Responding to a need:
developing literacy in a remote area of 
the Gwoza Hills in NE Nigeria

                                                           
Stella Cattini-Müller  
Mandaras Publishing
www.mandaras.info
 London 2000

Contents

Introduction

1	Dzga in context	 ……………………………4

1.1	a community of montagnards	

historical background
	geographical location
	climate of change

1.2	social circumstances of children

changes in family structure
	a growing need
	children’s roles and tasks
	traditional concept of learning

2	Developing learning support for Dzga  ….	6

2.1	researching the community structure

survey of household groups
assessing children’s needs

2.2	ethical concerns

from personal to political
numeracy and literacy in English? 
	equality of opportunity

2.3	setting up the Learning Support

addressing the community
   	developing a curriculum
	organisation and logistics

3	Providing continuity of support ………….	10

3.1	practical issues

	fundraising
resources

3.2	monitoring progress

	links to mainstream
	increasing demand

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction 

A recent consultation document from the Department for International Development on Human Rights for Poor People (2000) recognises the gap between “aspirations contained in the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the reality of the lives of many people in poorer countries” and proposes a new target for “universal primary education in all countries by 2015”.

Providing education in countries where there are wide expanses of rural lands has posed many logistical and economic difficulties and the low levels of literacy and numeracy are certain indicators of poverty and deprivation. In Nigeria, mass literacy campaigns to address this have failed to succeed during long periods of military rule and economic deterioration. Many projects aimed at improving adult literacy, and thereby promoting greater confidence in child education, rarely reach the more remote rural groups, who make up more than half (62% 1996 PNUD) the population of the country.

The Dughwede people of Dzga, are one such disadvantaged rural group at the extreme end of the poverty scale where basic primary education does not exist. Being confronted with this reality, not in my role as an educator, but accompanying my husband, a social anthropologist, on two ethnographic field trips in 1996 and 1998, eventually led to my involvement.

This study focuses on a specific and genuine need developing from changes in the lives of this community of montagnards living in a very remote and high valley named Dzga, in the Gwoza Hills of NE Nigeria. This eastern part, from the mountains towards the international boundary with Cameroon, is one of the most underdeveloped areas in the whole of Nigeria. I discuss in this work some of the difficulties involved in responding to this need for the delivery of some voluntary aided form of basic literacy and numeracy support for the children of Dzga, forgotten by both the state and the International Aid agencies, a reality illustrating that global intention still has far to go to match grassroots delivery.  

In the first section I will outline the historical background of the people, the remote location, the economic and social conditions in the mountains and life for the children, the skills they acquire, their learning needs and the changes affecting everyone. In the second section I will explain the evolving idea of voluntary Learning Support, some personal research I conducted, the difficulties I was presented with and the action I took to start the project, creating a curriculum and organising resources. The third section shows the continuing commitment, the fundraising, the children’s progress and problems which now need to be solved for future success.

1	Dzga in context

1.1	a community of montagnards

historical background

Historically, the montagnards have a background of enslavement which goes back 500 years. They sought refuge higher and higher in the Gwoza Hills, bordering the Mandara Mountains, to escape the slave raiders. The elder members of the Dughwede remember the arrest of the last slave raider, one infamous Hamman Yaji, by a British colonial officer in 1927. Although they welcomed this event and hold the British in great esteem for their liberation, they have nonetheless maintained a suspiciousness of the world beyond the mountains. When the colonial powers took over, the Dughwede retreated from change, refusing to pay taxes and rejecting education. Now, after many years of military rule and economic collapse, at a time when migration is increasing, the montagnards find themselves rejected by the state and the changing needs of their children overlooked.

geographical location

A major factor also inhibiting school provision is the insular nature of the mountain communities. Being 4,000 feet up over a rocky terrain and only accessible by foot, with no electricity, makes schooling very problematic. When I made my first trip to Dzga, I was taken on long hikes across the hills to see two abandoned schoolrooms. From the plains to the heights where these schools were positioned was, for a local, a 2-3 hour climb. Education at that time was at crisis point; teachers were very poorly paid or not paid at all, often untrained, not turning up for their classes, or finding them empty when they did, and certainly unwilling to make the journey up, or to live, in such remote places. Due to the lack of education there are few locally trained people who would wish to maintain continuity by returning as educators in their own communities.

climate of change

Schools failed also because the children were unable to adapt to the rigid rules set by government controlled schools. The hillsides have been dry stone terraced for hundreds of years, subsistence farming being the livelihood of the Dughwede and the children are heavily involved in the family farming duties, especially during the rainy season. Attendance at school could only be spasmodic and therefore the regime of the schools was inappropriate to their needs. Historically, the montagnards feared that they would lose their children to school, and the small number of families who did decide to send one child found that, with the primary school abandoned, there was no chance to pass the entry exams to secondary schools on the plain. Now, changes in the structure of life in the mountains raise more issues related to the requirements of children and the needs of the family group.
1.2	social circumstances of children 

changes in family structure

There is a trend towards downhill migration throughout the mountains although they are still densely populated. Although the terraces hold the rain and are more fertile, every metre being planted for optimum yield, subsistence farming is merging with cash crop marketing and therefore, value orientations are changing, money is needed to buy goods and to rent more land. Whereas previously a farmer kept three full granaries to cover the possibility of one or two bad years, his spare crops are now marketed leaving his family bereft should there be a drought. This in turn forces him to move away to earn more money.

The seasonal movement away from the mountains by men who go to the plains to work as lumberjacks or butchers is altering the way of family life and has strong implications regarding the long term survival of the montagnard communities. For those children whose fathers are now often away for long spells of time during the hot, dry season there are many changes to adapt to, women taking on male roles, additional responsibilities and new attitudes developing towards their own dreams and aspirations for the future.

a growing need

These changes occurring in mountain areas also highlight a need for the development of adult literacy, as yet not a provision in the Gwoza Hills, although much has been done to create locally based non-formal literacy classes in Hausa, serving rural communities. Abama & Mangvwat (1993:23) emphasise the importance for this: “both as an enabling and accelerating factor in meaningful and purposeful development.” The younger generation of adults, especially those young men with experience of life outside the hills, echoed that view in interviews I had with them. They expressed their wishes that their own children be given opportunities to access additional skills for future times when many of them would be jettisoned into urban life on the plains during seasonal work and transmigration.

children’s roles and tasks

It falls on the younger children to take on even more tasks during these times when their mothers are left alone to cope with the land, the animals, the welfare of their younger children and the maintenance of the home. Much of a child’s day during the rainy fertile season revolves around work and regular family duties. All family members are occupied in tending their terraces. It is usually the role of an older daughter to fetch the water at dawn which can be anything up to an hour’s return climb. During the rains it is the task of one of the boys to take the large bales of dried grasses to feed the fettered animals. Everything is carried on the head, including stones for re-building of houses and terraces. Very small children are tied onto the backs of an older sister who then performs her tasks carrying this extra weight.

Other duties involve planting, hoeing the fields, carrying produce down to the weekly market on the plain, grinding millet and corn, picking seeds and fruits, making fires and preparing food. With some older brothers and fathers away the labour is divided between the women and children.

traditional concepts of learning

It is thus that the children learn, through experience and need, many complex skills. During the dry, hot season, much is done in the way of maintenance, such as repairing thatching, weaving mats and baskets for storage, string making, pottery and many other activities which require skillful use of raw materials gathered from the harvest. Lessons are taught which are relevant and essential to the survival of the community and knowledge is passed to the children by their parents, older siblings or relatives. In the case of the potter, for example, she will be looking to pass her skills specifically to a female member of her family. (Cattini-Müller 1998c:2).

2	Developing learning support for Dzga

2.1	researching the community structure

survey of household groups

In order to understand the structure of family groups more fully and to see how this large community of people was placed on the hillsides I decided to conduct a survey (Cattini-Müller 1998a). Of the 162 households, or compounds, plotted round the terraces, 99 were Traditionalist, 48 were Muslim and 15 were Christian. Of the total number of 556 children in the valley, an average of 5 per household, only 8 children, all boys, had attended school at some point and 4 of these had reached secondary level. Of these 8, 4 were from Traditionalist homes and 4 from Christian homes. Those who had gone through to secondary level were Christians and had been influenced by the church mission group on the plain which had an historic interest in educating through religion. Our research assistant and now teacher in Dzga was one such determined young man who had taken himself through primary and secondary schooling in adulthood, finally to achieve a degree at the age of 33. 
 
The three religious groups co-exist in the hills and children often experience different religions in one family. Conversion from Traditionalism to Islam is common, and it is quite acceptable for younger Muslim members of a family to live alongside their Traditionalist elders. Each group celebrates their respective festivals and there is often an overlap when an event occurs which concerns everyone. For example, children might attend a funeral ceremony of a Muslim aunt, with Christian parents and Traditionalist in-laws, and experience three very different approaches to grieving (Müller-Kosack 1999). The children grow up strengthened by this tolerance and acceptance of diversity.

assessing children’s learning needs

The present change in the socio-economic climate brings into focus the changing needs of the children who, moving between two cultures, are often actively involved in trading, marketing and communicating with groups of people outside the mountains. As well as having agricultural knowledge and farming techniques, craft and survival skills, they are now showing a need for functional literacy and numeracy skills. Learning support would have to consider the working duties of the children and the pressures upon them. In the rainy season they have less time to spare than in the dry, hot season. A major consideration would be the respect and value placed on their traditional skills and a nurturing of awareness that a different set of skills does not serve to replace but rather to enhance and enrich. 

The traditional gathering place on the rocks under the mahogany outside our hut was  claimed by the children as their space to experiment excitedly with paper and pencil, making marks for the first time, playing with words and songs and telling their stories. Following on from my survey and discussions with young people and women, in particular, and drawing on many years of experience working with children who were transported directly into our city classrooms from rural hillsides in Bangladesh, I finally decided to consider the idea of some longer term support for the children with whom I was building a growing rapport.

2.2	ethical concerns 

from personal to political

A primary concern at the time was the burden of responsibility about my anticipated role as sole provider of learning opportunities and the ambivalence I felt about being party to this cycle of change the children were already caught up in. I questioned my own value judgements as an educator trained to react to issues of political incorrectness, inequality, gender, language and cultural and religious differences. When I started fundraising I was often confronted with challenging questions by certain colleagues regarding these issues and whether my ‘interference’ was justifiable. I could only answer at that time that I was responding to the request the Dughwede had made of me. The plea for help came because the Nigerian government cannot fulfill its primary tasks. Political issues on a wider scale came into focus later when I discovered that my experience only pinpointed a discrepancy which was  internationally acknowledged. Education for all, the slogan which opens the 21st century, moves this from the personal into the political sphere and those ethical concerns of colleagues about extreme voluntarism conflict with genuine human rights issues.  

numeracy and literacy in English?

Why English? This was a major question, one posed by many colleagues since. The children speak Dughwede, their unwritten mother tongue and some Hausa, increasingly becoming the lingua franca. However, all formal teaching in Nigeria follows a curriculum in English, the legacy of colonial rule and the national language. This is the established system, the National Curriculum (1987) is in English and the need for basic English at primary level has to be considered if there is to be any progression towards further state provided study. In London I had argued for the rights of children for whom English was a second language, subjected to unfair tests and demoralised by league table results. There in such extreme conditions all such idealistic notions seemed to shrink in relevance.

What about the loss of the local language? Would it eventually disappear?  When recalling the Dughwede singing their phrases across the hillsides, one resonates with the sentiments of Wolfgang Sachs, who mourns the loss of local languages (1997p.102) saying that: “languages often carry subtle cultures through time.” Still, the mother tongue remains a powerful means of oral communication in the mountains and a symbol of cultural diversity with about 20,000 Dughwede speakers, a middle sized group among speakers of five other languages in the neighbouring hillsides. Only through education is it possible to start to bring written form to an oral language, something our interpreter is now doing, through recordings of the spoken voice, songs, discussions and story telling, thus preserving it for his descendants. So, whilst maintaining interest and respect for the Dughwede tongue, the response is to help with English literacy.

equality of opportunity 

The Learning Support offers equal chances to all and, by virtue of its flexible structure, seeks to open doors for the girls who have previously been excluded from education. Although the Dughwede, like all other groups in the Gwoza Hills, is a male-dominated society, the women are exercising much more power now in the absence of their menfolk. They recognise the affects that the changes will have on all members of the family and display positive attitudes towards education. Although most girls are married at a very early age this does not prevent them from valuing the acquisition of basic skills at primary level. CARE (1994) focussing on education for girls states that “the number of years a girl spends in primary school has a direct impact on her future health, ability to earn a living, status in the family and community, and on reducing the number and increasing the wellbeing of the children she will have.”

2.3	setting up the Learning Support

addressing the community

By word of mouth a meeting was arranged to discuss these ideas, taking place in the traditional style, under the tree, on the rocks, with people gradually filtering down from the hills. It was a large group of men, although some women, who had shown interest during our interviews, encircled the gathering to listen. I put forward my thoughts, described my work as a teacher with the Bangladeshi community in London and the importance of language development for their children. I suggested that we tried the Learning Support for one year because I felt it could be financed for that long on a very low budget.
 
The presence of the rainmaker gave great importance to this gathering and his words were heeded with care as he spoke of mistakes the community had made in the past by denying their children the right to education through fear and of the difficulties encountered with paper work and legal matters due to illiteracy. He voiced the feelings of the community when he said that their children were now being denied this right by the State. There was an agreement that attendance was voluntary and dependent upon the needs of the family and that our interpreter, John, would be the teacher. Anxieties that he was of the Christian faith were dispelled by my insistence that there would be no religious input of any kind.

developing a curriculum

Developing a curriculum (Cattini-Müller 1998b) was next on the agenda. This needed to be basic, relevant and child-centred, using the environment as a tool for learning. With this in mind I created a set of basic skills in literacy and numeracy closely related to the children’s’ experience. 

For example, we started with an awareness of initial letters, e.g.: g-goat, s-stone, leading to simple object recognition questions: “What is this?,” “This is my goat,” later extended when looking at colours: “My goat is black and white.” It is structured so that children can learn without complicated textbooks or equipment and forms a starting point for the teacher to extend ideas. Language used is of relevance to the children so that they will be encouraged to use it: “I can hoe,” “I can play langa” (a game of catch performed on one leg), “I can get water.” It is hoped that it can be tackled at any level of experience, with children joining in at any stage according to their life needs: “Yesterday I went to market,” “I will work tomorrow.” Emphasis is laid on the fact that the learning support is voluntary, should be enjoyable, and maintains the philosophy that it is available for all the children of Dzga, girls and boys of all ages, regardless of religious denomination.

organisation and logistics

My time in Dzga was limited so I had to organise as much as possible before leaving. Money was set aside for basic equipment such as chalk, paper and pencils. We acquired a blackboard and a large metal storage trunk, its lid doubling as a magnetic board for future materials. Lessons would take place under the tree. The farming duties of the teacher needed to be considered so a flexible arrangement was made for him to climb up from his home in the village at the foothills whenever he could. I arranged to transfer his salary through an English resident in the nearest small town of Gwoza. We have another contact there who has access to E-mail and occasionally when the lines are working we are able to receive and send news. However, remoteness  remains a big drawback for communication and feedback.

3	Providing continuity of support

3.1	practical issues

fundraising 

Fundraising on a small scale, through word of mouth, slideshows and talks, school visits and generous donations from colleagues, family and friends has kept the project running now for over two years. On my return from the second trip I discovered that the EU had funded similar projects in remote areas on the Cameroonian side of the Mandaras (World News 12/09/98). My enquiries into the resources which had been allocated to the Nigerian sector met with no response. To generate more interest and funding the project has recently been included in the website for the Northern Mandaras and information about further developments is due to be added. 

Progress newsletters are sent to all donators, one of whom is now giving all proceeds from a self-published book to fund the cost of building a learning room on the patch of land the project purchased last year. This will pay for the foundations, wood and roofing materials. Members of the community at Dzga will provide the stones and the some of the labour. Our most recent communication informs us that the building is under way and that the community has collected enough funds to pay for some of the specialist work.

resources

Books have been made by myself and by groups of children using photos and text about people and places in Dzga (for example: ”Dada is sleeping, the women are dancing.”) Supportive materials, worksheets, storybooks and magnetic picture stories have been welcome resources. Children from Caldy Island School in South Wales, itself small and remote, have taken a particular interest in Dzga and have made counting books using images of animals and objects relevant to the Dzga environment. There is a need for many more resources but this is not only a financial problem but also an issue to do with the remoteness of Dzga and the unpredictability of the postage system. Reliable postage costs are high but we occasionally use travellers as couriers to carry packages and letters. 

3.2	monitoring progress

links to mainstream

Progress has been rapid and the Learning Support extremely popular because of its position in the centre of the valley, its child friendly approach and, most importantly, the commitment to education of the teacher and the parental encouragement. A recent development has been the direct acceptance into mainstream secondary school of two Dzga children, by-passing the usual hidebound system of insisting that all children must progress through the state primary system initially before sitting the entry exams for secondary school. Their success is an indicator that they have acquired sufficient skills through the learning support to qualify.

increasing demand

A recent E-mail from the teacher brings news of increasing demand and attendance, with numbers rising to over 300 from the initial estimate of 40! Although the children are taught in large groups outside, this number by far exceeds our previous expectations and it is clear that more teachers or adult helpers are required. Harrison (1983:256-286) describes many similar scenarios in third world countries and difficulties which we, in western schools, would find insurmountable. However, it seems fairly urgent that the building work is completed before the rainy season sets in and there will be a need for more basic materials as well as additional teaching resources. The issues of distance and communication make it very difficult to give regular support, feedback and reassurance to the teacher who is becoming overloaded with responsibilities over and above those he originally expected. I am advising him to enlist the older children from Dzga to help the younger ones until such time as we can fund further salaried staff.

Conclusion

The increasing success of the project brings with it new challenges for me and raises again the burden of responsibility to deliver. Money is urgently needed to fund at least two more teachers, the completion of the building and for more resources to meet the growing demand. It seems serendipitous to me that as I write and consider how to involve outside agencies in fundraising and to foster more awareness among schoolchildren here in the UK, the The Education for All Forum is about to take place in Senegal. The Guardian and the NUT have also launched their ideas for involving schools in the Global Campaign for Education. Steve Sinnot, from the NUT told the Teacher magazine (April 2000) “ ‘Education, education, education’ should be a genuine international priority.” With educational initiatives reaching all schools and charities such as Action Aid and Oxfam distributing educational awareness materials this is an advantageous time to present the case for the continuity of the Dzga Learning Support to some appropriate agencies. The remoteness of Dzga remains a problem but one could envisage possible sponsorship of volunteer students or teachers to spend some weeks in Dzga to enhance teaching methods and broaden experiences. To maintain continuity it is clear that the Dzga Learning Support has reached a stage where it needs to taken into another dimension to receive regular, stable funding on a larger scale.

Voluntary projects can contribute greatly to repairing the gaping whole in provision for all, especially girls, in Nigeria. However, the increasing numbers of children demanding their right to education in this project demonstrates that learning support cannot adequately replace the genuine and desperate need for a national restructured workable approach to primary education. We see highlighted in Dzga how the reality of life for poor children in remote places contrasts so dramatically with the academic aspirations dictated in principle. The discrepancies between political will and human  need (Tahir 1993.30)  referred to earlier are issues which will surely be addressed at the forthcoming Senegal Forum in April, where a global action plan to achieve universal primary education is to be considered. Taking this one small project alone and the developments needed for its continuity as an example, one would hope to see a realistic and well controlled distribution of finances and resources, as well as a clear identification of needs. Constructively organised action and generation of political goodwill and commitment also needs to be activated if the projected target for literacy for all is to be successfully met by the year 2015.

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