School

There are more boys than girls going to school in Congo, and that's something we hope will change. Families have to pay a small fee for each child who goes to school. It's not very much money, but most families in Congo have so little that they may not be able to afford it. If they don't have enough to pay for all their kids to go to school, they send the boys but not the girls. That's not fair to the girls, of course, but many families in Congo still think it doesn't matter as much for girls to get an education. Most girls will go to the first few grades, but not beyond that.

In many villages the school only has the first couple of grades. After that, the kids have to go to another town for school. Parents can't drive their kids to school, because they don't have cars (and besides, the roads are all dirt and full of big ruts). So the kids stay in the school town during the week, living with relatives or maybe in a dormitory. On the weekends they walk home, then walk back again when the weekend is over. (And yes, that's a long walk!)

There are lots of different kinds of school buildings in Congo. The best ones are made of cinder blocks and have metal roofs on them. Some have metal roofs with walls of adobe-clay bricks. Some are built entirely of tree branches and tall grasses woven together. And some have a thatch roof and no walls at all! When it rains, there's no school in the buildings with thatch roofs, because the roof lets in the rain. Sometimes a strong storm wind comes along and blows a roof off (the kids aren't there during such storms, don't worry).

See some photos of schools in Congo in the Resources section or on our Flickr page.