Malawi 便り Part3 〜生活編①〜

こんにちは、M2の竹内です。たまには、気分を変えて日本語で書きたいと思います。

長かった協力隊活動ももうすぐ終わろうとしている。今回は紹介がてら、今までのマラウイでの生活を少し振り返って見ようと思う。

マラウイに初めて着いたのは2010年6月23日、今から約２年前。到着後１カ月の研修期間を経て、活動と生活の拠点となる任地に赴任した。赴任して最初の半年は水道なし、電気なしの生活だった。電気がないとうことは、生活のほとんどが手動で、炭やろうそく生活ということである。最初は、火を炊いたり、手洗い洗濯だったり、生活に必要な1つ1つの動作に物凄く時間がかかったけど、少しずつ慣れていった。

水汲みは、近くの井戸までバケツを持って汲みにいっていた。しかし、その井戸はよく壊れていたので、その時は300m離れた遠いほうの井戸まで行かなければならず、毎度10k以上の水を持って、こぼさず持って帰ってこなければしならない。自分の身長の半分にも満たない小さな子どもが必死に水を運ぶ光景に感化されながら、重い腰をあげ、雇っていた警備員とよく二人で汲みにいった。両方の井戸が壊れてしまった時が何回かあった。そんな時は、お風呂や洗濯、皿洗いを我慢して、近所の人に飲食に必要な水だけを分けてもらい、凌いでいた。その他、火炊きや洗濯、水汲み、料理等様々な場面で悪戦苦闘していた私は多くの人に助けてもらった。

マラウイに限らず、サブサハラ・アフリカの国全体がそうだと思うけど、生活環境が厳しい分、家族内・知人間の助け合いの精神やコミュニティーの絆が本当に強い。もちろん宗教的・文化的要因もあると思う。いずれにしても、分け合う優しさや他者を手伝う気持ちといった道徳性が合理的・論理的に教わったものでなく、自然に備わっているマラウイの人達には未だに兜を脱ぎたくなる。きっと戦時中、あるいは戦後直後までは日本にも溢れていた（としばしば言われる）「人情」みたいなものに似ている。そもそも、合理性とか論理性とかいうものは、大抵の場合「教育」と「学習」の過程の中で培われるものだけど、教育を施すことで本来その人が持っている特殊な感覚や先天的特性が薄れていくのではないかという疑念を抱かざるをえない。そうなってくると、必ずしも教育を受けることが彼らにとって100%正しいことではないと感じる。

以前、こんなことがあった。マラウイの田舎では道端で会うと、例え知らない人でさえも、その場で足を止めて、会ったその人数分だけ挨拶をする習慣がある。つまり、5人に会うと5人1人1人に必ず挨拶するということである。10人いたら、10人1人1人に挨拶である。なんとも時間がかかるこの動作をマラウイの村人たちは、相手に敬意を表すための大切な習慣であり、後世に伝えていかなければならない貴重な感覚だと思っている。しかし、ある知り合いのマラウイ人の先生がこんなことを言っていた。「オレは、人数が多くても少なくても全員一斉に挨拶するよ。面倒だし、1人1人に挨拶はしていられないよ。そもそも、論理的に考えたら一斉に挨拶する方が自分の時間も短縮できるし、相手の足を長く止めることもないし効率的じゃないか？」彼曰く、子どもの頃はこんな風に感じることがなかったらしい。他の要因もあると思うけど、今まで学校に通い学んできた過程で、自然と論理的・合理的な考え方や効率的な感覚が身についてしまった、ということを考えずにはいられなかった。

自分の普段の授業でも、こんなことがあった。マラウイの子どもたちは、得てして独特の感性やリズム感、表現力を持っていて、ドラマやダンスの授業の際には、その力を如何なく発揮する。教会での歌や伝統ダンスとは違って、日々の何気ない「音」を聞いて彼らが感じるリズムや踊り方・歌い方には「型」がない。彼らにとって、音を感じ、表現する際に1番大切なのは「自由」という概念だと思う。ある日、音楽の授業で拍子と音符の関係について教えていた時に、グループ毎に「拍数を考慮しながら歌う」グループ活動をさせたことがあった。普段馴染みのある曲を、個々の感性に任せて自由に歌い踊る時は生き生きしていた子どもたちが、急に窮屈そうになった。指導する過程で伝えられる固定された知識や型にはまった方法によって、彼らが持っている独特の感性や感覚が失われてしまったような気がした。もちろん、教え方が悪かったのもあるし、土着感覚を生かしながら、知識伝達するといった「バランス」が大事なのかもしれない。でも、既存の知識を植えつけることは必ずしもプラスに働くわけではないということを身にしみて感じた。

ちょっと話がそれてしまったけど、そんなこんなでようやく半年が過ぎ、活動にも生活にも慣れ始めた頃、ついに家に電気がきた。日本では当たり前だった灯のある生活がこんなに素晴らしいものだと歓喜した。それまで、19〜20時に就寝していたのが一気に22~23時になった。電気があると言っても停電も多い。2~3日に一回の頻度で、それも大体18時~21時というご飯時という一番大事な時間帯に停電するから、困ったものだ。しかし、マラウイの全人口の約7%しか電気を持っていないということを考えると、本当に恵まれた生活である。

今まで自分は、世界平和とか人類の平等とかを人並みに願ってきたけど、ここに来てみて、悲しいけどそれは単なる自分のエゴで、美辞麗句に過ぎなかったと感じる。人々が平等に暮らすということは、富める者の富が貧しい者の所に行き渡るということだけど、果たして自分はそれを受け入れる覚悟がどれだけあるだろう、と考えることがよくある。物と情報に溢れ、何もかもに恵まれた高い生活水準を落とし、何もかもが不足し、物事も予定通りに全く進まない過酷な状況に身を置いてみると、どうしてもストレスを感じたり、やりきれない気持ちになったりすることがある。初めて自分の覚悟のなさ、心の弱さを知った。それが分かっただけでもここに来て本当に良かったと思う。

赴任して8カ月がたち、言語にも生活習慣にも慣れ、ようやく周りの人達と打ち解け始めた頃、家に空き巣が入った。それも2回も。幸いなことに、家のドアや窓が壊され、寝室の中が少し荒らされた程度で、何も取られてはいなかった。アフリカ（というよりアフリカの中でも特に貧しいマラウイのような国）に来ると、白い肌でいることが心地よくないと思う時が未だにある。白い肌＝お金持ち、白い肌＝外国人、という彼らのイメージを少しでも払拭し、1人の人間として他のマラウイ人と同じように接してほしいという一心で、彼らと生活スタイル・習慣を共にしてきた矢先の出来事だったから、本当にショックだった。それがきっかけで、今まで住んでいた場所からさらに西に15km離れた所に引っ越すことになった。家は変わっても、Zone配属の巡回活動のため、活動内容・活動範囲は今までと何ら変わりなかった。

生活編②に続く

Senegal便り(Part2)

Hello, this is Ayaka, an M2 student taking a break and working in Senegal as a JICA volunteer right now. As Yuki wrote in the last entry, I would like to write about my life here. It has been almost one year and the half of my stay has already finished. Recently, many demonstrations are carried out in Senegal. This is because many people are against the participation of current president for the election which will be conducted in this weekend. I hope that Senegal will keep in peace…
As I mentioned in my last entry, I teach music, P.E. and drawing in the elementary schools here. In Senegal, there are not many teachers who conduct those subjects in the class, even though these subjects are part of examinations to go to a junior high school. Some teachers don’t think that artistic education are not much important and think that teaching those subjects is difficult because of the lack of materials and their skills.
In the last December, I organized a small seminar with another JICA volunteer to promote artistic education. In the seminar, we planned all with local teachers and asked some of them to do the demonstration. It was relatively small seminar but it was a big challenge for us because as mentioned before, many teachers don’t teach artistic education in the school but we wanted teachers to know that it is interesting and not difficult, so we conducted in this way. Thanks to many cooperative teachers, after the seminar the participants talked to me that it was really fun and interesting. I am planning to organize the same type of seminar in April or May if I can. And I hope that even after I go back to Japan, the seminar will be conducted by the hands of local teachers. Also, in the preparation with local teachers and inspectors who work for the educational committee of the province, I learned a lot and thought a lot about the meaning of international cooperation and technical cooperation. I couldn’t have thought in this way if I hadn’t come here.
In the last year, I tried to teach artistic education on my own in the class but currently, I am trying to persuade local teachers to teach those subjects and I help them a little. Thanks to my cooperative teachers, I think that some teachers start to think that artistic education is interesting and very important for them. What I can do here is not much but I try my best!

Ethiopia便り Part አንድ (AND)

Hello, this is Yuki Shimazu, a D1 student at Yamada seminar and currently studying at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. I saw the previous blog article which was posted by Kyohei and I decided to write “Ethiopia 便り”.

It has been 2 months since I came to Ethiopia. I belong to the Institute of Educational Research (IER), Addis Ababa University, as a PhD student and am currently researching on "Agricultural Extension to Rural Women through Female Agricultural Extension workers". I would like to see the role of female extension workers in the agricultural extension system in Ethiopia from an educational perspective. One of the challenges of my topic is how to combine agricultural and educational issues. However, I believe it is important to conduct this kind of research since we cannot separate one issue from the others in the field of international development, which covers so many issues. Actually, I am enjoying having many challenges as a researcher. All staffs at IER are really nice and kind. They teach me Amharic language, give me advices, and help me all the time. I am really happy to meet them!

Here in Addis Ababa, majority of the population is Christian. Most of them belong to "Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church". Last month, one of their ceremonies, the Epiphany, called ጥምቀት (TIMKAT) was held. It was celebrated on January 20th; on January 11th in Ethiopian calendar. (Ethiopia has its own calendar which is 8 years and 9 days different from our one: today is February 5th, 2004 according to the calendar... So, can I also be 8 years younger? LOL). I attended the ceremony with my Ethiopian friends with wearing white traditional scarf called ነጠላ (NATELLA) as the photo below shows. There were so many people at the place and everybody was singing and dancing really happily.

Currently, I am also learning Amharic language. The language has its own characters and pronunciations. Remembering the characters was not so hard, but it was really difficult for me to master the pronunciations which I have to use my throat and tong. However, finally I became able to do last week!! I was really excited at the time and told everyone around me about it!

OK, I will stop here. I will write more "academic" thing next time, about the conference and workshop which I attended in Ethiopia.

The next blog article will come on next Monday titled “Senegal 便り” by Ayaka. Yoroshikune☆

Yuki Shimazu @ Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Malawi 便り Part2

Hi, this is Kyohei Takeuchi working as a JOCV in Malawi. As I briefly introduced last time, my work here in Malawi is to promote “情操教育” at primary school, which is similar to Ayaka’s activity in Senegal. My current activities are to conduct lessons by team teaching, to implement teacher training and to produce teaching materials (reference book for teachers) and visual aids (TV program). All of them are about “情操教育”. Of course, there are good practices and challenges but let me introduce one example of my activities.

Generally speaking, music is not at all taught properly at primary school in Malawi. It might apply to other African countries though. No matter what reasons behind that situation, there needs to be some actions. The workshop I have conducted is one of countermeasures whose objectives are to promote teachers’ motivation and sharpen their understanding of music. Workshop was implemented at zone level once and 12 times (12 schools in the zone which I was in charge) at school level as follow-up. At zone level, 4 teachers including heads teachers from each attended while at school level, those participants would facilitate under the facilitation of teachers who attended at zone level.

What needs to be taken account is the content of workshop. Contents should embrace information not far away from textbook, a strong connection between knowledge and their local life, and participatory activities. I discussed and discussed about them with some resource teachers. And we introduced many ways of easy learning. For example, learning beats of musical note in relation to the sounds of locally found animals, singing “do re mi song” by using local language and resources, learning musical scales with locally common songs, leaning rhythm with local dance and so on.

It is always difficult to evaluate especially because this type of subject focuses on non-cognitive aspects inside which people have. Those are of course so many challenges. It is not for certain whether or not participants utilize what they learnt into their daily lesson, how much they were motivated, whether or not their understanding was improved, whether or not positive effect would be seen in students’ result of exam as a reflection and so on. But, the biggest success seems that local teachers were involved in the whole process of conducting a workshop without any financial support from somewhere, and came up with ideas by themselves.
Anyway, this is just an example of my activities. Overall, my life with local people for 1 year and half is long enough to open and fix my eyes on the reality behind information. Let me share more about it next time. Thank you.

Kyohei Takeuchi from Malawi

Achi Village Trip 2012

Hello, my name is SENG Vanmaren, a current graduate student in GSID. I am very
fortunate to be able to join the Achi village trip organized by Prof. Yamada. I would like to share
my experience and my feeling about this two-day trip.
On the first day, we took a Meitetsu bus from Nagoya station with 11 members,
including Prof. Yamada, Prof. Benavot, and Prof. Nui Changsong.

When we arrived at Komaba, we had to transfer to a mini-van because the school is located in a remote area. Then, we had a short walk to Seinaiji elementary school. It was a snowy day.
We were very excited to see the snow fall which is rarely seen in Nagoya city.

At Seinaiji Elementary School, we were warmly welcomed by the school principal and staff. We were allowed to observe the classrooms of different grades and introduced to school facilities. I was very surprised to learn that there are only 31 students in this huge school and there are only three pupils in the first grade. One of the first grade boys told me that one of his friends has just moved to live in other place and he was sad. He also told me that he loves playing football and I felt that he was trying to tell me that he wants to play football but there is no one to play with since there are only three students in his class. Apart from the conversation with students, I had an opportunity to talk to one of the teachers. He told me that students are instructed to solve problems by themselves. If students cannot solve the problems, teacher will help them by giving clues and explanation.
Before lunch time, my group members presented about Cambodia and Nigeria. Sokhom introduced general information about Cambodia and Cambodian greetings and I presented about why “pumpkin” is called “Kabocha” by Japanese. Jacob, from Nigeria, introduced his country.
At the end of each presentation, students were asked to answer some questions. They received a gift as a reward for the correct answer. Every student was given a postcard from Cambodia as souvenir. Then we had lunch with the students.
In the afternoon, we got a chance to observe the rope jumping exam. Rope jumping is one of Seinaiji elementary school’s activities. I was very amazed by the students’ skills.

In the evening, we were taken to experience Onsen before going to our host family’s house. Bunnara and I were assigned to stay with Koike family. We were greeted with a Shabu Shabu for dinner.

I learned that this family runs a homemade Tofu shop and they have opened a Tofu shop for 80 years. I was told by the family that they decided to make Tofu in this area because the water is clean for making a delicious Tofu.

The family allowed us to experience making Tofu. To do so, we woke up around 4 am. However, Mr Koike woke up since 3 am.

During our stay, there was heavy snow. We helped Ms Koike and old couples who live near our host family’s house clearing the snow. It was great experience for me since I am from a Tropical country like Cambodia.

On the last day, we went sightseeing in Achi Village. We visited a museum, Buddhist temples, and Kumatani children photo museum. We stopped by a local cuisine shop and tried Soba for lunch.

Before returning back to Nagoya, we stopped by the community center. There, I realized that our visit to Seinaiji Elementary school was published in two local newspapers.

Reunion with current and former students in Senegal and France

This is Shoko Yamada. I am just back from Senegal where I visited to evaluate the Japanese assistance in the field of techical and vocational education dispatched by Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During my stay, I met with Ayaka Iwatsuki, master's student who is currently working as a JOCV volunteer. She is trying to promote art education in primary schools. I am happy to find that she is enjoying her work and learning a lot from it.

I also met Ms. Tomoko Matsumoto, JICA expert for the project on science and math teachers education. Matsumoto-san is pursuing a Ph.D. in GSID-EHRD program.
Ms. Kayo Matsui, whom I met in Paris on my way back to Nagoya, is now the mother of a 1-year-old boy! It was very nice to see that she is leading a happy life in Paris.

Shoko Yamada

Open Seminar on Children's Rights in Historical Perspective given by Prof. Fuchs

I was so glad to meet Prof. Fuchs and listen to his lecture in GSID, because the topic of his lecture, “Children's Rights in Historical Perspective”, researching education from historical perspective, was new for many students in GSID. In the lecture, we could know how the ‘children rights’ has emerged in the age of modernization and how it became norm in the local, region and international society. It seems that for many students that to doubt the concept of ‘children rights’ help change their paradigm to think of education since they had took for the granted the concept when we research the education.
For me, in personal, since now I read some books about historical research of education written by Japanese scholars, it was interesting that I could compare the research of history of education between Western and Japan, and how the history of conceptualization or becoming norm is different in western and Japan. I was simulated more in this point and now I would like to think more how this is different depending on the cultures of the regions.
In addition to that, to get comments from Prof. Fucks for my research in my seminar was great pleasure for me. Since my research topic is peace education in Japan and it has strong tie with the textbook issue in Japan, I was so glad to get the comment from the Professor of expert of this issue.
In order to maximize the comment from the Prof. Fuchs, I will try thinking my research from wider view point and also try deepening the topic.
We would like to thank Professor Fuchs for coming here and to give me an opportunity to get comment from you and also for your lecture, and we hope to see you again!

Sayaka Higuchi