After a Narrow Escape From Death, School Beckons

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/central-african-republic-win-a-trip.html

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BODA, Central African Republic — Tyler Pager is the winner of Nicholas Kristof’s 2018 “Win-A-Trip” contest to take a university student on a reporting trip. Mr. Pager, 22, graduated from Northwestern University and is now studying at Oxford University. He and Mr. Kristof recently traveled to the Central African Republic, a small, land-locked country in the middle of the continent, and this is the first of Mr. Pager’s dispatches.

As rebel forces burned his house to the ground, Teddy Sanguibe narrowly escaped death by jumping through a window. Although he has burn scars around his upper leg from the day he fled his home, he managed to survive the conflict that broke out here in 2012 relatively unscathed compared to many of his family and friends.

His grandfather, aunt and two brothers were killed by the Seleka, a predominantly Muslim militia that led violent campaigns throughout the country. Seleka forces also captured Mr. Sanguibe’s father, who worked as a guard at a local gas station, and tried to recruit him. He refused, so the militia tortured him. Mr. Sanguibe watched helplessly as soldiers whipped and stabbed his father with bayonets. The Seleka forces eventually freed him after the family paid a ransom of roughly $500, a large sum for a family making just a few dollars a day.

I met Mr. Sanguibe, now 19, at the one-story school he attends. He and most of his peers cannot afford textbooks, and the school has only two functioning classrooms, with walls blanketed by graffiti, to serve its nearly 800 students. In the third classroom, broken desks and litter lie strewn across the cement floor, rendering the room unusable. Only two of the 14 teachers receive a salary, and the remaining 12 are volunteers, parents with no formal training.

My visit to Mr. Sanguibe’s school could easily have left me feeling discouraged about the lack of resources and opportunity for kids like him. The lottery of birth allowed me to go to good schools and then on to college, where I’ve had access to hundreds of books and professors in every discipline.

But instead, Mr. Sanguibe’s resilience left me inspired. Even with all the obstacles he has faced and the violence he has witnessed, he spoke enthusiastically about returning to school after the fighting dissipated. His favorite subjects are French and math, and he wants to learn English one day. Right now, his school doesn’t have anyone to teach it. He hopes to become a teacher.

Mr. Sanguibe’s thirst for knowledge underscores the fact that access to education should be a right, not a privilege. Instead of hiding in his home from armed forces trying to kill him, Mr. Sanguibe spends his days in the classroom, and because of it, he has renewed hope for his future.

His story also serves to remind us that we can — and should — help those around the world who struggle to obtain an education. It’s easy to fixate on the problems in our backyard or the latest political scandal in Washington, but we can’t ignore Mr. Sanguibe and his fellow students. This is especially true because there are low-cost ways to invest in education around the world.

On average, education costs $1.25 a day per child in developing countries, according to the Global Partnership for Education. The Global Peace Index estimated that the economic cost of violence across the world in 2016 was $14.3 trillion, and research shows education promotes social cohesion and peace.

So, for less than a cup of coffee, we can support organizations that work to help students like Mr. Sanguibe get school books and help schools like his hire more trained teachers. Extra funds may even allow Mr. Sanguibe to learn English or enable his school to repair its broken classroom.

The sad reality is that Mr. Sanguibe and his classmates are among the lucky ones. Most children don’t attend school here, Boniface Katta, Boda’s mayor, told us. Boda has only six schools to serve its population of just over 20,000 people, so in some cases, a teacher will have 250 to 300 students in a classroom. Most teachers are volunteers — the central government pays only six teachers’ salaries in Boda. Mr. Katta explained that even during his childhood under the dictatorship of Jean-Bédel Bokassa, many more students learned to read and write than are learning now.

While securing peace remains his top priority, Mr. Katta warned about the pitfalls of neglecting education. He fears that if the country’s children don’t go to school, places like Bangui, the country’s capital, and Boda could relapse into violence again when those children grow up uneducated and face few job prospects.

Resolving the continuing political conflicts in the Central African Republic may be far-off, but it’s clear that education is a worthwhile investment, right now, to promote lasting peace.

“I believe in education,” Mr. Sanguibe told me. “Education can improve my situation.”