The Jaxaay high school, located in Keur Massar, in the suburbs of Dakar, like hundreds of other establishments in Senegal is facing the rainy season on October 5, 2023, the start of the school year. Reporting.
2 mins
With our correspondent in Dakar, Léa-Lisa Westerhoff
At Senegalmore than 4 million students will return to school on October 5, 2023. But a large number of them risk finding themselves in overcrowded classes due to a lack of teachers, or even in flooded classes.
Like every year during the rainy season, several dozen schools (318) have their feet in the water and are struggling to reopen.
This is the case in Keur Massar in the suburbs of Dakar. There, the last sweeps are given before the start of the school year. But faced with the state of the Jaxaay high school playground, Ousseynou Diagne, who came to enroll his daughter in second grade, is suddenly a little worried: “ There’s a lot of water and a lot of grass, it’s really not a pretty sight. »
This courtyard dotted with puddles of greenish water and wild grass is precisely the subject of a stormy back-to-school meeting between the teaching team and the principal.
“ We can’t start in these conditions, the whole yard is flooded »
Moussa Diouf is an economics professor. He thinks : ” When we say ‘We open today, we study today‘, normally that should be the rule. But today, in these conditions, can we start classes? We can’t start in these conditions, the whole yard is flooded. The rooms are invaded by the smell of this foul-smelling water, this water which is practically next to the classrooms. This is the problem we have, and it doesn’t start today. We have been experiencing this situation for almost two years. »
Because Jaxaay is in a flood zone and every rainy season, the high school faces new floods to the point of posing a safety problem, according to El Hadj Ibrahim Diouf, biology teacher: “ The problem here is not just the water: it is the water and the risk of collapse of building A which has been receiving water underground for three years. And all the relevant authorities are aware of the situation. But so far, nothing has been done, due to lack of political will, that’s all. »
On October 4, a representative of the Ministry of Water and Sanitation promised that work would begin. In the meantime, teachers have called on the approximately 2,000 high school students and their parents to mobilize today and boycott the start of the school year.