Communities around the Deng Deng National Park in dire need of Education

By Nchanji Roland

Deng Deng, situated in East Cameroon, where ERuDeF is working to create three community forests, to link the Deng Deng National Park and the Belabo Council Forest for the free movement of endangered species is facing huge challenges in the aspect of education. Illiteracy levels in these communities are very low which posts a major threat to the conservation of wildlife.

These communities have so many setbacks in the domain of education such as insufficient number and absenteeism of teachers. Since these communities are very remote and lack many basic facilities, many teachers shy away from going there whenever they are posted in those communities. Due to the corrupt nature of the system many of them will bribe their ways out and be posted in different areas. This goes a long way to affect the quality of education in these communities.

Another challenge is the insufficient number of classrooms in these communities. For example, in a village called Satando, they use one classroom for two levels.

 One of the biggest challenges also faced by these schools is the lack of text books which makes it very difficult for the pupils to study at home and this goes a long way to make the work tedious for the teachers. According to a teacher in Deng Deng in a class of about 65 pupils only about 5 of them can afford to buy text books. This makes learning slow and difficult for the teachers and pupils as well.