Chad: Abdel Razik Mohamed

Abdel Razik Mohamed

Head Teacher - Ousman School

Abdel Razik Mohamed is 28 and from the village of Touraju, just outside the larger town of Mastaré in the west of Darfur.

Before he left the village in 2004, it was a thriving community centred on trade, with 381 houses and just under 2,000 inhabitants. These days, just three buildings remain standing, the rest burned by the Janjaweed.

At that time, Abdel Razik was just completing his secondary education in El Geneina, the largest town in Western Darfur, and hoped to take further studies so that he could work in the public schools as a pre-school teacher. Unfortunately, he was just four months away from taking his final exams for a place at university, when he had to flee over the border into Chad.

Today, he is Cord’s head teacher for the pre-school in Ousman School, Bredjing Camp. Six days a week he works with 300 children aged between 3 and 6 years, helped by four colleagues.

Yet Abdel Razik is not only a teacher, but also a student . He lives with his wife, Tayiba and their 3 year old daughter, Nidaal in a compound of 5m by 5m where he has built two small shelters, one out of mud bricks baked in the sun, and the other from grass stalks. Tayiba has the place swept scrupulously clean; there was little furnishing except for two old metal chairs and a small bed.

Six mornings a week, before the primary school lessons start, Ousman School is known as Unity School and is a centre for learning English language.

Abdel Razik is one of the 400 students, and along with each learner he contributes a small sum per month in cash or kind to a central organising committee, out of which the teachers are paid. The six classes are well-organised into levels of ability and the students are of all ages, 40% of them girls.

They start their class at 6am, finishing after 45 minutes as the primary students arrive. In the early evening, before sunset and after the heat of the day has passed, a further 60 advanced learners arrive to study together.

At the other end of Bredjing Camp, there is another English language centre at Abubakar Assadik School, where around 200 students of all ages gather to learn in the late afternoon. Although there are many difficulties living as a refugee in a country that is in itself highly unstable, everyone agrees that the best thing about being in Bredjing Camp is the education. Formal education is free and they know that if they and the coming generation are to succeed, they must be educated. Abdel Razik wants nothing more than to provide for his family and to go to college to complete his studies.