Camaraderie is a major element of professional life in Togo. It seems everyone knows half their city’s teachers if they are a teacher, or a large part of the corps of taxi drivers if they also have a car, and so on. The strength of this network is encouraged by the fact that everyone has a cell phone now, while many do not use email addresses. So if you’re not tapped into that phone tree, you can often feel out of the loop.
My major chance to tap into this network came a couple of weeks ago as I journeyed north to Togo’s second city, Kara, to conduct some follow up events for English teachers. The coordinating started the day I arrived: a teacher-friend and I sat down and chose a couple of teachers to observe and conference with, as well as some locations for training workshops. Once we had some ideas, he called his ‘Inspector’- the local term for a city public education official responsible for overseeing teachers.
Once the logistics were figured out, the Inspector then called the principals of the schools we wanted to visit, and those principals called the teachers we wanted to observe (we contacted the teachers also, just in case!). For the training workshops, the Inspector—and this is what is really amazing—then called every teacher he wanted to invite to my workshops. One venue was a 100-seater. That’s a lot of phone calls. Then finally, those individual teachers probably called their closest friends and colleagues.
The results of all this are fascinating: many people hear about upcoming events, while many others never get the word.
First, some snapshots from class observations:
CHLOE GOES 