Story of American Couple Who Helped Build the Chibok School in 1954
The very opposite of terrorists arrived in Chibok more than a half century before the world came to know this remote Nigerian village as the place where maniacal members of Boko Haram kidnapped more than 270 girls and burned down their school.
While the terrorist group struck in recent days intending only evil, Gerald and Lois Neher of Kansas came to Chibok in 1954 with the purpose of doing as much good as they were able. They helped make it possible for girls to attend school there in the first place.
The Nehers helped expand the school with sun baked mud bricks and grass roofing. The structure’s very size became an invitation for more children, and the first girls began to attend.
SNIP
Lois served as a teacher, which placed her below only a chief in the social hierarchy. She used a patch of painted concrete as a blackboard, the students doing their work as best they could without the most basic school supplies. “We didn’t have much paper or anything like that,” Lois says. “You make do with what you have. If you don’t have paper, you use dirt. They learned to write in the dirt or in the sand with a stick.”
Back in America, keeping a youngster after class was considered punishment. Here it was a reward. “They would thank you over and over because they were so anxious to learn,” Lois says. “Any way to get education is what they wanted.”
Continued at Link:
http://news.yahoo.com/built-school-boko-haram-land-094500864--politics.html
