Since autumn 2015 we are collaborating with the Teba Diatta Library through the revenues from the sales of the book El dragón que se comió el sol y otros cuentos de la Baja Casamance.
In 2015 we met with the women of the village of Oussouye and they decided in which language they wanted to be taught literacy (they chose French, which is the language in which their children are taught literacy). From that moment, the literacy course began in the Teba Diatta library, in Oussouye, organised and directed by Fina Hernández Gordillo.
Since then, every year we make an evaluation and see, together with Fina, the person in charge and responsible, what has been done each year.
In this academic year 2022-2023 there were 18 women who attended classes regularly on Mondays and Fridays from 16h to 18h. They are divided into two different levels, depending on their reading comprehension, grammatical competence and numeracy. The teacher, Monsieur Niassy, is a Senegalese teacher from the CEM (from the Spanish Centro de Educación Media, medium education center) , Aline Sitoe Diatta, who is paid 25,000 francs CFAS from Occidental Africa per month. Professor Niassy is assisted by a volunteer collaborator, Mademoiselle Martine. Both teachers work simultaneously: on Mondays, Niassy meets with the group of advanced readers and Martine with the group of beginner readers. On Fridays they work with the whole group. They teach oral expression from 4 to 5 p.m. and calculus from 5 to 6 p.m.
This year new literacy books have been purchased, such as Aprendo a leer rápido, and activities have taken place outside the library, such as a trip to the local radio station Kabisseu FM, with whom they may be able to collaborate next year with a radio programme of their own.
They have also started to exchange letters with a group of women from Madrid who are learning to read and write at the same time as them. This project started last year when Teresa Rodríguez, one of the teachers from Madrid, travelled to Oussouye and visited the Teba Diatta library. As well as sending letters to each other, they met by videoconference and were able to talk to each other directly.
This year, they also had the opportunity to participate in the 1st edition of the Teba Diatta Library Storytelling Festival, which took place from 2 to 9 April 2023. They were able to exchange stories with the participants of the festival who visited the library.
In summer the classes stop and the course starts at the beginning of November. During October, the coordinator, Fina Hernández, and the teacher Nyassi, will contact the women who came to the previous course and will try to contact new students for this course, looking at the necessary resources and organising everything so that it will be ready when the women from Oussouye arrive.
We also collaborate with the cinema organised by the library.
Since 2019, every Wednesday they have been meeting to watch films on a projector on the library wall. They have watched classic films, for all audiences, by African directors and authors. This year what they liked the most, and what they laughed at the most, were silent films. Chaplin is one of their favourites. In 2023 they have started to do film forum for adults. They started with a cycle of Ousmane Sembene, a very well known Senegalese director.
We also saw a cycle of African women to celebrate the 8th March. In April and May they watched more children's films and commemorated Children's Book Day by watching the film Matilda.
During the month of November we will travel to Senegal and we will be able to tell you more news about the projects we collaborate with.
