Deborah Harper is a peculiar Barbadian teacher with a mission.
Every February, she takes her students on a trip across Africa from right in their classrooms at the George Lamming Primary School, Flint Hall, St Michael.
The aim of her trip is to educate as many children as possible about their rich African history, making them aware of their African identity while boosting their self-esteem.
In 2010, Harper and several teachers from other schools were installed by the Commission for Pan African Affairs as a mabalozis or ambassadors, pledging to act on behalf of the commission to promote African consciousness and value systems in their schools.
This Wednesday Woman is committed and focused on that journey. But according to Harper, the process has not been an easy one.
There are some myths and images of Africa that many children have in their heads, which make this teacher’s storytelling sessions a bit complex at times.
“This is very important because I find that when you talk to the children about Africa, especially for the first time, they would say, ‘Oh, I am not an African’.
“But when they know that there are kings and queens in Africa and they see pictures of Africa, they are able to see that it is a modern place and not what the media [have] portrayed to us where we see the starving children and the poverty in Africa,” she said, during an interview with the MIDWEEK NATION, just a couple of days after the school launched its annual African Awareness Month celebrations.
The religious education and social studies teacher described her role as a mabalozi as “very important”.
“I am the person who now has to do my best and through what resources I have, such as my teaching sessions and my board, which I decorate with African Awareness pictures and information to clear up these myths.” Nevertheless, Harper said that her charges were always ready and anxious to participate in the month’s celebrations.
The chairperson of the school’s African Awareness Committee said exposure to the songs, food and dances during that month was always “an opportunity for the children to have a good time”.
She hopes one day to take some of the excited students to see “the motherland”.
“I would like to see the day that African Awareness celebrations become a year-round celebration and not just be confined to one month and that maybe in the future we might even be able to carry some children to Africa to see for themselves what we have been talking to them about and showing them in pictures.
“I have been to Ghana myself and it was a very good experience for me, and having the children go and experience it for themselves would let them see that Africa is . . . not just a poverty-stricken place,” she said.
