Austrian writer Peter Handke won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday and the 2018 award went to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, the Swedish Academy said on Thursday.

Handke, 76, was recognized for a body of work which includes novels, essays, notebooks and drama and “that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience,” the Academy said in a statement.

Tokarczuk, 57, won for “a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life,” it said.

Both have courted controversy – Handke for his portrayal of Serbia as a victim during the Balkan wars and attending its leader’s funeral, and Tokarczuk for touching on dark areas of Poland’s past that contrast with the version of history promoted by the country’s ruling nationalist party.

Two prizes were awarded this year after last year’s award was postponed over a scandal that led to the husband of an Academy member being convicted of rape.

Since then, the organization has appointed new members and reformed some of its more arcane rules after a rare intervention by its royal patron, the king of Sweden.

Academy member Anders Olsson said both Handke and Tokarczuk had accepted their prizes.

“I only talked to Peter Handke myself. He was very, very moved. At first he did not utter any words,” Olsson said. He added: “It is not a political prize, it is a literary prize.”

Handke established himself as one of the most influential writers in Europe after World War Two, the Academy said. He also co-wrote the script of the critically-acclaimed 1987 film “Wings of Desire”.

The author of books such as “The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick” and “Slow Homecoming”, he attracted widespread criticism attending the funeral of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 2006.

Tokarczuk trained as a psychologist before publishing her first novel in 1993. Since then, she has produced a steady and varied stream of works and her novel “Flight” won her the high-profile Man Booker International Prize last year. She was the first Polish author to do so.

Though some of the episodes she has written about contrast with version of history promoted by Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS), her agent said the award should not be seen in the context of a parliamentary election being held on Sunday in Poland.

Speaking on Polish television, Poland’s culture minister, Piotr Glinski, said the award to Tokarczuk was a success for Polish culture.

“I think that Mrs Tokarczuk also perceives this that way, because she is a representative of Polish culture and Polish literature,” he said.

(Source: Reuters) 

Cameroon’s Ministry of Secondary Education on Tuesday began training teachers on how to counsel and guide internally displaced school children.

According to Cameroon’s Minister of Secondary Education, Pauline Nalova Lyonga, the training came as a result of growing internal displacement of people in the country caused by an armed conflict in the country’s English-speaking regions.

“Our country is facing a lot of challenges and the teacher is right at the center of this because we have to teach and transmit the right attitudes to the next generation.” Lyonga told reporters at the start of the training in the capital, Yaounde.

She said, the teachers after the three-day training will be able to teach the children to “remain responsible and focus”.

According to Lyonga, it is teachers’ job to make sure that students from separatism-hit regions can feel like at home in the Francophone part of Cameroon.

“If the teacher must give that value (of unity) to the children, he himself must have the value,” she added.

A UNICEF report released in August estimates that insecurity spreading across the regions has left more than 4,400 schools forcibly closed, affecting more than 600,000 children.

According to UN estimations in July, the conflict in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions has resulted in about 530,000 internally displaced persons (IDP) among them, many children and teenagers struggling to resume schooling with very limited resources.

Since 2017, armed separatists have been clashing with government forces in the regions in a bid to create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia”.

A national dialogue to end the separatist conflict held in the country last week and recommended that greater autonomy should be given to the English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest.

Source: Xinhuanet

Southern Cameroonians are attempting to break away from the French-speaking majority and establish their own state called the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Education has been a key focus at peace talks in Cameroon this week.

But as negotiations draw to a close on Friday, hundreds of thousands of children are still being excluded from school.

Ambazonia Restoration Forces are fighting against Cameroon government forces to break away from the French majority – and create a homeland for Ambazonians.

That has forced 98 percent of the schools in Anglophone regions to shut.

Al Jazeera

A solitary teacher has just two pupils in his class in west Cameroon, where thousands of schools have closed down altogether because of kidnappings and threats by radical separatists.

Since a crisis erupted in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon late in 2016, schools have been a prime target for breakaway groups angered by the teaching of French, used in most of the central African country.

On November 9, 2016, “hordes of people staged an assault on the classrooms in Excel College, wielding machetes and telling everybody to leave the premises or risk a bloodbath,” a teacher in the private school recalled.

Known as “Mr Tseke”, the teacher said the raid on the premises in Buea, capital of the Southwest region, led senior staff to arrange to move the whole school to a site in Clerks quarter, an administrative district with high security.

“Not far from us, you’ll find a gendarmerie contingent (paramilitary police), behind us you’ve got the police and down to the left, you have the 21st BIM (Motorised Infantry Brigade, an army unit with formidable firepower),” Tseke noted.

Home to most civil servants and police and army top brass, the Clerks district is a haven of peace in Buea.

Separatist attacks are frequent elsewhere in the town, which sprawls over the eastern flank of Mount Cameroon.

In two years, the conflict by English-speaking separatists demanding independence in the Northwest and Southwest regions has claimed more than 2,500 lives. UN agencies say that more than 530,000 have been forced to flee their homes.

– ‘We’re really safe’ –

The Excel College had to move into a building that is only accessible via pebble-strewn paths winding between residential housing, while school routines are rung out by a bell wired to the roof.

The teacher alone with his two students occupied one of nine classrooms. “The place is cramped, but we’re really safe,” Tseke told AFP, though such statements are not enough to reassure parents and their children.

The inscription rate has dropped from 1,350 in 2016-2017 to less than 400 today and fewer than half of those remaining have turned up since the academic year began on September 2, according to school data.

The French-speaking section has been closed, since many parents decided to send their children to towns in francophone territory, which makes up eight of the 10 regions in Cameroon.

Jeannette Benga, a prominent figure in local civil society who has lived in Buea for 25 years, is among the parents who resist threats from the separatists and keep their children in town.

“My daughter was kidnapped coming out of school in 2017,” then released three days later, Benga said, giving no further details. In spite of the incident she’s still sending her four children to school in the town.

“It’s a permanent worry to see them leave for school,” she acknowledged. “We live in perpetual insecurity.”

“We’re in a hurry to see an end to this crisis,” she added, with a hopeful eye to the “Great National Dialogue” due to be held in the capital Yaounde for five days from September 30.

The forum was announced by President Paul Biya, who has ruled for 37 years and is intransigent about the secessionist demands, but some separatist forces and opposition parties plan to boycott the talks while they have leaders and members in jail.

– Education ‘that suits us’ –

In the past three years, more than 4,400 schools have closed in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon, according to the UN Children’s Fund.

The closures directly affect the education of more than 700,000 youngsters. More than 300 students, pupils and teachers have been kidnapped since 2018.

State schools in Buea have tried to maintain a semblance of business as usual since the start of September, but private schools are feeling the pinch.

“The separatists force schools to close to draw the attention of the international community to the problems we face here,” said a parent named only as Mr Agbor, who was one of the rare people openly to express support for the breakaway movement.

“I want separation,” he said. “It will enable us, for instance, to have an educational system that suits us.”

It was a strike by anglophone teachers and lawyers three years ago that eventually led to the armed conflict in the two regions, which joined with French-speaking Cameroon in 1961, a year after independence.

The teachers notably protested that francophone colleagues were giving lessons in French inside schools regarded as anglophone. Once they and disgruntled lawyers went on strike, the movement turned into a popular uprising.

After months of repression by police and the army, armed separatist groups took shape. They have fought government troops for almost two years and demand outright independence, which is a major step up from proposals for a return to a federal Cameroon.

Source: AFP

Teachers in open societies around the world push their students to think critically about current events. But those in Cameroon might be thinking twice after one of them was arrested for doing just that.

On September 13, Fondang Mesaack Nathan, an English teacher at the high school in Avebe-Esse, a village in Cameroon’s South region, was arrested after mentioning in class that the government may consider allowing jailed opposition leader Maurice Kamto to participate in a national dialogue. The dialogue is to address the ongoing crisis in the country’s Anglophone regions. After all, Fondang reasoned with a student, if the government was going to sit down and talk to armed groups, it could feasibly do so with political opponents.

Word spread from the classroom that Kamto was discussed, local authorities got involved, and by the next morning Fondang was in jail, accused of inciting rebellion.

The vice-prefect, a local administrator, arrested him. Fondang’s lawyer contends that as he was arrested by a local official with no authority to do so, his arrest was unlawful. A petition filed by his lawyer secured his release on September 18, but he is only free on a conditional basis, and he has been instructed not to travel. Teachers at Avebe-Esse High School went on strike for two days to protest the arrest.

Fondang’s arrest is just the latest example of the increasingly restrictive political space in Cameroon. Under international human rights law to which Cameroon is bound, arresting teachers for their peaceful speech violates their right to free expression. Raising current events in class is not rebellion.

Source: Human Rights Watch

Seven have died and scores injured when a school building collapsed in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, in an accident blamed on shoddy construction.

“We can confirm that we have seven fatalities,” said government spokesman Cyrus Oguna.

Education Minister George Magoha said in a statement that 64 pupils had been admitted to Kenyatta National Hospital, most of them with minor injuries, but two others required “more attention.”

Hundreds of angry residents of Dagoretti, a poor suburb where many live in makeshift homes, thronged the site where rescuers picked through the rubble until the search for victims ended in the afternoon.

An AFP reporter at the site said books and desks were strewn through the debris of the two-story building, a semi-permanent structure made of concrete, iron sheeting and timber.

“I had just dropped my son to school, and heard screams on my way back, and that is when I found people assisting them out to hospital,” said Margaret Muthoni at Kenyatta National Hospital, whose four-year-old son was injured.

“I am just lucky my son survived with injuries. It is a very unfortunate incident because some children have died,” said Muthoni.

Kepha Otieno said he had lost his five-year-old daughter.

“I just can’t believe. It is too hard for me and the family,” he said.

The school was a private institution with around 800 registered pupils, said Magoha, adding that it would be closed for the next four days.

‘Disaster waiting to happen’

Dagoretti MP John Kiarie told KTN television that it appeared the first floor had collapsed on children on the ground floor. However, details were sketchy.

Kiarie said the area had no land on which to construct a proper public school.

He said the disaster highlighted the lack of “regulation of educational institutions, especially those in informal settlements… regulations that pertain to the construction and stability of educational institutions.”

“It is the highest level of irresponsibility and greed when you look at this structure that came down, and even the ones standing. It is another disaster waiting to happen,” said Shadrack Okelo, a local resident.

Moses Nyakiongora, an official with the National Building Inspectorate, said at the scene: “This school was not properly constructed. It is totally substandard.”

Magoha visited the site and vowed to build a public school in the area.

“What has happened here today is regrettable but investigations have been launched,” he said.

“I have inspected the rest of the classrooms and they look stable. But the one that collapsed was substandard, it should not have been allowed to be there.”

Numerous buildings have collapsed in Nairobi and other Kenyan towns with deadly results in recent years, as the country experiences booming growth in the construction industry. Corruption has allowed contractors to cut corners or bypass regulations.

In April 2016, 49 people were killed in the collapse of a six-floor building in the north-east of the capital.

(Source: AFP)

A huge fire at a Liberian Koranic school killed at least 26 pupils and two teachers on Wednesday when flames engulfed their dormitory, in one of the worst disasters of its kind for the West African nation.

The boys were sleeping at the school when the overnight fire began, said police spokesman Moses Carter, adding that an electrical fault could have caused the blaze.

President George Weah visited the site in Paynesville, on the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia, and said the cause was still unknown.

“We are here to encourage parents of the victims to have strength, because it is painful to lose your kids in this manner,” Weah told reporters at the scene.

The president’s office said 26 pupils between the ages of 10 and 20 died along with two teachers. The police spokesman said 27 students had been killed.

On Wednesday evening, the president of neighboring Guinea, Alpha Conde, said several of his country’s nationals died in the blaze.

In a statement, he expressed “great emotion” over the deaths and gave his “deepest condolences to the Liberian people and the Guinean community in Liberia,” adding that he was following the investigation closely.

“We extend our sympathy to the bereaved families. We don’t know the cause of the fire yet, but we will encourage our investigators to find how it happened,” he added.

Rescuers in white masks and surgical gloves carried the children’s bodies in bags from the burnt-out building as crowds of people and relatives pressed together outside.

“Our team is investigating the cause of the fire,” the police spokesman said. “It may be electrical,” he added, while refusing to rule out the possibility that the fire was a criminal act.

The children were asleep

“I was sleeping when I heard noise outside. My wife opened the back door and we saw smoke coming from the front. We came out and saw fire at the back,” said local resident Zazay Ballah, who said they had helped in the rescue efforts.

“We went for water, trying to put it out… When the fire fighters came, the fire was already going down.”

The victims were buried swiftly in a collective ceremony, in the Muslim tradition.

In an earlier tweet, Weah offered condolences to the families of those affected.

“My prayers go out to the families of the children that died last night in Paynesville City as a result of a deadly fire that engulfed their school building,” he wrote.

“This is a tough time for the families of the victims and all of Liberia.”

The Liberian authorities are all too familiar with deadly fires, often caused by malfunctioning generators, though “not on this scale,” the presidential spokesman said.

The majority of Liberians are Christian but there is a sizeable minority of Muslims among the 4.5-million population.

Liberia is one of the least developed nations in the world, and its recent history has been blighted by civil wars and the deadly Ebola virus.

(Source: AFP)

It’s back to school day in Cameroon’s economic capital Douala and 19-year-old Pricilla Ngum Che is getting ready to go to class — for the first time in two years.

Pricilla lives in this small windowless room, that she shares with her two younger siblings.

She and her siblings live by themselves and are supported by their parents who sends them money to tend to their other needs.

With only their clothe on their backs, Pricilla and her brothers fled their home town of Kumba, the second largest English speaking city in Cameroon, were separatist have been fighting to establish a breakaway state.

Cameroon has been gripped by violence since November 2016, when government forces crushed a movement of Anglophone teachers and lawyers protesting against their perceived marginalization by the country’s French-speaking majority.

The protests morphed into an insurgency of separatists seeking independence for the Anglophone southwest and northwest regions, which were controlled by Britain during colonialism.

The deteriorating security has led to the closure of hundreds of schools and left thousands of children like Pricilla without no access to education, leading many families to move to French speaking towns so that their children could go to school.

“I decided to come here to come and complete my education. Because schools there are not functioning that way. So, I decided to come here to complete my secondary education, yeah, which is going to help me and my family,” Pricilla said.

Pricilla attends a private English college 20 minutes away form her home, which also has other displaced children who fled because of the crisis.

School administrator Ali Ousmalia says the influx of displaced children presents many challenges for the school authorities, and that the number of children coming from troubled Anglophone region has more than tripled this school year.

“The population that we are having that is really disturbing us now as I may say, It is all these our brothers and sisters from the north west (anglophones). Disturbing us in how? They are disturbing us that they come they don’t have documents to prove they were in school, they come they don’t have their birth certificate, they don’t have their report cards, so it is really heavy on us. Some are even coming… as you can see if you move in to classes now… we are forced to take them in class without uniforms, without any information like that just to make sure we educate Cameroonians,” he added.

Political blogger Tah Javis Mai has had a devastating impact on the education system in Cameroon’s anglophone region and its children.

“We have about 20 percent of effective resumption for North and South West regions. We have 600.000 kids out of school. We have 4000 schools down, either burned down or not open at all. Now we are talking about a school resumption especially where I come from, an area where we use to have 5000 students per school in GBHS Muea is shutdown. Looking at the other surrounding schools but come now to look at the effects. It’s going to create an increase in hate crime because we have kids who have not been able to school 3 years going to 4 years now all of them are in the bushes. Now their mentality now is different. They now see things differently,” he said.

For Pricilla, readjusting to school in a new town has not been easy, especially after missing out on two years of school, away from family and friends.

“I face a lot of challenges inn school in the fact that, my teachers back in south west, where stopped. So, I have come here so they are not in the same page with us, yeah. So, I face lots of challenges for that and it’s very difficult for me to pick up here. And then secondly, I face challenges in school… I don’t have friends. Am just there bored, alone, I don’t have anyone to talk to. Yes, so am very-very lonely in school,” she added.

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya announced in a rare public address last Tuesday the organization of a national dialogue to solve a separatist crisis in the country’s English-speaking regions.

Biya said the talks, led by the prime minister and starting from the end of September, would bring together a wide range of people to seek ways to end violence that has plagued the region in recent months.

In June, NGO Human Rights Watch said the prospects for talks between the government and separatist leaders were very thin.

Reuters