Students in Africa hungry for learning

May 7 2010 by The Journal

Pauline Hughes lecturer in creative writing at Northumbria University, is forging links with West Africa.

LATER this year I will be taking part in a British Council-funded exchange with a lecturer in creative writing from the University of Sierra Leone.

I first visited the university there in 2001, just after the civil war ended, to help develop modules in creative writing.

The country was still suffering from the war and investment in the university had been poor for a long time, although the campus was particularly beautiful with gardens full of bougainvillea and flame trees.

The classes were huge and I gave workshops to 100 undergraduates at a time and often at 8am!

You learn to think on your feet and do without glitzy teaching apparatus. There was a blackboard and chalk but no photocopier.

But the students were wonderful, so enthusiastic and hungry.

Writers there have little access to commercial publishing and books are extremely expensive for many people so when I came back I used lottery money to put together a book of the students’ writing, Salone.

This was distributed to charities in the UK and the bulk sent back to the university, where it is used as a first-year course book.

I also gave some workshops in schools to young people who had been displaced by the war. I got to know many people and made friends and now go back for holidays to catch up with them all.

It will be good to be there again soon to see how the creative writing courses have developed and to work with a new group of students.