Learning When Life Won't Wait: Education in the Struggle

The school might have no roof, but the kids still come. Not because of some ideal—because a pencil stub and tattered notebook might be their only way out.

Classrooms Without Walls

Where I grew up:

• Math lessons happened counting change at the market stall
• Science was figuring which wild plants wouldn't poison you
• History lived in grandparents' stories of wars they survived

Formal school? Maybe 3 hours a day if the teacher showed up. The rest we learned by doing because hunger doesn't care about exam schedules.

Survival Is the Best Teacher

Rich kids get Montessori. Poor kids get:

• Age 6: Carrying water without spilling = physics
• Age 8: Haggling prices = business school
• Age 10: Spotting which vendor will short-change you = critical thinking

My cousin Aisha learned English faster selling bracelets to tourists than in five years of school. Necessity speeds up lessons.

The Broken Promise

They tell us "education is the way out," but:

• No jobs wait even if you graduate
• Textbooks show factories while we farm with hand hoes
• The "educated" return from cities unemployed, too soft for the fields

Still, mothers sell their last chicken for school fees. Because maybe, just maybe, this child will be the one who makes it.

When Learning Is Life or Death

Our "exams" look different:

• Diagnosing malaria without a doctor
• Spotting which well water won't give you worms
• Knowing which neighbor will share food when crops fail

The village calls this "common sense." Academics call it "indigenous knowledge systems." We call it staying alive.

Tomorrow the kids will walk two hours to school again. Half will drop out by rainy season. But right now, under this mango tree, the old men are teaching them how to read the wind before storms come. That's education too.