By Ellen Zunon
Blue gingham. Khaki. Navy serge. That is what the phrase "back to school" meant to us when we lived in the Ivory Coast. Whether public or private, in elementary school, the girls&Mac226; uniform is a dress made of blue gingham, and the boys wear khaki shirt and shorts; in secondary school the girls wear white blouses and navy skirts, and the boys still wear khaki, but with long pants. Most often families purchase the fabric for the uniforms and have the garments made-to-order by a tailor, who probably has a pedal-driven sewing machine in a wooden shack behind an open market, where the sounds and smells of everyday grocery shopping will forever color your memories of having your measurements taken. A far cry from our flashy Sunday newspaper brochures with back-to-school bargains! Abidjan's "mall" is an open-air market.

Public schooling is free in the Ivory Coast, but families must buy the uniforms, textbooks and school supplies. If you live in the city, your family would rely on income from Dad&Mac226;s job and perhaps Mom&Mac226;s market stall in order to make these purchases. If you live in the cocoa belt, your father may have to borrow money against his upcoming harvest, which won&Mac226;t take place until a few months after school starts.
There is always a flurry of economic activity at the end of the "grandes vacances" or long vacation in early September, when families get ready for school. Incidentally, it isn’t called "summer vacation" in the Ivory Coast because there is no summer, winter, spring, fall; Abidjan, the major city, lies only a short distance north of the equator, and the equatorial climate there consists of a rainy season, dry season, and "harmattan," a dry wind that blows south from the Sahara just after the New Year and coats everything with a fine powdery dust.

Besides the uniforms, families must buy the textbooks and notebooks the children will use. The notebooks are quite different from ours; imagine learning to write in cursive on graph paper, in order to make sure your letters are uniformly formed. Or on paper with four fine lines to one of ours, for the same reason. Computers are still not standard classroom equipment in the Ivory Coast in spite of the worthy efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so most children still practice penmanship rather than keyboarding.

There are about sixty different local languages in the Ivory Coast, although French is the official language, and all public schooling is taught in French. Since many children in rural areas do not speak French before they begin school, there is an extra year of kindergarten built into the system. This allows children to master French orally before learning to read and write it.

Our children struggle to score high on the SAT or other standardized tests in high school, but Ivorian children have an earlier hurdle to climb over; they must take a competitive exam at the end of the fifth grade in order to enter middle school. There are simply not enough spaces in public secondary schools for those who want to continue, and the competition for spots is tough. Imagine how much individual attention you get in an elementary class of 40 children, which is the average, and you can realize that it&Mac226;s pretty much survival of the fittest in the public schools. However, there are more and more private schools now, because the government simply cannot meet the demand.

Unfortunately, many children&Mac226;s schooling has been disrupted by unrest in the Ivory Coast during the last few years; it has become just another "hot spot" on the globe. My children sometimes feel nostalgic for the days when they went off to school among the palm trees, their chocolate croissant snacks wedged between the notebooks in their backpacks. Somehow things seemed simpler then.