Teachers (Gabon II, 1963-65)
Joe Bennett- "This is Ango, one of Anne and my
favorite students, going home at the end of the school year. This is
at the ferry landing opposite the north side of Lambarene island.
Ango was from Makoku, so that's probably where he's heading,
though it's not "far west." but "far northeast"."
Anne Desgranges- "Ango-Nang Samuel Parfait--he
was so sweet and smart. I remember treating him for that
horrible huge ulceration on his arm. We used to play a lot
together. He became the first petroleum engineer in Gabon, and
lived at Port Gentil."
Joe Bennett- "This is the College Michel Fanguinoveny
at Andende, where Anne Huseman DesGranges and I taught English. It's
on what I guess might be called the north branch of the Ogooué
about a mile or less downstream from the Schweitzer Hospital, which
is located right where the Ogouée divides and forms Lambaréné
island. The Gabonese secondary school system, at that time, was modeled
after the French system, to the extent that they used the same
textbooks, and had the same standardized tests: one the brevet
d'etudes aftthe 4th
year, and another after the 6th (premiere) and 7th year (terminale).
Our school only had the first 6 years, and in the "premiere"
class there were only a handful of students. But if you were able to
get through that and then pass the "terminale" exam, you were
pretty much assured of getting a scholarship to go to university in
France, I believe. "College" is the name given to private or parochial
secondary schools in lots of countries. (That may be why a lot of
small American "colleges" have changed their names to "university.")
The "lycée" has the same program, but it's a state school,
directly under the thumb of the national government. There was a lycée
in Libreville, and I guess in Port Gentil as well. In a public or
private school, if you finished the 7th year and passed the exit
exam, your education would probably be equivalent to someone who'd
finished the sophomore year in an American college, or better.
The largish building with the steep roof in the center is where Anne, I
and other single teachers lived. The little building to the right of
it was the director's house, and I think, where Schweitzer had his hospital
when he arrived. He had first been sent by the protestant church of
France. He moved upriver, probably after he returned after being
forced to leave by the colonial government at the outbreak of WW
I, 'cause he was Alsatian and German-speaking and maybe subversive.
Sound familiar?
The light colored buildings above that are the classrooms and above that
the dorms (for boys). What girls there were lived in the "quartier
des filles", mostly hidden among the trees on the left side of
the picture. Right down by the Ogooué are the church and to the right,
the elementary school and elementary school teachers' houses. A marsh
to the right side of the picture made it hard to get to the main
road, and the ferry landing and most people traveled by pirogue anyway.
Taking the pirogue to "downtown" Lambarene around on the other
side of the island, was faster than trudging over the hill and back
down to the other side of the island, or walking along the road along
the shore past the Catholic mission opposite the Schweitzer island
and that broad expanse of water where the Ogooue divided to form
Lambaréné island."
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Minko,
called "GrosMinko"
(there was a younger one, Petit MInko), Fang
Ndong
Nze Paul-Andre, Fang
Odimboussoukou,
Daniel, Mpongwe
Ntem
Levy, Fang (Anne-I saw both of these students later in Paris.)
Essono
Michel, Fang
Simeth,
Andre, Mpongwe
Ivendarere,
Raphael, Mpongwe?
Ntoutoume,
Samuel, Fang
Ondo,
Fabien, Fang
Unknown
Obame,
Simon, Fang (Anne-"Switzerland on some sort of
scholarship and a ringleader in the 1964 coup")
Anatole
Angonang
Samu
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