Talks about Mauritania in a high-school courtyard

Mouhamed Lemine Ould El Kettab

Description

Through a series of talks presented by students belonging to different regions of Mauritania, the author strives to shed light on the ethnic and sociocultural diversity of the country. By the same token, he throws into sharp relief social ills, such as frequent divorces, polygamy, early maririage, girls force-feeding etc, still wide spread in the country.

Sujets

• Anthropologie
• Géographie
• Ethnologie
• Civilisation
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: L'Harmattan
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 31
• EAN13: 9782296806030
• Langue: Français
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Talks about Mauritania
in a high-school courtyard
M ouhamed L emine O uld E L K ETTAB


Talks about Mauritania
in a high-school courtyard


Drawings and scenes
Mohamed El Hacen
© L’Harmattan, 2011
5-7, rue de l’Ecole-Polytechnique, 75005 Paris

http://www.librairieharmattan.com
[e-mail]
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ISBN : 978-2-296-54635-6
EAN : 9782296546356

Fabrication numérique : Socprest, 2012
Ouvrage numérisé avec le soutien du Centre National du Livre
Présentation
Ce travail accompli en langue anglaise et intitulé :

Causerie sur la Mauritanie dans la cour d’un lycée décrit une situation imaginaire où les élèves d’une classe de seconde du Lycée National, assistés de leur professeur d’anglais, décident, à l’initiative de l’un d’entre eux, d’organiser dans la cour du lycée des causeries au cours desquelles des élèves présentent des exposés suivis de débats sur les wilayas dont ils sont originaires.

Bien que ce travail comporte une technique narrative, des personnages bien différenciés, un héros omniprésent et un dialogue soutenu, éléments caractéristiques du genre romanesque, il n’est pas pour autant une œuvre de fiction cherchant primordialement à conforter l’imagination et à susciter une émotion esthétique visée comme but en soi. Il a plutôt un objectif didactique et informatif, dans la mesure où, à travers les exposés présentés par les élèves, à travers celui, plus global de leur professeur, et à travers les interrogations et les commentaires qu’ils ont inspirés aux élèves, il vise à :

▪ Situer géographiquement chacune des wilayas mauritaniennes ;
▪ Mettre en exergue de façon succincte leurs ressources, leurs potentialités et leurs vocations économiques respectives ;
▪ Mettre un accent particulier sur le caractère exotique et la vocation touristique des wilayas qui représentent de telles spécificités ;
▪ Evoquer les atouts particuliers de chaque wilaya ;
▪ Indiquer les difficultés et les handicaps de nature à freiner les efforts du développement au niveau de chaque wilaya ;
▪ Indexer les pratiques sociales néfastes tels que le divorce abusif, le gavage des jeunes filles, la polygamie, le mariage précoce, la paresse etc. ainsi que les comportements irresponsables comme la dégradation du milieu écologique, la destruction de la biodiversité, les gaspillages inconsidérés etc. ;
▪ Faire ressortir les efforts déployés par les pouvoirs publics dans les domaines de la santé, de l’éducation, de l’alphabétisation, de la lutte contre la pauvreté et la promotion socioculturelle, à travers l’intégration de la femme et l’instauration de l’obligation de la scolarisation etc. ;
▪ Souligner la crédibilité grandissante dont jouit la Mauritanie depuis la mise en place en 1986 de profondes réformes politiques et économiques qui se sont traduites par l’instauration du libéralisme économique, de la démocratie multipartite, de l’État de droit et des libertés fondamentales.

2 Tels sont les objectifs que ce travail vise à atteindre. Il y a lieu par ailleurs de souligner qu’il pourrait aussi servir à plusieurs usages, en particulier :

▪ Servir de texte de lecture individuelle ou collective pour les élèves et les étudiants mauritaniens, texte qui présente l’avantage d’être centré sur les réalités des Mauritaniens et leurs préoccupations de tous les jours ;

▪ Contribuer à faire connaître aux étrangers les caractéristiques, les potentialités et les atouts de la Mauritanie ainsi que les réalisations économiques, politiques et socioculturelles qui y ont été accomplies.

Ce travail est donc de nature à familiariser la jeunesse mauritanienne avec les multiples facettes de la réalité nationale et à aider à faire connaître davantage la Mauritanie au plan international.
NAJIB


Najib was a 15 year-old boy, born in Nouakchott to a university professor and his wife, a medical doctor, who lived in a house of their own where they had settled in the early 1980s. That house was located in a nameless street of the residential quarter of Travagh Zeina. Najib was a fair-complexioned, good-looking youngster with wide black eyes, an aquiline nose and raven black silky hair. He was well mannered, soft-spoken, sharp-minded and methodical. He liked reading, listening to music and watching cultural television programs. He was also fond of fine arts such as painting, sculpture, ballet, cinema and drama. Najib attended a nameless junior high-school located in the vicinity of his home. In June, 2000 he passed with brio the entrance exam for the first year of senior high-school ; he was since then looking forward to attend the time-honored senior high-school called " lycée national " where a significant section of the national elite had its secondary education.
On October the 1 st , 2000, at 8’oclock, Najib proceeded to the lycée national with a mixture of joy and nervousness. In the lycée, he sought and found the board on which the lists of the admitted pupils’sere posted. New pupils flocked around the board attempting to spot their names on the placarded lists. Najib met some of his new class-mates ; as they introduced themselves to one another, new comers joined in, and the circle they formed kept widening. Their talks hinged on the different schools they had attended, the difficulties they had encountered during their exams and the specificities of the various regions of the country they had come from. They also exchanged questions and ideas about the new curriculum ushered in by the new reform of the education system that has just come into force. Most pupils expressed their happiness vis-a-vis the prospect of having to study foreign languages as they consider that absolutely indispensable for a modern and really qualifying education. As the pupils extensively evoked their past experiences in the variegated schools they had attended, and as they described vividly the different aspects of life in the various regions of the country they belong to, it dawned upon Najib that it would be instructive for all and asundery that pupils who were willing to talk to their class-mates about their Wilayas do so, be it in a sketchy manner for that would allow everybody to learn a great deal about the different Mauritanian Wilayas. He suggested that idea to his class-mates who adopted it enthusiastically. it was finally agreed that once the courses flag off, they, the first year pupils, will be using after-school times to gather under one of the trees in the schoolyard in order to exchange information on their respective regions giving thereby every one of them the opportunity to learn as much as possible about the multifaceted reality of the country. The pupils contemplated this experience with a great deal of excitement and decided to inform their English teacher of this initiative of theirs ; and he for his part, promised to partake of such an experience.
NAJIB PRESENTS NOUAKCHOTT


On October the 12 th , 2000 at 5 p.m. when they finished their last lesson of the day, the first year pupils gathered as planned under one of the trees of the schoolyard with the English teacher attending.

Najib took the floor to say:


" Good after-noon ladies and gentlemen. Allow me first of all to introduce myself to those of you I haven’t met as yet. My name is Najib. I am from Nouakchott. I am glad to have met you all and I am proud to be your class-mate. To start with, let me on your behalf thank our English teacher, mister Hammadi, who has kindly accepted to attend these brainstorming sessions we’ve decided to organize. Thank you sir for being with us. We have, as you all know, decided to hold every other Thursday an informal get-together during our after-school times in order to exchange information concerning our home Wilayas and eventually to talk about our experiences and to discuss anything which is of interest to us. I am sure we’ll find this unprecedented experience very stimulating indeed! I am willing to be the first speaker. I shall, if you don’t mind, tell you some words about my birth place and home town, Nouakchott. And subsequently I’ll call upon some one of you to volunteer to talk about the Wilaya he or she comes from at our next get-together. Does everybody agree on this proposition? "

Many voices said in unison : " yes, everybody does ! So you may start Najib, we’re listening ! "

After a little cough to clear his voice, Najib said:

" all right, you know, when we consider now the mushrooming city of Nouakchott with its numerous streets full of traffic and pedestrians going in all directions we can hardly imagine that in 1957, that is to say, some 44 years ago, this city consisted solely in half a dozen banco houses built around a well located on the number 1 trans African road that used to link Dakar t