Since Agadez is the furthest city from the Niamey, the capital of Niger, and Niger is among the poorest countries in the world, there is no need to describe what the local school looked like when I was there in 2002. I decided to build a new school. The school needed a lot of sitting places since there are so many children and I decided to build a pyramidal form that allows all students to sit on top of it. The students don’t only go to school but they go on the school. At the beginning they were 150 students and they covered one quarter of the pyramid. Today the school has about 500 children aged 4-20 years (but nobody knows their birthdays or -years). The school is on a hill, and has a nice view and is windy and cool. The schoolhouse is completely covered with children. It’s a kinetic sculpture made of children who sing, and cry and shout and pray. It is a very touching site to watch this daily activity unfold in front of you. The inside of the house can be used to sleep or as cover from the rain or heat. The school is called Makaranta.
Many people consider me a missionary who goes to Africa to help. I am not. Not being a trained architect, it gives me an enormous satisfaction, to have the opportunity to construct a school building. I could not even dream of building a school in Europe or the US with all their regulations. But in Agadez I can. I have this phenomenal opportunity to build something that in most places in the world would be refused to me. As Nietzsche said, “friendship is not giving but taking”. So I take and so do the children in Agadez.
Not Vital