"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." William Shakespeare
"Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family." Kofi Annan
"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind." Plato
There can be little doubt that knowledge is the dream of great leaders in every field of human endeavour and those who will make a difference to the lives of their fellow men. In contemporary societies everywhere, despite the popularization of the internet, the school is still one of the most important institutions through which children may acquire knowledge. My last film at the Cinepanorama, "Sur le Chemin a l'école" (On the Way to School) (平平安安上學去) (2012) by Pascal Plisson, is a documentary about the kind of difficulties which some children may have to endure daily or weekly to realize their dream of knowledge. Specifically, the film tracks the respective journeys to their school of 4 children and their brothers and/or sister.
The first is Jackson Saikong (11), Kenya and his younger sister (Salome Saikong) who had to get up every morning at 5.30 a.m and run or jog for an hour and a quarter, a dirty white plastic water container in one hand, a stick in the other and a backpack on his back with his younger sister behind him, some 9.5 miles across the African savannah populated by wild elephants, giraffes and the other wild animals. He can never afford to be late because the whole school would be waiting for him to raise the national flag on the primitive flagpost at the dusty field outside of the classroom every morning. The journey would take them about 2 hours. Before starting on his journey, his father would have to remind him to avoid the wild elephants and give him his blessings for a safe journey and he would have to climb to the top of a small hillock to check on which side of that high rock the elephant herd would be on before deciding on the route to take. No wonder Kenya produces some of the world's best marathon runners.
Samuel E Esther (13), a paralytic in South India, has to be pushed an hour and a quarter by his two little brothers (Gabriel J. Esther and Emmanuel J. Esther), to the village school in a rusted and creaky makeshift wheelchair every morning from his little fishing village after shoving with his hand into his mouth with a rotten and malformed canine tooth his breakfast, a little rice cooked with the tiniest trace of curry gravy from a small tin plate. Although his school journey is the shortest amongst the four, just 2. 5 miles, they have to trundle, trudge, push and pull him across muddy fields, dirt tracks, streams and marshes and the dusty road through the town market filled with the noises and dangers of constantly passing jeeps, lorries, motorised tricycles and street vendors and crowds milling around them. Occasionally, a rubber tyre would fall off its wheel ring and they'd have to ask for some voluntary repair to be done by an old but kind-hearted bicycle repairer operating on the side of the dusty road using just the barest of implements: a screw driver, a spanner, some nuts, nails and bolts.
Zahira Badi,(12), of Morocco, living in a village high up in the snow-capped Atlas mountain, with an illiterate mother, would have to memorize everything she has learned by reciting them in her sing song voice on a rock platform close to her house and once a week to trek through mountain paths, her head covered with a veil, her developing body in a long ladies gown, a backpack upon her back and a rooster in a sack cloth carrier bag to a nearby town where she would trade in the rooster for some dates and other dried fruits which would last her the rest of the week in a boarding school and on the way, she would be joined by two of her fellow classmates. She would have to walk some long and winding mountain paths, full of grit and sand and cross streams to hit the dusty motor road where she has to hitch a ride to the town where her school is, having to wait anxiously for some driver kind enough to give her and her companions a lift, fearing all the time that she'd be late for school and sometimes would have to share the back an open lorry with goats shuffling around her. Sometimes, she got to help rub the feet of her school mate on the way to relieve her pain from too much walking so that she can continue without slowing her down her pace too much just to be in time for school to start. She has to do 22 kilometers, something she must do in about 4 hours.
Finally we have11-year-old Carlito Janez who has to ride through the Patagonian plains on horseback, his younger sister Micaela Janez behind him, trotting or romping along 18 kilometers (one way) each day and back between home and school, regardless of the weather. On the way, they got to go downhill along some treacherous slopes and cross mountain streams and a little further on, he would sometimes be joined by two other schoolmates riding from a different ranch and ride together for company. He comes from a rancher family raising sheep and has to help in feeding the small lambs.Each journey takes about an hour and a half.
Although the four come from different continents: Central and north Africa, the Indian subcontinent and South America, they are united by one desire: not to be late for school. At the end of the film, each child tells us in their own words what they hope from their education: Jackson wants to become a pilot so that he can see different high mountains, lakes and people and be amongst the clouds and blue sky. Samuel says that we all come into this world and we all will have to go one of these days and that in the meantime, he wants to become a doctor so that he can help cure people and relieve them of pains of disease. Zahira says that she too wants to become a doctor so that she can help the people of her region. Carlito wants to become a veterinarian so that he can help look after the animals. 4 children between primary and secondary school joined by one dream: their quest for knowledge and education! As the trailer says, these are four "extraordinary" stories. None of the children in the film got computer or internet, nor i-phones, not even plain old fashioned cell-phones.
I like the way Plisson presents his stories: all images, magnificent cinematography by Simon Watel, linked by rhythmic music either vocal or instrumental. Just facts. No moralizing. To avoid the stories becoming too straightforward and monotonous, the director skilfully jump cuts into the school and domestic lives of the different children at different points on their school journey or different parts of the day, linking them artfully through the excellent music of Laurent Ferlet. All children who claim that they don't want to go to school for all sorts of reasons really ought to see this film. And perhaps their parents too.The film won the Piazza Grande at the 2013 Locarno Film Festival.
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