This is the first time I've done this... I'm asking for money for a Gambian cause! Here is the plea: an 11th grade girl needs money to finish school
Here is why you should help: This girl is the most inspiring girl student I've met in the Gambia. Her name is Fatou Dabo, and she is a Fula living in a village near mine. I met her mom first- a skinny energetic Fula women, fiesty and sweet. I ended up giving her mom some soy bean to try and hanging out in their compound for the afternoon.

Fatou came in and greeted me in Woolof and in English and we chatted. I had never before met a young girl in The Gambia who could converse well in English so I suriously asked her about her schooling. It turns out she has been going to school in Kombo, living with an aunt, and just comes home during the rainy season to help farm. School was free for her until 9th grade, and paying the 3,000 dalasi (115 US dollars)a year fee has been hard for her family- of course, because they are subsistance farmers/gardeners. Last year, she began grade 11 but the money ran out and the school had to turn her away. I ask her what she will do now, expecting her to not care one way or another about finishing school... sadly, that is the popular view in the villages. But no! She says she LOVES school, loves reading writing and math, (math? i ask in disbeief) and that she wants to go back and finish. She says proudly that she does well in school. She tells me she goes to her uncle's hut every evening to study (this is summer break for her! and it doesn't look like she'll be going back anyway, and she's studying in the evenings!?) I'm totally taken aback by her un-fashionable attitude- a young girl caring strongly about school is not something I've come across yet here. I've offered to tutor girls in my village but even as they politely agree, I can see that there is no interest. Fatou is 17 she tells me, and her father wants her to leave school and marry. With all the rebellious-ness you'd expect from a teenager but in a wierd reverse way she raises her small voice a little and says "My father tells me to leave the school and marry but I don't want this. I tell him let me finish school." My inner feminist cheerleader is waving pom poms and cheering "You go girl, you go you go!" I resist the urge to cheer and instead encourage her to keep studying on her own.

We sat in her spotless mud hutt and talked all afternoon, and she came to visit me a few days later in Jamagen. The thing that impresses about Fatou is that she loves school in a time and a place where it's not the cool thing to do. She is truly a rariety. She really can read and write- she wrote her name for me and read Newsweeks in my hut... this may sound trivial but the young girls in Jamagen who have finished highschool cannot read, write or speak English. Because it was not important to them, which is not all their fault, it's a problem with really deep roots.

Anyway! Can you help? I'm looking for friends and family who want to support this awesome young lady. It's 1,000 D per semester (US $39) and there's three semesters in a year. She would start the first week of September, grade 11. It's coming up soon! If you can donate any money to sponsor Fatou, let me know. If you're annoyed that I'm soliciting money, I'm really sorry!

stephrayburn@gmail.com