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Before I realised what was happening, I had left. Off to The Gambia. I had no idea what to expect, what everything was going to be like there. I just couldn’t picture it until I arrived there. It can actually just be summed up in a few words: it is fan-tas-tic there. I spent 86 days in The Gambia and honestly I could easily add another 86 days to that. I felt at home with the host family and had amazing neighbours/ friends/ acquaintances.
I learned a lot from my work placement abroad. There is no comparison between a work placement in the South and a work placement at a Flemish school. First, because there are no resources to create material for every lesson, but also because they are not used to having any there. This definitely made it a challenge to integrate new forms of work with the school team and introduce a project week into the school for the first time, but also to convey the subject matter to the class in a fun way. During the 10-week work placement, I - together with a fellow IT student - succeeded in setting up an ICT classroom with 12 working PCs and the internet. This means that Garba Jahumpa Upper Basic School also has all the equipment it needs to give computer lessons to the young people.
So I would definitely recommend a work placement abroad in The Gambia, even if you are not an adventurer or a daredevil, because when you return to Belgium you will have become one anyway! You learn so much from it and it’s true what they say, it is a life experience!
Catherine Essique - Economics - Mathematics teacher training student