Bacc results are in!

About a week ago the results for the high school exit/university entrance exam was announced...here is the good news:

Terminale Sciences Sociales: Half my kids, 12, passed!! That's a great result. And it made me really happy because English counts as much as French on the test for them - high schoolers choose a track and these are the "Social Science" kids.

Terminale Sciences Experimentales: 2 kids passed out of 28...not a great result, but it's wonderful for Luke because I love these kids and he'll enjoy having them in class. I'm sad, but there wasn't anything I could have done - their math teacher left for over 6 weeks and the other teachers weren't around that much either, so I just don't think they covered all the necessary material. Unfortunately English doesn't count for as much of their total score on the test.

Last year only 3 kids passed in all of Timbi Madina, so my principal was extremely pleased with this year's result. Plus some of my favorites passed, including Boubacar, my most creative student and Mohamed, who just moved to the Fouta 2 years ago and doesn't speak Pulaar! He was the chef de classe and had a really hard time with English even though he tried so hard. Plus one of my girls passed - she was recently married, but I hope she'll take the opportunity to go to university next year. We'll see.

The other exciting bit is that Fatim, my Forecariah host sister, passed! This was a big accomplishment because she had a baby a year ago. I know I wrote about her before, but she's unmarried and has this baby and I was surprised that her family let her continue going to school - that's incredibly rare here. I almost cried when her mom told me that they are going to do everything they can to help her go to university. Even though that means she'll leave her son in Forecariah it will be worth it...here it's not uncommon for grandparents or aunts to take over the parental role.

Tomorrow Camilo and I are heading to Boke for 3 or 4 days to say good-bye. It will be sad, but we have one week left and we are excited to see my mom and aunt in Morocco, so that will ease the sadness a bit!!