DAKAR, 4 December 2009 (IRIN) - Two months after school resumed in Senegal scores of students still have not returned to their regular classrooms, which remain under up to a half-metre of floodwater.

Under a government plan many children affected by July-September flooding have temporarily transferred to other schools, but some are staying home because they have no way of getting to the more distant sites, families told IRIN.

Youssouf Ndao's eight-year-old son missed 25 days of school before his classroom re-opened. "My family doesn't have the means to send him elsewhere," said Ndao, who lives in the Diamaguène Sicap Mbao district of the capital Dakar.

Samba Tine is director of the Sam-Sam 3 public primary school in that district. "Of the 2,500 students enrolled in this school, just 1,005 are attending classes here," he told IRIN. "One-third of the facility currently functions. We don't yet know when the other classrooms will open."

Thirty schools on the outskirts of Dakar were flooded during the 2009 rainy season, according to Medioune Dieng of the school inspector's office.

Like many homes and other buildings in these zones, schools have been built on swampland. Central Dakar was once surrounded by wetlands, but in the 1970s and 1980s a Sahel-wide drought pushed people to settle in the flood-prone zones on the city's outskirts.

A handful of schools are not expected to be completely drained of water until January, Dieng told IRIN. But he added: "All children affected are in nearby [alternative] schools. The start of their school year was delayed by only a week or two."

Thiaroye resident Ramatoulaye Ly's two daughters, 12 and 16, waited one month, but were finally able to return to their usual school in early November.

"Had the situation lasted any longer I would have sent them to another location," Ly told IRIN. "I cannot have my children missing school."


The temporary transfer of students has caused overcrowding in some schools.

"In some cases you see 80 to 85 students in a classroom [in the schools receiving transfers]," said Mohamed Kane, president of a local association to fight poverty and flooding in his neighbourhood of Taïf, Diamaguène Sicap Mbao.

"Some parents, even if they really don't have the means, have made a sacrifice and put their children into private schools."

For 12 hours a day firemen are pumping water out of school buildings and courtyards in affected areas – when the pumps work.

"We don't have the means and equipment to pump everywhere, and roads and homes were the priority [right after the flooding]," said a fireman who identified himself as Commander Diop.

"We have found classrooms under 50cm of water. If all goes well we will complete this in about a week but from time to time we don't have fuel for the pumps and that holds us up."

Source http://www.irinnews.org/