Getting to know new perspectives: Excursion to Cameroon

By Victoria Wasner 

As part of the African - European School Dialogue research project funded by the Movetia Foundation, Victoria Wasner, project manager at Lucerne University of Teacher Education, accompanied a group of teachers from Zug Cantonal School to Cameroon from 17 to 27 October 2024. Regula Grob, head of geography at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, was there as a subject expert and co-organizer of the excursion, as was Brigitte Kürsteiner from Bern University of Applied Sciences. Teachers from the partner school Lycée Classique de Mfou, who had organized an exciting and varied program, warmly welcomed the Swiss delegation in Cameroon.

Since April 2024, teachers from Zug and Mfou have been working in subject groups (history/French, geography and English) on joint teaching materials to provide a new perspective on ‘Africa’ and ‘Europe’. The main purpose of the excursion to Cameroon was to deepen the exchange and gain new inputs for their learning materials and lessons. Both program schedules on site were put together in accordance with this aim.

The first part of the excursion in Douala focused on “History”. History teachers had the opportunity to hear from various Cameroonian personalities who are working to ensure that suppressed or forgotten voices can be heard. The visit to the Africavenir Foundation, for example, showed what a rich collection of literature there is on Cameroonian history. Cameroonian academics have been analyzing and recording Cameroon's colonial history since the 1990s. Particularly impressive, for example, is the series of books entitled ‘When the Elders Speak’, which the university professor Prince Kum' a Ndumbe III began in 1981. The Swiss delegation had the opportunity to meet the prince himself and ask him questions.

The second half of the excursion took place in Yaoundé and the surrounding area, focusing on “geography” and “literature”. On the first two days, the group from Switzerland was at the Lycée Classique de Mfou and firstly attended lessons with their Cameroonian colleagues, including some German lessons! Following on from this, the teachers from Switzerland and Cameroon had time to prepare and refine their jointly planned lessons in their subject groups,then they taught them together.

In the history/French lesson, for example, an extract from the novel “Confidences” by the Cameroonian author Max Lobe, who has lived in Switzerland since the age of 18, was discussed. In geography, Zermatt was mentioned as an example of migration and English lessons focused on poems on the topics of origin and identity, with the English teachers from Mfou and Zug both drafting a personal poem in preparation for the lesson.

The excursion had a different impact on everyone, and it will take a while to process all the impressions. However, as an attempt to make sense of them in a timely manner, the participating teachers were asked at the end of the excursion to select a photograph that best represented their personal insights and to explain the individual story behind it. A selection of these photos and their accompanying texts are available on this website.