| The Cistercian monastery Secondary School Mendida is some
how under the protection of the archdiocesan. Catholic Secretariat (ACS)
from the side of the church and assisted by the regional government. It
is administered by the Cistercian Monks. It is located 157 km to north
from Addis Ababa, it is found in the Oromiya region 4, Zone 12, Abchu
and Nga'a Woreda.
This school had been founded in 1964 E.C with small numbers of pupils
of the village. It is the first modern school in this woreda, in
addition to the traditional way of teaching which was given by the
Orthodox priests around the church. It started its work as junior school
(7 and 8 classes). It gave a great service to the people of Mendida. It
has been given a great position by government and following its example
actually the government has built a number of junior schools in this
area. But a crucial problem appeared with the increasing of junior
schools, the luck of secondary schools. The monks were asked by the
habitants and local administrators to upgrade this school to a secondary
school. The problem of the people was understood by the monks and they
started search for the donators from different sides. They built nine
classes in1991 E.C and they started to give services in1992 E.C for
grade nine with 130 pupils, seven teachers and four office workers. It
has started a new history, tried to solve the greatest problem and
questions of the habitants. It will be a surprising situation to have
one secondary school in the area where about 40,000 families. Most of
the students are from the peasant families. They have great economical
problems. Because of this problem the monastery has signed an agreement
with the government to support the school with textbooks and teachers.
So the school is working in a mutual way with the government, which is
not the nature of the most Catholic schools in Ethiopia. The school is
not selfsustaining, because the student's fee is six Euro per year. With
all these problems the number of the pupils grow rapidly.
Actually the school has 628 students with 16 teachers and some office
workers. It is a mixed school for boys and girls and it is a day-school
normally working from 8.00 a.m to 3.30 p.m, but sometimes it will be
extended to 5.15 p.m. In Mendida there are many children who do not go
to school because of economical problem and shortage of secondary
schools. In this area in most of the government schools there are about
120 per class, and sometimes they are teaching in tents. In the
Cistercian monastery secondary school there are minimum 85 pupils in one
class -room. Like any other catholic school the objective of Cistercian
monastery secondary school is basically humanitarian: intellectual,
social, moral and cultural formation of the youth without any
discrimination on the basis of social statues, religion or gender.
We are just following the national curriculum designed by the
ministry of education: Amharic (the national language), English (as
second language), Oromiffa (local language), Mathematics, Physics,
Biology, Chemistry, History, Geography, Ethical and Civic education and
Physical education. We do not teach Christian Ethics, which we are
purposely forbidden by the regional government. The number of Catholics
in Ethiopia generally insignificant; so we have about:
- 2% Catholic pupils
- 5% Protestants
- 92.5% Orthodox
- 0.5% Muslim
(there is only one family belong to the Muslim religion in the city)
In fact we didn't find any kind of difficulties in teaching Christian
Ethics in the past 30 years, because the masses of our students are from
the Orthodox family who has a deep traditional Christian education.
Unfortunately, now the government forbids us not to teach this subject
for his political purposes.
There are only two Catholic communities (Divine sisters and we
Cistercian fathers). We are appreciated and well respected by the
peoples, because we are contributing a great service to the habitants,
having two schools (secondary and technical, six kindergarten, one
elementary school (1-4 classes), one clinic and two women promotions and
such supplementary services). With all these services our school
actually has faced a shortage of additional classes, ICT (Information
Communication Technology) programme which is too expensive, Laboratory
equipments and chemicals, lack of computer training center, reference
books for the library and photocopy machine.
We hope and pray all these projects will get a positive response for
the coming years and we will able to give a full education to our
students on behalf of your generosity. |
