The events that transpired prior to our enrolment were never quite clear to me, I remember I was severely ill with conjunctivitis, however, from what I can recall, the then headmaster of the school Mr. Fatty came to Nyoro looking for more pupils to enrol into Dumbutu primary school which at the time was only used by Dumbutu and Batelling villages. The student numbers were very few to fill a class and I suspect this was the main reason why the headmaster decided to come to Nyoro, it could have been due to a government policy at the time as well, I am not sure.

As I mentioned above, I was not a party to the events that led to our enrolment due to my confinement with illness. However, from what was subsequently narrated to me, it appeared that the decision to enrol us was made at a meeting under the big tree of the banta in the old Nyoro were a discussion on the request of the headmaster of Dumbutu primary school was held. Only the Bah kunda agreed to his request and enrolled our batch.
This was a very difficult and courageous decision to make in those days because going to a western school was not accepted in a conservative torodo community, it was strongly frown upon due to the bad connotations associated with western education. I recall very well, the elders expressing fear of loosing their children to the world if they receive western education. Western education was associated with all the non-conformist behaviours that a conservative community like Nyoro detested such as drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes /cannabis eating pork and so on and so forth. Still to this day I do not know what motivated my dad to enroll me, because the subject was never on the table for discussion prior to him putting my name down and beside, I was a star pupil at the daara. Perhaps it was my attitude towards farming, I never ask him, anyway what ever the motivation was, I am eternally grateful to him for taking such a very bold and iconoclastic decision which at the time, would have been extremely difficult for him to make.
Most of us were excited but I can’t recall being part of the excitement, my attachment to my mother and the family was well known and the thought of going away to leave in a different community that speaks a language I hardly understood was quite overwhelming. Most of us like Mam Cherno and Bokarraye (Maali’s younger cousin who died few years ago whom I genuinely forgot to mention as one of the original batch members) were already street wise. Bokarraye was the eldest among us. I will never forget the slap he planted on my face on our first morning in class because I asked people to reduce the noise level, I don’t think he meant any harm but being the eldest among us and I the tallest, he wanted to show who is the boss and that was his way of asserting his authority. I bear no grudge, all forgiven. I don’t think he lasted longer than a week in Dumbutu.
By embarking on this long and treacherous journey, we had no idea what was laying ahead of us. If not for all of us but certainly for most of us, this was a rude awakening, we rarely ventured out of the secured comfort zone of Nyoro. On arrival in Dumbutu, we were allocated to our various guardians and luckily most of us were paired. I stayed with Sheriff Fatou which never lasted longer 2 weeks and I will return to that later, Buba Jobe and Dabo Manyo stayed together, Jabel and Mam Cherno shared the same compound, Yaya was alone and I have no idea what happened to Bokarraye. Anyway I too lasted for only two weeks in primary one, I couldn’t handle the new environment and I was missing my family in Nyoro too much. My recollections of those two weeks were full of emotions, fear and bewilderment. We were completely lost. We couldn’t speak the language and everything was just like a never ending nightmare. By the end of the two weeks, I have had enough, I went home and decided to stay and complete my Quranic study, a very plausible and expedient reason to give at the time. I stayed away and returned when my original classmates were in primary 3. I returned after the Christmas holidays in 1978, by then my original classmates were enviably fluent in the Mandika language but I was not doing badly either because whilst back in Nyoro, I attended the Arabic school in Sankandi for 2 years which helped improved my Mandinka language skill to a reasonable level to get me by.
On the whole the people of Dumbutu were generally very hospitable and kind to us. Our stay in Dumbutu was not plain sailing, it was difficult and to do well in our studies, we had to climb lots of hurdles along the way. I will avoid dwelling on the negatives because that will be unfair, comparatively however, those who went to Nyoro primary school were very lucky.
I am sure my batch mates will add more to my version of events.