“I have to go there” | The Press

Black teachers established in Nunavik testify to their attachment to the region

Marie-Eve Morasse
The Press

They were teachers in Africa and it is now in Nunavik that they have chosen to work. Three teachers from the Kativik School Board explain what brought them to Nord-du-Québec and prove that between Africa and Nunavik, there is sometimes only one step.

“What did I get myself into? Marie-Louise Nkwaya is a woman who likes to “take risks”, but no sooner had she set foot in Kangirsuk than she was no longer certain that settling there was the idea of ​​the century.

Growing up in Cameroon, she had been fascinated by images of the indigenous peoples of Canada. Years later, a teacher in Ottawa, she goes to a job fair attended by the Kativik School Board.

“I went to ask them: ‘Where is Nunavik?’ The lady gave me a little summary on the climate, how people live, the difficulties of the students. I said, “I have to go over there.” »

Planning to stay five years in Nunavik, she leaves behind her husband and five grown children.

That was in 2012. Since then, the Sautjuit school in Kangirsuk has relied on her for the teaching of mathematics and science in secondary school.

” My battle “

The beginnings were somewhat bumpy, some children made “very, very” racist remarks about him. “I told them, ‘If you don’t want n… as a teacher, work fast to finish school, because n…. will stay here for at least 30 years,” says Mr.^me Nkwaya. Village elders and Inuit colleagues stepped in to calm things down.

She now speaks of the “very strong” bond that unites her to her students (“they are like my grandchildren”), of her role with a soon-to-be 16-year-old boy who lives with her. “I’m the only family he has left”, slips in a soft voice the teacher.

Today, she makes links between her native country and her adopted land. “In Cameroon, they called my house ‘the Catholic Church’”, because anyone can come to my house. We share, we eat together. That’s kind of what I found here, ”said the 61-year-old woman.

If Marie-Louise Nkwaya promises to return to Cameroon on retirement, she understands her students who are so “attached to their culture, their traditions”. “When I go to Montreal, the first two weeks, I just want to come back,” she says.

Her role, she nevertheless believes, is to push her students further in their studies.

She dreams of meeting her former students at the clinic, sometimes doctors, sometimes nurses, or seeing them on construction sites.

She regrets that her students lack examples. Isn’t she one? Yes, admit M^me Nkwaya. “I tell my story to my students to boost them a little. I didn’t have an easy childhood, I don’t want kids to go through that. That’s why they became my fight,” says the teacher.

Recognize oneself in the reality of the Inuit

The “love at first sight” came at the University of Ottawa, in a course on Aboriginal, Inuit and Métis education.

“I saw myself through this reality,” recalls Elom Akpo.

“Togo was colonized in 1880 by the Germans. The realities that the Inuit lived and still live are the same realities that my ancestors, my grandparents, lived. Everything was imposed, our ways of doing things were changed”, explains the director of the Tarsakallak school, in Aupaluk.

Elom Akpo moved to Salluit to teach two years ago. For the past few months, he has been principal at the Tarsakallak school in Aupaluk, which has about fifty students.

Among the 13 staff members, they are three Africans and one Jamaican. “For such a small population, we have a strong black community here! laughs Mr. Akpo.

The 38-year-old man has been in Canada for ten years. He feels “fully accepted” in Nunavik.

Did he experience racism? “I don’t see it that way, especially when it comes to children. They are honest and open, I will never say that I see racism,” says Mr. Akpo.

In Togo, his family finds that he has “courage” to be in the Far North. “I feel they are worried, they say to me: ‘You are alone in the middle of nowhere. I send them photos of the northern lights, I learned of their existence when I was in elementary school. Being here is like living my childhood,” says Mr. Akpo.

He found in Nunavik the ideal place to be in harmony with nature. “I am the 202^and inhabitant of Aupaluk. I am the last to arrive,” he laughs.

Like other teachers from Africa he knows, he misses certain foods: goat meat, potato flour, hot peppers, tilapia, very specific spices… but he has discovered with joy the bannock. “I love it,” says the director.

The importance of barter in Nunavik is another point in common with Togo, says Elom Akpo. In northern Quebec, the fisherman interacts with the hunter. In his native Togo, a market located very close to the Benin border is devoted exclusively to barter.

Show that school is “salvation”

Bernard Gueu, teacher at the Sautjuit school in Kangirsuk, is convincing: in three years, he has recruited seven “compatriots” from Côte d’Ivoire who now teach, like him, in Nunavik. “There are four in Quaqtaq, two in Inukjuak and one in Salluit,” he lists.

What are Mr. Gueu’s selling points? “I told them that there are many advantages: we are well paid, life is not expensive, our seniority acquired elsewhere is taken into account,” he said.

Perhaps he is forgetting to tell them about his trip north, the four flights he had to take from Sudbury, Ontario, to Kangirsuk. The last, particularly, in a “very small archaic plane”…

“You see the pilots with the cranks to raise the plane… At altitude, I said all the prayers in the world and I said to myself: what am I doing here? “, laughs Mr. Gueu, who admits that he is afraid of the plane.

A few hours later, a co-worker showed up at his house with food and instructions on how to start the heating. Something to soften the landing in unknown territory.

The beginnings were not easy. The father of the family left his wife and four children in Toronto. “When I left [le Sud] in 2019-2020, it was like a funeral. »

He too sees certain similarities between his country of origin and what is happening in the North. “As blacks we had slavery, here they had boarding schools,” says Gueu. But the history of Aboriginal people is “more recent”, and he wants to be able to show his students to whom he is teaching physical education this year that “school is salvation”.

“I tell them that I traveled thousands of kilometers to come to Canada, and that if I hadn’t finished school, I might not even have left my country,” says Mr. Gueu.

In an interview, the teacher repeats that he “feels good” in Nunavik. “We are all the same, we are all human. As I tell my children: if you feel different from others, you will be different. »