40 years ago, teacher Gisela Fankel traveled to Cameroon on behalf of the Basel Mission for an assignment as a religious educator. She has now published her experiences from that time and her assessment of her work in retrospect in the book "Four years under the corrugated iron roof".
"A longing for new experiences, a search for real challenge and curiosity about other people and how to deal with challenges, as well as a thirst for adventure and travel" were important motives for the then 36-year-old secondary school teacher Gisela Fankel from Heidelberg to travel to Cameroon in the summer of 1984 as a religious educator for the Basel Mission. But, as she writes in the foreword to her book, she also wanted to get to know development aid in practice so that she could later talk about it credibly in class in Germany.
Gisela Fankel has now compiled her experiences in the book "Four years under the corrugated iron roof". What makes the approximately 150-page volume very readable is the combination of the contemporary reports - the "newsletters" that Gisela Fankel sent to the Basel Mission - and the author's texts from today's perspective. Among other things, she describes trips she made back to Cameroon decades after her mission and reflects on differences and developments in her former mission area.
Broadening intercultural and interreligious horizons
During her assignment, Gisela Fankel worked as a religious education teacher at around 25 schools around Bamenda, the capital of the English-speaking North West Province. The team responsible for religious education also held training courses for the teachers and, together with the team leader, a youth pastor, developed a curriculum that still forms the basis of religious education today. Gisela Fankel describes this teamwork and the contact with pupils of different ages and social backgrounds as very enriching and broadening her horizons.
The book is subtitled "As a single woman in Africa" and one chapter is dedicated to this topic in particular. Here, she describes her experience of how it made a big difference whether she was working on a development cooperation assignment as a family or as a single woman. Gisela Fankel observes precisely that she also had to overcome tough resistance as a woman working alone. In this context, she also puts up with poorer working and living conditions than male aid workers, who are often present with their families.
In contrast to the insights into the patriarchal social structures of the 1980s, she notes the progress made during her later travels. For example, the fact that more women were now being ordained and working as pastors in the Presbyterian Church. Gisela Fankel also met a single female pastor whom she found very impressive - and realized that she was still an exception some 30 years after her work in Cameroon.
Relationships at eye level
The author's enthusiasm for the people she got to know and love in Cameroon is beautifully expressed in her descriptions of a trip to meet them, which she was able to undertake in 2007 at the invitation of Mission 21 (which continues and develops the Basel Mission's projects in Cameroon), as well as on another trip in 2015. She describes the encounters with her former superior and other companions from her time on assignment in a touching and warm manner. And she notes with great regret the feelings of oppression among the English-speaking minority, which have intensified since her time on assignment.
Numerous photos from Gisela Fankel's personal collection illustrate the book. Most of them show encounters with people, teaching situations, youth work groups, employees and much more. This also gives the book the character of a personal book of memories. The text and pictures make it clear that the author understood her work on an equal footing with the people in Cameroon and still cultivates her relationships in this spirit today.
Gisela Fankel: "Four years under the corrugated iron roof. Als Singlefrau in Afrika", published in 2024; available from: www.literareon.de or directly from the author: g-fankel@t-online.de
