Baccalauréat · Série C · Anglais — 2019

Text — Light for the village

For as long as anyone could remember, the village of Kombissiri went dark at seven o'clock. Children who wanted to study walked to the health centre, the only building with a generator, and read under its window until the nurse turned the light off.

Then, three years ago, engineers came and covered the roof of the primary school with solar panels. Nobody believed it would last. The village had seen projects before — a pump that broke after one season, a mill that nobody could repair.

This time was different, and the reason was simple: before leaving, the engineers trained four young people from the village itself. Two of them were women. They learned how to clean the panels, check the batteries and replace a faulty cable. When something goes wrong now, nobody waits for a truck from the capital.

Today the school has light until ten at night, and it is never empty. Last year, for the first time, every candidate from Kombissiri passed the primary school certificate.