I was a woman just like you

by Miriam Noyes

Mama Kiba Pierrette, president of the Baptist women in her local church glows as she receives her literacy diploma.

“I was a woman just like you”, she said, addressing the numerous women’s choirs that had come to sing for the event. “Now look at me.” Indeed! Mama Kiba Pierrette had, by diligent effort and the help of the local Baptist literacy classes, gone from illiteracy to reading and writing easily not only in the local Lingala, but also in French.

A rather short square friendly no-nonsense lady, you get the sense immediately when meeting her that this is a lady who gets things done. And she does, as the president of the women of her church. When she gave the elegant address in French for the occasion, the television journalist there murmured admiringly, “That was better than most university students could do!”

The occasion was the Kinshasa Baptist churches’ celebration of International Literacy Day, and Mama Kiba Pierrette’s graduation day. I don’t get to many of these occasions, having been in rural Congo for many years. So I found it interesting to see who was graduating.

Besides a number of middle-aged women, there was an elderly lady who looked positively thrilled, a bunch of teenaged and twenty-something girls, a woman who they tell me is preparing to travel in Europe, several young men and a middle-aged man who radiates satisfaction at getting rid of his educational handicaps.

Several of the ladies were like Mama Kiba Pierrette: having gotten well-educated in literacy classes, they took the training to become literacy teachers themselves. They walked to the front twice: once for their diplomas, and once for their teacher’s certificates.

Literacy classes in Kinshasa have evolved. No longer are they just classes for women.


Everywhere I have gone, the centers at our churches are full of teenagers, and not just those whose parents never sent them to school. There are lots of kids whose schools are on half day sessions, who sign up for reading classes in their free time.

And it’s surprising to see which of them are in the beginning reading classes. Some, of course, are there to improve their French, taking advantage of the fact that school French classes and our French classes take different approaches.

Some are like the graduating boy, who suffered some brain damage from a severe attack of meningitis and had to drop out of school for a year or so. He is, I’m happy to say, back in form and at the top of his English class.


We estimate that in the 15 years we’ve had this literacy program 16,000 people have found new lives through our classes. Now that’s worth celebrating!