Côte d'Ivoire

In 2003 and 2004 Catherine was sent by the French Education Ministry to the Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) to be an examiner for the French Baccalaureate. Why, you might be wondering, does the ministry send teachers from France instead of from one of the countries that neighbor the Cote d'Ivoire and have French schools? It's because the Cote d'Ivoire is not a safe place to be and no one from the neighboring countries is willing to go there. Only in France can they find teachers crazy enough to go a country where rioting just a week before the examination period caused the French school to be closed, a country which the US and British government strongly recommend their citizens to stay away from. Indeed, while Catherine was there a gendarme was shot dead.

Catherine would have liked to back to this school as an examiner but unfortunately it was attacked and burnt to the ground.

Here is the school's bursar in what remains of his office.