Hello All,
Sooooo I have been pretty lazy when it comes to blog posts this year! Because the old ones took so much time and were a lot to read, I am going to change things up a little bit. The last time I posted something was just about a month ago and a lot of things have happened since then! Needless to say, the past month has had the same extreme ups and downs which have been present throughout my time in Ghana. One thing that hasn’t changed is the heat…still hot as hell!
TEACHING
Plenty of good things have been happening on this front. A few weeks ago I was finally able to split Class 4A into two sections, the advanced group and the ones who need extra attention mostly because they are disruptive. Because of the original teachers’ attendance and his preference to cane kids, I left him with the disruptive group and took the advanced class to another room. Immediately the entire learning atmosphere changed for the better in my section. In the three weeks that I have been with them, I haven’t had to tell them to be quiet or interrupted the lesson for any kind of discipline. Almost all of the students participate and I have slowly helped them feel more comfortable asking questions. My suggestion to split the class was validated this week in the online class I am taking. The professor discussed how “tracking,” or splitting a class to homogenize the academic level, has been proven to help all students. In my section, I have already seen an improvement in the responses to some of the exercises and have been focusing on developing their critical thinking skills. One day this week the normal teacher didn’t show up which means I had to teach both sections together. It was just like old times with a crazy class and a lot of talking!
Still Goofballs
Related to teaching, I finally tracked down the assemblyman who has the key to the library. Unfortunately he told me that the library “needs” renovations, paint, and asked me for money to complete the project. Basically he is holding the library hostage until he receives a few hundred Cedis for this project. This type of behavior is what has constantly discouraged me while living in Ghana. While young students are begging to go to the library for access to storybooks they can’t afford to buy, someone in power is trying to enrich himself without thinking about the consequences for everyone else. Not only that, but does the library need to be closed while you are raising funds? Best of all, the letter he presented to me soliciting funds for the project was poorly written broken English. Proof that these people need the damn library!
Last week I began teaching at Nali High International School in addition to Senya DA Primary. A returning volunteer, Lucian, just finished four weeks of helping the school construct a library and canteen while improving their class schedule which has been a problem because of a severe teacher shortage. He asked me to take an hour or two each week to go over there and instruct the Junior High School Class 3 in whatever subject(s) I feel comfortable with. At the end of this term they take their exams which will determine whether or not they can attend Senior High School. After twelve noon, the students don’t have any teacher so I scheduled myself to come in the afternoons during their “self-teach” periods. The first lesson went well but it is hard to work through past exam questions when there are only two textbooks for the class. My teaching style is certainly different than that of a typical Ghanaian teacher and it will take a few lessons for everyone, including myself, to feel comfortable. They must have thought I was crazy when I moved all the desks into a semi-circle and sat with them! The class is small, only 8 students, which makes it very enjoyable compared to the 20-45 student classes in Senya. I hope that in the coming weeks I will be able to create a good working relationship with the students and address the topics that they don’t feel confident with.
Library Dedication Assembly
My New Class
CHILD LABOUR & TRAFFICKING PROJECT
A lot of things have been going on with the project since I last posted. Freeman and I have continued our trafficking interviews in Senya and the monitoring of students who we already sponsor. Each week when we interview these children, it is a stark reminder of why I am here and the unimaginable hardships that other people face. In my last post, I outlined a number of projects that I would like to institute and ranked them by how possible and necessary they are. Since then I have started laying the groundwork for these projects and have been gauging the level of interest in them. I will run through them briefly with you:
- Agriculture Project – Initially, I envisioned some kind of farming cooperative for the parents of our sponsored children and other individuals in the community. After doing some research and talking with people who actually know how to farm, we decided that a demonstration farm would be a better idea to train people how to grow crops for themselves. I visited a demonstration farm in the old Liberian refugee camp outside of Kasoa where an organization called Point Hope is doing some amazing work. A CHF volunteer is working in the camp for their nutrition program which is tied in with their agriculture training program. The farm manager, Emmanuel, explained their training program and took us for a tour of their vegetable farm, poultry farm and newly acquired land where they hope to build a compound complete with a farm. The great thing about this project is that an assemblyman and sub-chief in Senya offered to donate land to CHF. While I think the term “donate” is used loosely here, it is an encouraging sign that this idea can actually materialize into one of the missing pieces of the trafficking project; skill building and income generation. In the coming weeks we will be working on actually securing the land, which can be a nightmare in Ghana, and arranging our funds and ideas on how the training program will work.
- Open Dialogue with Parents of Sponsored Children – After I teach my class in Senya, I have been seeking out parents of our sponsored children to give fill them in with the academic progress of their children. Next week I even want to visit the parents of my two best students to let them know just how talented their daughters are. Sometimes it is hard to track down the parents so I have had mixed results with this. It is also hard because I need a translator to come with me who can speak the local dialect. After I create a survey/questionnaire, I will begin to more formally ask them what kind of job training they might be interested in or if they would like to learn how to read, write and speak English. I would like to eventually organize some basic business and financial workshops for them using local businesspeople
- Apprenticeship Program – This program has been a little slow in getting off the ground because of how transient the older fishers are. We have been trying to target people in their late teens to early twenties who are not interested in receiving a formal education and don’t see a way out of the fishing industry. While we have interviewed two possible candidates, they have not been in Senya recently when we looked for them because they were following the fish to the Ivory Coast. To formalize this program, I would like to create a database of skilled workers who can be used in the future as we locate more individuals interested in learning a trade.
- Adult Education – This initiative has also been a little slow to get up and running because of my preoccupation with the farming project. My mother, the literacy guru, has sent me some literature to start with and I am formulating some ideas on how to run these courses and who to use for instructors. Next week I will meet with the head of the District Assembly to find out about their past literacy program and if the community has anything running right now. Finding literate instructors who are willing to volunteer or work for a very low wages is a difficult task and I am trying to think of what kind of schools or organizations would be interested in providing their support. After conducting a trafficking interview a few weeks ago, I encountered a woman who asked if we could teach her how to read and write in English. I was so happy that she was asking for this and I know that there must be more people in the town like her. Something tells me that I will definitely get this program running and it will be success.
- Sanitation – This is such a large issue in Ghana and it is hard to think of how CHF could really set up a comprehensive system in Senya and the surrounding communities. Part of the reason it seems so daunting is because sanitation is a mentality and lifestyle choice. That being said, I do believe that CHF can make a difference in some of the schools that we operate in. In the next few weeks I would like to buy waste bins to help collect trash and water rubbers, or the bags that drinking water comes in. While the garbage will be burned, at least it will not be strewn all over the schoolyard. The water rubbers can be recycled and the company that collects them will pay you for them. Using that money to help purchase school supplies or create a bonus for well performing teachers is something I had in mind.
Despite our lack of personnel, I am highly confident that all of these programs will be feasible in 2013. The agriculture project has taken priority because of the possibility of free or very cheap land which is amazing. It feels so good to suggest something and see some momentum put behind it from outside forces. In the next month I hope to have a more concrete view of all of these initiatives and be able to outline a timeframe for everything. Then I will be able to create some project plans and wait for some more volunteers to help execute them.
Trafficking Interview
Trafficking Interviews
Point Hope Demonstration Farm
Point Hope Demonstration Farm
TRAVEL
The past month hasn’t been too crazy with travelling. We went to Kumasi a few weeks ago for a festival and checked out the huge central market. It is said to be the largest one in West Africa and was quite overwhelming with the amount of vendors and variety of goods. This past weekend we all went to a beach resort by Cape Coast for a fellow volunteers’ last weekend in Ghana. It was a nice break from spending everyday in Kasoa and it always feels good to lie on the beach in February!
Ashanti Akwasidae Festival
Ashanti Akwasidae Festival – The Ashanti King
Ashanti Akwasidae Festival
Abandze
Fort Amsterdamn
Abandze
GHANA
“Water is life.” A common saying here in Ghana. Water is something that you don’t think too much about when you live in the US. Growing up in New Jersey a drought meant that you couldn’t water your lawn everyday or wash your car in the summer. Moving to Colorado, the realities of a drought became a little more real when I saw ever increasing forest fires and water restrictions that were actually enforced. Still, most of those restrictions didn’t affect my everyday life besides from the disappointment of not being able to tube down the closest river. For the past two months, water has been a huge problem in Kasoa. The tap has flowed once in the beginning of January and that was it. I think it has rained once or twice for a few minutes in those two months which is hardly enough to even keep the ground wet for more than a few minutes. In a real drought like this, you quickly realize all the things you rely on water for and how difficult they become when there truly isn’t enough water for everything. From washing dishes and clothes, to taking showers, washing your hands, flushing the toilet, or cooking, everything becomes more difficult or impossible. It seems that you never have the time to fetch enough water. Fetching water is always that chore that you are too tired to do at the end of the day and the water source always seems to get further and further away. Tensions over water are always high and I can’t help but understand why people will literally fight over the right to water. Even in my own house, it has been a source of these tensions. Granted, my host mom and I don’t have the best relationship, but the water issue adds more stress to an already challenging situation.
In addition to the water situation, electricity and fuel has been contentious issues in Ghana. The power supply has been extremely unreliable in the past few weeks, almost as bad as when I first arrived. Fuel prices have spiked which immediately caused an increase in everything from drinking water to bread. Natural gas or LPG prices rose by 50% which is devastating to the taxi drivers who rely on it to power their vehicles and anyone who cooks with gas. The election is still being contested in court which makes the government the perfect, likely, scapegoat for all the criticism going around. I don’t think anyone really knows the true problem or solution to all of these issues. All you hear in the media is propaganda and there is never a reliable source of information in the government because everyone believes them to be corrupt. It is easy to see why so many people distrust the government with all of these problems swirling around but I maintain my position that the government shouldn’t be blamed for every difficulty we face here. Private organizations and individuals need to step up and create realistic solutions to these pressing issues if Ghana is ever going to overcome them.
Overcoming Hardships Starts with Education!
THOUGHTS
I have been thinking about what I am going to write in this section for over a week now. Although there is so much I can discuss, my mind keeps on coming back to the challenges and success I experience every day. In short, volunteering in a third world country is a complete mind-fuck (excuse my language but there isn’t a better word). Every single day I am faced with terrible and great situations, awful and truly amazing people, and a country that is both severely dysfunctional and beautiful all at the same time. It’s the never ending onslaught of emotions which exhausts me and keeps me motivated to make even the smallest of changes. Each day is an extreme exercise in patience and teaches me to move on from small failures and create something positive out of them. As I have written about in the past, every other week I am forced to calm myself down and refocus on what is possible in the situation at hand. Things can become so overwhelming that you lose focus of all the good things that are happening around you. I have always been someone who likes to come home from work, talk about and process everything that has happened that day and allow myself to decompress. For a long time in Ghana I didn’t afford myself the time to do that because coming home was always another stressful experience. Now that I have been making the time to actually process the events of each day, I can evaluate all the good things that took place after I clear my head of all the frustrations and “clutter” that diverts my attention from the positives. Some of my worst days are littered with great moments from my students, colleagues, neighbors or just plain strangers. Despite all of the crap that goes on, I will always be inspired by the humanity and resilience displayed by some of the people I have met here. I have been extremely fortunate to encounter and be surrounded by some truly amazing individuals who, if for nothing else, keep me going day after day. These are people who will continue to empower and transform the lives of those most in need and will remain with me no matter where life leads me.
I love and miss you all,
John
My Adventures 