Volunteers in Ghana usually keep in touch by texting. I got this message from my friend Lizzy a few weeks ago.
“Oh my word, I just was playing a game w my English club, and a lizard on the ceiling caught a bat, like slo-mo planet earth video, had close early cause screeching.”
When I asked her who was screeching, herself, the kids, or the bat, she wrote
“bat was screeching, too loud for us to continue too, what a bugger, it was so cool though.”
Village vs. New Volunteers Football match
The new group of volunteers has almost finished training. As part of their training, they went on a field trip through my site. We ate a really delicious lunch of rice balls and groundnut soup prepared by Madame Shera and Madame Rahi (who I’ve decided need to come back to America with me to be my personal chefs. I haven’t told them that yet though.)
After lunch, I arranged a soccer game with the new volunteers vs. my community team, with the trainees teaching about malaria prevention at half time. Ghanaians love soccer. It’s called football here instead of soccer though. When community teams play each other it draws almost everyone in the village. Kids climb into trees near the field so they can see better, and everyone else just packs in tight around the edges of the field, which is conveniently located across the street from my house. It’s usually a good game, because kids start playing football when they are really young.
Beth, one of the trainers, told me that the new volunteer vs. community team game was a chance for America to redeem itself from the game against Ghana in the World Cup. (Yes, America lost.)
I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending, but the new volunteers definitely did not redeem the America/Ghana football match. They lost, 0-3. Then my community team held practice, because apparently the game wasn’t all that challenging.
On the upside, the new volunteers did a great job teaching about malaria (even if they were all sweaty and out of breath). They even made sure to keep everyone involved by asking for volunteers and letting my villagers speak, instead of lecturing about it. The new volunteers seem ready to start their service, which they will in a few weeks. It was great to meet some of my new neighbors. My community didn’t get to see a great football match, but they did get to see a great comedy- and people were laughing quite a bit.
School
Students start coming to school as early as 6:30 a.m. The students sweep, weed, and keep the schools clean. Boys wear shorts that hit about mid-calf and a green button up shirt. Girls wear a dress of the same color, with a white sash around the middle. All students are required to shave their heads as part of the school uniform. By 8 a.m., most of the students are there and they line up and start singing “God bless our homeland Ghana…” the national anthem. They usually march to one or two other songs before going to their classes. When the Saints Go Marching In is popular.
There are two schools in my village, the primary and the JHS. In America, this would be the equivalent of the elementary school and the middle school, respectively. The nearest SHS (equivalent to our high school) is at the district capital, a little over an hour by bicycle.
The primary school has two buildings. There should be three to accommodate all the students, but one of the buildings literally washed away in the rain. Goats play on what’s left of it. The roofing is stored in the library so that people won’t steal it. There are no books in the library, only the sheet metal roofing. Students crowd four students into desks designed for two students. There are no posters on the walls, let alone terrariums or other accoutrements that we had in my elementary school.
Students start school at different ages, so grades (called forms) are not made of students of uniform age. Sometimes students take a year off to work for fees associated with school.
Teachers come in from Tamale, about 2 hours away by bus or motorcycle. The community provides housing for the teachers. Usually the teachers come to the village on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, and then go back to Tamale to be with their families on Thursday or Friday. Sometimes they don’t come.
If it rains, neither students nor teachers come. There’s no point- the rooms have no electricity, so when it rains it’s too dark to see, and the rain is loud enough that you can’t hear anything other than the pounding of water on the roof.
Each class has a syllabus mandated by the federal government. Classes cover similar subjects to American schools, with the addition of Dagboni literacy and moral and religious studies and the subtraction of art and music. Classes tend to emphasize memorization of material. Students spend a lot of time chanting answers, especially at the primary level. When the teachers don’t come, students stay in the classroom. I observed a Dagboni literacy class at the primary level without a teacher. The students chanted vowel sounds for 20 minutes before losing interest. A fight broke out over some lip gloss.
Students take a National Exam in order to pass on to the next grade. In my community, over 70% of students fail the exam.
People in the community, on the PTA, and school officials say that enrollment is equal for boys and girls. This is true until the last two years of JHS, where the class enrollment shows half as many girls as boys.
There are no official school fees for primary or JHS. Some students can’t afford to go anyway because of the cost of books, paper, pens, and uniforms.
Class sizes vary. The class that I taught last term had about 50 students in it. This term I have about 30. It is hard to pinpoint how many people there are per class though, because absenteeism is common. Students might miss class to go work on farm, or because of an illness. Sometimes they don’t come because they don’t have the materials. Sometimes students skip class and go sit in a tree all day, particularly if they are in trouble and are scheduled to receive a punishment that day. Punishment usually takes the form of extra clean-up work around the school. Caning students is illegal in Ghana, but it still happens.
When the teachers come, they have a good rapport with the students. Sometimes students will come over to the teachers quarters for extra help. The teachers are patient and will keep repeating things until the students understand. They do the same thing for me while I try to learn Dagboni.
Teachers feel that the students are not serious and that neither students nor parents understand the importance of school. The teachers aren’t making things up. I asked my men’s group once why it was important to send their children to school. The answer I got was “because the white man says it’s important.” Teachers and headmasters tell me stories about how a parent got angry when one of his twins advanced in school while the other twin did not. The parent was confused, because the boy who had been held back was physically bigger than his brother.
A common dinner discussion at the teacher’s quarters is whether or not pay has been added to their accounts, because paychecks do not always come on time. They also talk about how they want to get jobs that have better pay than teaching. Most teachers see teaching as a temporary job on the way to better things.
The building in front is the primary school building that washed out and now serves as a playpen for goats. The buildings behind are currently used for the primary school
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