Wednesday May 14, 2008: School is about to start but I wanted to begin typing this weeks blog because it seems as though I have a lot to write. Finally the school attendance is almost back to normal and I am so happy to see all the kids. I am still trying to work out my schedule for this term because, as usual, there is so much I want to do and so many classes I want to work with. But first I am going to go back to this past weekend.
On Friday night I went to the hotel of my friends from Canada. Heather and Leann are staying in a hotel for 3 months while they are completing their research for their nursing school masters program at the university of Alberta. Both are interested in birth and delivery and midwifery and they have told me about their findings. Heather is studying pregnancy and birthing within a community in Ghana while Leann is studying from within the teaching hospital. This hospital is supposed to be one of the best in the country but from what she has told me, I pray to do not get sick during my last three months here because it sounds as though the conditions at the hospital will only make me worse. Patients are placed on mats on the floor and are not given even remotely the care they should be given, especially while in labor. I watched Leann break down in tears when she was telling me about the number of babies that have died before being born or just after she has witnessed in the 6 weeks she has been in Ghana. The high infant mortality rate is more often than not due to the negligence of the hospital staff. How terribly sad. And from what Heather tells me, I would prefer to have my child with a midwife in the community because she has witnessed far fewer infant deaths, stillborn births or death of the birthing mother. One rather morbid cultural difference is that in Ghana if a woman dies while giving birth it means she was unfaithful to her husband and God is punishing her. Just before the baby is born, within the village/community, the nurse or midwife asks the woman if she has anything to confess and if she neglects to do so and then dies it is because she did not confess to her adulterous sins. Another thing I find quite disturbing is that women are not allowed to grieve if their first child dies. Because children under the age of 5 die so often here, and in many developing nations, a woman is not allowed to grieve when her first child dies, but once the second or third child passes away then they can mourn. And another thing, when a child is stillborn or dies within the first 8 days of being born, they are not given a funeral but simply placed in a shoebox and are disposed of. Apparently a baby is not a person until they are 8 days old. The things Heather and Leann are learning are both fascinating and horrifying.
To continue: on Friday night the three of us made fufu and chicken stew. Yes it is possible to make fufu without the actual pounding stick, you can buy fufu flour at the store and mix it on the stove. We also used a blender to mix the veggies, how very un-Ghanaian of us. Still, it was a good dinner. That night we met up with other friends and attempted to go out to a bar. Nightlife here is very different than nightlife back home. For one thing bars and clubs do not get remotely crowded or in full swing until after midnight and some people stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning. Not me. By 2 I am tired and it is well past my bed time. Then on Saturday morning I woke up at Heather and Leann’s hotel and we made breakfast! They had found some instant bisquick batter and we made pancakes and eggs. It did not taste exactly like home but it was nice to have something other than oatmeal. I returned to the school on Saturday to see how the chalkboard building process was going. The workers seemed to have gone home early for the day but three more boards were finished. Overall they look good and are now just in need of paint. While I am glad I could help to make the school function better, I was unaware of all the extra costs such as paying the men for the labor. This means I can not continue buying posters for the classrooms and colored chalk because now is the time to really watch my finances. I did good on Sunday however and I was able to have a great day without spending much. Before heading into town and to the swimming pool I made a peanut butter (or rather ground nut butter) and jelly sandwich to save money on lunch. I was at the hotel swimming pool with a few friends from 10 to 2 pm and then I headed to the football (soccer) stadium. I had met a new friend named Tony a week earlier, he is from the UK and is here for the summer working construction for a water treatment company. He is living with another girl from the UK whom I met while at the national park. The two of them are living extremely luxuriously while here in Africa. They have drivers to take them wherever they want to go (and now their new friends, me) and a beautiful 5 bedroom house for the two of them complete with huge kitchen, washing machine and big screen tv WITH cable. We spent Sunday evening watching tv and enjoying a beer and drying off. Earlier while at the game we experienced Ghana’s rainy season like never before. Before the game started the sky was blue and it was quite HOT but by the first ten minutes of the game dark clouds rolled in and I was worried. First off there was NO shelter and all of us has cell phones and cameras. We crammed them all under our one umbrella just before the rain came pouring down in buckets, literally. We were instantly soaked through the bone and I was feeling cold. Everywhere around us people were yelling and having a great time, it was quite the experience. The second half was called off but I was not disappointed one bit. What better place to go than Tony and Alison’s palace of a house? I plan on spending many of my weekends there.
So Monday came and school started. To my surprise, most of the kids had actually showed up. While school is important in Ghana, daily attendance is not. Even though teachers expect attendance to be low I still witnessed many kids being caned because they missed the first week of classes. One thing I have noticed: the child is always to blame. If the parents requested the child stay home or if the family wanted to travel (not that that happens too often) or if the guardians do not have the money for the printing fee, the child gets beaten. How is that in anyway fair?
On Monday I dealt with some issues in building the chalkboards, I did not want the building to interfere with the children’s education and had to tell the workers they must wait until the weekend to continue. It seemed as though the nursery school class was completely out of control so I attempted to get them to quite down by singing songs. We began with “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” but the teacher soon took over and I heard the kids singing songs about Jesus. There were no vocational school girls at school so I headed to Kumasi early to bid farewell to Emily. For those who need clarification as to who she is, Emily is the other American volunteer from my organization. She and I grew close over the phone starting in October and had planned to first go to Kenya together and then decided on Ghana a month later. Due to the late start of our volunteer work, she is only able to be here for 3 months and is returning home this week. I will miss her a lot but hopefully we will see one another soon since we do in fact live in the same country.
Since I got home later than planned on Sunday I had movie night with the kids on Monday night. This time we watched “Save the Last Dance,” a movie about dancing. I guess the older kids had grown tired of Disney movies.
Yesterday (Tuesday) the workers had completely dismissed what I had told them earlier and continued building. After some rather harsh words, they understood and will wait until Saturday. I began with class 4 and we did math, or converting centimeters to meters and millimeters to be exact. I had to correct the teacher a few times so clearly it is difficult to teach the kids but about half of them got their homework correct so they are making progress. It is so hard to teach the kids without text books. If I did not have my own math book when I was in grade school to take home and complete my homework each night, I would have been hopeless. This school needs so many supplies, I hardly know where to begin.
After break I decide to begin working with the vocational school girls. Apparently there are 16 girls enrolled in the class but I have never once seen more then ten girls at a time. Yesterday there were 3. Oh well, I decided those three will benefit from being in school on time. I began my sex ed course with the question “What is sex?” I said there is no right or wrong answer but I wanted them to write down whatever they think of when I say the word sex. One girl, 16, answered “when a man and a women come together, in a bed.” That is on the right track. I then brought up several different ideas that come to me when I think of the word sex. The girls seemed both attentive and interested so I have high hopes for this course. From there I bulleted the main topics I wanted to discuss over the next 5 weeks or so. So far I have menstruation, puberty, sex health such as methods to protect yourself, STD’s and infections, abortion, sexual abuse, rape and finally some nutrition. For homework I told the girls to think of anything else they would like to discuss and to tell their friends to make it to class next week. Clearly I have a lot of research to do. I know what I learned in middle and high school health classes and that was a while ago. While I plan on looking online more this week, if anyone has some keys facts about these topics, please email me. Thank you. Well that’s enough for today. More before I publish this post this weekend.
Thursday May 15, 2008. The school day is over and I am once again rolling my eyes as myself because I must learn to control my impatience. I find myself writing a checklist each day of all the things I want to “fix” at this school but then I get overwhelmed, have no idea where to start begin thinking pessimistically telling myself “well nothing is going to change anyway so why bother?” I know this is a terrible attitude but it is just so heartbreaking to see the lack of necessary materials and resources needed to accurately teach these children. After grading the math homework of class 4 yesterday I wrote down the names of the 4 children that got the lowest scoring grades then today I took those 4 children out of class and began from square one. How can these kids do long division is they can not subtract? The four kids, Paul Owasu, Kwame Agyr, Bonsu Opoku and Elizabeth needed to break down the problems step by step to understand that you can not subtract 5 from 2 and therefore you must borrow from the number to the left. This concept is quite difficult for them and even though I find myself easily frustrated I remember that I too had serious difficulty learning math. I however had access to tutors, math books, chairs and desks meant for a child my age (not desks meant for kindergartners), and people who actually KNEW how to go slow and teach me. After 45 minutes 3 of the 4 were able to answer problems on their own but Elizabeth was having major trouble. I dismissed the other 3 and I worked for another half hour with her. This time I had her begin with a simple addition problem. After a while of making her understand the difference between addition and subtraction we began the long process of her adding simple number such as 9 and 3. Starting from 9 and adding three on her hands also proved to be quite difficult for her. I took out a plastic bag with many bottle caps (something Catherine had put together and left for me before returning to England) and used them as props to add and subtract. I decided for next week I will buy a bunch of hard candy and use it for props, perhaps that will help. After lunch I did a lesson about colors for KG 1. Overall they did very well and knew just about all of their colors. I think I need to give myself balance between the older classes and the younger classes. Tomorrow I plan on teaching a lesson on prepositions to class 4, we’ll see how that goes, and continue math with Elizabeth and a few others who need extra help. Then this weekend I am going to look into the price for blackboard paint and attempt to paint the boards myself to avoid more labor costs. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Just another quick thing before posting this. It is now Saturday and I have yet to buy more paint. It turns out that the men building the boards did not estimate correctly because there are several bags of concrete leftover. They are not finished with all of the chalkboards but they defiantly do not need 12 bags to do so. Therefore I am waiting to buy paint until I see if I can return the leftover concrete. Yesterday was nice and somewhat relaxing. We were due for a rainstorm since it had not rained since Tuesday. The storm prevented me from getting into town to use the internet and check on paint prices but I was able to almost finish my tenth book, A Thousand Splendid Suns. If any of you have not yet read both this book and The Kite Runner: Get On It! They are absolutely incredible and terribly sad. I now have just two books left for my next three months so that could be a problem. In addition to reading all night I put to use the multiplication flash cards mom sent to me in Ghana at the request of the kids. No where else will kids be asking to “learn” on a Friday night. This gives me great pleasure and helps me realize the impact I am having since I feel utterly useless while in school. More on that later though. Ok well I am off to meet the Canadian girls and my new friends from the UK. We are going to make dinner in their fancy kitchen and watch movies. Have a great weekend.
-Erin
and last but not least...I have some photos up online. I am only up to my weekend at Cape Coast over Easter and I am not near done yet) but check these out in the mean time: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26395483@N06/?saved=1
just plug in the above website and start from the beginning!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment