ANYWAY. I'll begin this (which is bound to be ridiculously long) post.
So Monday June 13th was the first day of my placement at Grace and Mercy School. Luckily for me I am one of two people at my house that doesn't have to take a tro (bus) to placement everyday so I didn't have to get up to start getting ready until around 6:30! YAY SLEEP IN (hahah yeah right). Anyway, I arrived at Grace and Mercy at the bright and early time of 7:30 am(apparently I could make 8:30 classes if I wanted to). From the moment I surrounded the school grounds I was surrounded by a bunch of children jumping up and down screaming "OBRUNI OBRUNI OBRUNI" at the top of their lungs, I must say, I felt pretty important! After meeting the Headmaster and Headmistress I was taken around to all of the classrooms to meet the students. Grace and Mercy has children from the age of around one and a half to twelve or thirteen years of age. The classes range from a type of nursery school/daycare class to class five (grade five). In Ghana it is expected (and possibly mandatory, but don't quote me on that) for children to attend school up until class six (grade six), anything above that is for the people who can afford to go. Due to a lack of funding Grace and Mercy does not have a class six so students who reach that level have to go to school somewhere else. Anyway, enough of that. After meeting all of the students and teachers I met once again with the Headmasters and we began chatting about where I should be placed.
After much discussion it was decided that I would be placed in the kindergarten class to assist the current teacher. I won't lie, I was a little disappointed to hear that I wasn't going to have my own class, after all I did come here to help and to try and make a difference and I was hoping to be sent to a class that didn't have a teacher but what I didn't know is that you'd be hard pressed to find such a case in Accra, I guess that's a good thing. But now I know if I ever come back again I will definitely go to a more rural area that is severely lacking teachers, funding and resources.
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| Some kids from Grace and Mercy |
After much discussion it was decided that I would be placed in the kindergarten class to assist the current teacher. I won't lie, I was a little disappointed to hear that I wasn't going to have my own class, after all I did come here to help and to try and make a difference and I was hoping to be sent to a class that didn't have a teacher but what I didn't know is that you'd be hard pressed to find such a case in Accra, I guess that's a good thing. But now I know if I ever come back again I will definitely go to a more rural area that is severely lacking teachers, funding and resources.
Sine it took me so long to actually write this blog I can't completely remember what I did the next few days so I will sum it up. One morning, instead of helping the kindergarten class I got to help with the nursery school class.... AMAZING. There are about 20-30 kids that come and go depending on the time of day and the exercise (the three younger level classes sometimes join together) and I just got to play with them, sing and dance with them and to help feed them their snacks and lunches - so much fun! They are the happiest little children I have ever seen. Unfortunately there is a language barrier, most of the children at this age can only say "How are you?" and "I'm fine, thank you." so I don't know any of their names, ages or anything else about them. There are also the few adorable children who are completely terrified of white people and cry every single time they see me... I feel so mean every time that happens! I've actually been pretty surprised by how often I've been the first white person a lot of children have seen, I guess living in a country like Canada where we have so many people from so many different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds I completely forgot that there were people out there that don't have that sort of exposure (silly me).
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| Some more kids in my classroom |
So other than meeting the 11 students in my class (Osei, Zebelon, Farida, Miriam, Sandra, Nathaniel, Jesse, Ester, Ishmeal, Kingsley and Anita) the only other point of interest that I can think of telling you about is a negative one, but it is a huge part of my experience here so I guess I need to tell you guys about it. In the school system here the discipline they choose to use on the children is of the physical sort, smacking, punching (lightly - most of the time) in the back of the head, and worst of all - canning. The cane is a wooden stick about a centimetre in diameter that they use to smack the children on the palm of the hand, back of the thighs or back of they neck when they are misbehaving or when they answer questions wrong. I had been forewarned by some of the other volunteers I am living with about the cane so I was sure to have a conversation with my teacher about it. I let him know that I was completely against it but didn't want to be culturally ignorant so I told him if he felt he need ed to use the cane he needed to let me know so I could leave (I told him I'd have to leave or else I'd beat him with it. Dead serious). Unfortunately, right after I had that conversation with him I went outside to join the students for lunch and I walked in on a teacher canning 12 kids in a row on the back of their neck for something as simple as not sitting up straight while eating. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to see. I immediately left the school and went home. As horrible as I think canning is I have tried very hard to not be too judgemental, I mean, 40 years ago Canada was doing the exact same thing, but it is definitely something I will not get used to seeing and it still breaks my heart every time I hear that a kid at the school has been canned. All of the teachers now know how against canning I am (if they didn't they'd be the least observant people in the world) and there has only been one time since then that I've had to witness that (more to come on that later).
That weekend (June 17-19) all of us (us being the 7 other volunteers) went to a small town called Nsuta (near Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana) to meet up with a friend of the other volunteers named Poppo! Poppo was works for Volunteer Abroad when he is not in school - he worked here when Anne came here 2 years ago... he remember she so we talked about her (mean things only Anne, I promise). The plan for this weekend was to live like a local and Nsuta was a great place to do that and other than the hotel we stayed, I'd say we did a pretty good job. We started out the weekend by taking a 6 hour air conditioned bus to Kumasi, once we got to the city we were greeted by Poppo and we were off to find a tro to Nsuta. After a 2 hour tro ride we had finally arrived! We arrived fairly late, around 8 o'clock and headed straight over to Poppo's house to have dinner with his family. His mother was nice enough to cook us a delicious dinner AND do all of the dishes. What a wonderful lady. We stayed around and chatted with his mother, father sister and younger brother for about half an hour and then turned in for the night - we still had a long weekend ahead of us! Saturday morning we slept in a little bit (aka didn't have to get up until around 7:30) and were on our way for a great adventure. After an interesting cab ride trough muddy, rocky and barely there roads we finally arrived in a small town and at Prayer Mountain. Prayer Mountain was about an hour hike straight up (so many stairs) and was definitely not the easiest thing I have done which I was here but it was so rewarding. Close to the top there was a little bit of a clearing area that was covered by a rock over hang (sorry, I am horrible at describing things) but it was the perfect place for a break! So we sat down, chilled for a little bit and had the snack that Poppo brought along called "try and see"... he was being stubborn and refused to tell us what it was even after we tried it. Anyway, the break spot was perfect, it was a scorching hot day and there was the perfect amount of water trickling down from the overhang to cool us all down. After we finished our break we were back on our way to finish the climb. At the top we saw what the mountain was all about. Like I said before it is called Prayer Mountain and it is considered to be a very holy place by the people that live and visit there - we were very lucky to have the opportunity to climb it! Throughout the climb we passed groups of people praying (normally in tongue) and some camps where people live/come to worship. The view from the top was amazing and I can really see why people would have such strong ties to the place. After we rested at the top for a bit we began our descent so we could head back to Nsuta and do more local things. We rested for a bit at the hotel, climbing in the heat really takes it out of you, but were quickly on our feet again to.... FETCH WATER! I don't think I have said this in a previous blog but everybody here carries everything on their heads, and I mean everything. Even if a person just has a small bag or purse, still, it goes on the head. And of course, water falls into that category. Nsuta is one of the many villages in Ghana that has no running water within the village so when the villagers want water they have to walk down to the stream just outside the village and collect their water in buckets. So since we were living like locals we, of course, were going to try our hands at collecting some water. Let's just say it was interesting... as soon as we got the buckets full of water on our heads we remembered that we had to walk up a steep muddy hill... and you all know how bad my balance is on flat ground. I ended up spilling about half of my bucket of water all over myself during the journey but it was definitely entertaining - and hard work. It didn't actually hurt my neck but my shoulders were killing me by the end of it (I was holding onto the bucket because, let's be seriously, there's no way I could have done it without my hands). After fetching water, or maybe before, it has been three weeks so I can't quite remember, we went out for lunch and I had goat - delicious. I just felt like that was one of the weird foods I need to tell you guys about haha. Anyway, back to the interesting stuff. We made our way back to Poppo's place and made ground nut cake with his family and the local kids that found out there were a bunch of white people around (about 30 kids). Ground nut cake is essentially peanut brittle but so much better. We started by shelling roasted ground nuts (very very similar to peanuts) and then they were placed into a large mortar and pestle similar to the one that is used to pound Fou Fou. After that we began to melt sugar on an open fire until it was melted, then the crushed ground nuts were added, stirred in and then the mixture was poured out onto a wooden stump and cut into bite size pieces before it cooled. I still have my share left (and I'm told it will be good for several months) so I'll bring it home and share it with all of you guys when I get home! After the ground nut cake we went out to celebrate Poppo's brother's birthday. I introduced a couple Ghanaians and the rest of the volunteers to red or black/umbrella, it was a hit! I'd tell you more about the evening but after a couple giant stars things got a little fuzzy. The next morning we slept in a little bit and were then on our way back to Accra. But first we made a stop in a small town that had a place with traditional looms where they did traditional weaving and stamping. We learned about the process of taking bark from certain trees and making it into usable and permanent ink for printing on fabrics. After that we picked out our fabrics and Africa symbols that we either liked the look of, or meaning or, and stamped them onto our fabrics. I chose symbols that meant adaptability, the importance of democracy and unity, the importance of wisdom and learning or the wisdom knot and the spirit of mother earth. While we were waiting for our fabrics to dry some of the workers dressed us up in clothing they made and we became African princesses! Finally when our fabrics were dry we got back on the tro and then back on the big air conditioned bus and headed back to Accra for the upcoming week.
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| My new friend Sarah |
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| Me on top of Prayer Mountain |
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| Cassandra, Jaclyn, Michelle, Me, Nici and Ani as African Princesses |
The following week 27-1 was pretty much the same as the previous one except that I was sick on Wednesday night. We all know that when I get sick I get brutal coughs... turns out it is amplified about 1000000 times by the pollution in Accra and I was so sick that I had to go to the clinic/hospital. I ended up getting tested for malaria as soon as they heard I had been throwing up... they took my blood from my hand and were ridiculously impressed by how see-through my skin was. DAMN GINGERVITAS. I had a HUGE bruise on my hand because my lab dude was not the gentlest person I've met, BUT the good news is I don't have malaria... which I knew. Anyway, after some convincing I finally got them to give me the proper drugs and I've been so much better ever since! So worry not.
Thursday June 30th we ended up going to the Canadian embassy for Canada Day... it was so much fun, and, they had POUTINE! Oh hey Ellen :) I ran into 3 people from Acadia who are also in Ghana for the summer, that was pretty crazy and I also met a girl from Goderich, also crazy!
So Friday, actual Canada Day, brought the arrival of three new volunteers, French Canadians... SO EXCITED :) haha I love French Canadians. But the same day also saw the departure of three of the old volunteers Ani, Jon and Michelle - sad day. And another volunteer, Alex, left on Monday. It just hasn't been the same without them, you get used to a place with certain people and the whole vibe changes when they leave. COME BACK DAMN IT. haha ok. As you guys can probably tell I am starting to go a little crazy. I wrote the above in just over an hour and I think my brain is finally shot. I will give you a better sum up of this past weekend during my next blog, which I promise will not be three weeks away, I can't do that to myself again.
I hope all is well at home for everybody, miss you and love you all!!
<3
