A Day In The Life II

The alarm on my phone, that ingratiating chatter of MIDI chimes and artificial percussion, chastises me at 5:30 am. I roll over, confused and annoyed, and promptly hit “snooze.” Three minutes later, I again hear the infernal racket in my ear. Again, I hit “snooze.” This happens maybe one more time, until I realize that I really do have to get up and get ready for school. I stand up, bleary-eyed, straining to see in the pre-dawn darkness, and grab the implements of hygiene—toothbrush, soap and bucket for bathing, deodorant—and walk outside to the little bathhouse, greeting my host-mother and sister along the way, who have already been awake for half-an-hour sweeping, preparing food, or washing clothes. After I have cleaned up and gotten dressed, I grab my books and materials for school and head down to the chief’s house (“Nana’s house”), where the Bridge Year crew eats all of its meals, for breakfast. By this time, it is around 6:30; the sun has risen, and as I walk over the hard, rocky ground, I pass houses made of mud brick or cement, with thatched or aluminum roofs. Trees scattered throughout the village will provide wonderful shade once the sun gets hotter later on in the day.

Upon reaching Nana’s house, I greet Nana, Serwaa, Clara, Ama, and anyone else who is rummaging about. Usually, Nick has not yet risen, but perhaps Aria is getting ready for school, and Kathleen may be helping Clara make breakfast. I set the table, put the water on the electric kettle for tea or instant coffee, make sure I have everything I need for the day. After eating my breakfast of browned porridge, sugar bread, and fried egg, I take a bike and head off to school. Unfortunately, the ride to school is almost entirely uphill. Huffing and puffing and sweating, I stop at the little village before Senchi to say to hi to some of the people doing chores or lounging on benches outside their houses. Then I reluctantly push my overheated body up the last hill to Senchi and finally to the JHS building, where I stop, throw down my bag, and begin to fan myself with any loose paper or book I can find. I am usually one of the first teachers to arrive, so I observe the students as they clean the compound and chat casually with them.

“Okyere Darko,” I call to one of the students in form one. “Did you do your science homework last night?” “Yes, sir,” he replies respectfully. “Was it hard?” I ask. “No, sir.”

At 8:00, after assembly, the kids go into class. I don’t teach until 12:25, so I sit down to prepare the next day’s lesson. Once I finish that, I open the book I am currently reading, The Brothers Karamasov, and immerse myself in it. This is difficult, though, because almost as soon as I start, I am interrupted by the arrival of the Pre-Voc teacher. She very recently had a baby, who she is carrying on her back, and the presence of this beautiful child causes a stir amongst the teachers in the teacher workroom.

“Akwasiii,” a teacher drawls to the baby, carrying him over to me, “come and greet your father.” Turning to me, she jokes, “Kwame, this is your son; he likes oburoni’s very much.” I laugh and carry on reading, giving some mild, evasive response. When the students have break, I go into the form one class to talk to the kids. I am wearing a button down shirt with the very top button undone. Seeing this, one boy points to my small bit of exposed chest.

“Sir, how can I get some of this?” he asks, referring to my chest hair. “It is so beautiful.” All I can do is laugh in reply and tell him, “It will come.” He must be only 12 or 13.

I teach during one of the last periods of the day, so when I have finished, there are only a few minutes left before closing. At 2:00, the bell is rung for closing assembly, and the kids come together to say a closing prayer and hear announcements from the teachers or headmaster. The students are at last dismissed, and, collecting my things to leave, I say goodbye to the teachers. Hopping on my bike, I see a boy who also stays in Oguaa walking home. I ride up next to him and tell him to sit on the rear rack of the bike. He gladly accepts this ride in the searing Sub-Saharan sun, and we head home. The ride back, which is mostly downhill, is much easier and faster. I hardly have to work going down the hills, and the apparent wind cools me off nicely. I let the boy off near his house and walk the bike past the communal well, where many people fetching water greet me, saying “Akwaaba,” or “welcome.” I am indeed glad for the shade of the trees, but I am still sweating miserably by the time I reach Nana’s house. Clara has started preparing the food for us; while I am no expert on Ghanaian cooking, I can still help out by cutting tomatoes or onions, grinding pepper, boiling yam, or just…setting the table. Once everyone gets back from school, we sit down to eat and discuss our days. Often the conversations are similar, but there are still many new thoughts, observations, and funny/upsetting/interesting experiences to share.

Once we finish eating, it’s time to do some clean-up. A couple of us will wash dishes, someone will sweep up, and another will ensure that the food is stored properly. After all this is finished, it is usually around 4:30. I have many options as to what I can do at this point. Sometimes I go for a run, sometimes I read, sometimes I mark assignments. I may go home to relax for a while, and my host sister Ama is always there. I f she isn’t doing chores, she is studying Maths or Scince or English—she is in form one—so I may help her out with that. When evening comes, I return to Nana’s for the last time of the day to eat a light meal, maybe left-overs with some fruit. After that I say goodnight to everyone and head home. I brush my teeth, floss—you know, the usual—and set my obnoxious alarm for 5:30. I finally sink down on my foam mattress, cursing the heat and soaking the mattress in sweat. At last, I drift off to sleep, enjoying a sleep of Mefloquine-induced dreams that is only disturbed by roosters crowing, my alarm, and the inevitable sounds of a newly-dawning day.

Teaching at Senchi DA JHS

Having passed the halfway mark of our village stay without blogging in any real depth, I feel somewhat guilty about my silence. There are many topics I could (and probably should) write about, and hitherto I have treated none of them. Fortunately, our seemingly omniscient, lovely, and ever-helpful caretaker Clara is in possession of a laptop, which I can use to write blog entries in advance so that I can copy and paste them immediately when I reach an internet cafe. This means that today I will be posting several entries, and hopefully it means that I can maintain this blog with more care in the future. Now, it seems sensible to start with a description of my work here, my thoughts and feelings about it, its challenges and triumphs. Welcome to Senchi DA JHS.

As I have already written, although all of us Bridge Year Students stay in the same village, we teach at different village schools, and I am privileged enough to teach in Senchi, a village about 25 minutes’ walk from Oguaa, at the District Assembly Junior High School. JHS consists of three “forms,” or grades, with English, Twi, Maths, and Science taught as the core subjects along with French, Religious and Moral Education, Information Computer Technology, and Pre-Vocational Skills, among others. I currently teach science at the form one and form two levels, and so I teach a total of six one-hour classes each week. The rest of my time at school is spent preparing lessons, correcting assignments or tests, talking with students or teachers, helping with PE, or just reading a bit. Officially, the enrollment of the school is 118 pupils, which means that, depending on the day and the form I am teaching, there are between 35 and 45 kids in class. They can get rowdy and difficult to calm down at times, but I usually acquire the assistance of the science teachers—the ones actually hired to do the job—to help me out in class, not only in calming down the students, but in helping to explain concepts as well.

The whole of the JHS is a rectangular, five room building: three equal classrooms for each of the forms, as well as another room of equal size serving as the teacher workroom, and a smaller room used as the headmaster’s office that has storage space. Although the town of Senchi has power lines, the school is not connected to electricity.

Now that I’ve given a general description of the school, I can move on to my perceptions of my work. As I have said, I teach six lessons a week; one each on Monday and Tuesday, two on Wednesday and Thursday, and none on Friday, although we have PE on Fridays. I’m not sure if this seems like a lot of teaching, but…it’s really not. Except for Wednesdays and Thursdays, I feel like I have a lot of downtime, during which I feel very unproductive. It is true that I occupy that time with the things I have already mentioned, but I certainly feel at times that it isn’t very useful and that I should be doing something better with my time. That said, it would certainly be possible for me to take on another class, help another teacher with his or her classes, or otherwise take the initiative, and really, I should do that. It is a trumpet screaming at me, “Carpe diem! Take every opportunity! Give your fullest!” etc., and yet I can make myself deaf to the clarion call. “You still have time,” I tell myself, “You owe it to yourself to not rush into this, to take time and get comfortable. Besides, life can be a challenge for you here; no one will blame you for not doing more, you’re already doing a lot.” And yes,  there is some truth in all these justifications; but isn’t that always the struggle? There is always something more I can be doing, always someone else I should be helping, and yet this desire conflicts with my own desire for comfort, my own needs and wants, which, albeit selfish, make a compelling argument. I have been contemplating this especially over the past few weeks; that is, I have been thinking about what it means to serve, what it means to give of oneself, and what constitutes my share of giving: am I required to sacrifice myself entirely, to please all others before myself? or is there a balance between what I give and what I can retain for myself? And, if so, where is that balance? There are lots of ideas, lots of ideas floating around, in and out of my head and heart, and it’s hard to make sense of them. But the fact remains that I am here now, and I am living and teaching and thinking now, and sometimes it is very necessary to forget all these lofty thoughts and just live. So, while I haven’t resolved these questions in my mind, I suppose I feel that I don’t have to quite yet.

Up to now, I haven’t talked about what it is actually like to teach in a Ghanaian village school. Well, to begin with, it is wrought with challenges, more so because I am a foreigner, but even for the Ghanaians working here. The school day starts officially at 7:45 with the morning assembly, when students gather in the rear of the school to say an opening prayer, the national anthem, and to hear any announcements for the day. The day really begins earlier for the students, though, who are expected—machetes and brooms in hand—to arrive early and clean the school compound. At 8:00, classes begin. Now, the policy of The Ghana Education Service (GES) is that classes be taught in a mix of the local language of the region (Asante Twi in the Asante Region) and English, the official language of Ghana. As students get older, there should be more English used, until by form three of JHS, classes should be taught entirely in English. In form one, for example, teachers are supposed to use about 70% English and 30% Twi. The main problem with this, however, is that the students’ English is simply not advanced enough to understand a class that is taught mostly in English. Their textbooks are entirely in English, but only a select few students can comprehend what they are reading in such books. The reasons for this difficulty are complex; teachers themselves, while having good English, do not really use it with the students outside of class, and, because the students struggle to understand English in class, teachers end up using Twi to help them grasp concepts. This is a problem because these students don’t have much opportunity to practice and learn English outside of school. At home, most of their parents can’t or don’t speak English, and everyone is speaking Twi all the time. As a result, English proficiency is extremely difficult to acquire, which is why I admire the students who do speak English well all the more.

My Twi is not spectacular; I can’t get by around town, buying things and making small talk, but there is no way I could teach exclusively in Twi, especially in a subject like science. In addition, I am not supposed to be doing that: all the teachers are supposed to be using English anyway! I have certainly seen that when the kids are taught things in Twi, they understand them. They are not at all incapable; they are smart, eager kids who have a million factors hindering their education and only a handful helping it. Despite this, even if they learn and understand something in Twi, they cannot translate it into English—they can’t express themselves in the language of the colonizers. If asked a question in English, they may be able to answer in Twi, but often they can’t understand written directions or questions. This is a huge problem because all of their examinations are in English, including the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE), taken at the end of Form three, which essentially decide whether or not these kids can continue their educations. Further, we are in a rural area of Ghana. It is not so impoverished as you may think; nevertheless, it is not a wealthy area, and so many resources are lacking. As I have mentioned, there is no electricity in the school, which of course means no computers or electronic lab equipment or teaching equipment; there is no library like I had at Branford High School; no guidance counselors, no student internship offices, no auditorium, no music room, no art wing. I can’t say that any of this was unexpected, but it does demonstrate the massive disparity between the education these kids are receiving and the one I received or that residents of more affluent sections of Ghana have access to. Hmm, differences…I suppose that’s why I came to Ghana.

The portrait I have painted here may be somewhat bleak; while it is often upsetting and difficult to see this injustice, the system is certainly not without its merits, and there are many dedicated to trying to improve it. Many teachers and headmasters are dedicated to their schools, and the GES has a lot of policies in place designed to ensure that teachers and schools are doing their jobs appropriately. I think those policies are helping. Also, there are many success stories that boost my morale and confidence. Despite the difficulties, many students perform very well on the BECE and get into good high schools and, later on, good universities in Ghana. Just the other day, walking home from Senchi, I bumped into a boy in Senior High School (the level after JHS) who was on vacation and back home in Oguaa to help out with his father’s farm. Talking with him, I learned that he had gone through the Oguaa school system, scored a seven on his BECE—the top score is a six, the lowest a 45—and is now going to a perfectly decent Senior High School. He told me that he wants to study government at the University of Ghana at Legon in Accra so that he can become a lawyer. And he can do that, I know he can, provided that he works hard enough. It’s stories like this and the knowledge that students can succeed that gives me hope.

I am not sure where my place is in all of this. I don’t know where can best apply my talents, knowledge, and observations. I doubt that it is in the actual teaching of these students because, while I am not incompetent or detrimental to their education, I am certainly not improving it by leaps and bounds. This experience has allowed me, however, to witness the system, see its strengths and its flaws, its successes and failures. It will take a lot more time, dedication, and reflection to best apply myself. Although I am not sure what I will do, again, I think it is not yet the time to figure all that out. I have to continue to observe, continue to live my life here, continue to strive to understand. That’s why I’m here; I think that’s why a lot of us are here. At any rate, I have to go prepare a lesson for school tomorrow; I’ll be teaching diffusion and osmosis to the form two’s. Until next time, my friends.

Long Silence

Dear friends and family,

I must apologize for my long silence. I can use the excuse that we were in a remote area with limited internet access–which is true–but it doesn’t really matter now. After a heartbreaking departure from Oguaa, we have arrived in Kumase and hit the ground running. I live right by a cafe now, so I hope to blog about my time here soon. For now, though, I will post two blogs that I wrote while in Oguaa. I hope that suffices for now.

Love,

Cole

The Start of Something New

It has been a while since my last blog entry, but that is not due to the fact that I am less eager to share my experience or am at a loss for things to write about. On the contrary, I have more and more observations, discussions, and thoughts every day, and all I want to do is share them. However, it has become apparent upon our move to “the village” that internet access will be very intermittent. Further, when I do have an opportunity to use the internet, I have so many small things to check and emails to respond to that blogging is somewhat relegated. Despite this, I will try my best to keep this account of my thoughts and activities somewhat up to date–I think it will at least be personally fulfilling, even if it is not a life or death issue for all of you reading.

Currently, I am sitting in an internet cafe in Kumase, a city about 250 kilometers away from my former home of Accra. Kumase is not, though, our current home. Rather, we are staying in Ogua, a small village that is about 90 minutes away by public transportation. It is shocking to realize that on Monday, we will have lived in Ogua for three weeks and will have been teaching for just as long–it seems like only a few days have past and that we are still very new in this environment. In this post, it would be impossible for me to go into all the challenges I have already faced both with village life and with teaching, but they will certainly be the topics of several others.

After leaving Accra on January 6, we arrived in Kumase for a brief orientation. Leaving Accra was at once easy and difficult: easy because the anticipation of a new experience which I had been eagerly awaiting spurred me on, but difficult because I had come to thoroughly enjoy life with my host family. The source of this enjoyment, in retrospect, was a hard-earned feeling of comfort. I had learned how to get around relatively flawlessly, I had grown accustomed to the food, the dust, the heat, and I had made solid friends with members of my host family and those I worked with. Especially now, again confronted with the need to adapt and be hyper-observant all the time, I miss old red-dust Adenta and the Amponsah family. When I think about the significance of this, I am pleased with my performance. I think I have done very well to become semi-comfortable and happy; and, at the same time, I see the necessity of changing our circumstances again. This is only nine months of my life, and I didn’t come here to seek comfort. I came to be challenged, to question and be questioned, to learn and to serve. I came to see if I could become comfortable: now I have seen I have, and it is time now to do it all again. Reflecting on all I have learned and done in the first half of the program, I am incredibly excited for the incredible journey that will be this second half.

After four nights in Kumase, we headed off to Ogua, and the following day we began teaching. We all gather three times a day at the chief’s house, which serves as a central location for eating meals, discussing everything, tutoring village children, and as the location where both Aria and Nick sleep. I sleep in a house a mere two minutes’ walk away, and Kathleen and Jessica stay in houses that are closer still. After breakfast each morning, we head off to our separate schools for our teaching assignments. Aria teachers in Ogua, the same village that we stay in, but the rest of us teach in villages less than a half hour walk away. I myself ride my bike each morning to teach at the Senchi District Assembly Junior High School. JHS in Ghana consists of three forms (or grades) that are equivalent to sixth, seventh, and eighth grades in the U.S. The ages of the students probably falls between 11 and 16, and I have been charged with the task of teaching science to forms one and two. Again, I will blog in more detail about all of this later; for now, I would just like to give a brief account of what we have been up to.

That is the general gist of our lives right now and for the next two-and-a-half months. This school term ends on April 15, at which point we will probably spend some time in Kumase and then in Tamale in the north of Ghana. That time, while not physically far off, is still very distant for me mentally; I have to focus as much as possible on my work and life in Ogua while I have the chance. In brief, we are happy, healthy, and awed by almost everything we see: and that’s the way it should be.