Thanksgiving, 2012

Main Street, Sanfo.  on my way to Atta's house for a Saturday night
movie.

I have been in Ghana nearly six months.  I have taught for nearly three.  At this point the Peace Corps “invited” (aka “ordered”) all first term education volunteers to attend a week of in-service training. All have arrived and last night it was fun to actually spend time with the other teachers and hear their stories.  All in all it was encouraging if only because I could see that I was not the only one who struggled with classroom management and seeing children master the objectives provide so idealistically by Ghana Education Services.

Last Tuesday I gave my students a big test in fractions.  Actually I didn’t think it was a very hard test, but when I got the results I nearly cried.  In the class exercises they did quite well, but in the test they made every mistake possible. (i.e., adding denominators, comparing them raw.) Their errors were so correlated. It was obvious that most of them cheated (usually from the wrong person). And I left for Thanksgiving in Accra so I had no opportunity to challenge them or make them account for their performance.  In Accra I was able to print the test.  Normally all work is copied onto the chalkboard and they copy it into their workbooks.  We don’t even have clean paper that I can give them to do a test on.  At the Peace Corps office, I printed three section tests so that I can help them prepare for district end-of-term exams when I get back on Monday.

Anyway commiserating with Lou Triacci, the only guy in our education group who is older than me, he suggested that part of their problem is self-confidence.  Even when they know something, if they happen to see someone out of the corner of their eye with a different answer than theirs they assume their answer was wrong.  Lou taught in New York for many years and he says that he gives his pupils some feel-good exercises in addition to fractions and word problems.  I need to think of something that will give them confidence in their thinking as well as their feelings. Overall my kids are bright and working with them is a lot of fun. I only have 35 in my math class; Lou has 60. They work hard for their families to cook, wash clothes and farm.  They greet me with an enthusiastic “Mr. Jim” whenever I come near their compounds. We have a long way to go but the material is there.

This month was Thanksgiving. In that spirit, I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn to teach here, my good neighbors prepare delicious fufu, red-red and other Ghanaian dishes for me, my room is comfortable,  my family in America support and sustain me,  and my Peace Corps colleagues are amazing.

Three slices of pie on this plate, Apple,
Pumpkin & Pecan.

On Thanksgiving Day we had a full scale Thanksgiving Dinner at the home of US Ambassador Gene A. Cretz and his wife Annette.  All Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana were invited. Cretz is from Albany, New York and I got the opportunity to introduce him to a couple of our volunteers from his region.  We all enjoyed the time. I spent through Friday night in the PC Hq in Accra.  There are three rooms with bunks where we can hang out if we make a reservation or have an official reason to be there (i.e., medical checkup).  The air conditioner leaked onto the floor of my room so i spent an hour or more mopping the floor while the other residents were out for the evening.  The next day i met with the doctor who gave me three shots and weighed me.  160 lbs!  That's what i weighed when we first moved to Washington State in '75. I'm not sure I'm thrilled about that, because a lot of it was muscle.  I'm still soft in places. In the afternoon, I was reading in the PC library and Raven, a Utah PCV who dressed up as Tin-Tin for our Halloween party in Kumasi, asked if i wanted to see a movie.  Sure!  About 6 of us took 2 drop cabs to an American style shopping mall out past the airport.  We saw the latest Bond 007.  I don't want to spoil it, but i think the villain was the best (i.e., worst) I've seen. Fun stuff

Accra, Ghana Temple

Finally while in Accra I was able to attend the Mormon Temple there. It is an island of peace, solace and service, welcome to me in a time of personal stress.  It is also close to the Peace Corps office in Accra; I hope to find many occasions to attend during my teaching tenure here.

Wade in the Water

It has been while since I’ve updated my blog and a lot has happened.  First today I am at the Peace Corps Sub Office in Kumasi (KSO) because the septic system has been overflowing into the yard creating an awful smell and making the toilets in our compound unusable.  We have had heavy rains almost every night for a week and the place is designed so that each time it rains the runoff leaks into the septic access ports and when the whole system is full it all leaks into the yard. Not only that i am having a stomach problem so a long hike to a public toilet could be disastrous. So the Peace Corps director for education volunteer directed me to go to the KSO while they try to fix the place.

I am disappointed to leave site at this time because we are making good progress in both science and math classes, while the children will do fine in my absence I will miss out on the action.  Three weeks ago the district sent us 6 student teachers who will be with us all year.  There are only 8 regular teachers at my school anyway so that means that we all have student teachers to “supervise”.  One has taken my science class.  I’m still responsible. But he is an incredibly flexible and creative teacher and I have learned from him already.  When he found out I had to leave he quickly volunteered to take my math classes as well.  So I don’t feel like I have abandoned the educational enterprise, but I do feel like I have abandoned my kids and hope to get back to them real soon.

Our regular classes are 70 minutes long and sometimes I give them a short song or game to break up the time.  I even taught my Form 1 Class an old spiritual that I personally love.  It’s called “Wade in de Water”

Wade in de water,

Wade in de water, children,

Wade in de water,

God is gonna trouble de water.

Who’s those children dressed in red?

God is gonna trouble de water.

Mus’ be the children that Moses led,

God is gonna trouble de water.

Sanfo-Aduam JHS Form 1 (7th Grade) Jubilee Singers debut on
October 19, 2012

They really like the song and I tell them slaves, for whom Moses was a symbol of their hope for freedom, sang it to a tune they probably brought with them from Africa.  The Fisk University Jubilee Singers first published it in 1901. But my kids sang it for the school morning assembly last Friday.  They sang very well, especially if you equate loud with well. I am very proud of them. 

To me it is a symbol of stepping out on any enterprise with uncertainty–like joining Peace Corps or starting Junior High School.  Speaking of that, I think some of them progressing on the “boring basics” like multiplication tables, 3 digit multiplication and l o n g division. I think I have a scheme to recognize those who take the trouble to master these skills; I hope I can get back and see if it will work.  I was told I might even be able to return today, so I packed for the possibility, but Mary APCD for Education called later and said the place was not ready so I should stay put for another day or two.

Star Gazing in Africa

The rooster crows even if the power is out
usually at 3:30 am.  People don't eat
their chickens, it seems.  I wish they
would make an exception for this one.

September’s full moon was very early in the month so I expect there to be another one before the end of the month. They call that a blue moon, I think. A few days ago the moon was a slim slit in the early evening sky like a Cheshire cat with it’s head tilted slightly to the south. Now the crescent is filling up with moon like a large cup in the sky; in a week or so it will be full again. Electrical power fails almost every night for a couple hours. Two days ago a thunderstorm took it out until sometime after school started the next day.  We have power in the school but we don’t usually use it so it doesn’t affect us much if it goes out. 

I love it when power fails on a clear moonless night. The stars are phenomenal.  The milky way is clear and I think I could see Gemini, Taurus and Draco all lined up.  I wish I had the star mapper that I used to have on my old laptop so I could be sure.  The African sky is amazing, but it's been 50 years since i took the class.  Of cou cannot see the north star.  If it’s not under the horizon, the light from Bekwai obscures the north.

Bicycles

It works fine now.

Last week I bought a bicycle.  One of the teachers took me to Kumasi this morning (Saturday) and we picked out a nice looking used trail bike.  I bought it without riding it.  I would never have done that at home.  But it looked solid.  When I got it home I rode and the shifters didn’t seem to work. I should have stopped and checked them, but I didn’t need to shift so I rode along.  It felt so good to be riding again.  We’ll I didn’t go far and the pedal slipped like it wasn’t connected.  So I stopped and found that one of the idler wheels in the rear shifter had fallen out and though I could find the axle bolt, I could not find the wheel. So I walked it home, the proud owner of a disabled used bicycle. That very nigh, I had not quite finished this writing about this to a friend and my neighbor, James came to my door with a man who fixes bicycles!  He looked at it and said he would come by in the morning and fix it.  Being an Adventist he prefers to work on Sunday. When I got back from church my bike was together, working and oiled.  I rode it every day except  one rainy morning and it feels great! Today i even rode to Bekwai, 5km and 3 hills away.

Teaching and Learning

I taught Beatrice, my neighbor's sister,
to ride. The first time, she stayed up with
almost no help.

I had and interesting science class last week.  The school held an early morning assembly and showed the students a video on malaria. My class was partly superseded by the assembly, but when we went to the Form 1 room, it was locked–both doors.  No one had a key that would work.  I tried to have the student do the study out doors, but they were not doing it very well and there are only about half enough books to go around.  So I gathered some of them at one end of the building and said if they would teach me a Twi song, I would teach them and American song.  So we did that and some of them seemed to enjoy it.

Finally I suggested to the head master that I could unscrew the hasp with my swiss army knife. He said do it.  two screws came out fine, but two were stripped and wouldn’t back out. The head master whacked them out with one of the student’s cutlasses (machete) and we got in for the last 10 minutes of my period.  The HM suggested that we use the sports period for science, but my pupils had already observed that the social studies teacher Madam Frema wasn’t there so we used her period and my kids got their sports period after all.

Madam Frema is teaching Social Studies to my Form 1 students.

Teaching here is interesting.  I’m never sure they understand my American English and a few of them don’t read at all.  They copy the words from my chalkboard, but words like observation, and experimentation, and factorization are not in their active vocabularies.  Few know their multiplication tables and long division seems to be a new topic to everyone.  I teach two extra early morning periods where I try to drill the basics in mathematic. But it’s hard to see improvement yet.  Still it is only the third week and it is their first year in Junior High School. 

Kwame

I enjoy my neighbors, Esther and James, and visiting Kwame, a friend about my age, who is teaching me Twi slowly enough so that I can understand what he says.  He’s been around.  He worked as an clerk in the docks at Tema and learned to speak good English from the sailors and merchants he worked with there.  I get with him almost every evening for practice and some new words.  Friday is Founder’s Day in Ghana, so I taught Beatrice, my neighbor’s young sister how to ride the bicycle and then practiced with Kwame.  Now it’s time to finish my lesson plans for next week. Tests in both Math and Science.  We'll see how we're doing. 

Actually Teaching

Sweeping the school yard on the first day of school, Monday
September 3rd.

I'm into my second week of teaching.  It's only Tuesday and already i have taught 4 classes–three Math and one science class.  I think it's going better than the first week, but I'm learning and finding that my students will agree with things i say that they absolutely do not understand. Since these are first year (Form 1) junior high school student, my headmaster is very concerned that some of them are not ready for the work.  I gave them a simple multiplication test.  Most did okay, but there are a few who may not be ready yet.  Some of them have already been held back so we probably wont send those back.

Sad Week

Last week was a sad week in Sanfo/Aduam.  On the first Monday of school I was informed that the woman who operated a little store in Aduam where I often bought bread for my morning egg sandwich had died. On Wednesday they told me a young girl who would have been in my Form 1 classes died.  I passed near her home on the way to visit my twi teacher, Mr.  Kwame and met a group dressed in the traditional black and red mourning clothes and greeted them with the “mo nshe den” (transliterated and translated “have strength/endure” and shook hands with each thinking it was for the young girl.  On reaching Kwame I was told that a young man in his 40’s near by had also died very near the same compound.  So I don’t know which occasion these people were “enduring”.  Later in the week I passed another compound in a different place that had chairs an awnings set up for a funeral, and my counterpart, Tim, said that a relative of his too had died and he would miss some of school to meet with the family.

Funeral Awnings for Elizabeth Yaboah, the operator of the store where I regularly bought
tea bread for our breakfast sandwiches. She was widowed and had lived a full life
so I expect there will be drinking and dancing tonight

Funerals tend to be celebrations for people who lived full lives.  They play amplified music all night  and dance, drink and greet.  For the young it is more of a sad occasion.  My headmaster, Mr Bruce, said it has been a sad week in Sanfo.  I asked if he knew the causes.  He did not.

Prefect Elections

Last Friday, my science class was superseded by the election of the school officers (the Boy’s and Girl’s Prefects). That is like a student body president with a little more authority–they actually direct the work for cleaning the school compound and the formation of the morning and after school assemblys.  Mr. Bruce, who  is also Assemblyman for Sanfo/Aduam, wanted to conduct the election like the national presidential elections that will be held in Ghana in December. So three Form 3 boys and three girls were nominated for each position early in the week by the faculty.  They each prepared campaign speeches and elections were to be held using secret ballots.   Friday arrived and all the students assembled in one of the classrooms together with drums.  Only two of the boys stood, but they and all three girls gave excellent speeches.  The students cheered as loudly as if these students were running for national office. Two drums added to the excitement.  The Form 1 students will have to work hard if they want to be as good. Mr Tim (my counterpart teacher) prepared ballots, I prepared a ballot box, and Madam Linda (a colleague) and I judged the proceedings as the students passed through the room one at a time to cast their ballots by marking a secret ballot with their thumb print from an ink pad.  One of the boys won by a landslide.  Two of the girls nearly tied, only two votes different.  I suggested to Mr Tim, that in America, since neither girl had a clear majority a run-off or at least a recount would be in order.  In Ghana they don't mess around.  Two votes are enough, so Sanfo/Aduam Municipal Assembly Junior High School has two new Prefects.  Life goes on.