First school week

Written on the 8^th of July
Summary of this blog:
On tuesday I had another day of teaching at the same school which was really hard. However I'd told Fred, the coordinator, my problems with it and he's changed me to a different school. From Wednesday until now when I leave I'm teaching at Maltiti Girls School, which is a much better school and the level of it is a lot higher! I've loved it! I've also loved doing the reading classes there in the afternoon. You just see the girls improve before your eyes which is so exciting! I did have one day where on my own I had to teach a really young class which was again harder, but it was doable as teachers kept checking if I was okay. I also did my first set of laundry which was a new experience haha.
Detailed: 

On Monday night, 3 new volunteers arrived. Helen, 17 from America, Anna, 19 from America and Marcus, 17 from Spain. They’re all lovely and it’s nice to meet new people! Anna is staying 4 weeks and Marcus is staying 5 weeks, so they’ll be people I’ll be with the longest as most of the volunteers leave on the 14^th of July.

On Tuesday, teaching at the school was still hard. There are 3 classes and Matt and I as volunteers go there, but because of the chat with Rachel, she came with. None of the teachers had turned up (what a surprise) and so we had a class each. Rachel was hoping to have talked to the teachers about their attendance, about the students and about their level, but that obviously couldn’t happen as they weren’t there. Rachel had the smallest kids, about 4 to 7 years old, and Matt and I had the same ages about 8 to 12, but Matt’s class is at a higher level. I continued doing some maths with them and did places in town and was able at the end of that to have them draw things up and name them in English. This was improvement, which is always very exciting as you can see they’re taking it in.

We were meant to teach until 12pm, but at 10.30am I decided to play a name game outside and suddenly all of Rachel’s class burst out to play outside. I checked on Rachel and she was literally about to cry. She’s never felt that helpless and with 40 young kids who just hit each other all the time, nothing’s possible. All they were able to do was repeat the alphabet and repeat 1 till 10 in English. If she tried to do a word they’d look at her blankly. It was also impossible to get them to behave, which was the same problem with one boy in my class. You can raise your voice, get in their faces, send them outside, but nothing works. They seem to have a LOT less respect for us than their Dagbani teachers. Especially as we can’t speak Dagbani, it’s hard to tell them off, but she even knew phrases like stop and go outside etc in Dagbani, but they just laughed at her although they understood perfectly well. We gave up for the day and painted the huts that Volunteering Solutions own near the school, which are meant to be used for if volunteers want to stay in a hut for a night. So if we get that all painted and cleaned up again, I’ll definitely give that a go!

In the afternoon I got to hear that I’m changing schools. They’ve moved me to an all girls school, where the teachers are usually always there and most of the children are keen to learn. It’s also walking distance from home, which is perfect as then I don’t need to give the organisation money for transport. They moved me as they knew how much the situation was stressing me out and they said as a 17 year old, I shouldn’t be dealing with that, so I’m definitely not complaining.

At night there was a cultural show. This was absolutely amazing! There were about 200 kids and us and some parents who watched and the chief of the village came and watched as well. It consisted of 4 songs played by a flute and 4 drums and danced to by breathtaking dancers. The video on facebook or the pictures can’t do it justice in the slightest! In the end, they tried to take one of my friends up, but she didn’t want to go so I joined her and we had to dance haha! All the other volunteers ended up joining in as well and we copied one of the dancers with the moves. We definitely got laughed at haha, but it was so much fun! At the end all the dancers came up to the white girls and started chatting and asking for our email address etc. Typical Ghanaians. They were nice though!

Yesterday was my first day at Maltiti, the girls school. I absolutely loved it! One of the teachers came in an hour late, so I taught with Rachel for that hour which was fun and then the teacher came and I helped her mark work etc. As my class I’m helping at is nearly doing exams, it’s all mainly revision so I mainly marked their work. 2 kids got 5 out of 15 which really upset them, which was so sad to see! They had to do improper fractions and big multiplications and all, so some struggled. If they pass these exams then they will be able to go onto state school, which is a normal primary school, but they have to pay for that. So primary school is at a much higher level as Maltiti and the village school just prepare the kids for that. The Maltiti girls all need sponsors for state school, so if you’re interested in sponsoring them, let me know! It will mean that they get good education and can move onto high school after that.

In the afternoon, all the volunteers went back to Maltiti and we did reading club with the girls. I really enjoy that as you see so much improvement every day and you can just see how keen they are to learn and it’s amazing to be part of the help towards that. I ended up getting an early night last night at about 9pm and I heard this morning that all the boys got really drunk and that I missed a hilarious night, but honestly? I really do not mind, seriously love my sleep here, as we all get back so completely drained and exhausted every day.

Today, was another stressful day, but that’s okay I didn’t come here for an easy ride. One of the teachers didn’t turn up for Maltiti and that’s the class which was the youngest ones, so the 4 to 6ish year old. The teacher that teaches them hasn’t gotten paid yet, so we think that’s probably why she didn’t turn up, which would be fair enough, so we’ll see if she’s there tomorrow. Teaching those little ones was such a struggle. I had to think of a lesson plan. We sounded out the alphabet and even when I randomly pointed at letters they could sound them out without me saying them, which was great, and then I made them copy the alphabet followed by a word for it. The class only has really small pencils as they’ve been used a lot, but there weren’t enough for the whole class. There are new pencils available so I gave them new pencils. Those kids got so excited and so suddenly everyone had lost their pencil or it wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t control them, couldn’t get them to sit down or anything. After a while I took the new pencils off them and made them all share between the old pencils as I didn’t know what else to do. Especially as they can barely speak English. Later this was the same case with new notebooks. One kid’s book was finished so I gave her a new one and it was bigger and thicker and so she was so proud of it and so suddenly everyone’s had run out and so I had to, again, take that book off her and just ripped a page out of it.

It was just a very stressful morning as they were always surrounding me with things to mark or to approve (even after they’d only written one word of the alphabet), they didn’t listen and they were never in their seats. Also the class is at very different level as some kids couldn’t even write out the letters of the alphabet, they just looked like random symbols, so that was sad to see as after a while I just needed to move on.

This afternoon I did my first laundry, so hand washing my laundry by hand in a bucket. I think I got most the stains out, except the white shirts were near impossible as they always end up being brown at the end of the day from the sand which flies around, and got them smelling at least a bit clean haha. This evening we found out that one of my friends from Volunteering Solutions, Helen, who stays in a host family across the road, that her ipod has been stolen. And this time for real. She could never lock her room, but she kept everything always hidden. When she walked in her fan was on which she never turns on and her case for her headphones and ipod was lying around. The ipod was missing. Luckily she’d hidden her passport and money in a really good spot, it’s just such a scary thought that someone has been in her room, got comfortable enough to turn on the fan and literally searched through her stuff to find her ipod. They’d left her headphones. That thought is a very scary thought, which definitely warns us again to keep locking our room all the time even if we’re in the garden, as it can be anyone..

We also had to live without running water for 2 days, which means you can’t do your laundry, the toilet doesn’t flush, you need to be careful with the water in the tanks etc, so that was quite hard as even taking a shower you should use only a little bit of water as everyone needs to use that water. As it’s 35 to 40 degrees every day, you feel very gross all the time, so not being able to wash every time you felt like it was a struggle.

Anyways, in conclusion, I’m definitely loving Ghana more every day. Every day I learn more about the culture and about the people and I love (although it’s hard) helping the kids as it’s so rewarding. 

Me doing my laundry

at the culture show

my new blanket:)

the water they drink out of