First day of teaching

Written on the 4^th of july

Wow okay I’m not sure where to start. Yesterday was a really nice relaxing day. I was ready at 8.30am to go with Fred to church, but he was nowhere to be seen until 11am. He then asked if I still wanted to go and I’d been up for it 3 hours before, but I just felt sweaty and hot at 11 and couldn’t imagine going to church anymore. 3 other volunteers and I decided to go to town instead, however when we were about to leave the heaviest rainfall started. It was absolutely pouring it down and as we have no real windows the floor of the bedroom got really wet. There are Ghanaian boys that live at Fred’s that do jobs around the house, so they were kind enough to clean it up for us. As we had just been sat outside enjoying the sun right before the rainfall, I’d left my phone outside in the rain. Typical me. It was absolutely soaked, but still turns on however says it has no sim card, so I’m leaving it in rice for a while as that’s meant to soak moisture out. If it doesn’t end up working it’s okay as I brought an oldish phone with me and I can buy a phone here for about 10 pounds.

When we went into town after the rain (those rainstorms last about 20 minutes) and checked our emails and facebook quickly and afterwards tried to find somewhere to eat. As it’s a Sunday, many places were closed so we ended up getting a rice takeaway. The rest of the day I just read and as it was one of the volunteers’ last day, we all went out for a drink at night which was really nice.

This morning we had to get up at 6.30am to leave at 7.30am to the schools we were teaching at. I got ready to take a bucket shower and wash my hair etc but realised there was no running water anywhere in our area. We just had to get ready without a wash and I felt so gross, especially as I’d put mosquito spray on the night before and you just perspire 24/7. For breakfast we always have this yummy bread that tastes like cake with egg or jam. The drive to the schools are about 30 minutes as they are in the villages which means there are no roads and just mud roads with big holes and bumps in it. I think I hit the roof of the car a couple of times that’s how bad it was. The fast speed they drive at doesn’t help the situation in the slightest. Most of the time that they drive they call at the same time as well and as there are no traffic rules anywhere it’s just a scary experience overall. As my travel insurance didn’t start until today, because the teaching didn’t start until today, I felt lucky to have reached today without needing the hospital haha. The goats, sheep and cows on the road make you feel even more scared as sometimes they’ll move and sometimes they don’t so they’ll have to brake quickly.

When we reached the village, I got told that Fred would help me teach or tell me what to teach, but when I turned around just after I’d gotten out the van, they’d already started driving off. I was shocked for words. One other volunteer, Matt, had been in that exact situation last week and could help me a little bit with how he filled the time. The two other volunteers that teach, teach at a different school. I could not believe I was just left like that! I didn’t know what level the kids were at, how good their English is and what material they’ve learnt! I was so angry/upset/frustrated, but put on a brave face and looked at my classroom I’d be teaching in. As you can see in the photos below, half the classroom was filled with wood of broken tables etc, half the roof was missing and as it had rained the day before, the class was covered in water. Great. There have been no teachers around since the roof broke, so there was no one to ask for information about the kids etc. Fred didn’t want the kids to just stay at home, which is why he got us to ‘teach’. The kids in Ghana are so well disciplined and behaved, e.g. the teachers always get the kids to clean the school and the playground around it before school starts. Therefore when I looked into my room to kids were already sweeping the water out. When we had the class back into some sort of decent state, I decided to just get them to copy out words they knew e.g. Ghana, Tamale, school etc. And fill in the missing letters that I’d leave out. First of all, to get them to understand what they had to do was a 10 minute task. They’d copy out everything I’d written but still leave the blanks, blank. Half of the kids understood the task, but got many of the letters wrong and half just left them blank until I filled them in on the board. Secondly, I got them to copy their family members e.g. mother, father etc and they copied that, but then I asked them to write their mother or father’s name after it, which is where it got hard again. Lastly I did some maths. I did equations like 8 + 2 or 20 – 3, first thinking that might insult their intelligence, but that was indeed the level they were at, and when they are numbers that they can use their fingers and toes for it’s okay. When I start doing 35 + 6, they’d have to tally it (like IIIIIIIIIIII) and then take away some of them to work out the answer, in other words that would take about 5 minutes to work out.

All in all, I hope you can imagine how hard and frustrating it was. I taught them for 1.5 hours (usually it should be from 9 until 12), but due to the teachers not being there because of the roof, we wouldn’t have known what else to teach them for that day. So at 10.30am we were finished and just played with the kids for a bit. The kids all were fascinated by our cameras and seriously at one point you just got to say, ‘no more photos now’ or it never ends. By 1pm (!?!) we finally got picked up. We were all exhausted and would have loved to go home, but we could go to town quickly to get some lunch and go by the supermarket to then go onto the Maltiti school, which is another school in a closer village to us. At that school every day from 3pm until 4pm, we read with the kids. For most kids that only go to the village schools, this means that we read and they repeat and have no clue what they’re saying. It’s really sad to see that. But I learned to speak English by it just being spoken to me etc, so I do believe that it will work and I just picked out random words like ‘tree’ or ‘short’ which you could then explain or point at a picture to show what it means.

I’m now back at the volunteer’s house and we are all just completely exhausted. I find it hard to imagine me doing this for 6 weeks, but then again I’m really excited to achieve something with the kids. As I’m staying for 6 weeks, I’m determined to see the kids improve as it’d be harder to see the improvement if you only stayed 2 weeks. Also I think I’ll enjoy the reading class, as I did a similar thing with year 7’s at high school and I do believe that it will help them. 

There’s one girl that stays at Fred’s house, Rachel, who’s American who did the teaching program for 6 weeks last week. She’s come back this year to do some research and help an organisation for women empowerment, which she’s passionate about. She also helps out at the schools, so when I told her how my day had been today, we went over to Fred and ended up having a heated discussion about the situation. He blamed the whole situation on the roof, but she felt in the same position last year and is determined things will change. In conclusion, Fred has promised me that I’ll get a syllabus and a book to teach out of and usually it’ll be alongside a teacher, unless (he said) they don’t turn up... So fingers crossed!

Two things that had shocked me today was finding out that a volunteer last year had spent a lot of money and effort on building a well for the village and as no one maintained it, after a few months it had just broken down. Sometimes that’s really hard to accept as some people try so hard to make a difference here in Ghana, but it sometimes feels like they don’t appreciate it. Because the well doesn’t work anymore, many kids drink out of the mud puddles... so shocking to see. Also in the villages the huts are either round on square. The round huts are for the women and children and the square ones are for the men, how strange is that? What’s the point in marriage then? The men can also marry more than one woman in Ghana and whichever wife cooks the meal for him, he’ll sleep with her that night. I find it hard to accept and come to terms with hearing things like that. But that’s all part of learning things about the different culture!

 The room I taught in. The broken roof

 the huts the people in the village lived in

 some of the kids

 some of the volunteers:)