Summer 2010 in Ghana

Monday, July 26, 2010

School today was a bit bizarre, because after the bell rang for first break, not a kid seemed to move, and none of the usual noise, eating, fighting, and chaos that we’ve come to expect ensued.  We soon discovered the reason:  Apparently there is to be a PTA meeting on Sunday afternoon, and Mr. Kabutey was going around to each classroom with a large cane, handing out invitations to each child to give to their parents, and threatening them what might happen if their parents failed to show up.

We were also shocked, and not particularly happy, to see that today, instead of caning the children who were late, Mr. Kabutey sent each and every one back home to get a note from their parents explaining their tardiness.  They were not to return without such a document.  Unfortunately, many of the childrens’ parents had left for work, and nearly all are illiterate anyway.  This resulted in severely diminished attendance across the board, notably with only 6 out of 25 in the oldest JHS class.  This was particularly frustrating, because the year’s cumulative exams are next week, and this week is an incredibly important one for review.  Clifford and his sister Christabel were also sent home towards the middle of the day for “improper attire”, although this confused me because I had talked to both of them earlier, and each had on leather shoes (this is a rarity), white socks, and functional (although, obviously, worn) uniforms.  None of us was sure what inspired the crackdown.

During second break, the children also were not released.  Instead, the “doctors” who Mr. Kabutey had told us about last week finally arrived.  Upon sitting in on their lecture (the blackboard separating Class One and Class Two was removed to form a larger space to fit more of the students), we soon realized that neither of the Ghanaian men who had come were doctors.  Furthermore, they were not, as we had been previously told, going to “examine every child for diseases.”  Rather, one was a spokesman from a toothpaste company called “Close Up” who showed a tube around to all the kids, defined words such as “gums” and “fluoride”, and tried to encourage the students (many of whom already have rotted teeth) to “paste” twice a day with “Close Up”.  The man with him was just a friend who’d come to see the school.

In Class Four Creative Arts, we began working on “Self-Portraits”.  I’ve been wanting to do them for awhile, but saved them to the end because I wanted them to be the best the kids could do.  I’ve even been toying with the idea of bringing the portraits home to display somewhere, either in Princeton or up at school, to help raise money to fund the kids’ school fees (which almost none of them can afford).  After explaining what a self-portrait is, and handing out white paper and coloured pencils, the kids began, tentatively.  Many copied pictures from the fronts of their notebooks, almost all of white people that looked nothing like them (for instance, none of the kids here has any hair, because they get it shaved regularly so as not to distract them, particularly the girls).  A few kids copied one another and others refused to continue once they’d “made a mess of it, Madame.”  Still, the operation was more of a success than I’d anticipated, and I promised them we’d finish the portraits in class on Friday.

After school, Annabel, Kelly, and I went running.  As we were leaving the school, eight-year old Tetteh (Dornuki’s cousin who lives with us because his father is in the US) ran out to join us.  The only shoes he has are over-sized plastic slippers, and he had to hold up his shorts the entire time because they have no button.  Nevertheless, he managed to stay with us for almost 15 minutes.  He walked with us the rest of the way, and we even showed him “Plank” at the end (which he somehow managed to do for a minute and a half) because he said he was no longer tired.

After dinner, a good bit of power-reading (Kelly just finished “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the first time, and I am currently trying my best to crush all 1,448 pages of “Gone with the Wind”), and some refreshingly cold bucket showers, Dornuki told me she wanted to start History.  I had told her I’d teach her lessons at night if she wanted, but assumed she wasn’t interested because she hadn’t mentioned it in over a week.  Evidently I was wrong, however, so I got out a piece of paper, pencil, and the maps of the seven continents that I’d brought, applied lots of bug spray, and we began in the weak light on a wooden table outside the kitchen.  I decided to shamelessly entitle the course “the History of the World According to Georgia,” and so it began.  We began with the Big Bang and the Dinosaurs, and probably covered more Geography, Archaeology, Biology, and Biblical History in our first lesson than typical history itself, but it was really fun.  Dornuki particularly enjoyed learning what “latitude” and “longitude” were, and how Tema, our home, is also the closest human settlement to 0° latitude and longitude, and therefore to the center of the world.