What would you do.......?

When I went for my VSO assessment day, I thought of the types of things I might be asked about potentially working in a developing country. Various things popped into my mind, but one issue I thought I might be asked about was corporal punishment: how I would deal with the prospect of seeing children being caned and what I would do about it.

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Corporal punishment is now illegal in Ghana, yet you go in to few schools in Ghana where you see no-one with a cane or stick in their hand. It is sometimes used as a pointer for the teacher – just because there’s a stick on the table does not mean that the teacher is beating the children. In fact, during my first 15 months in Ghana, I more often saw older children hitting wee ones than teachers beating children. Older children (sometimes monitors) stop younger ones from going into classes during tests and keep order in the playground. I also occasionally saw teachers beating children – normally hitting them around the ear with either stick or a hand – but it was not as often as I’d feared. I don’t know how accurate my view of this is though – teachers know that “sulemias” don’t approve of corporal punishment, so I get the impression that it happened less often when I was in school. However, overall I was pleasantly surprised by how little it was used – though admittedly, threatened often.

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However, a few weeks ago, I went to do a visit in one of my schools. This school is certainly the best of my 18. The children are all taught by qualified, trained teachers (which is very often not the case), the classes are relatively small (most around 40-50), the teachers are creative and effective in the way they teach (they even use group work (!)) and the head teacher is organised and efficient. I’d been asked to go in to observe the work of two new teachers who were sharing a class – one qualified teacher, who had just moved to primary from secondary and one national service volunteer.

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The NSV was taking the lesson and the other teacher was “watching” which in practise seemed to be sitting on the veranda, interrogating any child from other classes that went past to go to the toilet. At one point the man got up, spoke to two boys who I had noticed being a little lively, and got them to come to the front and kneel on the concrete in front of the class. I didn’t ask any questions, and was almost impressed that the teacher had chosen to do this rather than beat the boys. About 15 minutes later, two other children were sent to kneel down. At this point, I realised that the first two had been kneeling for a long time, and wondered if he would come back and tell them to sit. However, instead, the teacher came along and hit each child on the back of the legs five times with a long, thin cane. Perhaps after seeing this happen to child number one, I should have interrupted and asked him to stop. However, I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I chose not to, though certainly felt the anger rising inside me!

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When I had previously seen teachers using corporal punishment, I had not ever spoken to a teacher directly. However, as I was so horrified by what I witnessed (and also, admittedly, rather hungry which doesn’t help my anger levels!), I decided to speak to teacher directly. I asked him if he was a qualified teacher, and asked him if he knew it was illegal to hit children at school. He said that yes he was, but “ah, these children, they are hard to control”. I told him that I’d had smaller classes in the UK that were MUCH harder to deal with, that this was by far the worst case of beating that I’d seen, and that there were many effective behaviour management strategies he could use instead of hitting the children – and I’d be happy to show him some!

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I then left the class, saying I’d come back to observe him soon (which I still haven’t done…) and told a rather shocked head teacher what I had seen. She said she’d speak to him as well, and I think she will.

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Why didn’t I intervene? It’s difficult to say. Although if you are in a class with a Ghanaian head teacher or education office member, they will stop a lesson and correct a teacher, I am of the (British) impression that you shouldn’t undermine a teacher in front of a class – even if you think what they are doing is not correct. Perhaps I should have.

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What would you have done?

Christmas newsletter, a little late......

Hello!

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I realise that any Christmas letter going on for longer than 2 pages is a bit socially unacceptable, but please excuse my Ghana-brain for this 5 page wonder…

I’ve been back in Ghana for about 10 weeks and it has completely flown by! I’ve been feeling much more settled and at home in Bolga, mainly due to being incredibly busy at work and enjoying spending time with friends, both other volunteers and local friends, thinking of new and exciting ways to cook tomatoes and generally sitting putting the world to rights into the wee small hours.

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Workwise, I’ve been mostly busy though things have slowed down somewhat in the last few weeks. My aim this term was to finish watching the 90 or so P4-6 teachers in my 18 schools teach English, and organise 4 workshops for them in interactive reading activities… I very nearly fulfilled my first objective, seeing teachers in all but one school, but organising workshops didn’t prove to be so easy. This week, which would have been ideal, is exam week, and last week was revision week, so the teachers are very busy and not free to come away for two hours during the school day which unfortunately is the only time they can come. Classes are left for hours at a time, but it’s the only way to organise things here. I am now hoping to do one workshop next Monday, hopefully with the help of one of the teachers at my best school – though again, we’re running on African time so who knows if that will happen or not.

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My observations have been very useful though; I’ve seen some teachers who would handle a class in Scotland just fine and others who struggle with speaking good, accurate English themselves. I’ve had a couple of wee goes at taking a few classes myself, mainly for “model lessons” to help show teachers different ideas. I’ve got quite used to standing in front of a group of teachers or children and have a goat or chicken wander past! After a recent model lesson, there is now a P2 class in Yorogo Primary who will chant the words “verbs” and “nouns” forevermore in a Scottish accent!

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The hardest part of the VSO job by far is the “capacity building” side of it. People need to want to have their “capacity” built in the first place, and it takes so long to build trusting relationships with colleagues – particularly when you’re about 20 years younger than most of them! I’m hoping to have some Circuit Supervisors (like QIOs – Quality Improvement Officers) at my workshops over the next few months, then see if I can train them up a bit on what I’m doing.

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Other than working I’ve also been busy at weekends attending other “programmes” (got to love the Ghanaian way of saying these things!). I’ve been to a wedding blessing of a teacher from one of my schools – the longest wedding service I’ve ever seen, and I was standing… outside… for the whole 4 hour service! Another Saturday, my friend and colleague Joana’s father died, so I went to the first part of his funeral (the burial) with literally hundreds of other mourners. I’ve also been to an Anglican Bishop’s consecration – Jacob, a former pupil of Sisters Patricia and Dorothy Stella, two of the Sisters I know from my time in Swaziland but who taught in Bolga in the 70s and 80s. I also had a lovely week in the Upper West Region, at an education sector meeting then travelling to see some friends. There have also been various other Cultatanga gigs (local band that one of the volunteers plays in) and volunteer parties to celebrate everything from Diwali to Christmas! Hannah and I have also been doing a little work with the children at Mama Laadi’s Foster Home once a week – reading and simple phonics activities – fun but tiring!

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I’m still really enjoying having my motorbike, and am even going along to help with the new volunteers’ training one day next week – if you’d told me 18 months ago I’d be riding a motorbike, let alone helping to teach others how to ride, I’d never have believed it in a million years! Despite a few setbacks, including a rather scary journey where I got almost completely stuck in the clay, had it not been thanks to a very kind passerby, I’ve become quite confident (and hopefully competent!) at taking passengers, as my summer guests Sonia, Emma and Hayley discovered! I’ve been taking a new volunteer, Hannah, in to work most days and have had to check a few times that she’s still there… I don’t know if that’s a good sign that I’m feeling more at ease with someone on the back…or a bad sign that I’m not paying enough attention!

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I’m now one of two regional reps for the Upper East Region and we have 23 volunteers and 4 accompanying partners in our region, the biggest contingent in Ghana by far at the moment. The regional rep job involves picking up new volunteers when they arrive in Accra, helping people with problems if they can’t get them solved through the Ghana VSO office, and administering Distress Fund claims every time someone loses a camera or phone. It’s interesting seeing how things are run at VSO and a good excuse to have the odd weekend away in Accra at a nice hotel when the newbies arrive!

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Living in Ghana continues to have its ups and downs. The weather has improved to a very pleasant 24ish at night and cope-able 35ish during the day (lowest temp been 22.9 and highest 37.4 I think since my return…). The Harmattan has not long started, which means very dry winds, chapped lips and dry skin – but my favourite season by far as it is actually necessary to use a sheet to sleep at night! We have a very large family (village?! 200+) of bats living in our roof, whose favourite pastime is to start squeaking incessantly at around 3am every morning. We’ve also a couple of dead lizards in our house, accidentally squashed when resting under cushions on the sofa!

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We’ve only had one other minor disaster lately. I was awakened by shouts of “Madam Rita, Madam Rita[1], the water is flowing!” one night around 2am. When I went outside, I saw that our water pipe had burst and was spraying wildly all over our back garden. Mercifully the breakage was before the meter, meaning it wasn’t being charged – but not much of a comfort at 3am! After an hour of trying to fix it using an insane selection of useless materials (how on earth did I think a Smartie tube would help!), phoning the emergency VSO number and being told to “phone the regional rep, Rachel Campbell!” and waking up several other people whose names and numbers I had for such disasters (Water man??!), our watchman and his friend finally switched it off from the mains outside our house and we were able to dry off and get a few hours’ rest!

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I’ve remained pretty healthy since my return – I must be getting a stronger Ghana stomach finally – and other than a small, minor, unconfirmed case of malaria, (much better than the first one!) I’ve been pretty fit!

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I’d better stop my ramblings now… I hope you are all well, enjoying the snow and feeling nice and Christmassy at home (something I do definitely miss here in Ghana!) Have a lovely festive period and Happy New Year when it comes.

Lots of love,

Rachel xx

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[1] Rita, Richard, Reechee, Richie, Rahel, Raquel, Rackel, Rake-hel… Ghanaians generally CAN’T say Rachel!

Saturday 9th October

My friend and colleague’s Joana, lost her father on the 30^th September. His funeral – a traditional affair – was today.

My first problem was knowing when to go – no-one seemed to know when the funeral was, so the consensus with my flatmate was that 10 or 11 would be fine. I arrive around 10.45 – after asking for directions – simply “where is the funeral house?” is sufficient. The place was full of people – old, young, locals and family members and colleagues from all over. Joana’s father lived in a traditional Ghanaian house, but was a landowner so seemed to be highly respected in his community.

I went in to “greet” Joana, which meant going through to the main family home and sitting with them – not talking much but just sitting – while there was some dancing and celebration from locals. We then went outside and I joined other colleagues under a simple marquee. And started to wait. And wait. After a good hour, I finally asked a colleague what we were actually waiting for. Then pieces of the puzzle came together. I saw some young men, wearing only shorts, running up and round the compound several times. This was because the grave was a new grave, so they have to “run with the stone” round the house three times. We saw women go off to “inspect the grave”. War dancers appeared and danced, then went off to other clusters of people to dance for them. Groups of people – relatives, in laws – came every now and then, disappearing into the compound with traditional “mats” made of reeds. Tradition is that you bring a “mat” to the funeral. The mat is used to cover the body to carry it to the grave. One end – the head end – is bigger than the other. Some tradions dictate that the mat be carried wide end first – others say it should be feet end first.

The graves are huge here – they can hold up to 100 people. Men are buried facing the west as men work in the fields in the mornings when the sun is rising – women are buried facing east as they are particularly busy at night, preparing the food. Bodies are buried sitting up, and the mat that the body is carried in is buried separately – in the wet season. In the dry season, when digging a grave is very hard, the mat is burned – its never buried with the body.

At around 3, we saw men undressing down to their shorts – a sign that the burial (what we’d been waiting for!) would be soon. These men were undertakers, and traditionally, men have to be naked when carrying the body to the grave, though now they wear underwear. It’s important that the body in the mat is carried with naked arms. Then the war dancers went up on the roof, also signalling that the body would soon be taken from its resting place in the house. Big crowds gathered at the entrance to the house, then finally (4.15!!) the body was taken from the house and taken around the house (3 times for men, 4 for women). We had a few hairy moments when we thought the undertakers were going to knock us over. Then the body was taken to the grave, as you heard women crying – the first crying I’d seen all day.

In the south of Ghana, the traditional funeral dress is dark colours, a tradition that has travelled north too now.

Old people have big funerals with war dancing, celebrating their long life. Young people have more sombre events.

Joana’s father had 5 wives, 4 of whom are still alive. Joana’s mother is the first one, and had 10 children, 8 of whom have now died – there is just Joana and her sister left. He has a total of 21 surviving children, 41 grandchildren and 35 great grandchildren. He was 95.

Day 3 – Wednesday 6th October

In Ghana, I don’t take my camera with me everywhere I go – perhaps I should but its one extra thing to worry about.

Today’s picture has two reasons. Firstly, it is my new toy which I can’t wait to try out! After hearing of my difficulties trying to cook with no scales, Jane bought me this super measuring device. My flatmates were equally as excited to see it, and I’m going to attempt tablet this weekend.

However, the second reason for this picture is it made me think of something I saw today. I was visiting one of my schools, and when I arrived I saw a large group of ladies under a tree. After mistaking them for a PTA meeting, I realised they all had small children with them, and that there was an outdoor clinic going on in the school grounds. There was a very simple weighing device attached to one of the tree’s branches where babies were put in a sling at the bottom and their weight taken. It reminded me of Comic Relief scenes on TV, and was nice to see these families being cared for in Ghana.

Day 2 – Tuesday 5th October

Guess what this is? When I left in September, there was not much at all, but I’ve returned to a year’s supply of basil. It is now growing like wildfire and smells gorgeous. Clearly Vic and Rose are better botanists than me – my humble attempt at growing basil in a small tin ended when I drowned it after worrying that it was going to dry out!

Photos and thoughts

I decided that for my next year in Ghana, I would take one photo each day. It lasted about a week……. However, it was a good reminder that I need to keep writing my blog/taking photos… so here’s a little to get started with….

Day one – Monday 4^th October

The tree and sunset in the rain. It started to rain shortly after I got home from work today – I was having a snooze after reading an inspiring story from Gogo Mama about a lady from Kenya who had FGM and is now campaigning and sensitizing people about the dangers. I heard the door bang, and after my initial “I’m being burgled!” thought, I realised it was the wind and knew the rains were coming.

The rain at this time of year is terrific. July and August rain is impressive – big storms often in the afternoons – but it’s at the start and end of the rainy season that you really appreciate and smell the rain – the gentle earthy tones – and hear it – the gentle clanging on the empty pot Godwin uses for cooking, occasional rumbles of thunder. Nothing like it J

A rather African day...

Some days are more typically “African” than others, and this has to be one of them. My morning was spent showing a Ghanaian friend where to get nice Ghanaian presents (he was buying a wedding present for a Canadian friend) and then spent much of the afternoon with my seamstress as she fixed, then refixed, then adjusted my most recent dress.

However, the late afternoon was one of those “I live in Ghana” experiences!

I met Omar, a friend of Sister Marjorie’s. He started a project with Sr M and she wanted me to go along and see it and take some photos. Originally, we were to meet and ride there independently, but he couldn’t get a motorbike at short notice, so asked me to “pick” him. Thankfully I’ve had quite a bit of picking experience lately (thanks to all willing guinea pigs, both vols and brave guests!) so taking a rather small man on the back was not too big a deal.

We rode for what felt like ages along dirt tracks, over large bumps, through rocks, round bends, past villages and finally, on the home straight, came to a rather large puddle, with marshy bits on either side and no clear way through. As ever in Ghana, there was a friendly and willing passer-by to give advice on the best course of action. He recommended going round another route, which I think would’ve added several miles to our journey. So Omar decided to wait until some local men on bikes appeared, hoping they’d show us the best route through. They went across a less marshy grassy bit then back onto the road. After a brief conversation in Frafra, Omar decided he would ride my bike over a clearer patch and I would meet him on the other side. He attempted to do this, but got stuck in the mud just before reaching dry land. The two bicycle men quickly jumped off their bikes, into the mud and pushed him out effortlessly. I was looking for a suitable path to take, across some stepping stones perhaps, when one bicycle man came along, grabbed my arms, threw them round his neck and piggy-backed me right the way across to the other side. Very soon after, with me back in the driving seat, Omar pointed to a building up a small but very steep hill and across the grass – so somehow I managed to ride up the verge, across the grass and to the centre.

After seeing the project and speaking to some local people helping with some tree planting, we heard thunder rumbling in the distance and we set off back to Bolga, this time trying to miss the huge puddle by going a better route. Of course Omar had to “greet” and chat to all manner of people enroute as the thunder got louder and more threatening. At the moment in Ghana it is farming season, so there are huge tall fields full of corn, with only small dirt tracks running through them – I felt like a character in “Honey I Shrunk the Kid”! We managed to make it back to a road, very narrowly missing 3 stray chickens (the most stupid creature in Bolga), a small herd of sheep and one small child. All of a sudden, we seem to be in a village but are actually back in Bolga, Omar jumps off the bike and tells me to “follow that man” to take me back to the main road.

A slightly more successful day’s riding than Monday’s, where I got stage fright going through our local puddle, slowed down way too much and ended up IN the puddle, covered in mud, with the bike on top of my leg, and three ladies up to their ankles helping me out of the situation. It was a laugh or cry situation and thankfully laughing was the far better option!