Sugar and Spice and All things Nice!

My first remedial teaching group of girls was at Limanyirr Primary School.  They were funny 10 and 11 year olds,  interested and excited to show me what they knew.  They have beautiful names: Ziinatu, Nadilia, Rukaya, Muratu, Samia, Shama, Huda, Mufida, Fridous, and Asana.  I will have 30 students, in 3 schools, that I will work with an hour a week for 8 weeks and then in April I will get 8 groups of 10 for about 45 minutes per week to assist with their reading literacy.  I have so little time to try and make a big difference. 

Ghanaian women are know for being good providers, great mircro-farmers and being the mainstay in keeping the family together.  In working with these girls the Ghana Education Service hopes that there will be more women succeeding in schools, universities and in the local communities.  I am glad to make a small contribution and also teach the local teachers how to reach these children.

Below are some of the students at St. Aidan's Anglican School.  I share this school with an excellent teacher from the UK and will be continuing on with this school and five others in the third term when that teacher returns home at the end of her placement.  I will miss her knowledge and collaborations when she leaves at the end of March.

This last picture is of Fongo Local Authority Primary at break.

Beginning in the schools

The first week of class interaction is now complete.  The students are generally warm, friendly and eagar to learn.  Class sizes vary from 48 to 70 and the age of the pupils at P4 (grade 5 in Canada) range from 9 years old to 14 or 15.  Often children who live in isolated villages do not attend school until they can come to Wa and stay with family members. 

The conditions in the classes are similar.  Wooden benches with attached table tops that are filled with 2 or 3 students.  In the larger classes, it is often difficult to get between the rows and many have to squeeze 4 into a desk.  Students usually come with pens and workbooks but they are in poor condition.  The textbooks are soft cover books for each subject but are shared by each desk and often are torn, missing pages and falling apart.  Despite the conditions the teachers carry on, some with a high degree of success.  I observed teachers, young and old, who had great teaching skill and good methodology.  The lack of hands on resources or active learning techniques made many of the lessons the same but teachers were happy learn and could not wait to have me teach a lesson or demonstrate a technique.

On the school yard, often just a patch of dirt or in best cases an area with trees, students laughed and played just like Canadian students.  Many of the girls were excellent skippers and the boys and a few girls loved to play “football” or soccer to Canadians.  The African Cup is on now so it is a great topic to engage the students.

Most schools have a nursery program on site and the little ones will come over to see the “mansala” or white woman.  They just stand and stare at you and are thrilled to get a high 5!

Next week I begin working with groups of 10 girls in each school who have had struggles reading at this level. I look forward to the personal contact and opportunity to possibly make a difference in their lives.

Food in Wa

I have had some interest in the foods and meals that are available in Ghana.  I have not worked with any local ladies yet but I do cook a lot, usually twice a day.  For breakfast, my roommates and I have ground nut paste with honey and toast.  The bread is made by local ladies and you buy it at night because it is too hot for people to have ovens and many women cook outdoors.  Occasionally we have hot oatmeal but that is purchase at a premium at an Afro-American store.

Lunch and dinner are more interchangeable.  The local staples are rice and beans of several kinds.  They use shea oil that you get in round balls and use for sauces and frying.  I have a propane burner so it is like using my gas stove top at home.  The beans are soaked for at least 12 hours and rinsed a few times while checking for stones and sticks in the batch.  They then are boiled for several hours with a mixture of vegetables such as tomatoes and greens.  The greens are rough in texture when raw but when shredded and boiled are quite like spinach.  There are lots of onions, at the market, so they are added  to most things with garlic and some local spice packets or Italian spices I brought from home. 

Yams are also a local favourite.  These yams are big, brown and rough, and when cut open, are pure white like a potato but a little bitter.  My roommate, Miriyan and I have experimented with this root vegetable and have made something like mashed potatoes with powdered milk but no butter, and salt.  They taste much better when refried with onions and garlic the next day.  We also made yam fries.  Although a little bitter, they are not too bad and the coarse salt and spiced mayonnaise.

I have also made variations of cabbage soup with the tomatoes, greens, very expensive carrots, even more expensive green peppers and some imported pasta.  Ghanaians eat with their hands so they serve rice with the soup so they can pick it up.

The locals pound  the yams to make a powder and then make a smooth dumpling that they ferment.  The blob is not to my taste but they put it together with a stew-like mixture made from okra and vegetables.  Bits of the dough is pulled off and then they dip it in the stew.  This is called Banku and the unfermented ones are called Fufu.  Neither of these I can stand but many volunteers have come to like these local delicacies.  One "spot" or restaurant/bar I went to sold fried yam balls and they were delicious but apparently difficult to make. 

You can also get fish and chicken at the cold storage houses but I have not gone to buy any yet.  In the market you can get fresh butchered goat, lamb, chickens and possibly beef but I cannot go there.  There are too many flies, strange smells and unsanitary conditions.  The other protein we seem to use a lot is eggs.  We have had refried rice, omelets, deviled eggs, boiled eggs with beans or rice and scrambled eggs. 

When we have been out, my roommates and I have had some excellent dishes that we are excited about learning to cook.  Fried bean balls, ground nut balls, ground nut soup, Red-Red, and others.