Reflecting on the School & our new Friends...

Team Journal ~ October 21, 2010

Written by: Volunteer Kathleen

Quote for the day: "We will all be together when we reach common ground." ~ From a song we sing at First Unitarian Society in Minneapolis.


Before going in to my second grade classroom, I take a little tour of the grounds of Beatrice Akoto School. There are two one-story buildings with classrooms for students from grades one through six. There are two small buildings away off which I imagine are latrines. Garbage burns in a corner of the yard. Sometimes I see the older children “cutting” the area grass with yard-long machetes.

The office—the wonderful office: two of the ever popular molded plastic stacking chairs, a table and two or three stacks of books on the ground. All this is under one of the big sheltering mango trees. What a dream office!

Madam Rhoda wears dresses made of the colorful African fabric, some traditional style, some not—but all tailor made for her. Even the students’ uniforms, brown and peach and yellow, are made by a seamstress, pants for the boys, skirts for the girls. No “off the rack” for Ghanians, at least not in this village.

There seems to be no concept of stealing here. Madam R’s purse hangs on the back of her chair most of the time half open, her cell phone and money on the desk. Esther tells me that if someone finds money or anything else not belonging to them, they must try hard to find the owner. If that proves impossible, the finder must give the money to charity. And this is not a land of plenty. Every piece of paper, every worn down pencil (sharpened by its owner with a razor blade), every bit of eraser is precious.

The path to school today is surprisingly dry; only larger puddles remain after yesterday morning’s deluge. The rain has cooled the air somewhat—more so yesterday when some kids were wearing hooded sweat jackets. One boy was wearing an enormous Air Force Academy sweatshirt.

The second graders on their way to the classroom from morning assembly in the yard race to meet me and see who will carry my books to my chair/office where a nail has recently been appropriated to hang my backpack.

Madam Rhoda is not here today — at a class or meeting, the headmistress tells me. Madam Rita wearing an Afro-print pantsuit will help me. She has a class of her own in the next room. She starts the children on mathematics “Applying the Properties of Addition.” After board work, from the supply cabinet textbooks are passed around. The children don’t write in these books though they are intended to be workbooks. They write only in their personal notebooks. These very much used textbooks, the class textbook are not to be folded back; the book spines must be protected from wearing as much as possible.

During the board work, the kids often clap for a fellow student’s right answer or the whole class claps for itself. It is a rhythmic clapping—one two, one two three, one. I like it. I think it encourages the kids the shared moment.

For English we work on phonics (letter sounds) from pictures in the textbook, again writing only in the individual’s notebook. I read a story in the primary English book and the children read back to me. I ask them to write six nouns and six verbs (desk work). Then I grade the kids’ verb and noun lists. With a little help, they all got 100% A+. Not being the real teacher or a professional, I could be somewhat relaxed.

The teachers gather and eat oranges during the recess. Later when the students are quietly doing desk work, a mama goat with two babies comes to eat the orange seeds thrown out the door and the babies even dare to snatch some under Madam Rhoda’s desk chair.

After lunch at the villa, Esther arranges for Michael to take Madeleine, Betty, and me to the Thursday market. I think it safe to say we all three had a marvelous time seeing the many and varied venders and buying some things African to remember our tour here in Senchi Ferry and to take home for friends.