Ghana Team Journal

Thought for the day:

“Some pursue happiness, others create it.”

Journal by: Liz

Today we again had a filling breakfast of egg and veggies and toast – to keep us going on another hot day until lunch at 1:00. We heard the journal for yesterday and talked about logistics for the day. Some of us had spoken to the man from Holland who is living here. He is working on the new hotel being built across the road, perhaps as an engineer or supervisor. He says it is a good kind of business. Apparently people from Accra like to come to this area on a weekend and meetings are held here, too.

We went to our classrooms where more children than yesterday showed up in my class and Sandy’s . I had 18 in my class. Rosina wasn’t there when most of the children had arrived, so I started. The children sang two school songs and did their pledge of allegiance to their flag. Then we sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” again. I had made some flash cards the night before and I started with them doing addition and subtraction. They have difficulty understanding the concept of subtraction – Eric told them to get some stones in the yard to figure out the problems. That seemed to help. One boy named Lawrence couldn’t do 2 + 2. I gave him some easy math and later he was doing what the others were doing.

It was getting near recess and the children were getting restless, so Winifred read “Goldilocks” from a book Sandy borrowed from the library.

Then we had break. Most of the adults sat under a tree in the plastic chairs. Rosina showed us some beautiful dresses she has. She told us on Friday we will have a party here at The Guest House and need to wear a Ghanaian dress to dance in.

Winifred does some of the teaching with me and she put math problems and fill-in-the- space word problems on the board for the children to copy and take for homework. This copying takes a long time. Then we check what the children have copied. Some take much more time than others – some help others. Then the children just sit around and talk. They came up to me with their books to be sure they had copied correctly. And then I had the bright idea to give them some math problems in their books. They loved that and kept coming up for more. I made the problems more difficult as they went along. They were having fun and so was I!

When we gathered to come home Eric gave each of us a plastic bag with our names on the outside. We peered in and saw a beautiful cloth bag in Ghanaian colors. When we arrived back at St. James each of us opened our bag and found a beautiful dress in awesome colors. We all thought we were in heaven with our gifts. What could be more typical of Senchi Ferry? But what was overwhelming is the generosity and thoughtfulness of all those teachers, when thy have so little.

When we left school, waving goodbye to the children, I felt emotional about them. I know some of them now, have grown to really care for them and finally feel immersed in their culture.

Susan, Pat, Sandy, Vivian and I were all very concerned about accepting these gifts. In talking it over at lunch with Esther she assured us we could keep our gifts.

Pat, Sandy and Liz went with Esther, her 3-year-old son Yaw and a young woman from The Guest House to the Continental Hotel for a 30-minute boat ride on the Volta. River. The boat had a cover so we wouldn’t get sunburned and had an outboard motor. We all wore life jackets as Esther had requested. The boat ride was wonderful!!! It was lovely to be out on the water, skimming along in the breeze. We passed little villages where children waved. We saw many boats on the river. And the shores with their vegetation were beautiful – refreshing and cool. I had a feeling that I understood why some of the local people wouldn’t want to leave here. The landscape is so lovely and the life is at an easy pace. Why leave?

We arrived back at the library in plenty of time. Many children were already there. Sandy did a very good job at getting the children quiet and she read to them. Samuel arrived and he asked almost every child in the room what they wanted to be in the future. And then he asked some of them to explain exactly what these different jobs entailed. A short big thunderstorm happened. At the end Samuel gave a slide show from Global Volunteers of 2010. All the children loved seeing the pictures.

We walked home, hand in hand with some girls who live in New Senchi. Cailin and Julie walked to the river with some kids.

At supper Kathleen told us that the decisions had been made about who would receive the scholarships to go to high school. There were more finalists than could receive scholarships. We talked about ways money could be raised to give more scholarships.

And now after typing this day’s journal I am going to prepare for tomorrow’s class.