A Note On My School

All week, My Roomie and I have been observing the classes at our small church school, to try and pick up the necessary skills for when we begin our teaching this coming week. It's been a very enlightening experience.

The school consists of two buildings - one is the wooden church, and the other is a concrete block making up three classrooms. During the school day, the church is partitioned into six class spaces by large blackboards, and fits almost a hundred children. Most of the work is done off a blackboard- the kids' learning is more or less down to recitation and reading off the board. All the teachers have 'pointers'; thin wooden sticks, which they alternately draw attention to the board and hit the children with. The kids are remarkably keen to get involved with the beating process- on my second day in the school, three little girls came dancing up to me, presented me with one of the pointers and asked if I wanted to 'play the caning game.' I declined, and tried to explain that in my country you would go to jail for hitting your pupils. They all laughed hysterically at this.

I thought I'd be more upset at having to watch them get hit, but I've gotten used to it surprisingly quickly. Perhaps this is because the kids seem so unaffected by it- they get hit, and go back to their seats positively beaming. At every break and lunch time, my Roomie and I are mobbed by all of them. Wherever we walk, we are followed by two children carrying chairs for us, and if we ever want to sit down, we have to wait while they clean the chair with a cloth for us Once seated, around twelve of them will try to climb into our laps all at the same time. The littlest ones, around three or four years old hover anxiously at the edges of the crowd, staring at us with deep trepidation. The older children take delight in forcing them closer to look at the Obrunis, upon which the little ones burst into terrified tears, hysterically afraid of the ghostly women. Wherever we go, we find ourselves surrounded by cries of "Madame! Madame!" and get pulled in all directions to look at this picture, or this toy. They are enthusiastic about absolutely everything.

The teachers are a strange bunch. I had a fifteen minute conversation with the Head of the school a couple of days ago without understanding a single word of what he was saying. All the women handle the younger children- the nursery class of seventy children, and the first form. The older children are taught by a group of young men I have collectively termed as the Lost Boys. They have finished High School, and are teaching as part of their National Service, necessary for them to be able to go on to university. There are five of them, all twenty years old, all totally gorgeous, and all absolutely hilarious. Lacking the imagination to name them as individuals, I'll simply refer to them as D, M, R, E, and I. The five of them often sit around my Roomie and I, and try to teach us Twi, or ask us endless questions about England, where they all want to go one day. On wednesday, R noticed I had scribbled 'shortbread' on my hand with my pen (the results of several failed attempts to remember giving a gift to the rev.) and asked me whether I was worried about getting cancer. I explained that you couldn't get cancer from drawing on yourself, and handed my pen. He spent half an hour delightedly drawing pictures all the way up his arm. Easily pleased.

The School had a big celebration on Friday for the last volunteers, who are leaving Ghana in a couple of weeks. We all had to sit on a sort of raised dais bedecked with flowers and ribbons. Very exposed. There was a lot of dancing and singing (of course), and a new school bus got consecrated with holy oil in a spray bottle. After the party was finished (about five hours of sitting on that platform)- the Lost Boys took us into the church where we all sat and ate a local dish called Fufu off some upturned boxes. I can't really describe it, except that it involves a big lump of dough, a beef and salmon stew- Okra- and a lot of eating with your hands. It was the best thing I've had since I came here. Beef and salmon really shouldn't work in one pot. But it really, really did.

Yesterday, my Roomie, The Scientist, the Veteran Volunteer and I, and the Lost Boys all crammed into a small hired bus and went bouncing off over the hills to visit the Big Tree. A fairly self-explanatory name. The biggest tree in western Africa, 404 years old, in the middle of the surrounding rainforest. It was amazing; D tried to climb it, and got as far as the end of the roots before giving up. Trekking through the forest was like being in an Indiana Jones film; as the scientist commented, only the Nazis were wanting. Our bus got pulled over by the police on the way back- there was some problem with the license of our driver, which I would have been less concerned about had there not been a couple of rifles involved in the argument. We got back safely though, though rather shaken- round here you're considered boring if you drive anywhere at anything less than a hundred miles an hour, and seatbelts are, of course, totally out of the question.