Thursday, September 18, 2014

First day of school... in Ghana

Not to be confused with my blog post from the first day of school as a student teacher in Wellsboro - because there are several differences between the two places:

1) School started Tuesday... but there was no teaching. In fact, there were few students in classrooms. Most students were outside, either playing (elementary school) or cleaning the grounds. This includes:
  • cutting the knee-high grass around the school buildings with machetes (boys, ages 8-18 were partaking in this)
  • sweeping the classrooms, corridors, and sandy areas with hand brooms (girls of all ages were doing this)
  • cleaning up the litter (the waste management system in Ghana is still developing... thus waste is commonly tossed on the ground)
  • organizing desks and classrooms 



In Ghana schools, there are no custodians: the kids are the groundskeepers. I will reflect more on this aspect of Ghanaian culture in a future post, but let's just say it is a pretty ingenious structure to build life skills and a sense of responsibility for these kids and their place of learning. However, that does not negate the fact that learning wasn't actually happening on the first day... 
Anyways, all of this was readily occurring with a gentle roar of children uniting after 2 months of vacations. They were all in their pink and green uniforms (which coincidentally match the colors of the school buildings) and seemingly all hard at work... until it rained. 

2) Major differences also lie within responses to weather. In the U.S. (Wellsboro) we have snow days. In Ghana, we have rain days. Because 95% of the kids are walking to school and 80% of those kids don't have rain coats or umbrellas, school doesn't happen when it is raining. How hard must it rain for a rain day? Well, I would say if it is any heavier than what we would consider a steady "spring" rain, students aren't expected to be at school. There is no notification system, but they handle things well: if it is raining at 8 AM (school start time) and stops at 9 AM, you should come to school ASAP (i.e. 1 hour delay). If it keeps raining past 10 AM, you aren't penalized for not coming to school that day (i.e. more than a 2 hour delay). The weather here is about 75 degrees and pretty humid. I will note that it rained pretty hard for 1 hour this morning, then mildly hard for 3 hours this afternoon. It got pretty cool this evening (72 degrees) so I wore a jacket to go out... mind you, this is nothing compared to the -15 wind chill that welcomed me in Wellsboro this past January. :) 

3) I didn't have much to do during my first day. Teachers were running errands/registering new students. Kids were all over the place. My colleague/fellow 4-H advisor left me for several hours... so I just chilled in his classroom with some of my 4-H girls for the majority of the day, teaching them some songs and looking at pictures. I know this was to be somewhat expected due to the Ghanaian culture and sensitivity to time, but I would have hoped to do a bit more. Classes are actually expected to start next week (after a Monday holiday) so I will hopefully see some pedagogy then. 

While my first day of school in Ghana wasn't anything like my previous first days of school, I have had some awesome successes over the past week! Now all moved in and a week-long resident of Oseim, I have been able to engage with 4-H and the community almost every day. 

Last week I visited some more farms with Dustin, a fellow AgriCorps member, as he came to visit my village. We also helped set up the first "home entrepreneurship project" of the year! Samuel is the 4-H lead secretary and he set up his project on a small plot of land outside his house (which is about 300 yards from mine). We constructed about 8 raised beds for carrot production, with the 4_H advisors, Dustin, and the larger kids sharing the hoe and pick axe. Because everything is about community in Ghana, we had about 30-35 observers at all times. We put the small children to work picking trash out of the garden, and I got distracted by some of the babies... but it was a beautiful success! 




Later in the week, I met with my 2 other 4-H adviors to review some key aspects of the club and some major goal areas for the year. I am super excited about what is to come! While I know it will be hard to stay on track with some of the dates I designated for goals, I know there are motivated and supporting people here to make things happen. 

Saturday was the Sabbath at Savior Church (the church that founded the school) and it was also my prepared "Community meeting." AKA about 80% of my 4-H members and their families go to church and were present among the 500-600 people at the service where I introduced myself. I spoke to them a bit in their local language (they laughed), said that I loved their food (they clapped), shared about my 4-H and farming background, then stated my purpose for being here for the year (they seemed to fall asleep a bit...). Overall, however, I think it went well! The community is seriously very welcoming and gracious - I already feel at home here. 



On Sunday evening, we worked in the school garden for a bit... then continued into Monday morning: weeding, cutting, clearing the land. Based on a recommendation from myself about the mass amounts of green cuttings/weeds they were pitching, we made a COMPOST PILE on Monday! My first ever 4-H "lesson," to about 30 students, was a success! I shared that compost = air + water + nitrogen + carbon + microorganisms then, after they all correctly answered the "quiz" questions to check understanding, we got to making a 8 ft by 4 ft compost heap! It's pretty massive... I hope it turns out well! 




Wednesday was quite a bit more productive compared to Tuesday - we had a 3 hour staff meeting for the teachers to be assigned their classes, then a good 4-H executive meeting! I am getting excited for Friday's general member meeting, the first of the year! More to come later!


Monday, September 8, 2014

On the edge of the diving board


You know that moment when you are standing on the edge of the diving board? It’s when you’re hovering over the 12 foot deep pool of water deciding how to best execute the dive – there is excitement, anticipation, a vision of how your dive will look, and maybe a bit of anxiousness over the potential for messing up.

That moment is now.

The past 6.5 weeks of training, transition, excitement, stress, and growth have brought us to this point – we have been training to dive in to our true year of AgriCorps service. While we may have been mentally preparing ourselves for a Liberian pool filled with post-war problems, little to no educational structure, and a very physically challenging environment, we are now finding ourselves standing at the edge of a decently attractive Ghanaian pool – this one with a bit more educational structure, a strong 4-H foundation, and much more room to swim around. I can already see the positive impact of diving in and I can clearly see myself diving deeper than I would have expected to in Liberia.

We have been in Ghana for 3 weeks now. So far, we have had cultural/language training, agriculture training, and we got to go to our our villages for a set-up/scoping visit this past week. Then, after the 4-day village visit, we reconvened as a team in Koforidua for a weekend of review/final training. Although all of us were ready to “get to our village” for so long (because we literally have lived with each other for 6 weeks straight), we certainly were excited to see each other after just a few days apart – mainly because we were all so anxious to share about the awesome things we learned from our placements!! Let me share some of 
  • My new home is great! My “host family” is a young couple with 2 small boys under age 6. The father, Richard, is my “counterpart” and one of the 4-H advisors for Savior Junior High School (JHS). He is great to work with and his wife is eager to teach me Twi and how to cook, etc. so I am super excited about this new home and my cheery, spacious room.
  • My 4-H club is rocking – it is seen as one of the most advanced in the region in terms of size and scope. The kids have been so welcoming (AKA at least 5 visited the house every day I was there last week) and one of my officers has even started a home garden project even before school started!!
  • The community is fantastic. Oseim (my new town) is a genuinely welcoming place and the Savior church community seems like a great area. People are kind and always willing to greet me or help me. I held a successful stakeholder meeting last week with some key persons in the school and community and everyone was willing to work with me and 4-H to improve the lives of the youth and farming community.
  • There is already stuff happening... just because they have a foreign volunteer! While at first I doubted that my presence or work would bring much visible “fruit,” I learned quickly that the fruits are already present... even before my official start time! There is a very prominent Cocoa farmer in my town who is also head of the entire Savior church in Ghana. He is currently in the U.S. for a conference or event (as he is the World Cocoa Foundation President) and will be back soon, but he apparently is excited to meet with me. Plus, he donated about an acre of land for our school 4-H to expand its garden program... and he did this before I even arrived! Even more, there are some larger animal farmers in the area who are willing to donate pigs and rabbits for our 4-H to start one of the first school animal raising projects in the region!
  • My school and community have high expectations of my time in Oseim – this is where the “anxiousness” of diving in is sourced. I know I will not have all the answers: I will mess up. But I am still so excited to work WITH the youth and community to empower them for sustainable agrarian and economic change... and let’s not forget how many awesome public speakers will come from Savior 4-H by the time my year is over!
I am sincerely excited to dive in to my year of service. There will be problems and barriers: I will get frustrated with the relaxed culture, especially in professional settings. I will miss home and I will feel lonely. I recognize these things, but I embrace them for they will allow this new “job” to be an all-encompassing growth experience.


So what next? Well, after a lovely weekend of team reflections and preparations (and some down time at an ACTUAL pool at a local hotel), I am ready to head back to Oseim tomorrow to GET STARTED! Classes start next Tuesday (September 16) and I have no idea how school will look or what my teaching will look like, but I will be teaching integrated science classes.

Here I stand at the edge of the board. The pool of opportunities is huge. Room for impact is unknown yet promising. I am ready to dive in.

And now you get to enjoy photos of the last 2-3 weeks, since I was unable to upload them for my last blog!

This is my school's 4-H garden!! Check out that welcome sign.

Ag training in Atiwa district (2 weeks ago) with extension officers

That time I wanted to do individual farmer interviews and my counterparts set up a meeting of 11 farmers with me and 14 farmers with Melissa... It didn't go as smoothly as I would have hoped but it was fun to talk to them!

Piglets we may be getting for our 4-H program!! I am SO EXCITED! They have pretty nice structure and genetics!

Another local hog facility - some pretty nice stuff... 

Dog breeding at a local farm! They weren't quite pure bred, but they were cute.

This chicken farmer has 15,000 layers at his farm - he has been to ag trainings all over Europe and imports his chicks from Germany... crazy.

That one evening a herd of cattle made its way through our school yard... (note: cattle are NOT common here)


My cheery room and my new mosquito net! It makes me feel like a princess... really!

Good reflection and brainstorming occurred this past weekend in Koforidua with my AgriCorps family!

Check it out: I am starting to develop my own head carrying skills! I am excited to learn so much more while I am here!