October 30th 2012

Tuesday morning.

I set off with Castro, the head of the college to meet with the District Education Commissioner - his office is in Apam about 10 miles away.  The office is on the 2nd floor of the building, and there are a number of people outside waiting.  We get ushered in quite quickly - the affect of being a white person in a queue.  The District Commissioner is a busy man - and he has 4 mobile phones, most of which ring at least once during our conversation.  He is furious that this has happened, and recognises the potential embarrassment this might be for the country if an English charity is treated so badly.  We agree to write a letter of complaint outlining the problem.  

Back at the college there is still no electricity which is a real nuisance - IT classes certainly cannot happen...  I am going to talk to the staff about learner centred teaching this afternoon, so I spend a bit of time planning what I am going to say and how to do it in a learner centred way so that they understand and experience what I am talking about.

A group of travellers turn up - 3 people from England and their Ghanaian hosts.  They are friends of Tom Yendell and have heard lots about the charity, so come to see for themselves.  Two of the women are photographers here to work with the Ghana Institute to get some joint projects working.  

I deliver my talk to the staff which seems to go down quite well - time will tell whether it will have any effect, but it's a big change away from mostly lecturing the students.  At the end of the day, the whole student population are to be found on the compound cutting grass with cutlasses - knives about 18 inches long.  And the college's knife policy?  Every student should have one!!

Monday 29th October

Monday morning

The Vocational College starts its day at 7.15am.  We arrived somewhat later, and had a general introduction from Castro who is the head, and very calm and capable.  The college has about 150 students and will have almost 200 by the end of the year when the full compliment of first years have enrolled.  There has been some bureaucratic slowness in assigning students to colleges this year.  The General Election, due on December 7th, is being blamed, but it's hard to establish cause and effect.  

A collection of poles and separate electronic parts has arrived from Accra and lies all over the floor of one of the outdoor open-sided huts.  It's allegedly a wind turbine which will be about 10 metres off the ground when assembled.  Chris looks confident that there are the doings for completing that task but to me it looks more like the scrapings from a technology equivalent of an IKEA outlet.  Fortunately, it's his challenge, not mine!!

I go off to meet with some dressmaking students.  They are a combination of 3rd and 4th years, and my challenge is to get them to talk English with me.  English is their national language, but most speak Fante among themselves.  They agree that in principle they should be speaking English, but in practice?  They are quite ambitious, and we have an interesting conversation about going on to the Polytechnic and how they could fund that.  Some want to train to teach and come back and serve their community.  Others are much less communicative in the classroom, but happier chatting over their sewing afterwards.  They have an interest in fashion and also in tie-dying and batik which are popular here.  

After a break, I have a session with the year 1 students. There are 11 of them so far, and more will join in the next few weeks.  Some of them are housed by the college in a hostel.  14 to a room in some cases, and there are not quite enough beds, but we do have some on order, and will put them up in the garage until the new hostel is built next year.  

We talked about their backgrounds, about the presidential election due here in December.  They were all keen to vote, and to do so will have to travel back home or where they are registered.  There was a mixture of confidence that the candidates would implement the plans they outlined and cynicism that they might just be appealing to electors to get the power.  The students came from a number of local towns as well as Mankoadze (Man-kwa-ze) and a wide variety of family backgrounds too.  They range in age from 16 to 22, and have the usual mix of bravura and anxieties common to that age group in the UK.  But they do differ in that generally they do at least say that they want to learn and look as though they mean it.  

In the afternoon we have an official visit from Nana George.  He is the chief of the village, dressed in long robes, though with a mobile phone lodged somewhere inside, which he fishes for when it rings during our discussion.  There is a problem that the head of the organisation that provides some of our vocational staff has decided he wants to run the college.  We need to provide a united front to ensure that does not happen, and its very good to hear that we have his support.  

Sunday October 28th

Arriving in a country where it's hot whilst dark still confuses me.  However, we arrived at Accra and were met by an employee of the founder of the TEABAG charity.  Roger Gillman is English and is an undertaker who has a business in Accra, and so we were met by one of his drivers in a 7 seater limo!  Since we came here last, a new ring road has opened around the city, so as with the joys of the M25, traffic is now filling the motorway to a standstill whilst the roads through the city are fairly clear. 

We drove along the coast road this morning which was a fairly easy journey though it did start with a real shock.  A group of men were moving what looked like a small shed on a trolley and moved it in front of my car just as we left.  They turned it into the 3 lane dual carriageway - the wrong way.  A small child ran out to join them, and just turned back in time before I hit him.  Health and safety is rather different here.

We arrived at the village of Mankoadze mid afternoon, to find that it was the naming ceremony of the new daughter of the man who run's the beach lodge where we stay.  As I sit, some 3 hours later, there is loud heavily-bassed piped music, though most of the 200 or so guests have now gone.  It's now dark (6.10pm) and the cicadas or other noisy insects and surf on the beach are competing with the rhythms from the music.  The live drummers and band have all gone.  

We had a short walk along the beach accompanied by a few children who were keen to be our friends.  'What is your name?' is a sentence beautifully delivered by these children with sparkly white-teethed smiles.  Any answer than 'My name is ...' confuses them.  Whilst English is nominally their national language, it is generally very limited, and has usually been taught to the children by non-native speakers.  The best English is spoken by those over 80 who benefited from lessons by missionaries 70 years ago.  One of the contributions to village life that we can make is the English we speak.   

Several youngsters who we have met and worked with in the past gave us a very warm greeting.  It is very rewarding to help these people a little and know that they both really appreciate it, but also to see them changing and developing as time passes.