First, some bad news…my camera memory card got a virus (thanks, internet cafes), so I can’t upload any photos from it until I get back to the US and get it fixed…and we’d taken most of our photos on that one. But, that just means you get even more detailed blog posts from us :-)
Now the awesome good news! We’ve been here in Sumbrungu for almost 2 weeks, and have been in Ghana for almost a month. It’s incredible how the time has flown. We’re really settling in now and have a lot on our to-do list for the libraries in the coming months, including full inventory of books, follow-up on this summer’s reading camp research, a new evening program for upper primary students, and much more. To be honest, if we get at least half of our list done, I will be ecstatic.
As Laura said last time, we’re holding evening classes with the equivalent of 5th grade students 3 times a week. After the first week, the classes seem to be working well. We’ve been focusing on some of the reading strategies Francesca and Nico (previous FAVL volunteers) used this summer in their reading camps. For example, one strategy is “Look at the cover and try to predict the story”. The strategies are meant to help improve reading comprehension and make reading more fun. Laura and I are both extremely impressed by all the amazing work Francesca, Nico, and the Ghana FAVL team put into creating the camp materials. We can only hope we’re doing their work justice as we share their great strategies with other students.
To be expected, there has been some confusion across the language barrier even with our trusty translator Darius always on hand. But, many of the students have been faithfully coming in to the library during their school breaks to continue reading and working on the small assignments we’ve given them, which is a great sign! It’s also a great chance for us to spend more time working with individual students since we tend to be very time-limited at night (we don’t want to keep them out really late and get in trouble with their parents or be tired for school in the morning). For any Colby College readers out there, we also taught the students how to play WAH! They LOVED IT. And they now show up to class randomly shouting “WAH!” We’re going to have to get a video of this in action sometime (after the Macarena, of course).
During the day around the Sumbrungu Women’s Center (where we live and work at the library), we’ve become quite the attraction. Almost like zoo animals, if you will. The children never cease to be amazed by the “solmias” (our new Frafra word for “foreigner”). Sometimes students will show up before 8am, peering in through the windows to see if we’re up yet, ready to play a game or hang out with us reading in the library. As excited as we are for them to want to come to the library…some seem to have started cutting class to do so…we’re on the look out for it now and make sure they’re in class when they should be!
Speaking of school…we’ve had some very thought-provoking and enlightening conversations with a few people (mostly teachers) about their thoughts on the state of education in Ghana. Some of the issues discussed: teacher’s low salaries, extremely high student to teacher ratios, attempting to teach computer skills courses when your school has zero computers to practice on, school food program supplies being diverted to other parts of the world for disaster relief but never being transferred back to Ghana afterwards and leaving many students without food and unable to focus, and the high cost of attending school in Ghana. When we hear Ghanaians talk about these issues so passionately, by the end most start to look very sad and disappointed, almost dejected, in a way that says “We try so hard, but what is really changing? Nothing”. My thoughts: while it may take a very very long time to change these systemic problems with formal education, non-formal education (like community library activities!) can help fill in some of the gaps and continue to support students and teachers during the waitin’ on the world to change. At least that’s what I hope is happening… just some thoughts.
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