Visiting With Have Teachers and the Trip to Dodome Teleafenu

NOTE: We are back in Accra with internet access and I was able to upload some photos and a video. If you are interested please visit: Ghana Trip Photos

Monday January 16, 2012

Breakfast is an omelet on Ghana bread with tea and milk, but the Ghanaians have milk with tea. I am hoping lunch will be that rooster who crows at midnight, two and five o’clock!

Today’s goal is to meet with teachers at the primary school and the junior high. We start with the little kids who welcome us with a song. The formalities are followed and speeches and greetings are exchanged with more music in between events. The children are dismissed and we meet with the teachers, while Afenyo gives our small gifts to the teachers. (Pens and Jesus post cards) Doug talks about the HM reading textbooks and the teachers investigate and flip the pages. We will leave the sample books at Adaklu-Have Primary School until Courage can return them on the day the container is unloaded. Courage will also make photo copies of the questions I carried from Joan and Candy and ask each teacher to look them over, answer them as completely as possible and return them. He will then consolidate the results and email or mail the results. Doug took some notes and exchanged email addresses with a primary teacher, Richard, in hopes we can build more bridges between the staff and us.

A similar exchange took place at the junior high minus the students and textbooks. Their main plea is for computers. The national curriculum requires teachers to cover ITC, but they do not supply the schools with computers. ITC is started in the primary grades and still no computers have been supplied there or at the junior high. Teachers then are teaching basic computer concepts and how to use them by the only means available to them—writing and drawing on the blackboard. This has to be happening all over Ghana! If you are reading this and care about it, please help us help them!

Lunch was interesting… a plateful of beans, a small salad and red-red. Red-red consists of fried plantains in palm oil creating the red effect. Gari is found in a bowl to sprinkle on top of the beans making for a lot more starch. Gari is cassava root dried, ground and crumbled. It has the nickname of “students’ friend” because in boarding schools they practically exist on it. It is easy to keep and carry and never needs refrigeration or attention. Just add water and viola!

Our next stop is in Ho to catch a taxi to Courage’s home village of Dodome Teleafenu. However the taxi to take us to Ho drives away before we are ready. When another one is called he goes into Adaklu-Have, picks up several people and drives right by also. Courage is angry and by now it is getting late so we catch the local tro-tro (the local means of human transport) which is usually a van with two seats on either side of a very narrow aisle. However this one is a converted pickup truck with bench seats along the sides. Each tro-tro has a driver and a driver’s mate who collects the money, makes room for you and helps stash your baggage. There are only three of us so it is no problem until we reach the next stop where nine more people get on, some with big bags of maize and other products. The resulting 14 people in a very small pickup bed with no head room is quite an experience. The dry season, dust, potholes and washboard gravel roads add to the experience. Still we arrive safely at the central bus station and pick up a cab going to Courage’s village.

We are greeted again by the chief and the elders of the village where we exchange welcomes and thank-yous and explain our mission. Afenyo’s father (Afenyo and Courage are the same person) explains the needs of the community and we tour various facilities after a shot of the local gin is downed quickly. The village needs are plentiful and agricultural assistance in the form of good practices and veterinary services plus financial assistance to finish and supply a maternity center next to the health center which they built themselves top the list. Of course computers are needed also, but the plan here is to house them in a community center so all schools and the community have access. They have two Pentium III machines at the moment looking a little forlorn and dusty in a big, empty hall.

Courage’s father is well read and likes to receive American magazines, no matter what the date. National Geographic, Newsweek, Time and Reader’s Digest are a few of his favorites. This is the first home Doug has seen in Ghana that has a stocked book shelf which Courage and his siblings, as youngsters, visited daily after school at their father’s insistence. Father would make up assignments for them to complete using whatever magazines and books were on hand at the time. They repeated all parts that were not answered to their father’s satisfaction—all this in addition to the full school day.

During the informal chat time and while we were waiting for a cab to take us back to Ho, Courage’s father commented about the mild winter in the U.S.A. this year. My jaw dropped, but when I thought about his reading habits, it was clear he reads everything he can get his hands on. I wonder how many Americans can tell you if the climate has varied from the norm in Ghana?

The paramount chief was fascinated with my glasses and kept gesturing to me to take them off. So when I did he tried them on much to his and everyone’s pleasure. I showed him the bifocals and we repeated the routine one more time so he could look through that part.

The trip into Ho was after dark and a range of low mountains are crossed. It was a delight to see the glimmering lights of Ho from the summit. The city was still humming when we ate obroni food consisting of chicken and fried rice. It was 9:30 by the time we returned to our guest house—a long, dusty and tiring, but very fulfilling and promising day!

Website version: http://e-quipafrica.org/content/visiting-have-teachers-and-trip-dodome-teleafenu