A lot has happened since the last time I wrote but I’ll try and make it brief because I’m exhausted!
The biggest thing is that school has officially started and, as it turns out, we are very busy. I am spending every day at the primary school which is a proper challenge. The others have one or two lessons a day while I’m teaching all day everyday so come home emotionally and physically shattered everyday. The first day of proper teaching was Wednesday of this week and fair to say was not the best. The headmaster, Mr Sogolo, walked me to Class Six, told me that there were no text books or curriculum, that all the jotters were in the cupboard which was locked because the teacher was in hospital and had the key, and then left. 30 confused faces stared at me as a frantically tried to figure out what to do. They had only had one day of teaching with the real teacher so I had really nothing to go on with their level or stuff they had to learn. What makes things worse is that they are proper devils. There is one 15 year old boy in the class (class is not determined by age but ability) who thinks he is the big man and all the other kids follow him. The only punishment that they will respond to is beatings, which I refuse to do, so any positive reinforcement or punishment that I try to do never works because it is always better than what other teachers will do. On Thursday it, unbelievably, got worse. They twigged that I won’t cane so their behaviour was out of control and I still had nothing of value to teach them. Friday was the worst though. I tried to do something fun with them by running a business enterprise day and get them to create and present their own product in groups or ‘companies’. They were so confused because I was asking them to come up with something themselves. These kids have never been asked to think for themselves or to be creative which saddens me. They have no concept of individual thought or argument, only one of copying and repeating. This is something I plan to tackle over the year because it is such a fundamental part of being human. It’s going to be a challenge because I will have to start right at the beginning of being creative and I don’t ever remember not being imaginative. Does anyone have any suggestions?
On a more positive note, we have met some other volunteers from Germany who live half an hour away. Their names are Alex and Tobi and we have been spending a lot of time with them which is really nice. Because we live 5 hours away from everyone else it has been really great being able to have some people to relate to. On Saturday we went through to New Ayoma, where Alex and Tobi live, for a Muslim Festival called Salah. They were kind enough to show us around and then took us to the house of the Muslim leader to watch a cow being slaughtered…! Luckily we arrived late (as per usual) so we only had to see a whole, skinned cow lying on the floor while everyone around it ate and laughed and pretended that nothing was wrong. The rest of the day we just played cards and chatted about stuff but it turned out that the best part of the festival was the next day so we went back REALLY early the next morning. What we didn’t realise was that because it was a Sunday there was no public transport so we got a lift from a passer by. It turns out that this passer by was a man off to his sisters funeral so he was playing really depressing music by the genius of Liberty X. When we got there things got really weird. The five of us were invited along to what can only be described as the Small Town Ghanaian Version of Jeremy Kyle and were asked to give marriage counselling to this couple who we didn’t know. It was a very weird situation to find ourselves in. In the end (through incredibly rough translation) we concluded that the man was a total asshole and deserved no love what so ever and that the woman should just ditch him. What made it worse was that the man’s girlfriend was waiting outside the meeting and they walked away holding hands! The festival was pretty sweet and was worth waiting for although we only got to see about half an hour of it because Frances and Rebecca wanted to get home :(
Someone recently asked me what one word would I use to describe this year. It took some time but the word I decided upon was, bizarre. This country is bizarre! The situations that we find ourselves in are bizarre and I’m loving it!
Abby
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