where is nige? beijing - mongolia - trans-siberian - stockholm - koln - turkey - syria - lebannon - iran - ghana - tanzania

Hi all,

firstly, sorry for the impersonality that is a web blog entry. thanks for all the emails and bday wishes, while id love to reply to each of you, i think a blog entry is the smartest thing, photos are on my picasa album http://picasaweb.google.com/nigel.kt.kee. i spent my bday marching with the kids at the school, in preparation for the annual Ghanaian Independance Day Parade two days later on the 6th of march, where all the schools come together, march/dance through the streets of town to the sounds of a brass band, then gather at the local football field for some speeches, an english military school style parade and a game of football. Im told that i didnt march too badly, or at the least, didnt embarass myself.

So ive been here in Kwahu Tafo for about two months now, and have a much better understanding of the organisation (Ultimate Volunteer Organisation, website on the way) and what its trying to do. They have just started a big restructuring, for reasons that i wont go in to, but unfortunately theyre pretty much starting off from scratch again, with no real support from their founders.

The first month that i was here i found things pretty hard going. culture shock was a weird thing, id never had it before. i just felt that things were going to be a lot harder than i had imagined. i guess all the previous places that ive travelled, at the least, the people had a similar mentality to me, and there was an ease of communication (even when there was little common language) and exchange of ideas which just isnt here in ghana. though now that ive been here a while ive bcome more accustomed to local life, and things are much easier.

So the organistions primary role is to take kids from families that are too poor to send them to school, and who would otherwise be bumming around the streets everyday, and sponsor their education. In addition the kids are involved in one of two projects that meet each day after school. The larger is the football project, with U12, U14 and U17 teams training every afternoon, and the second is a cultural group that learns traditional dances and drumming (and anything else the volunteers can teach them, im goign to try and choreograph a swing routine for them). The football kids have games every few months against neighboring towns, and the cultural kids perform in nameing days, funerals, and the occasional regional cultural festival. while the priority for the organisation is the kids' education, the kids' priority is the football or cultural groups, they wouldnt bother going to school (free though it may be) if they werent enjoying themselves.

Not all the kids come from Kwahu Tafo, many (esp football kids, who are chosen on talent by the coaches) come from neighboring towns. These kids are housed and fed in a boarding house style accomodation (a room about one third the size of a basketball court with 20 bunk beds in it) They stay in Kwahu Tafo during the school term, and return to their families during the holidays. In addition to sponsoring all the kids' education, the organisation runs casual classes, on anything from the school curriculum, during the holidays for those that are keen.

The role of volunteers is primarily to help with the kids' education. We (there are 5 of us at the moment) usually teach in one of the local junior secondary schools (grade 7-9) during the day, help out at the football training or cultural rehearsals in teh afternoon, then at night after dinner well walk down to the hostel and tutor anyone who wants some help. Also the volunteer donations are the main source of funding to house, feed, and pay for school fees. Anything left over (not often) can go towards football equipment, drums, transport to and from games etc. Unfortunately when volunteers are scarse, the organisations' founders pay from their own salaries (teachers get paid comparatively worse than in australia).

So whats it actually like. The concept of "school" is a bit different to ours. everything is really laid back here. there is a school timetable, but its just a rough guideline at best. Each day we (the volunteers) just turn up and if theres a class on that we can teach, well teach it, and if theres a classroom with no teacher in it, well start teaching something. or well mark some papers for the teachers, or just bum around with the kids - ive taught a bit chinese, some swing dancing, and a few australian songs. just talking in english to them is also helpful - the dialect here is Twi, but everyone is taught english at school (its needed if one travels to different parts of ghana where twi isnt the local dialect) though the standard is very low.

im mainly teaching science, they have a silabus that was written in conjunction with the textbooks, so im just working through that. unfortunately they dont have any science reagents or equipment of any kind, and only a few textbooks (for any subject, and only enough for the teachers really), so the learning is all by wrote from the blackboard. bad luck for kids who are visual or practical learners, and kids with learning disabilities have no hope.

The kids also spend a lot of time at The Farm. they have two farms going now, where they learn how to grow the staple crops - plantain (a large looking banana thing thats a lot more starchy), yam, maize and casava. standard punishments for coming late to class, misbehaving, or getting a question wrong in class (!?) is to carry buckets of water to The Farm, or a good old caning (volunteers dont participate :) the coordinators of the organisation, Eric and Christian, are trying to foster the beleif that fear of violence isnt the only way to motivate a student to work). Kids can be called to work on The Farm at any time, often a class that you had planned gets delayed a day or two by The Farm. or in the current case  delayed a few weeks by a combination of The Farm, The Junior School Sports Week, The Senior School Sports Week (where sounds from the field distracts the junior school kids such that its impossible to teach them, so they just work on The Farm instead), or the Independance Day Parade (where you get to have fun practising your marching around the school grounds all week).

Its a lot of fun, teaching, helping out at the farm, at the sports ground, marching, learning some dancing and drumming, im teaching them a few australian songs, and im slowing building up my repetoir of football songs ("Eguai Eguai Eguai Go! Ezai Ezai, Marmaeh, Marmaeh!"). so "school" in ghana is very different, though its only been this disrupted during febuary. All through January we had regular classes each day, trouble is im just not sure which is the norm :)

The one on one tutoring in the evenings is the most rewarding. Understandably when the Africa Cup of Nations was on, none of the kids were interested in being tutored, but since it finished (the Black Stars came 3rd, lots of unhappy kiddies) weve started up again. Also the blackouts have become much more frequent and longer now that international eyes have left the country :)

Home life is pretty simple. Im getting better at bathing out of a bucket (and i have to clarify that i dont actually fetch the water that is 15min away by bucket, the kids from the hostel do it for us, but i am limiting my shower to every few days, stretching an extra day - or two - out of each piece of clothing to minimise washing, to save water), im not so good at making the local dishes of Fufu or Banku (requires the pounding of yam a few thousand times, see pics), and if anything im gaining weight from eating too much yam. The standard diet here is a starch (yam/plantain/maize/rice) with a soup/sause of some kind (usually tomatoe based), and it can get a bit tireing :) All us volunteers have started torturing ourselves each night by talking about what foods were missing the most - cheese, chocolate, icecream, or something that isnt red, yellow or brown in colour, feature the most. but were getting by. you can buy a whole assortment of powdered chocolate/coffee drinks that are "just add hot water" (see picasa photos), though most of the time youre drinking purified water out of a plastic sachet, 5c governemnt fixed price, that people sell out of eskies they carry on their heads, and almost always ice cold.

To date, its been really dry, and really hot (a welcome change after russia, sweden, germany and the middle east in sep-dec), but the rainy season is just getting started (along with mango season:), and im told everything will quickly go from brown to green, the mossies will start coming out, and the red dirt will turn into red mud pretty much permanently. We had a downpour a few days ago and had water streaming through our closed windows, and about an inch of water on the floor. weve made a few amendments to the windows, ghanaian style "shove something in there to block it up", and have been ok since.

Spent a week site seeing and went up to the Paga crocodile park in the north, and back down to Mole national park in the centre of the country. Got to hold onto the tail of a croc, saw some baboons (had a bit of a biff with one when he tried to steal my biscuits), warthogs, antelope (saw a classic clash of the dominent male with a challenging male), and elephants taking an afternoon swim. One of the volunteers, Paul, must have been smelling bad or something as one elephant really didnt like him, raising his trunck and thrashing the water when he saw Paul. Soon after Paul did start smelling really bad after the same elephant came out of the waterhole it had been in and started charging towards him. Thankfully it was just a bluff and after getting within 15m of Paul it pulled up and just trumpeted some more. we made it back to to the road with all our limbs, though Paul was shaken.