OVERSEAS 1 - "Voluntary Service - Overseas at last"

I have just got back from a fascinating and eye opening trip to a remote area of West Mamprusi District called "Overseas.” It is so named because it is cut off during the rainy season (May to September) due to the numerous rivers crossing the land. There have recently been a couple of bridges constructed, but it is basically a very isolated area and teachers do not want to go there because life is hard.

I have blogged 13 (mostly short) entries about the trip - you may have to use the 'Older posts' link bottom right to see them all.

Many children had never seen a white person before and I caused a real stir everywhere we stopped. I began to perfect my royal wave.

Our trip lasted a whole week and was a joint venture between WorldVision and the Ghana Education Service. Our mission was to educate the School Management Committees (Governors) and Parent Teacher Associations as to their roles and responsibilities. Radically, I suggested we include some group work and each afternoon we split the attendees into school groups and got them to make a draft SPIP - School Performance Improvement Plan. This was a huge step forward as most of the committees had just been formed for the purpose of attending the training and had absolutely no idea what they were there for.

Group work.

Here I am trying to be helpful. There was always at least one english speaker in each group and he then translated for the rest.

OVERSEAS 2 - The Team

There were six of us in the team which was quite cosy in the car with four of us in the back. However the roads were so bad that sometimes it was an advantage to be wedged in a bit to stop one from flying off the seat.

Augustine, Ramatu, Kwame,Charlotte, Mohammed

Ramatu, Kwame,Sammy(our driver), Charlotte and Mohammed

Preparing for the workshop.

OVERSEAS 3 - The Environment

The villages are quite isolated with cattle herders roaming between the settlements. These are the Fulani people who live in round houses made of reeds and corral their cattle in pens made of sticks. The main language spoken is Mampruli but also Bulli ,so on the first day I had to have two interpreters which was an interesting experience.

Some ladies at the market.

The roads are in a terrible state. View through car windscreen.

The school field.

Ghanaians are terrible about dropping litter and there is rubbish and plastic bags thrown everywhere.

A herd of cattle crossing the football pitch.

OVERSEAS 4 - Programme and venues

As with all programmes in Ghana there was the challenge of "African time" with the itinerary optimistically suggesting a start time of 8.30am, whereas in reality we usually started nearer 11am. Some of the attendees arrived late but they had walked 3 hours to get there so we cut them a bit of slack and tried to give them lifts home when we could. On one occasion we thought the attendance was really good until we discovered that all the seats were occupied by village folk who had come to have a look, probably at me.

The venues were interesting, one church, one classroom (with 90 of us squashed into it), two meetings under trees and one in the World Vision Conference Centre. World Vision has done so much in the Overseas area. Mr Augustine really knows and cares about the people and their situations. He is also a lovely Christian man with a real call to enable the people to help themselves.

We targeted 32 communities and only two of them failed to turn up. In general they were extremely grateful to us for enlightening them and empowering them to take responsibility for their schools. One Chief even presented us with a thank you gift of two fowl and five yams! Some of the problems identified in the SPIPs included such things as shortage of teachers; lack of teacher accommodation, or teachers’ accommodation in a terrible state of repair; poor attendance of pupils; rural -urban drift or kayayei (where girls are sent to be ‘head porters’ in the bigger towns and often come back pregnant); lack of a source of water’ and the need to repair or build classrooms.

OVERSEAS 5 - The schools

The school and teachers’ accommodation in one village was particularly bad.

Note the collapsed mud brick wall at this end of the school.

The children carried the furniture out of the school for us to sit on outside.

The village in the background with piles of sticks for firewood and a VIP toilet (Ventilated Improved Pit) with a pipe to reduce the aroma!

The roof partly blown off this P5 class.                                                 The school office.

The Kindergarten Class

The floor was littered with bits of broken furniture and the walls were cracked.

The teachers' accomodation. Note the crack in the bedroom wall.

The kitchen. Three teachers live here.

 

The bath house, with no roof and a "screen door" for privacy.

OVERSEAS 6 - The People

We met some amazing people. One chap had gone back to school, into Primary 5 (average age 11 years) when he was 25 years old. His father had died and he told me he had to herd cattle on the family farm so he couldn't attend school as a boy. Anyway, he stuck it out and completed school and was now a Head Teacher in his community.
One evening we met the MP for the NDC party. He held court on a mound of sand in his front yard and offered us all sachets of water. He seemed well informed about his constituency and said he wanted to have some VSO volunteers to help him with his work.

We worked with upwards of 300 people in total and of the women, only 3 were literate. Bearing in mind that our attendees included a teacher and Head teacher from each community the reality is that virtually no villagers were literate. Some of the schools had only been opened 10 or 15 years ago and most of the attendees had never been to school themselves. Most people registered by making a thumb print on the paper.

It was great to see so many women attending.

This is Umar, a volunteer teacher who we are going to help to get a teaching qualification by distance learning from Cape Coast University.

OVERSEAS 7 - The Evangelist

As Augustine from World Vision said "Organise yourselves very well and apply the things you are learning here because we want to see a change. Learning is the key. Your children will come back and build the community because of education. If white people give money you will sit down and do nothing, even fight amongst yourselves. You must take action now and think for yourselves. Build your capacity to monitor teachers and do something new in your community. It is all about the children in our communities. Now it is time that we ourselves should rise up and plan and think about what is good for our children and their future. World Vision and GES have joined hands together to help you build your capacity as SMC/PTAs in your community. Open your mind and capture what is coming!"

The wonderful thing for me is that I delivered the same key messages to the SMCs here as I did to Governors back in England. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the most important things are to

1. Know your school,

2. Build relationships

3. Run effective meetings.

These same key messages seemed to be considered crucial here too and were well received. I must email my governor training colleagues back home and tell them!

OVERSEAS 8 - Responses

Here are some comments from the attendees:
" We need support, only one teacher is handling the whole school"
"What should we do if a teacher goes to collect their salary and never comes back?"
"As PTA/SMC can we intervene in an issue of a man giving his girl child in marriage?"
"As PTA chairman, how do I handle insults from members of the community because of non-performing teachers?"
"We plead that teachers should give their best and not indulge in sexual relationships with the school girls."

This man spoke passionately.

Group work.

Sharing ideas.

Helping the groups with their School Improvement Plans.

This woman was expressing her view strongly.

OVERSEAS 9 - Our Accommodation

We stayed in the World Vision accommodation which was really very civilised. We had a petrol driven generator for electricity (though various light bulbs were not working) and the girls from the local school brought us water for our bucket showers. There was a toilet which you flushed with a bucket of water and beds with a sheet (no pillow case, but you can't have everything).

The food was cooked by the Pastor's wife. Ghanaian food is enormously labour intensive and we had fufu, TZ, banku, guinea fowl and jollof rice. All Ghanaian staples.

Plucking the guinea fowl.                                                      Peeling the yam.

Making a drink for the attendees from ginger and millet.         Pounding fufu made from boiled yam.

I shared a room with a Muslim lady called Ramatu who preferred to sleep either outside or on the floor. Every morning she would appear at 5.30am to wash before her early morning prayers. It was a pity the screen door was so squeaky! Ramatu preferred to poo in the scrubland rather than use the toilet. She calls this "free ranging" and it’s very common amongst Ghanaians. However, when she nearly trod on a large snake she began to rethink this plan. We spotted several snakes and the men killed one as you can see in the picture.