End of the second week and weekend activities

End of the second week and weekend activities

After two weeks, life is beginning find a routine. Navigating my way around town (slightly difficult without street names or signs), types of food and eating schedules, public transit, it all seems easy. Even cold showers are beginning to feel normal. As time progresses, the general week plan is beginning to take shape: teaching Monday and Wednesday (along with monitoring the sponsored children and recording their progress), child interviews on Tuesday (then compiling the data for the quarterly report), community awareness on Thursday (as well as meeting with parents), and finally meetings and paperwork on Fridays.

Most of my work currently is going into reporting on and monitoring all of the sponsored children. The official school year starts next week and I need to update all of their profiles and examining their marks from last term. It is important, especially when sponsoring children, to keep all of their reports up to date, both for their educational progress as well as to inform the individuals who sponsor them financially. Because I am in the classroom two days a week, it makes it much easier to monitor the children, but there is a still lot of work to make sure everything is prepared for the new school year. There are a total of 56 sponsored children in three different communities, but around 20 attend the Day Star International School in Senya (which is where I am teaching). My goal is to know each of them by name soon.  

As well as completing the reports and paper work, we are also busy talking to all of the parents. Even though Cheerful Hearts is sponsoring their child, which allows them to go to school when they otherwise could not, (option #2 for many of them is to return to child labour), still many parents struggle seeing the importance of education. Home visits are necessary to make sure that the parents understand the opportunity that their child is being given as well as to confirm that they will support their child’s quest for an education. There are many inspirational stories of children who single handedly changing their future through education, but most children (American, Costa Rican, Dutch, or Ghanaian) still need someone to help push them along and help them stay focused on their goals.

Weekends are slower with plenty of free time. After Friday, which involved a long day of meetings with various community volunteers as well as the planning of our major fundraising effort (which should start on Wednesday), I decided on Saturday to go and explore Accra (the capital of Ghana). Accra is about a 45-60 minutes tro-tro ride east of Kasoa. After a hot and cramped tro-tro ride, I arrived around noon to start my walking tour. I started in Jamestown, the oldest part of the city. The Jamestown fishing community was very similar to Senya or Nyanyano with many boat and plenty of poverty (but I did see my first University of North Carolina basketball jersey). There is also a small fort for as well as a lighthouse which are some of the oldest buildings in city. From Jamestown, I walked to Independence Square which is a large “fair grounds” where the president will give speeches and host other large national events. The football stadium is also across the street, but the season in Ghana has not yet began; a Ghanaian football game is definitely on my to-do list in the future. Along the way, I discovered the Nkrumah Mausoleum (a garden and memorial to the first Ghanaian president) as well as the Art Market, before turning back into the heart of the city to find the National Museum. I was not particularly impressed with the capital city. It was hot and busy, feeling very much like a large African city (which it is). I did however, find a restaurant where I could sit down at a table and order a sandwich (a slight difference from the normal rice and fish diet from roadside vendors).

After eating and getting a cold drink, I was reenergized and continued on my quest to explore the city. After walking into several shops, I found my way back to Nkrumah Circle, a major stop for tro-tros and taxis. With some time to spare, I decided to stop in an internet café to answer some emails where I asked the owner for a recommendation for dinner. I ended up finding a sports bar where I could grab some food and watch the football matches for the day (no, not the opening day of college football, but English Premier League football). EPL football is everywhere in Ghana. Everyone has a team and even in Kasoa there are small buildings that are lined with benches all focused on two or three tvs showing the biggest matches of the day (English and Spanish football is common, but Dutch leagues games are pretty tough to find).

After a long hot day, I was ready to head home, but decided to meet up with several of my coworkers at a local bar in Accra to hear music and have a drink. It was a fun night as the bar had numerous tables outside (finally cool after the sun went down) along with Ghanaian party music. It turned out to be a successful day in Accra, even though Accra may not be the easiest city to explore as a tourist.