Community Event Movie Presentation

Community Event Movie Presentation

Here is my community write up for last night's movie showing:

As Senya’s Akumese Festival was drawing to a close, Cheerful Hearts Foundation had a special event planned for the community. Sadly, many children and parents do not understand the importance of a child’s education as well as the dangers of the fishing industry. In order to raise awareness, Cheerful Hearts Foundations prepared a movie showing for the entire community to shed light on what is really happening to their children.

After an epic rainstorm completely destroyed any hope for an outdoor movie on Tuesday night, Cheerful Hearts decided try again the following day. Even though we had originally planned to have our showing on the final day of the festival, we still hoped for a good turnout. A group of volunteers arrived around 2:00 pm to start building excitement for the film. Along with the loud dance music and amusing verbal banter, Cheerful Hearts hired a car with speakers to drive around Senya inviting all residents in ear shot to come to learn about the issue of child labour and trafficking in Ghana.

As the sun began to go down, a crowd started to gather. With seating space limited, both children and parents began finding a space outside the church to better see the screen. By the time it was completely dark and the crowd was loosened up with some clips of Boys Kasa, Eric started the presentation with some information about the power of a child’s education and the purpose of Cheerful Hearts. With nearly 500 people eagerly waiting, Eric turned the microphone over to Hayford and the movie began.

Hayford, the director of the local school Day Star, helped translate the movie into the local Senya language, keeping the crowd both excited and curious throughout the entire presentation. Many parents and children did not have any idea what happens to the children when they would leave to work in Yeji or other fishing villages. The truth about the poor living conditions, acts or threats of violence and beatings, as well as the life ending or debilitating injuries accompanied with the fishing industry were shocking to many in the crowd. Watching the audience, it was easy to see how seriously they were taking this new information, as many were shaking their heads or looking away, finally beginning to understand the horrors associated with child labour.

After the movie finished, the discussion turned to the importance of child education. Several community members stepped up to the microphone to express the importance of school. Each speaker expressed how education is the key which opens all the doors for a child’s future. Child trafficking has robbed many children of the opportunity to obtain an education, but the community needed to know that these children still had the opportunity to change their futures. One of the most powerful moments of the evening occurred when several of Cheerful Hearts’ sponsored children came to address the community. Their excitement and drive to change their future was empowering to every child in the audience and their appreciation for Cheerful Hearts and their sponsorships was emotionally touching for everyone involved. Hearing such meaningful message from the very boys that had been working on Lake Volta and were now back at home and in school brought the crowd to their feet with a standing ovation.

The movie night was a huge success and helped raise awareness about the dangers of child trafficking. Keeping children in school and away from the exploitative and abuse work on Lake Volta is the key for both the children of Senya as well as the future of all of Ghana. Cheerful Hearts wants to thank both the IOM and Challenging Heights for their film as well as so many other individuals in the Senya community for helping to put together such an impactful event. Awareness and education is the first step in stopping child trafficking and Cheerful Hearts Foundation is proud to have had such a successful event last night in Senya. 

First Day of Child Interviews

First Day of Child Interviews

This morning was the first day of child interviews, so I took a tro tro to Senya to gather data for the child trafficking research (This was my first time attempting the journey solo, but made it without problem). This data then gets entered into a spreadsheet, from which we create a report each quarter about the trafficking problem in Ghana. Today is an important day because it is the final day of the festival in Senya, and many families (and trafficked children) return home for the week to celebrate.

I met Hayford, who is the director of one of the local schools where we have many of our sponsored children in Senya. He is a well known figure in the community and works with a lot of the children throughout the town. Walking the streets with him is similar to walking with a celebrity as he must stop and say hello to everyone. Together we walked towards the shore to find some children that he knew were trafficked.

  

During the interviews, I try my best to fill out a questionnaire and use Hayford as my interpreter. He is able to explain what we are doing and speak to the children and families in the local language (which I cannot). Our first interview was with a boy that Hayford knew. He was 14 years old, and had been trafficked to Yeji by his uncle for almost 6 years. In Yeji, he would fish, mend nets, and help on the boats. He was often beaten by either his uncle or by his boss if he did not do as he was told. The boss would prepare two meals a day, but did not provide other supplies such as shoes, clothing, or personal hygiene products. He had to work 6 days a week and could then work on Sunday on his own in order to make some money for himself. Conditions were quite bad and he attempted to run away once, but was caught and beaten. After that experience he never again attempted to escape. One of the questions on the questionnaire asks, what he disliked and liked during time working on Lake Volta. Sadly, he could not think of anything he liked and could only describe the situation and the work conditions as bad. Most of his answers were short; it was obvious that his time fishing was not a memory that he wished to hold on to. He said that he was never seriously injured, but he did know of several children that died while in the water, normally getting caught trying to untangle the nets from the underwater hazards. These stories were not unlike others that I had heard and read, but having them told by such a small child made them much more real.  

While walking through the crowded neighborhoods, Hayford asked a local child if he knew where to find other kids that had been working on Lake Volta. Quickly, he led us to a neighbor’s house. The home belonged to a porridge seller and a large extended family all congregated throughout the living room. She told us that her sister and husband had moved with their family of 9 children to Yeji to work as fishermen. All 9 of the children were forced to work long hours with their father on the boats. Two children were now in Senya living with her, so that they could attend school. The girls had a similar story about their fishing jobs; lots of work and no free time, accompanied by beating when they did not work hard enough. They were very shy especially in such a crowded house to tell us any details, but they were happy that their parents allowed them to travel to Senya, in order to go to school instead of work on the boats. 

Our interviews were cut short today as it started to downpour as we were leaving the girls house. Luckily we made it to the school where we sat stranded for several hours until catching a tro tro back to Kasoa.

Festival

Festival

The weekend is free time and after a week of cultural adjustments and working, I was excited to have some time to explore the town. Three volunteers were leaving on Sunday after two months in Ghana, which meant that we needed to celebrate their final weekend. Luckily, it was the perfect weekend for a celebration, as Senya (the fishing village that I am working in) was having their yearly festival. The festival celebrates the first harvest which eliminated hunger and allowed the village to prosper back several hundred years ago. Each year, many families travel back to Senya to see family, dance, and party.

We decided as a group to go to the festival on Saturday night. We arrived around 8:00 (which seeing as I have been going to sleep around 9:00 was quite late). Even if I was tired (partly because of a 45 minute tro tro ride in the dark), my energy levels were recharged quickly as we walked down the crowded street. Everyone seemed to be outside and spontaneous dance parties were found on every block. After a walk up and down the main street, we (3 international volunteers and 4 Ghanaians) went to the main bar located at the front of the town which was hosting a live band. The group continued drinking and dancing the night away, first to the live music outside, and then to the “night club” inside. A mixture of some American and some Ghanaian hits kept the crowd entertained well into the night. It is always interesting being the only white guy on the dance floor, and I tried my best to overcome the painful dancing stereotypes that have plagued the obruni for years. Sadly, the final night of festivities where we were going to show our a movie about child trafficking was rained out, but hopefully we will reschedule for this week.

   

Teachers Training and Liberia Refugee Camp

Teachers Training and Liberia Refugee Camp

Fridays are reserved for staff meetings and administrative work. After planning the schedule for next week and going over all of our current projects, I decided join the director for a teachers training in the local fishing village of Nyano. We arrived at one of the local schools where around 15 teachers had come to listen to the training. The focus was on lesson planning both about its importance as well as how to do it. I was shocked to find that less than a quarter of the teachers were planning their lessons. Eric, the director, stress how important teachers are to the future of the children and the country. The root cause of children not growing academically or in some cases losing ground is due to a lack of planning on the teacher’s part. Many teachers start class late, ramble through the material, or even don’t know enough about the subject to field questions and help the children understand. Luckily, this group of teachers was very responsive to Eric’s message and many asked about follow up trainings.  

Because I had some free time in the afternoon, I decided to join another volunteer who was working on a side project at a local orphanage. She works on the public health project and spends several days in the local health clinic. During that time, she formed a relationship with an orphanage and decided to help paint their facility. The health clinic and orphanage is located in the Liberia Refugee camp about 15 minutes outside of Kasoa. This area of land was given to the UN to create a refugee camp during the Liberian civil war in the 90s. After the war was completed, Liberian citizens were either offered to go back to Liberia, or some were given a ticket to the United States. With many not wanting to return and a minimal time limit on the United States offer, a large number of Liberians still live in the camp (although many Ghanaians have also moved in during the last 5-10 years). It was interesting walking around the camp. Many buildings still looked like temporary house. The buildings, which were made of wooden walls and sheet metal roofs, had been built to last a couple years, even though it had been almost 20 years since the camp’s creation. Poverty was a problem and the streets were covered in trash. In the past year a large area of homes had been bulldozed to make room for the health center, effectively leaving many families homeless. Prostitution has also become a problem in the camp as it is very difficult to makes ends meet. There is still work to be done at the orphanage, but all of the residents were so excited with the new paint job and could not stop talking about how beautiful their home now looked.   

Twi word of the day=

Madase “Thank you”

First Day Teaching

First Day Teaching

School does not officially start until September as students are currently on summer vacation, but for me classes began today. Cheerful Hearts helps put on summer classes for children to help prepare them for the upcoming year and monitor the development and progress of their sponsored children. Paired with a local school in Senya, four of us (two Ghanaians, a Russian, and myself) took the Tro-Tro (minibus-taxi) to the beach to teach the eager student (which is about a 45 minute ride for 2 cedis which is about $0.55-0.60)

Even though class was suppose to start at 9:00, Ghana (and specifically summer school) is not necessarily on a particularly strict schedule so we began class at 10:00. I was working with the youngest age group which only had 9 children in class. There were a total of 25 students present which is much higher during the school year, 11 of which were sponsored children. I was in charge of basic English. During the first half of class we worked on the first 10 letters of the alphabet. We wrote the letter in our workbook and then drew a picture of a word that starts with that letter. With each letter we chanted the sound that it makes (ex. a… a… a… apple, b… b… b… ball). After finishing the first 10 letters we wrote the letters again on our sheet in both capital and lowercase print. We finished the class by played a game where we tried to think of other words that start with each letter. The class could come up with between 3-8 words for each letter and we would stop when we could not think of any more. After break (which was absurdly long and included soccer and general goober-like behavior) we wrote down the second set of 10 letters in our note book along with a picture, again chanting each sound as we went.

Most children speak basic English, but spelling was poor. We started the class with introductions, which were hilarious to me. When asked “how are you?”, there is only one response ever given throughout the entire country, “I am fine, how are you?”(Pavlov would be thrilled). Even walking around town when children yell out “Obruni, Obruni” and you wave and ask how they are, the response is always “I am fine”. Everyone in the whole of Ghana is always “fine”. We went around the class one by one with “What is your name?” and How are you?”; “I am fine”, “I am fine”. I also asked the children to come up with a word for each letter so that we could draw it. A was apple, B was ball (soccer ball obviously), C was cat, D was dog, E was elephant (which I was complemented for my elephant drawing, not so much for my dog), F was fish (practically the only source of food in the town), G was goat (which walk the streets everywhere), H was house, I was ice cream (still yet to try Ghanaian ice cream), J was jacket (which is worrying because everyone is currently cold in Ghana even though it must be high 70s or low 80s; I fear for the heat which is hiding just around the corner), K was key, L was lion, M was mango (everyone was a critic on my mango picture), N was nail, O was orange (which I can’t pronounce apparently), P was pineapple (most proud of this picture), Q was queen, R was radio, S was snake (which I have not seen any so far, thankfully), and T was television (which is always on in our house and is fairly funny to me; special effects in Ghanaian movies are super low quality and turn scary movies into comedies). The kids did a great job drawing and even humored me as I chanted the sounds each time we said a word.

The big realization after teaching in the United States, Central America, and now Africa, is that kids are kids. It is fun to see the differences in culture, but in the end they are all fun, curious, and energetic kids that are generally excited to be having fun and learning. Quirky as they may be, they still fight over pencils, go silent when called on (or jump out of their chair, apparently no middle ground), and want your attention and affection.

Ghana Trafficking and Family Interviews

 Ghana Trafficking and Family Interviews

Yesterday, I finished my orientation and learned more about the research that is being done by the Cheerful Hearts Foundation. Both child labour and trafficking are a problem throughout Ghana. Many poor fishing villages force children to work on the boats pulling or mending the nets, or in the village collecting, drying, and selling the fish. Forcing children to work and restricting education only perpetuates the cycle of poverty. The village that I am focused on has some child labour similar to surrounding villages, but due to minimal boats and coastline, it is more known for child trafficking. Because of to the large population and excessive poverty, Senya is a source for many children to be trafficked across the country as well as internationally.

In order to better understand the problem, my organization is working on interviewing children and families throughout Senya. The first types of interviews are with the children. When doing child interviews, it is important to talk to the fishermen first. The fishermen watch over the children and you must obtain their consent before any interview. Children discuss their long work hours and minimal pay as well as the dangers they face in the poor working conditions. Fishermen often feel that they are helping the children by providing them food or money so that the kids can survive and possibly support their families, but rarely see the disservice they are doing not allowing school and risking the children’s health and safely. Even though children will be working long hours in a dangerous job, their situations are often better than the children who have been trafficked to other parts of the country such as the Lake Volta region.

We also interview families and have different questionnaires depending on if the family has children being trafficked, who have been trafficked, or who are not trafficked. When a child is trafficked, most parents are involved in some way. Often parents will receive money upfront when the child is taken, and then have minimal contact with the child. Selling their children, normally to a family member or friend, is a quick source of income and parents rarely think about the future consequences of their actions. Even just a few dollars is tempting to short sighted parents living in extreme poverty. Parent will often have an idea of where their child is going and will possibly see them if they are allowed to return home for holiday at the end of the year, but they rarely know the true story. Most children are passed from one individual to another until they arrive at the trafficker with a number of other kids who are set up with a fisherman in need of cheap or free labour. Most of the time, the parents only know the first people in this long line of trafficking. After a one year contract (or possibly longer or indefinitely) it is not uncommon for parents to prolong the trafficking contracts for additional money. Sadly when children are asked, many do not know that their parent or caretaker was given money in exchange for their “employment”. One trafficked child who is now sponsored by Cheerful Hearts to attend school but trafficked from age 7 to age 17 and did not return home for 10 years.  Children are also trafficked internationally, because many Ghanaian fishermen travel and fish internationally. Because of language barriers and a preexisting personal relationship with the kids, local children are often targeted by traffickers who work in Togo or other neighboring countries.

It is important to be deliberate in the use of terminology during interviews and make sure to tone down the issue of trafficking when talking with parents. Interviewers must ask about how many kids are in school and how many are not, trying to stay away from directly talking about “trafficking”. Parents could get in trouble if they talk about trafficking their children to law enforcement and interviewers need to get the most accurate and unbiased information possible. It is interesting when asking if the parents who traffic children should be prosecuted during the interviews, because responses correlate very closely with the education level of the interviewee. Most feel that the parents should not be prosecuted, but many feel that parents need to be educated about the consequences of their actions. Community education has become focus for Cheerful Hearts due to the information they have heard from interviewed parents.

One child that I worked with in school today was named Kow. He is a 15 year boy, but is currently at a kindergarten grade level. When he was 6 years old, he was sent 450km away to Yeji (a dangerous area for child labour on Lake Volta) to work helping to pull nets. He stayed there for 5 years, working seven days per week without earning any money. Kow didn’t like his work as he had to start at 6am in the morning, working until 7pm in the evening. He stated that it was very tiresome and that he often his hands got hurt by pulling the nets. Now he has returned to Senya and is sponsored to attend school by my organization.  There are many other stories of children either working in Senya or being trafficked to other fishing villages, all of which are not allowed to go to school and create a future for themselves. Some are paid generally less than a dollar a day and many are injured or have friend that are injured due to poor treatment, abuse, or the dangers of getting caught in the nets when diving to untangle them.

I will have more information about child and family interviews as I start conducting them along with a Ghanaian national over the next few days.

I also learned a little about some of the other projects that I will be helping with during my stay. Cheerful Hearts is conducting and publishing research as well as sponsoring children to keep them out of labour trafficking, but obviously, sustainability and address the poverty issues is a key concern. Sustainability and was first addressed when interviewing a little girl who wanted to continue in school, but asked how can the organization help her mother to allow her the opportunity for school and a future. Agriculture, microfinance, water projects, refrigeration center and general job creation are all being debated. Two projects are underway including a refrigeration center which would allows food to last when harvests are small and create jobs, but the most the most important project is a poultry farm which is currently undergoing the fundraising stages.  Agriculture is difficult because it takes a lot of time to set up, but a poultry farm would be a new food source other than fish and provide a new industry in the town. There will still be challenges for workers to manage money which would require education and classes to the farm, but these classes have been planned and are ready for implementation. Many parents do not understand how to manage money which is why they would sell their children for only a few dollars, living in the present and not thinking about the future. Families of sponsored children would be hired to work the poultry farm in order to address the source of the trafficking issue instead of simply sponsoring and educating individual children (which is also important). There is so much going on that it is exciting to be a part of the solution the one of Ghana’s largest human rights issue. 

Day One Complete

First day is complete. Today I found out that I will be working in Senya, one of three coastal fishing villages where Patriots Ghana sponsors child labour survivors. After meeting with the project coordinator at the office, a small group of us got on a Tro-tro (a group taxi) to travel to Senya. Senya is a source for many victims of trafficking and child labour. Many children are trafficked from Senya, either exploited in the village itself or “groomed” before working in nearby villages or on Lake Volta (where child labour is the worst). Poverty is very visible and leads to the exploitation of the children. Fishing is the only source of income in the town. Job choices are fishermen, who work on small boat, fish mongers, who are women who buy the fish from the fisherman, and the fish salesmen. Due to a lack of refrigeration, fish is either dried or smoked and is the main source of food along with some goats and chickens which are owned by the families and walk the town freely. Days without much success fishing affect the entire village and fisherman are forced to use very small nets especially as the coast is overfished and the size of fish decreases. 

While exploring the village, we made our way down to the water, which was full of activity, men preparing their boats and nets, women with large containers to buy the fish from the boats, and many children playing by the boats and in the water. The fishermen will often ask the children for help with net repair or untangling nets in the water. First, the fishermen will ask for help possibly giving the children a small payment working to recruit them. Eventually the children are trafficked to other towns and exploited for little to no pay. The most dangerous conditions are on Lake Volta in the east of the country where many children can die as they get tangled in the nets while underwater or dive into underwater trees or rocks.

My schedule will be a combination between conducting child and family interviews for research and teaching the sponsored children in the local school. Patriots Ghana works with several different schools in the area and keeps reports on the children that they are sponsoring, monitoring their education progress, class attendance, and family situation. Two days a week will be spend teaching and monitoring the sponsored children's progress while the rest of the week will be spent conducting child and family interview looking for new sponsorships, conducting research on the labour trafficking problem and doing other community outreach. Patriots Ghana is also preparing for a community movie showing (IOM created movie) in order to increase awareness in the upcoming weeklong summer celebration. A handful of victims are coming home in the next week for holiday, before returning to the fishermen who are exploiting them. I have heard that it is easy to identify the trafficked children when they return due to their physical state.

Africa itself is a very different experience from my past work and travels. Walking around the villages is a very strange culture shock. It is quite strange being such a visible minority Every child will yell out “Obruni” which means “white person”. They yell, often at the top of their lungs “Obruni, Obruni, Hi, How are you? Obruni”. Their English conversational skills often stop at “how are you”, but some will grab your hand, either wanting a hand shake or to walk with you. They will not stop yelling unless you acknowledge them somehow and seem excited to see such a strange white creature in their village. 

I Have Arrived

I have officially arrived in Ghana. For the next 12 weeks, I will be working with an NGO called Patriots Ghana located in Kasoa, Ghana. After a summer in Washington DC doing research work for the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, I am excited to beginning my second internship working in the field.  

I arrived in Ghana from the Netherlands. After a stopover in Frankfurt and a 6 hour flight, I walked off the plane. It was warm, but the sun had already gone down making it a perfect summer night (even though locals were stating how cold it was, which is worrying for the heat to come). After passing through customs, I met Douglas, the director’s younger brother. At this point, we hit our first obstacle; our taxi driver got his car booted for parking in an illegal location. We waited for around two hours until we finally took a different cab leaving him to figure out how to get his car back on his own. The drive to Kasoa was fairly quick maybe 30-40 minutes. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Accra was a sprawling city and still full of life even on a Sunday night. Even though English is the official language, which allows me to read signs and talk to everyone, I felt lost as Douglas worked out our taxi situation completely in Twee. The language is unique and my Spanish or English does not help me follow the conversation. I doubt that I will learn Twee in 12 weeks, but the new phrase of the day is “No Shaking”. Similar to the “Pura Vida” concept of Costa Rica; “No Shaking” means no worries and is used all the time.

After eating some rice ball soup (very tasty and spicy) and briefly meeting several of the volunteers, I retired for the night. The first night was warm, but I was able to get some sleep which I badly needed after a long day of flying following a late final night in the Netherlands. A previous volunteer had left a mosquito net which I used, but needed proper instructions to set it up correctly in the morning. Feeling somewhat sweaty and gross, I finally fell asleep ready to start my new adventure the next morning.

The sun was up early so I decided to get going even though I was still a bit tired and was not meeting the director until 8:30. After a cold shower, I started to organize my things and was beginning to feel more at home. Feeling clean and alert, with my mosquito net assembled and my clothing unpacked, I was ready for the day.  While eating breakfast (omelets), I managed to do a better job of meeting the other volunteers as well as understanding the organization. Different volunteers are working on different projects for Patriots Ghana. Several are dedicated to Public Health and were starting a community outreach project today. They have recruited and trained about 25 Ghanaians for a fellowship where they go door to door educating the public about Tuberculosis which is a problem in the country. Douglas, the director’s brother, is a public health student finishing his final year at university also has several of his own projects, one of which includes attempting to raise money for a clean water project to address the Cholera problem in many of the smaller villages.  I will be working with the Child Labour and Trafficking project with Eric and will begin orientation today.   

Before heading to the office for the first day, I explored the house. I will be living in the volunteer house which is located within walking distance from the office. There are several bedrooms. My bedroom has two separate bunk beds, but, currently, only a German public heath volunteer and I are staying in the room. There are maybe 9 people in total living in the house, but several are leaving in the next week or two. The house has a large kitchen and living room area which are communal space and have a very relaxed vibe. I am excited to start working and find out the types of projects that I will be focused on over the next couple months.