Parent problems

Parent problems

Every teacher talks about problem with parents in some form or another and in Ghana, it is no different. My first interaction with parents was at our scheduled parent meeting with the sponsored children’s families. Our first meeting was in Nyanano on the Friday before school was set to begin. We wanted to make sure that the parents were going to support their children’s education and try to open lines of communication early so that we can work more closely with the parents during the upcoming year. We made a plan for the meeting and arrived early to prepare. After an hour and a half, not a single parent showed up. When we walked around the town to find the parents, we learned that there had been a good catch at the shore and the parents were too busy/did not remember the meeting. We decided that maybe Senya would have a better turnout on Sunday for their scheduled meeting, but similarly not a single parent showed.

It was frustrating that the children were being provided such a great opportunity to attend school for free (including clothing to wear and meals at school every day), but their parents could not take the time to attend the meeting. We rescheduled our meetings to the following weekend and this time we had more success (but not much). On Friday in Nyanyano 3/15 parents showed up, on Sunday in Fetteh 3/15 again and finally in Senya 1/30. I have to say, I was frustrated. However, there are always exceptions to the rule, and the parents that did show up were so positive and excited that their children will be attending school.  

Similarly to absent parents, the school attendance has also been off to a very slow start. Finally in the second week of official school we are beginning to have children in the classrooms. It is a struggle getting the children to come to school and hopefully we will have most of the kids consistently in the classroom by week three. When I am not teaching, I am often walking around the town to check on the sponsored children that are not in school. One mother we encountered was adamantly against her child going to school.  She began to make up excuses about uniforms and shoes and then about her child being beaten by teachers. Eventually, I was in the middle of a shouting match (all in Twi of course) as the school director, the mother, and about five female family members (aunt, grandma, ect) were all yelling at each other. When you do not speak the language, you get better and better at reading body language (which is also slightly different in a different culture). I learned later that the family members wanted the child to go to school and were upset at the mother (the child and family members denied any physical abuse at school and disagreed with the other excuses the mother was making to keep the kid at home). Eventually, the child followed us to school, but the mother is not very happy. Many parents do not understand the importance of education and would rather the child sit at home instead of attend an institution that they either do not understand, believe in, or trust. Many of the parents have never been to school and need help understanding the importance of education for their child.

There have been other stubborn parents, but slowly the children start to show up back at the school. We currently have about 70 children in school and are eventually expecting about twice that number. This week’s major parent issue however occurred when we were doing child trafficking interviews. Each Tuesday, the school director and I go around the town conducting interviews about the problem of child labour and trafficking. This week we interviewed a boy who was 16 years old and had just returned to Senya after working in Yeji for 8 years. That same day, we attempted to interview several parents which we have done in the past, but the parent who we wanted to talk with was convinced that we were there to arrest her for selling her children. The door was quite literally slammed in our face and all of the families on the street wanted us to leave. It is obviously very important to be delicate when using the words labour or even trafficking when trying to starting a family interview.

Even if there can be push back from the parents, the children have been simply wonderful. They are very happy to be back in school and their smiling faces and excitement in the classroom makes the difficult parents much easier to manage.

Food Blog

Food Blog

I have had a lot of questions about Ghanaian food, so I decided that I needed to do a food blog post. My food situation is pretty ideal. I will start in the morning. Normally, I wake up and eat some bread with peanut butter along with my malaria pill. The peanut butter here is very similar to what we have in the states and spreads fairly easy on bread. Some morning, I wake up to the director’s wife cooking eggs and take an egg sandwich for breakfast. I am generally not a big breakfast person, and I have been scolded for not eating enough on several occasions. Days when I skip breakfast, I generally buy a “fried dough ball” which is similar to a hushpuppy or non-sweet donut which I eat on the walk to work.

For lunch, I am either at the office or in one of the fishing communities. For a quick bite to eat, there are lots of snack possibilities that are sold by vendors carrying the foods on their heads. I am always impressed by the balance of the sellers as I have yet to see anything fall off, even when they are running after a tro-tro or taxi trying to make change (whenever your vehicle stops, you have the opportunity to buy almost any snack imaginable). There are also many streetside venders that fry plantains, sweet potatoes, or other various items. Because I am not much of a snack person, I generally go to a “Chop Bar” which is like a street stall with a couple benches off the main road. Freeman, my coworker, showed me two chop bars that are generally clean and safe to eat at. I am normally very wary of cold dishes and don’t often go to random places without a recommendation from a Ghanaian first. Also long as the food is hot, it is generally safe to eat, but some places are better than others.

 

Eating out, my first choice is Waakye. Waakye is blackeyed peas and rice. I normally order it with plantain and one egg. Most of the dishes in Ghana also have some spice with a red sauce (when eating yam, I prefer the green sauce). It is similar to the spiciness of many Central American dishes, but I don’t necessarily considerate very hot. When eating, I always ask for a spoon, but many Ghanaians prefer to eat with their hands. There are tubs of water along with soap to wash your right hand before eating and to clean it off after you are done. Normally, I see about 50% of Ghanaians eating with a spoon and the other half using their hands. I will use my hand for fish but I am not officially Ghanaian yet (Hand is singular, it is important to use the right hand for eating or for greetings).

Another common dish is Jollof rice, which is normally cooked with spices and fish. Different places will have more or less fish in the rice. Especially near the coast, fish is pretty common in most all dishes. Even when buying sweet potatoes or yams (a good lunch replacement if you don’t leave the office), a fish head or tail is often included to add some protein to your snack. Talapia is very common, but there are other fish as well that are caught at the shore.  Most of the time when I eat lunch it cost around 3 cedi which is about $0.75 USD.

When I return home from work, the director’s wife has dinner prepared. Each night it is a different traditional Ghanaian food. Along with Waakye and Jollof, it is very common to make a stew often with fish or lamb that is eaten with a rice ball. The rice has been pounded the consistency of mashed potatoes (only stickier) and you will eat it with the soup. Fufu and banku are also eaten with soup and are very similar to the rice balls. If you ask for it, banku is often added to the meal (kind of like bread in the states) to soak up any extra sauce and fill up your stomach. You can also see that some nights, there is also a noodle dish that has some chopped vegetables and some spice which is always exciting as well.

To drink there are several options. For non-alcoholic beverages, my favorite choice is Alvaro. It is somewhat similar to Sprite but with pear or passion fruit flavor. For beer, there are several options (I generally go with whichever one is cold). The top two choices are Star or Club. There is much debate about which is better, but both taste like a light wheat beer. My coworkers will often mix their beer with Sprite and I have realized that in general, Ghanaians are not very heavy drinkers. Most drinking is reserved for social events and ordering a beer at dinner seems uncommon. When they have it, I enjoy Castle and Stone which are two other types that are available and are slightly darker. Guinness is also very popular and they even have a non-alcoholic Guinness “energy drink” which is heavily advertised. Most beers come in 0.5 L glass bottles which you must return to where you bought it, but most water is drank in small bags (you actually buy whiskey or vodka in bags as well).

For dessert, there is ice cream, but dessert in general seems uncommon. I don’t think I have tried any dessert other than one “ice cream bar” in the entire month that I have been here (although, that is not exactly uncommon for me).

Overall, I have enjoyed Ghanaian cuisine so far, lots of rice, a little bit of spice, and always the option of fish (or egg). It is nice however to find exotic specialties in Accra like a turkey sandwich or pasta just to mix it up a bit.

Child Labour Talks

Child Labour Talks

Now that school has officially started, each Thursday I will be doing Child Labour education talks in local schools. This week Freeman, who is the child trafficking project director, and I went to Ebenezer Memorial School in Nyanyano to give the presentation. The class takes about one hour and we presented to the 5^th and 6^th graders first and the 3^rd and 4^th graders second.

We start with introductions and asking what people wanted to be when they grow up. It is interesting hearing their answers. Almost all of the girls said they wanted to be nurses. For the boys, answers varied between, doctor, bank manager, soldier, and footballer. We stressed the importance of education in their quest to achieve their future jobs, but most of the children already seemed very motivated to finish their education. Some talked about even wanting a Master’s degree after university. The fact that there are many things that can stand in the way of a child’s education, lead us into the topic of child labour. We started with an activity where we passed each child a card that had a picture of a child working. The students were told to look at their picture and decide if this was “good work” or “bad work”. These talks reminded me a lot of the child sexual abuse talks that I gave in Costa Rica, but instead of good touching and bad touching it was good work and bad work. We talked about how “light work” such as cleaning the house, fetching water, helping your father untangle his nets after school was fine for a child to do as long as it did not stop them from going to school. “Heavy work” or dangerous work such as quarry work, selling water on the roadside, agricultural work, was very different from the “light work” that children are meant to do. If work is considered dangerous or if it would stop a child from going to school, we said that this was not ok and is not acceptable for a child to do.

The kids were very responsive and were good at choosing if the work was appropriate or not for a child. Afterwards we split the children into groups to analyze short scenarios and determine if the work was appropriate. I was very proud of the kids and they did a great job absorbing and analyzing the material. During the talk we also discuss some of the rights that every child has such as food, medical attention, education and so on. We made sure to tell the children that there were people that wanted to help them or their friends if they felt that their rights were being violated. Luckily, our head community volunteer in Nyanyano is a teacher at the school and is a wonderful person for children to go to with problems. It is exciting to know that there are so many good people in the community that understand the value of education and want to protect their children from exploitation.

Even though school has officially begun, not every school is running as smoothly as the one we visited in Nyanyano. The school that I will be teaching at also officially began on Monday, but only about nine students showed up. By Wednesday there were around 25 and hopefully next week we can start following the actually class schedule. While one of us was teaching all the various grades, the other teachers and director walked around the town reminding parents about school and asking why their children are not attending. It was a much different start than the past four years at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville.

First Month Summary

First Month Summary for the Newsletter

The past month has been very busy for the Cheerful Hearts staff. As summer school finishes and official school begins, there is a lot to do in order to prepare for the upcoming year. Teaching classes, reviewing students’ progress, and updating sponsored children’s profiles have kept the office busy along with the numerous community outreach projects occurring in all three of the local fishing communities.

First, Cheerful Hearts would like to thank all of summer volunteers for their hard work and passion. Now that the summer is officially over, the office has become much quieter, but it was nice to work with such a dedicated team. All of their hard work is appreciated and will be continued as we begin the new year.

The children seem excited for school and many took advantage of the free vacation school classes that were run and staffed by Cheerful Hearts volunteers. Over the summer we had classes both in Nyanyano at Franklin Int as well as in Senya at Day Star International, both schools who teach our sponsored children. This year, we are sponsoring 57 children who are placed in various schools throughout the three fishing communities of Senya, Nyanyano, and Fetteh. All of these children were trafficked or were working in child labour and now have the opportunity to attend school free of charge. Cheerful Hearts also has a volunteer and former teacher working in Senya two days a week, both to educate the children as well as to monitor the work and progress of our sponsored students.

The Cheerful Hearts team is very excited about their new fundraising campaign that started at the beginning of September. The poultry farm project, which is directed at combating the poverty of Senya, has been over a year in the making. Finally, Cheerful Hearts is ready to start the fundraising and has launched the campaign online at Indiegogo.com. The campaign will last until the end of October and several people have already started donating. Please continue to support this project and share it with your friends.

Child labour talks have also resumed in the local schools. The first talk of the school year occurred in Nyanyano where over 80 children listened to and participated in the interactive discussion about child labour. With an updated curriculum, the talks focus on the difference between good work and bad work as well as the importance of education. Cheerful Hearts will continue to promote community education and outreach and will continue the talks with various schools in the fishing communities.

Along with the talks in local schools, the community volunteer project has also been continuing in Nyanyano. With two months left in the project, Cheerful Hearts staff sat down with our volunteers to see how their outreach was going. Even though local community outreach can be difficult, the volunteers were very excited about the impacts that they have made so far in their community. It is wonderful to see local Ghanaians take such pride in their community and being so dedicated to educating their neighbors on the issue of child labour.

Finally, Cheerful Hearts was extremely proud of the community movie event in Senya on August 27^th. There was a wonderful turnout for the presentation and discussion of a film created by the IOM and Challenging Heights about the problem of Child Trafficking in Ghana. The large audience of around 400 individuals was very interested in the information. While watching their faces during the film, it was apparent that the presentation made an impact on their views of Yeji and child labour. The discussion afterwards was also very powerful, especially due to several child speeches from our local sponsored children which were incredibly heartfelt and moving. Cheerful Hearts is so proud of the children who spoke and their testimonies to the importance of education had a deep effect on everyone in the audience. 

Community Volunteer Meeting

Community Volunteer Meeting

Along with sponsoring children and conducting research, Cheerful Hearts Foundation is also focused on community outreach. We are currently conducting a project in which about 20 community members in were trained on the importance of child education and the dangers of child labour. After their training, they agreed to spend two hours, 2-3 days a week, sharing this information with the people in their community. Each month we sit down with the volunteers and see how their outreach work is going. The project will run for five months and will be evaluated when it finishing in October. We are currently running this program in Nyanyano, but we hope to extend it to the other community as well.

It was interesting listening to the volunteers talk about their successes and struggles while working on the project. One of the biggest concerns for the volunteers was gathering getting personal information such as names and ages from the individuals that they talk with. In order to evaluate the community impact of the project, it is important to keep data on who the volunteers educating, but many parents will refuse to give their names to the volunteers. We talked about various ways to fix this problem. First, we discussed how it is important to not be robotic when talking to families. Volunteers must be personable and establish a connection instead of simply trying to fill out a questionnaire or disseminate information. In order to work in the community, volunteers must create a connection with their neighbors so that their message will actually be heard and the project’s mission will be effective. It is also import to try to get the community to support the cause. This is one reason why community volunteers involved in the outreach. Along with the education and information volunteers must explain our mission, in order to form a partnership with our organization and the community.

Volunteers also realized that many parents misunderstood the purpose of the project. When parents see people with clipboards walking around the village, they automatically expect the individual to be signing up children for sponsorships. Even though Cheerful Hearts does sponsor children to go to school, families need to know that we cannot simply walk around the town writing down names of children to sponsor. There is a very specific interview process that Cheerful Hearts needs to conduct before sponsoring a child. They need to make sure that the child fits our mission statement working with child labour and trafficking, and we must evaluate whether the child will attend school and use the opportunity given to them. Even though we would love to sponsor all children to attend school, limited resources force us to priorities when distributing sponsorship. It is especially when I am walking around town as a foreigner, that the initial belief is that I am there to give them money and sponsor their child. The Ghanaian volunteers have these same problems so we discussed the importance of being clear that the current project is working on advocacy and not sponsorships.

There were two stories that stand out from the meeting. One was about a mother who told a community volunteer that she was not going to send her daughter to school because her older child, who was in high school, had become obstinate and was poorly behaving due to his time in the schools. Internally, I laughed at this notion that it was school that made teenagers obstinate and rebellious, as it seems to be a universal state for the teenage mind; however, we talked about how it is important that we encourage parents to control their children and be active in their lives. School is not the enemy, but instead we need to give parents new tools to discipline children. We discussed methods for developing a child’s respect and punishments for misbehavior, trying not to focus on caning which is the only option that most parents consider. One of the younger volunteers (there are several high school students that have been trained to try to talk with their peers about the importance of education) described a household that she came to where she found a daughter not allowed to go to school and was being abuse by her aunt. Even as a high school student, she knew that the physical abuse was not alright, but did not know how best to help the younger girl. We made sure to discuss the issue of child abuse at our meeting. She will be going back to the house this week with adult (and a respected member of the community) in order to address the physical violence that is going on behind the closed doors. With the training that these volunteers have received, they must act as the first line of attack against the abuse and exploitation of the children of the community. Children should not be beaten in their homes or working on the shore, but instead should be in school, having a childhood and creating a future for themselves.

I believe the community outreach and education that is done by Cheerful Hearts is just as important as sponsoring students or conducting research. Many individuals in Nyanyano (and even more so in Senya and Fetteh) have not completed primary school. It is not always that they beat their children or sell them to traffickers, because they are bad people, but instead it is due to a lack of knowledge. The more that the community can work together and educate each other about the child abuse and exploitation occurring in their village, the safer the children will be.

Fundraising project created

Fundraising project created

During the past several of days along with teaching and trafficking research, I have been working on our new fundraising project. In order to address the poverty problem, which is often the root cause of child trafficking, Cheerful Hearts has been planning a Poultry Farm project to add a new industry to the fishing community of Senya. Senya is one of the main trafficking sources in central Ghana due to a large population, high poverty, and a small fishing fleet/coastline. With new jobs and something not dependent on fish, the families of the sponsored children can start to make money to support their children instead of selling them to traffickers. Please take a look at the campaign:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/combating-child-labour-through-job-creation/x/3806483

There are definitely other ways to get involved as well. There is a serious lack of reading materials in the local schools and any elementary school books to help with reading are always appreciated. The last option is to help sponsor a child. This school year we are starting with 57 sponsored children. I am currently working on all of their backgrounds and stories as well as documenting their academic performance last year. All of this information gets passed along to the sponsors.

Along with working on fundraising, I did get a chance to watch some football on Sunday. A large crowd showed up for the Tottenham vs Liverpool game, but sadly Tottenham did not (3-0 loss; painful to watch).

More excitement, first laundry day! We will see if everything is dry when I get home (Due to the super hot sun, I would be shocked if there was any water left, not only on the clothing but in the entire country).

 


Again, if you would like to be involved, it is greatly appreciated, but either way please keep enjoying the blog and learning more about child trafficking and my experiences in Ghana. 

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.