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.