Beautiful Uses of the English Language

It was everywhere!

The Peculiar International School 

Spotted at Nsaba Senior School 

What does this even mean? 

Is it ironic that I found an iron mark on my dresser? 

Look closely: 'touching our generation with the power of God.'

In the toilet of Chez Afrique 

The End of Our Teaching

Today I found myself embroiled in a battle of the wills with a group of 35 maths teachers. Why anyone out me in front of a group of maths teachers is beyond me, but I delivered a session on Inclusion and Differentiation which involved rudimentary stick figure drawings and an extend Support: Challenge: Develop debate about the way to stop AIDS from spreading across Africa. 

My class humoured me before asking a series of progressively more challenging questions ending in: 'do you use the cane?' After swerving my way around positive behavior strategies I use instead, I was then given a round of applause. I cannot imagine getting a round of applause for doing a training session at home and I cannot imagine that a group of teachers forced to come in on their summer holidays in England would be anything except openly hostile.

And still, the teachers come in smiling, grateful to be in our sessions and open to listening and considering a series of provocative challenges that threaten to change the well-established environment in their classrooms. Challenges, that when imposed in England, caused widespread anger and debate. You want us to talk less? You want us to create completely independent learners? You want us to give up control? The teachers here might think we're crazy, but they handle it with true professionalism. They critique and ask questions, but that makes me think they might try some of the ideas. 

This will be difficult for teachers in a system where rote learning seems to be the government's educational policy at the moment. A more child centered approach was implemented in Accra three years ago, but it's yet to trickle this rural direction. Thus, students' books are filled with paragraphs copied from the board, exercises in recall and quizzes arbitrarily marked out of 5/10/20 depending on the day. This means students can tell you what iambic pentameter, similes and personification are, but they can't tell you why the writer uses them or what inferences we can make about the characters being written about.  

Change is in the cards though and the teachers are up for anything.  

I think some of this positivity comes down to the Agona Educational Team consisting of Mina, Mary and Reverend John who put on a rather long-winded but ceremonial opening event hosted in the presbyterian church just off campus.  We all attended on Monday morning and were reminded that: 1. we were on British time, not Ghanaian Time (more to our African colleagues); 2. We all needed to open our hearts and minds to progress: 3. We were on British time, not Ghanaian Time. So important it was mentioned twice.  

The team of administrators were a force to be reckoned with.  On a daily basis, Mina called non-attenders demanding to know where they were.  She also ensured our facilities were well-kept and our drink, snack preferences were to our liking.  She wandered, greeted, buzzed around to ensure the teachers were making the most of their sessions.  Mina need not worry; they were.  

In the end, it did feel like we made a bit of impact.  Closing evaluations revealed that this was the first Professional Development event many of the teachers had attended.  Unlike the teachers in Accra, they had limited access to training and INSET.  Our closing evaluations also revealed statements like: 'This was awesome', 'God Bless You' and 'We are truly grateful'.  

It's hard not to feel warm and fuzzy with feedback like that.  

Greenland Hotel, Agona Swedru

Today Ghana called a national holiday because the new moon was sighted and Muslims across the world celebrated the end of Ramadan. Ghana has a growing minority of people practising the Islamic faith so they give everyone a day off to celebrate with their families and enjoy one another. For us, this meant no school. And as exciting as those words usually are, I was a bit disappointed because we're only here for two weeks. 

But after a week of 6am wake ups, a lie in was a welcome relief. As I yawned and stretched at nine, I was greeted with sunshine, something we haven't seen a ton of these last two weeks. I'm not complaining; the weather's been warm and humid but in a Michigan cloudy, hazy day kind of way. Direct sunlight therefore meant we could laze away at the hotel pool, one filled with a variety of flora, fauna and insects, but a pool nonetheless.

This may be the highlight of our accommodation, The Greenland Hotel.  I'd like to believe the hotel had its heyday in the 1960s.  With its tennis court, pool, geometric shaped everything and casually molding fountain, it reminded me of Kellerman's Resort in Dirty Dancing.  Pictures of successful events gone past and awards long won lined the walls.  There's even a discotheque downstairs.  But like Kellerman's owner Max says at the end of the film, 'teenagers want trips to Europe..12 countries in 9 days...not this anymore', the relics of the past palpably haunted the spacious venues.

In the rooms, the ghosts feel even more present.  Once 'modern flourishes' have become dated--wooden paneled ceilings, yellow bathroom fittings, floral curtains.  Oppressive mahogany furniture steals any light away from wide windows and the fluorescent light bulb dotting the ceiling chooses the days it wants to work.  On day three the limited cold water I had started leaking into the bathtub and ceased working.  I'm opting for bucket baths in Wendy's room instead.  There is something deliciously refreshing about this.  My air conditioner also sounds like it's about to take off, and my daily routine has become checking under the bed, in the bathtub and in the broken wardrobe before I go to sleep.  This has been a challenge--I don't sleep well in new places at the best of times.


Essentially, my room could be the scene of a bad porn.  Ironically, when doing some online searching, another member of the group found that this was indeed the case.  Which made sense why my welcome gift from the hotel was a box of 150 condoms, a pamphlet about how 'Safe Sex is Fun and Easy' and a bible translated into three languages.

Despite all of this though, the staff has been lovely and accommodating.  We appear to be their only major custom.  We've drank their bar dry--not a difficult task with 20 of us.  But the wait staff have gone on to deliver little surprises, strawberry ice cream, chicken sandwiches, chips.  So despite the fact that i'm convinced someone is going to break into my room and murder me in my sleep, i'm culinarily well considered.


Alas, with our last day to be tourists in Agona, we've had a morning poolside playing chicken against the African sun.  The darker/smarter of us who applied sunscreen fared better than others; being this close to the equator does things to the strength of the sun.  The braver of us ventured into town one final time to pick up various bits of tailored clothing and have one final properly African meal.


This is how I discovered fish in palava sauce with yam, fufu in goat soup and red red with plantain.  Minus the goat, which I didn't try, it was all nice in that way you'd try it once.  To be fair, actually, fufu is probably the only thing I wouldn't order again.  It's quite hard to explain--a lump of play dough type consistency that you pick apart with your hands and dip into soup.  It tastes like not much but is still strangely satisfying.


Food photos to come!

Talk of the Town

The local community seem to have cottoned on that we're in town. Today, we had a series of shouts greeting us with 'obruni!', to which the twi translation is 'Hey You! White person!'' considering the potentially offensive nature of this comment, it is probably important to note that this happens to be our main distinguishing feature. I have never stood out more.

The greeting is usually followed with an 'etisenne?'. If we respond with 'mehuye', fine thanks, people cheer and poke the person next to them. Others, usually braver, more fearless children come up to us staring and ask 'how are you.' in English. When we respond they either stare back in wonder or run away smiling. Walking through the market, the lady selling gigantic (seriously, seriously gigantic) snails had a similar reaction to us than we had to the snails. Then she tried to sell us some.

I think today's highlight though comes courtesy of a step located on a dusty side street off the market. Janet, Wendy and I sat chewing through the Ghanaian equivalent of a chocolate ice lolly. As we watched the world watching us, we were greeted, waved at, stared at, welcomed and smiled at. Traffic briefly stopped. A street vendor took a seat across from us and eyed us warily, waiting for us to do something crazy. I think we disappointed her when all we did was eat.

Later, when I briefly lost my friends, a group of women all pointed down the street and into a shop: 'your friends are that way.' Very helpful.

The local dressmaker also knew who we were. A group of more experienced seamstresses manned sewing machines in the balcony. I asked one lady if this was the place another friend had been in. She replied with a: 'yes. Your friend, she's tall and a little bit wide. Yes she's been here.' Pull no punches ladies.

I was then introduced to Madam, a short, fierce looking woman wearing a beautiful, clingy handmade dress and yelling into her mobile phone. She continued to yell as I proceeded to be sat down in front of an array of dress catalogues, prompted to skip patterns that wouldn't suit my body shape, age and style before being measured: chest, hips, bum and even the distance between my nipples. I was asked if I planned on hoiking my boobs up any more than where they were already; I gave an answer and was given an approving nod before being re measured.

Madam operated a swift, efficient business noting down all numbers in a carbon copy log sheet. Her seamstress apprentice minions fluttered around me, some at beautiful, hand wound singer sewing machines, others watching me make my decisions. Everyone was on their toes--I get the impression Madam doesn't put up with any crap.

And when all the particulars were done, I gave her my fabric (bought at a stall in the market--3 yards for 20 cedi/£6.50), agreed a price (25 cedi/£8) and a pickup date in two days' time. I hope the dress turns out half as beautiful as the dresses so many of the women wear here--I don't have the bum to pull off half the fashion nor do I have the skin tone, but if I can pull off a funky pattern back in the UK, I'll call it a success.

It was more of the same on the walk back to the hotel. People made busy getting on with their lives whilst we temporarily caused the day's gossip for some of them.

I can't help but fall in love with this country.