Ghana 2012 - Week 1

After a few delays and misunderstandings our team reached Ghana. Although after landing in Accra we were still missing Patrick and had no idea where he was, we finaly met each other. Apparently, his friend met him in Accra and he was fine, but he did not call us to tell that!! Anyway, a friend of Patrick took us from the airport and brought us to Kasoa, the place where we are currently staying. We were met by Robert, who is a member of Dawn Faundation organisation and Isaac, who is our host here. We were surprised by the house of Isaac, because it is quite big and has WC, shower, eletricity and what not. The only tiny problem is that the is no internet in the house, but we can easily access it from the office of Dawn Faundaiton, so it is not a major one.

As we arrived later then expected we had almost no time to prepare and have a look around. On monday, 28th May, we visited two schools. That was School Epinal and Believers Hope school. Both are private schools and look very nice from the inside. We were surprisded that kids spoke very good English and aproached us to ask our names and where we are from. We felt very welcome at both of the schools. The person who has been helping us with schools is 'Mr Aye'. We call him that because that sounds a bit Scottish and we find it a bit funny, but he is okay with that. He helped us to organise the classes and told us a lot about Ghana.

The first school we visited was School Epinal, kids wear green uniforms so it is easy to distinguish them in the city, everyone is very curious to talk to us and touch us (as apparently our skin and hair are different). The first day we gave 3 lessons. Andrius and Margarita started with the workshop of structures, where kids had to build towers that could withstand the heavy weight. By asking them to make triangle and square, we proved that triangles are generaly stiffer and more stable than rectangles. We asked them to keep that in mind and build the towers. We were amazed by the variety of tower designs children came up with. Some of the groups came up with truss towers, which were very strong and they could even sit on in. Everyone seemed to enjoy the workshop very much.

The other workshop that Patrick and Caroline ran was the lever workshop. They introduced the mechanism called the lever to the class and asked them to make one. The aim of the task was to lift a heavy weight, using a lighter weight. Most of the kids understood the concept very well, however there were some who strugled till the end of the lesson. It looked like this was a bit more complicated for the kids to understand this workshop.

After sprending two days in School Epinal we moved to Believers Hope school. We did same workshops there. All the kids wanted to have us teaching in their classes and we tried to visit as many as we could. Apart from the traditional workshops we also gave short lessons (which we were not prepared for so had to improvise!!!)  for younger kids and played with the smallest ones which were about 2-3 years old! In the Believers Hope school we also had a chance to try some traditional Ghanaian food (Yam and Kenkey) which we all enjoyed so much! In general we are very well fed by Elyna, who is the mother of Robert.

During the weekend our team went to Accra. Mr Aye showed us around and also helped us with traveling in a trotro, which is a bit challenging and can be confusing at points. On Sunday our host Isaac invited us to participate in the function in a church. He is a singer in a choir in that church and is one of the elders as well. We enjoyed the dancing and singing so much, that we could not resist joining the dances. In the afternoon we visited Bojo Beach. Although the sky was cloudy, it was still warm outside and we had a chance to swim in the sea. The waves were amazing!!!

So that was week 1. We have prepared some new workshops for the kids for this week (Sand filter and the Syphon) so we'll see how it goes!

 

P.S. Team Ghana hopes that you are enjoying your holidays as much as we do :]