Personal Blogs

Anyone who knows me well also knows that I am a very heavy drinker. I can never get enough water. Over the past two mornings, I have stopped myself from drinking my water first thing upon finding piles of ants attempting to stay alive in it by climbing on top of other ants, a bit reminiscent of scenes from Titanic, but in my water glass and definitely not kosher. Until now, and on any of my previous trips to Ghana, this had never been an issue. I will do a lot to avoid using bottles of water which are actually quite difficult to recycle as compared to the sachets produced, so I use water filtration to get some chemicals out of the water from bags and then drink it from a glass. The ants, however, are hampering my efforts. This, in a way, is not unlike what I’ve been learning about how students are surviving in the school I’m working in. It’s definitely not identical, but it does represent the hardships they encounter, the drive to do what they must.

First, I try not to pity the students, but it can be hard. On the way to school on Monday, my friend and ride to campus stopped to talk to a boy who was clearly not headed to school and who should have been. He was asked directly by my friend if he would eat that day. This isn’t a cultural question, as you might find in places like China, but a very real question with an equally real response. The student indicated that he might eat at home, but it didn’t sound positive to me. I came across this issue in my work in Title I schools in California, turning a cheek when some pupils would finish their free school lunch and then pilfer a bit of food to take home. I wasn’t about to stop them, especially when nobody else seemed to want the fruit they were taking. In this case, though, there is no school meal from which the pupils might gather a few extra bits for their family or themselves. There is also no outside support system to assist.

I further encountered a situation in which a young person (age 16) was ready to quit school having been late again and told that they would be held back again. The teacher doing the telling has a lot to answer for in this situation, but I took the young person aside for about twenty minutes of pastoral care. It revealed so much to me and I saw the situation as simply desperate. This person lives in this area so that she can go to a better school than that in the rural area from which she comes. Exploited by an auntie to do numerous chores before school, making said pupil late for classes regularly, the pupil earns a beating from the teacher for being both late and for not paying different fees (noting this is a ‘free’ public school). The pupil can’t please the auntie or the teacher, so the next thing to do is quit, but quitting will just make the rest of life worse. We talked at length about what could happen if the young person stayed in school, but it really isn’t as simple a decision as we would like to think in the western nations. The forces in this child’s life will not change their ways, so the child is faced with how to make changes (perhaps some kids in western education could learn from this?), but the only means at present involve giving up school. I sincerely hope the pupil doesn’t, but I recognise that I am not going to be here for long to make sure the pupil stays in school. One friend back in Cambridge suggested sponsorship, but this doesn’t actually remove the opposing forces striking regularly at the child. If it were that easy, I’d pay up right away. The pupil still has an auntie using her as a domestic and still has beatings from the teacher for doing the auntie’s bidding instead of being on time to school. The young person can’t please anybody, so will give up instead.

The school is labelled ‘deprived’, but this doesn’t begin to describe the lack of adequate bathroom facilities, the shoddy workmanship of a building built 8 years ago which looks considerably older than the 40-year-old building next to it due to holes in the concrete, leaky roofing which tears apart in storms, and much more. The children are incredibly deprived and, from what I can see, this isn’t going to change.

In my time here, I am hoping that the children can see that there are other ways to do things, learn to think more critically about their lives, and that they can learn to pay forward a simple kindness. I hope they will see that I do not beat them, but that I treat them with respect, even if it isn’t wholly returned (it is junior high after all!). Maybe they will learn from that and move forward in their lives, not beating children, but developing meaningful relationships with them instead. If it happens with even one or two, I will have succeeded a little bit.

As for the ants, I’m afraid that if they invade my water, I will be ruthless. They’re going down!