Blogs from Ghana, Africa - page 13

This morning at school, there must have been something in the water. The children were off on a mental one. Auntie Lucy was off again, as her son Elijah is still poorly. Another teacher came in to set work, but half the children had their books missing, and it was all just a bit chaotic. They were out of control today. No matter what I did, whether it was distraction, positive reinforcement etc, they just wouldn't stop hitting, pushing, slapping and punching their classmates. There were tears every few minutes! Alfred was an absolute little monster today.He ripped his book up, and just couldn't keep his hands off the others, constantly stealing their erasers, distracting them and hitting them. The hitting isn't done in a violent way for the most part- it just seems like the ... read more

I spent this afternoon/evening at the orphanage. As soon as I got there, Junior came running up to be picked up. He is so cute. He has something wrong with his eyes and looks blind as his eyes are cloudy, but he's not. He has surgery coming up in October - not sure how the orphanage will afford it though, particularly with Blessing's surgery coming up too. I spent most of today with Destiny. Her and Junior were fighting to sit on my lap so I put them both down and told them that if they fight, none of them gets to sit on my lap. They called an uneasy truce, and I had both of them with me for a while. All of the little ones are so adorable. They have nothing, and that makes ... read more

I was woken up at 3am this morning as three of the volunteers who had gone up North returned in the middle of the night. I generally didn't sleep that well all night anyway, had woken up even before that, as I have so many mosquito bites that it's difficult to sleep, particularly with the heat. I got to school just after 9am, and this morning the children were learning poems. Then they did some copying of numbers, so I had to set up each students book with "Write 74" or whatever number they'd got up to. I'd draw about 30 dots over the page, and on each dot they had to write the number. They love it when I write a comment on the bottom of their books, although they can't read them. The other ... read more

This morning I got up at 6.40 as we were getting a tro-tro (mini bus) to watch the football team that Robbie has been coaching, playing in a match. Typically though, we're on Ghanaian time, so we didn't end up leaving until a good 45 mins later than we had planned. We walked up to the church to get the tro-tro, and a couple of the team met us there and got a ride with us. It took 45 mins to get to Tema Stadium, though it wasn't really a stadium in western terms. But the guys playing were so excited, as it was just brilliant for them to be playing a proper match on a proper pitch. (Well, it was Astroturf, and a half-hearted attempt at it but whatever). I had my camera, and a ... read more

Today has been another great day. I woke up at 7.30am and Mavis made me a vegetable omelette for breakfast (quite a strange choice, but I did ask for "something vegetarian"). I got to school for 9am and when I walked in, the kids were so happy and excited to see me. :) I told Lucy I had pictures on my laptop of animals I had downloaded, so that was the first thing we did. I'd get each picture on to the screen and ask the children "What animal is this?" and they would shout out "tiger!" or "monkey!" or "parrot!" and then I asked them "and what noise does this animal make?" and they'd all make the noise. Then we sang "Old MacDonald had a farm" and added in all the animals. I never thought ... read more