PICTURES!

Since the computers seem to be on my side right now, some pictures!


Some girls goofing around at the school.



The oldest students, studying during night classes.


I went to a track meet for the high school (where some of our students are on scholarship). See the "track" in the foreground? The thing that really made me do a double take was when, during the 4x100 relay, I realized that only half of the guys were wearing shoes!!!


This is the market in Kumasi, which is Ghana's other large city, besides the capital. I got lost under that sea of corrugated tin for around three hours, because I like that kind of thing. I swear, it was on purpose, I meant to lose myself in the market. Just maybe not for three hours...


Back in Elmina...I see this scene every time I walk by this house, on the main road to town. Everyone is crowded around that window because there is a tv in there. In case you're wondering what fascinating show is on, it was a commercial for American WWF Wrestling. YEAH. Imagine the scene when something that people really care about, like soccer, is airing.

Ah, the Joys of Teaching....in Africa.

On Wednesday, I taught a computer class at a school nearby that had requested my help. Having read about science labs in Ghana, many of you may see where this is going, so I will clarify one important fact first: they have computers there. Four of them.

Now that we've cleared that up, let me start from the beginning. Their computer teacher had left mid-year (as many do) putting the computer class permanently on hold. The headmaster contacted me, and I agreed to come one or two days a week, for two hours each day -- I suggested that he could split the class in half, so I could take about 15 students the first hour and the other fifteen for the second. He agreed to this, and told me to come on Wednesday at 10:00am. I asked if he had a syllabus or some notes to follow (silly me) and he said no, but not to worry, the students could explain to me what they had already learned and I could just go from there.

Skip to Wednesday. I showed up at the prescribed time, which of course happened to be the start of morning break, so I was told to sit for thirty minutes until the students were done playing. Then, I was told to sit for another thirty minutes while all thirty-five of the kids were assembled into a room with eight benches wedged together around four computers -- one bench in front of each computer and one behind, so half of the students couldn't see the screens. Now this turned out not to matter much, because the computers don't actually turn ON. After ten minutes or so of trying every possible combination of outlet plus cords, I ran to find the headmaster.
"The computers won't turn on," I said.
"Yes, the computers won't turn on," he explained helpfully. He suggested I teach them what I WOULD teach if the computers were working, and then we can actually practice it all NEXT week (by which time the computers will have been magically fixed by flying monkeys).

So I went back to the class, longingly gazing at the front gate on my way by, and proceeded to ask the students what they'd already learned. "TYPING!" one boy yelled. "WOW, typing! Ok, show me how you put your hands on the keyboard." I was suddenly hopeful that these kids knew more about computers than I'd anticipated. The boy, still looking squarely at my face, plopped his palms down somewhere in the general vicinity of the keys, much in the same way a child throwing a tantrum would repeatedly swat the table with his eyes pinched shut. Everyone else nodded approvingly.

I decided to switch gears, and explain things that were readily apparent on the surface of the computer. "Who knows what this is?" I enthused, pointing to the CD-ROM drive.
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVIEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!" The entire class cheered. Seemed they did have some experience with a computer or two. So it wasn't purely educational, but whatever, I'll take it. I drew a CD on the board, we all said "CD" a few times, and we learned the buttons and symbols below the drive (play, stop, open, close...). The class was excited. We were on a roll. "Who knows what THIS one is?" I continued, pointing to the disk drive without losing a beat. Crickets. Not a soul. You can't watch movies on that drive. We discussed "disks," "files," "saving" things, all of which sounded to the class like I had temporarily been replaced by Charlie Brown's teacher.

Next, the class really started picking up. We moved on to the KEYBOARD. Specifically, the SHIFT key. Helpfully, the shift key is blessed with a big fat up arrow, which was put there for the soul purpose of Giving Shawna Hope. It was relatively easy to explain that if you pushed the key with the big up arrow on it at the same time as, say, the "1" key, you'll get the "!" which is written ABOVE the number one on the key.
"And what do you get if you only push the number one key by itself, class?"
"EXCLAMATION POINT!"
"Nooooo! Let's start again." So after about fifteen or twenty minutes, we had it down, seriously. We could all imagine that when we pushed the shift key with the number two key a big @ sign would appear on the dark lifeless screens in front of us. We practiced passing keyboards around and pushing buttons at my command. Then, I added, it also makes letters CAPITAL! Oh boy! We spent another fifteen minutes or so on that, culminating in the glorious triumph of one girl, Sara, correctly typing her name with a capital "S" and lowercase a-r-a. We all clapped for her, so proud, and then I asked the rest of the class to type their names, to which everyone enthusiastically typed "Sara."

With fifteen minutes remaining, and the glaring success of the SHIFT key making me feel like the World's Greatest Invincible Teacher, I trucked right ahead to discussing the difference between the "delete" key and the "backspace" key. Apparently I wanted to dish my self out a nice serving of humility. You try explaining a cursor to ten year olds who have never seen one by using chalk to draw a blinking object on the board. Didn't really think that one through.

So on that note, it was time for lunch. The kids, on their way out, all told me how they couldn't wait for next week. Let's hope those flying monkeys or magic electrical rats or whoever fixes computers around here gets crackin.

OH, and a sign for you. I saw this sign on the side of the road, in a lushly vegetated part of the country, with an arrow pointing down a small dirt path. Oh, how I wish I could have jumped out of the car and gone down that path. It said:

"GOD'S FINGER FARM"

Back to Basics

My time here has been flying by! Lately I have been quite busy, juggling projects with the school, as well as other relevant education projects and the district offices. At Christ Cares, I have been focusing most of my time on putting some fun back into Science. I found out early on that science is almost exclusively the students' LEAST favorite subject -- and after talking to the kids and teachers and observing some classes, it wasn't hard to see why. There are a few factors behind it, but it seems that generally it boils down to one of two main culprits.

First, most of the students are intimidated by science and math -- subjects that are apparently introduced to them with the warning that one small mistake will make your whole answer wrong. Most students hear this and expect failure. Additionally, let me bring you to a typical Ghanaian science lab.

Imagine for a moment that you are back in YOUR high school or middle school science lab, or if your family was like mine, your kitchen at home. Now, walk out of your lab/kitchen, into the yard. You are now without most of your equipment. NOW, keep walking until you are far, far away from civilization, maybe in the middle of a desert or a Midwestern cornfield somewhere, but without irrigation or another form of running water. Confirm that cooking over charcoal is your only method of heating anything for chemical reactions. Then remember that you don't have access to those chemicals.

Now, transport THAT scene to the equator, where any small items that you may have brought with you from your fancy-pants country of origin will mold and/or rust before your eyes in about eight minutes. Make sure you are at least four hours from the nearest possible place to buy anything other than food, and make sure that THAT place is not a store, but a four-by-four-foot blanket laid out on a hidden side street somewhere in a city of ten million people. Finally, remind yourself that you are probably too poor to get there anyways. Congratulations! You are in a Ghanaian science lab.

After years and years of this, it comes as no surprise that science here does not revolve around experiments or hands-on learning, since most of the teachers have never been around many experiments either! Consequently, the students do not relate science to their every day lives -- they see it as a jumble of boring and confusing English words that they have to memorize, with no relevance to what is going on around them. I have made it my mission to try and get the teachers in the habit of doing experiments to break the monotony, and seize every opportunity to point out how science relates to an every-day activity.

Upon first glance, the environment for experiments sounds pretty bleak, but in actuality there are plenty of simple projects that don't require any purchases, or very small items that will not need to be replaced. For example, I have punched holes into an old can (like a soup can) from the trash, filled it with water, and used it to demonstrate water pressure at different depths. This was an example STRAIGHT from the textbook, it just doesn't even cross the minds of the teachers to create this themselves -- instead, they draw it on the board and lecture about it. I sat in on a lecture about a periscope, and wanted to jump out the window I was so bored...so the next day I went to town, bought some small mirrors for 50 cents, got some cardboard from a shopkeeper unloading boxes, and made a periscope. Granted it's not the most aesthetically pleasing project I've ever completed, it pretty much looks like someone found some old cardboard on the street and randomly taped it all together...which is exactly what happened...but it WORKS and we all had fun hiding behind the wall and peering out into the schoolyard. Still, no one recognized this funny contraption as the thing from the lecture the previous day. It's like they have the real world, and then the science world, but when you try to draw parallels between the two, you're met with blank stares and confusion. So that's my main battle, trying to make science relatable.

There are so many differences in the Ghanaian school system, it would take much more than an entry here to explain anything greater than a few very small insights. In fact, much of my time is devoted to trying to crack this code! One of the major differences, in my eyes, is the ages of the children. In the United States, we are all basically the same age, give or take a few months, in any given class up through the end of high school. Here, where it is often not seen as the most financially feasible option for children (when they could work hawking food on the street, for example), kids start school at all different ages, sometimes drop out to work or help at home, and then join back in again. Obviously, sometimes they do not join back in, or join at all in the first place. In any case, the result is that students in any given class cover a wide range of ages. This has an effect on many aspects of schooling, the most prominent being discipline. If you think it is hard to control 30 middle-schoolers, try mixing them in with some cocky high school aged adolescent boys and a few smart-alec younger kids, and someone please give me a video camera because the dynamics that result would make a hit reality show. For me, it also makes it pretty difficult to remember who is in which class, since a boy that looks to be about 11 could be in Class 7 just as easily as he could be in Class 4.

Well, I've got to run, its almost time for my next attempt at a science experiment. I'm starting to feel like McGyver - "Let's see, I've got a stick, a rubber band, some soap and some used matches...."