Farmer's Day: December 2nd

                 I’ll start this post by saying that I am thankful that I was educated in Plymouth, Indiana. To all my teachers, coaches, aides and administrators, thank you for not only giving me the tools to learn whatever I want, but for giving me experiences that I will take with me wherever I go. 

            I really don’t mean to gush. Few days go by where I don’t turn to Jamie after something good happens and say, “oh, well, that’s how we did it in P-town.”   Yesterday we finally executed an idea that sprouted from Plymouth’s Saturday Enrichment program.

The Idea
         Jamie and I don't have backgrounds in teaching.  We have backgrounds in psychology/anthropology and economics/philosophy respectively. So were were a little dismayed that our students could tell us about Halloween, Thanksgiving and Columbus Day; yet they knew nothing about the origins of some of their own nation's holidays. Saturday Enrichment is not really a concept that has hit Ghana, or at least Kasoa, yet.  But when we asked if we could have a Saturday Enrichment program on Farmers' Day, our Headmistress, Sister Esther, was receptive of the idea. Jamie and I started researching (since we knew nothing about Farmer's Day ourselves).  We planned art projects and activities, eventually sending home letters with our students in Basic 3 and 4 explaining that we wanted to have an educational morning where together we'd all learn about Ghana's Farmers' Day through experiential projects.  We were hoping to get at least 20 students to come.

            Two mornings after we sent home the letters, the program was filled.    We were turning kids away in tears. (One student cried so much, Sister Esther let her attend, so we actually had 41 students).

Welcome to Farmers' Day!: Introduction

            Yesterday, with the excitement of a young child before Christmas morning, Jamie and I jumped out of bed out of bed at 6am. Good thing, too!  Our first student arrived for our 9 am program at 6:20 in the morning! He was sent home to eat breakfast and come back.  But when Jamie and I arrived at school a little before 8, students were already there.  Armed and ready to teach these kids everything we had learned about Farmer’s Day, we began with our lessons!

                  To warm up we had our students make “maize” name tags.  They got to use markers and crayons however they wanted to design their name tags - something our students don’t get to do often.  Jamie is my official organizer; she checked everyone in and took care of problems like the girl who showed up, but hadn’t signed up.  She also wrote names on the plastic cups and managed what could have been a chaotic morning.  We talked a little about what crops grow in Ghana before transitioning outside.

In The Beginning...
               Each student received a black piece of construction paper and some sidewalk chalk.  I read the Creation story from Genesis and everyone drew their own picture of what they heard.  We went back in the classroom and matted our pictures (with glue!) on a larger sheet of construction paper.  The emphasis for this project was that God creates the Earth and commands us to take care of it.

Farming and Trees: Keeping the Balance

            After a break, Jamie used her former environmental club experience to explain that we need balance. While farming is good, because we need food, it also leads to major deforestation and a lack of trees. She talked about Ghana and subsistence farming, and how subsistence farming accounts for the majority of deforestation in Africa. She talked about how we need to be cautious with how much of things we use, and to not waste things especially paper.  To illustrate her points she made the classic, “newspaper tree,” where one rolls up 5 or 6 sheets of newspaper, cuts some slits, and then pulls up the middle to make a giant tree.  Through the project our students learned a) less can really be more as it is hard to cut through layers of newspaper with safety scissors and b) while we need paper and pencils and things made from trees, we shouldn’t waste our resources.

Planting Seeds: Practicing Sustainable Agriculture

            Of course, what good would a Farmer’s Day enrichment program be without actually planting crops? Every student was able to plant their own pepper, tomato, or garden egg (eggplant) seed in a cup.  We talked about how to care for plants and a little bit about crop rotation. Mostly, however, we talked about ways we can not just celebrate farmers, but be better farmers and consumers ourselves.  After I told the story of  Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement (www.greenbeltmovement.org) , we came up with ways we could actively take care of our world: we can plant trees, we can throw our biscuit wrappers and water sachets away in the bin instead of on the side of the road, and we can chose to not eat our pencils in class. 

Education Is Key to Being the Change You Want To See In The World

            And so that was Farmer’s Day. If it seems a little bit like Earth Day, you are correct. Ghana’s government gives a lot of machinery and monetary gifts to the “top” farmers in the country.  But the focus of this year’s celebration is agricultural sustainability, and so Jamie  followed the plan we laid out.  Some of you may ask, “Isn’t it a little hypocritical for an American to teach kids in a developing nation to use less resources?” To this I will admit that there was some guilt present as I realized how much I waste on a daily basis simply because our life is easy.  But the consequences of the Western World’s development are impacting, and will continue to impact, Africa the hardest.   While I have a responsibility when I go home to make sure I am taking care of our planet, my students here also need to be prepared.  The way we live now is not sustainable and the change must begin somewhere.  I would love to go to school tomorrow and witness my students throwing away all of their wrappers.  I would love to see my students take care of their pencils instead of eating them, losing them, breaking them or throwing them at things.   But if I do not see any of those thing for the rest of the term, I have the confidence that a seed has been planted.  I’ll keep watering, but not unlike the rest of education, the light and the ultimate outcome are in Another’s hands. 

           

Our Week in Pictures:

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us in Ghana!

What?! Jollof Rice with Turkey? HECK YES!

Helene was wonderful enough to take some pictures of our classes. 

We are very proud of our Thomas the Tank Engine train.

Lizziey's idea, Jamie's execution

Read to Grow, Grow to Read

The library: always a work in progress.

Of writer's block and jumbled thoughts...

So I had planned on writing a blog post soon after Lizziey's last post... but that didn't happen... obviously. 

The problem: I honestly don't know what to write about. 

The approach: Writing about being unable to write. This comes teacher advice for writing reflections and journal entries. Whenever students complained about not knowing what to write about, teachers would usually say to write about the assignment itself. Of course, this usually turned into long rants complaining about the absurdity of the assignment, but Hey! It was technically a reflection/journal entry after all. Wow, I just had a flash-back memory of TAPATEA(O)s* for Spanish in middle school!

The solution: To start writing, even though I don't have a specific topic on mind...

The result:

 I still don't know what to write about! I have plenty of budding ideas, but most of them are too time consuming to actually carry out...

A long while back I wanted to write about the facial scars some of the kids have at school. I had known that these deep and noticeable markings had been made intentionally, and were not the result of some strange type of abuse. I carefully asked one of the B4 kids about it, and he managed a short mumbled explanation.

      "Other people have it too..."  "It's okay." I said after noticing his reluctance. "You don't need to tell me if you don't want to, I won't force you, I was just curious." Then I resumed my work of organizing books, so as to make clear that he needed not continue his story. "It is not good Madame"...  (I waited patiently for him to continue) "It means my mom had a baby that died." He explained a little more, but the gist of it was that when a baby died, he and and his sibling got the marks. 

Recently I remembered to do some research about it and found that the facial scars in Ghana held many meanings for different people. Some were basically "tribal marks", others were used for beauty, and others for medicinal/spiritual purposes. I found a better explanation about the one's pertaining to an infant's death. According to the information I found** the belief is that after the death of an infant, that same spirit goes into the next child born. They are considered children who "come and go", and the marks are meant to keep the child from dying (so as to keep him/her in the realm of the living)... 

I don't know how accurate this finding is for the case of the student here, but I presume it to be pretty close....

I still don't know what to write about...

Women often wear long colorful tailored dresses to special occasions (such as church). Street vendors often carry things on the top of their head. Babies are carried piggy-back style, using a large sheet for support. Drivers treat traffic signals as mere suggestions, even seat belts are optional for passengers (but not for drivers). Plastic bags and random trash lay by the waste-filled ditches by the side of the roads. Traffic is a nightmare (literally you can stay in the same exact spot for 20 min. before advancing!). Herds of goats and sheep lurk in every corner. Sunsets and star filled skies are breathtakingly beautiful. Music and signing can be heard at all hours of the day (and night). Ants and lizards are everywhere, it is impossible to avoid them. The pineapple is very sweet!...

That's the end of my fragmented and rambled thoughts.

~Jamie

*TAPATEA(O) were basically complex and thorough book reports for spanish, each letter stands for a different section of the report: T(title), A(author), P(characters), A(argument), T(theme), E(style), A(environment and atmosphere), and O (personal opinion). 

** An Ancient Practice-Scarification and Tribal Marking in Ghana by Alyssa Irving.