Ghana Day 6 - 031812 - The Orphanage and Our Duties

Ghana Day 6 031812 The Orphanage and our Duties

Our program, sponsored by a New Zealand company called International Volunteers HQ (IVHQ), is one of many that seeks to place volunteer help with schools, clinics and orphanages who could benefit from the help. They also provide a standardized set of living conditions, food, lodging and guidelines for us, the workers. For those arriving and departing their assignment, they provide a central volunteer center in Accra, the capital city, to welcome and house people coming and going. IVHQ also sets up housing at the various programs, which are typically in more rural areas, outside the city. Volunteers prepay a weekly fee for room and board, which varies greatly between companies competing in this business. Our cost was about $220 per person per week. This money goes directly to the host families, and represents a more than adequate compensation.

So, here is the story of our orphanage, the West African Foundation School. To the right, is a photo of the day program, about 120 school kids, lined up for the four classes, covering K - 9, with about 30 in each class.. Our hosts, Patrick and his wife Pat, live a five minute walk from the school with their three boys. They have reconfigured their home a bit, to accommodate volunteers living amidst their family, The boys are all sleeping in one room in order to free up two bedrooms for us. Potentially, they hope to house up to twelve volunteers, who would arrive on a rotating basis, staying for a period from 2 weeks to over 2 months (above that requires a Ghanaian Visa renewal.) God bless them for they have placed the success of the orphanage far above their own needs and comfort.

The welcoming entrance to the house has a large porch and swing, and a beautiful patio area with two large mango trees (which are not yet in season). The whole property, probably a half acre, is walled with an ornate iron gate.

Their home has a central, ceramic-tiled living room/dining area of about 25 x 25 ft. Surrounding this are five spacious bedrooms and their kitchen. There is a toilet room and a separate shower room, with a sink just outside these. We mentioned earlier that there is electricity and running water, but no hot water. Each bedroom and the toilet have a hanging curtain for privacy. The photo is of Patrick, who was saying a blessing, sort of giving a toast over some soda that we were drinking to celebrate the birthday of his 16 year old son.  (Happy Birthday sounds the same in every language.)

Pat, Patrick's wife (who only speaks the native Twi language and French) apparently had several visions and dreams during the past few years, impelling Patrick to quit his teaching job and start an orphanage and school for needy children. We asked about the availability of public schooling. It is indeed available, however class sizes are often over 30 per grade (kids join grades by ability, not age). A further obstacle to participating in education is the requirement that each child pay money to "purchase/rent" a desk. This is out of the reach of most in this community. There are private parochial schools as well, but again, these are unaffordable as most families are just one day's work away from poverty.

Patrick rented a separate, gated home for his school/orphanage. The four room house uses three rooms for classrooms, one doubling as a bedroom for the overnight children. There are 34 permanent "residents", aged from 2 to 14, and they split up by gender, sleeping in two rooms on mats rolled out on the floor. One of Patrick's short term goals is to afford small mattresses, and to build some classrooms outside the house, so that the benches do not need to be removed each day. Building, in Ghana, is almost exclusively done with concrete block, and very little lumber. He is also in the early stages of building a separate structure for toilets and showers. The photo shows the roughly 15 x 15 foot, and 12 foot deep trench that they dig by hand in the rock, and the first day's work of lining it with brick by the masons. Currently there is one toilet, shared by the 34 residents, 90 day students and 12 staff and volunteers. I mentioned earlier that there is no running water at the school, and each day they "fetch' water in buckets from the distance of about a block down the road, filling up a 50 gallon storage barrel.

The resident children awake at 5:30 and have their bathing. One of our duties has been to help with these "showers", consisting of a naked lineup of the 15 youngest children, who stand in a large rounded metal bowl, and are hand washed with lots of soap, and rinsed with clean water from an adjacent bucket. Then they are dried, have a type of "pomade" shea butter rubbed into their skin, have their teeth brushed, and get dressed for the day. Many have gray and purple uniforms with a "tie" stitched on as part of the uniform. Most of the clothes are old and ill fitting, relying on oversized belts to secure their pants from falling. Similarly, their underclothes are in rough shape. Their clothing, however, is quite clean.

Each child is responsible for their own hand washed laundry, and they often can be found taking a few idle moments to grab a bucket, a bar of soap,scrubbing their clothing, and hanging it out on the line in the courtyard. They each have chores, from rearranging the benches outdoors for meals and then indoors for classes. There is a constant parade of these 10 foot benches being carried and swung by young children. It is surprising that no one has gotten clocked in the head, but God seems to be protecting them from such injuries.

Breakfast follows the morning cleanup process. So far, it has been composed of a large pot of porridge and some fresh baked white bread, purchased from a local vendor who carried a few dozen loaves into the complex on her head at around 7am. There is a cook, MaLizzy who does all of the cooking with the help of a few others. MaLizzy doesn't speak English, and could best be described as a "strong woman." She put us to hard work immediately, stirring, serving and dishwashing, as if to test our constitution. We are the first IVHQ volunteers to this program, so, the regular help are quietly watching to see how much real work we are going to contribute, or if we are just there to hold babies.

Around 7:30am, the 90 or so day students begin arriving, and there is a formal line-up of students into four lines (by class), a moment of prayer and some singing, followed by the morning classes.

Around noon, lunch is served, which, from a volunteer standpoint, is the most challenging activity of the day. There is usually a big pot of something based on rice or beans and often a soup. These portions are individually served in an eclectic collection of colorful plastic bowls, and distributed by staff and volunteers to each student seated outdoors at benches. Many Ghanaian dishes are served with a large starchy something, a rice ball, a sticky pasta ball called Fu-Fu, or a pasty maize and casaba ball called banku. These are immersed in soup, often with beans or dried fish, and eaten by hand by dunking a piece of the carb ball in the soup. The main dishes are nicely spiced and have a similar flavor to Carribean food, with a generous amount of spices and cayenne.The photo shows on the other volunteers, serving lunch from the large pot of banku.

Frequently, palm oil is used as a main ingredient in cooking. This locally made oil is pressed from the pounded nut of the palm tree, and it has a bright red color, not unlike transmission fluid. It has a slight hot spicy taste to it, and you may remember hearing about it towards the top of the "bad oils" list of high trans-fat oils. It lingers on everything, and I can tell you first hand, that it is nearly resistant to becoming soluble in any dish washing detergent. I will be dreaming of palm-oil coated dishes, long after this volunteer trip is over.

There is an afternoon class, and between 3 ond 5pm, there is a free time, recess of sorts, during which the day students are picked up. 120 kids can make a lot of noise when in free play, and they are a bit difficult to contain in each of the classes of 30+ students in the mid day heat. Yet, they are learning math, English grammar, writing, music, composition and writing, in a rapid-fire learning experience of memorization, individual presentation and much applause from classmates for a job well done.

At least once during the day, an entourage needs to head down the road to replenish the water supply by carrying buckets. It takes about 30, 2-gallon buckets, carried by head, to fill up the 50 gallon storage barrel and the large Igloo cooler used for drinking water throughout the day. Patrick purchases this water from a Moslem family down the road who have a "pipe" (really just a spigot coming out a wall). If he purchases a large containers worth (5 gallons) the cost is 15peswas (about 9 cents), but if he fills individual gallon buckets, he is charged more. So, we go through this inane ritual of filling the large container, then distributing it into smaller buckets to obtain this discount. A complete replenished fill of the water storage containers costs just over 1 Cedi, probably about 65 cents. On Patrick's short list of improvements, is to get a "pipe" at the school. This will save about 6-8 man-hours a day of water "fetching" as well as give him the ability to sell water to others close by, turning and expense into a small profit center. The cost of running this public water feed down the road to him is about 650 Cedis ($400).

At 5, the school begins winding down in energy a bit with dinner. Again, this is usually a pot of some soup or bean dish, served individually to each student by volunteers and staff. The dishes (again) get washed by hand in two large round pans (the same ones that we used for showers). Showers again after dinner, and another round of teeth brushing before bed at 8pm. Retiring at 8pm sounded awfully early to me, until we realized that everything in Ghana comes to life around 5am, so it is just a morning-based culture.

A few times a day, we take the walk to the orphanage/school to perform our tasks, and then return to our host home for our own delicious meals and a moment of renewal and rest. It is brutally hot and humid, and some of the chores are exhausting (today I helped Patrick carry 50 kilo bags of concrete for some of his construction). The work needs to be done, everyone smiles, the children are delightful and warm and full of love and hugs. Somehow, it is all worthwhile and satisfying.It is a different world, one that seems to have little bearing on the culture in the States that we left, but everyone has a purpose and the same human needs, and dreams and a family to care for and support.  it all works out, just in a different framework.

Donations:
Many readers have asked if they can help to support the orphanage project, so we set up a webpage for the orphanage, fundraising for some of the recurring expenses like food, shelter and utilities.  We also have a donation page for several special projects like completing the toilet/shower building, bringing in public water, classrooms and raising money for mattresses for the children.  You can even help by purchasing chickens for the farm project associated with the school.  There is a page for supporting Services and Projects.  You can find out more, and support the school with any size donation at: WestAfricanSchool.org