Avid Readers

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It’s just before 2 pm and a crowd of excited school children have gathered around the doors of GHEI’s library.  They chatter and laugh, some kicking around a soccer ball, others playing jacks with pebbles.  All of these children have finished their school day, but are here eagerly awaiting the start of the daily ‘Read-a-thon’.  The Read-a-thon is GHEI’s month long program which encourages the kids to do some extra reading through two separate two-hour reading periods each day at the library.  The aim of the Read-a-thon is to improve reading skills and to foster an interest and joy in reading amongst these young students.

It’s remarkable how eager they are to hit the books.  When the library doors finally open the kids try to rush through all at once, getting caught with little shoulders wedged against the door frame.  Nevertheless, GHEI Library Administrator Lawrence Donkor runs a tight ship and keeps things orderly, insisting that everyone signs in while entering.

I’ve had the chance to help out around the Read-a-thon by monitoring the kids and it’s been a really enjoyable process.  It’s satisfying when a student approaches me to ask the pronunciation of a word. “Con-clu-sion” I say.  She rushes back to her friends to teach them the correct pronunciation with pride. It’s also good to see a young boy totally absorbed in his "Clifford the Dog" book, and funny to think that a story about a massive red dog is as entertaining to Ghanaian kids today as it was to my Canadian classmates and I twenty years ago. 

That being said, the North American context of many of these children’s books has proven to be an obstacle when trying to improve literacy.  They often include concepts that the kids have no prior knowledge of, which can be detrimental to reading comprehension. GHEI addresses this challenge with an intake of stories written by African authors featuring a more familiar context for our young readers.

Two hours is a long time for some of the younger participants to concentrate and things can get a little hectic in the closing minutes.  I’ve defused a few small quarrels, and even had to break up some fisticuffs that broke out over a coveted piece of reading material.  I confiscated the book in question and not wanting to compromise my disciplinarian façade, contained my laughter in seeing that it was a picture book of WWF wrestlers.  Go figure!  Fortunately, for the most part everyone is well behaved and focused on their reading.

To motivate the kids, Read-a-thon is something of a contest.  Each junior high school student is awarded a point for every thirty minutes spent reading in the library, while younger students are given a point for every twenty minutes of reading.  At the end of the month we will tally up the points and award prizes to the students with leading scores in the different age groups. 

 In addition to this GHEI will hold a quiz competition that will see Humjibre’s various schools competing against each other in the categories of lower primary, upper primary and junior high school.  Each school has been given books to study based on reading level, and contestants will be quizzed on their reading comprehension as well as their general knowledge of Humjibre and Ghana.

Next week GHEI will welcome our second group of Summer Serve and Learn Volunteers who will help out throughout the rest of the Read-a-thon by reading to the children for story time, assist in creating the quiz competition as well as assess the students final performance.  We look forward to their arrival!

Ready to read!

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Running Water for Humjibre

Nana Kwadwo Twum II

The Summer Serve and Learn volunteers and myself recently had the privilege of meeting the Chief of Humjibre, Nana Kwadwo Twum II.  We filed into the palace led by GHEI Education Manager Enock ‘Happy’ Nkrumah, going around the room greeting and shaking hands with everyone in attendance.

The Chief’s main spokesman made a ceremonial prayer thanking God for bringing us together and asking for wisdom and guidance in our work.  As he prayed he poured out libations of Castlebridge gin on to the palace floor as an offering to their ancestors.

Next they passed around the bottle of gin, starting with the council of elders.  I noticed that most of the men were drinking about an ounce of the gin, pouring out the last drops, while others abstained and poured out their full servings.

The bottle worked its way around the room and soon I was offered my drink.  I knocked back my shot and managed to avoid wincing in front of my gracious hosts, pouring out the last drops.  Nothing like a shot of gin to start my morning!

We were informed that the Chief rarely addresses the assembly, usually communicating through his spokesman, but in a demonstration of his warmth towards his guests he spoke to us directly in his closing remarks.  He wished us God’s blessing in our work and welcomed us to his community.  He also ensured our safety in Humjibre, promising to protect us throughout the duration of our stay.

GHEI Country Director Clement Donkor then announced to the elders that the water borehole that GHEI had sponsored the construction of was now complete, and that we wished to formally hand the keys over to the Chief.  Together we walked to the site of the new borehole.

Previously people in Humjibre would use water pumps to collect their water, which is quite a laborious task.   Since most residents of Humjibre don’t have running water all the water for daily living had to be obtained in this way. This new borehole features four faucets fed through an elevated Polytank, making life that much easier for the surrounding community.

 

In the United States the average water used per person is between 250 and 300 litres of water (65 to 78 gallons) per day for drinking, cooking, bathing and watering their yard (Pacific Institute).  Imagine for a moment that you had to pump your entire daily water supply by hand, then transport it back to your home in a bucket carefully balanced on your head.  At those rates it would take more than one trip!

Before handing the keys to Nana Kwadwo Twum II we bowed our heads in prayer, asking for God’s blessing on the use of the taps and all those they will serve, followed by the pouring of more libations on the ground.  The faucets were turned and each of us cupped our hands under the brisk running water, splashing our faces to cool off under the blazing sun.  I took a big sip of water, which I had been craving since my swig of gin.

GHEI Country Director Clement Donkor hands over the keys to the borehole to Nana Kwadwo Twum II

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We Are The Future

GHEI’s Girls Empowerment Club usually meets twice a week throughout May and June to promote girls’ education, discuss self-expression and build self-esteem amongst other things. Recently the girls have made an extra push, meeting every night to practice new songs and run through plays in preparation for their big welcome performance for the first group of Summer Serve and Learn volunteers.  After hours of rehearsals, the Girls Empowerment Club gave a memorable performance for both their community and the newly arrived volunteers Wednesday evening.

The crowd stirred impatiently with anticipation as they waited for the show to begin.  As the young women trotted out to the beat of blaring dance tunes, the crowd could not contain themselves.  Parents pointed out their daughters with pride, and the audience was immediately won over.

The audience was wowed by a night of singing, dancing and short skits, all delivering a message of gender equality.  For some spectators this was an unfamiliar message that challenges the status quo in rural Ghana.  For others, it is a new reality for the younger generation in which girls are given the same chances as boys both academically and socially.

Satisfied with their performance the girls bustled off the stage. The thundering applause gave way to an all out dance party as the DJ blasted ‘high-life’ music and the crowd erupted into an undulating mass.  Meanwhile backstage the girls celebrated and congratulated one another on a job well done. Their message was sent loud and clear.

Our volunteers were thoroughly impressed by the unforgettable performance and are very eager to work alongside the Girls Empowerment Club in developing leadership skills, building self-esteem, teaching business and money management, and discussing safe sex and family planning.

We at GHEI are extremely proud of the Girls Empowerment Club for their diligence and perseverance.  Way to go girls!

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Songs of Hope

One by one, the young women of GHEI’s Girls Empowerment club file into the classroom. Smiling and joking with one another, their enthusiasm is unmistakable. Tonight’s session will have the girls learning and practicing new songs for their upcoming performance for the first group of Summer Serve and Learn Volunteers.



GHEI staff members Aggie Obeng and Enock ‘Happy” Nkrumah lead them through the new material, and at first the girls are bashful, singing just above a whisper. Within moments they have found their rhythm and are singing in unison, as though they had known the songs for years.

These are no ordinary songs. The lyrics depict a bright future for these young women, a future in which education will be their key to a rich and fulfilling life. In a country that often favours boys’ pursuit of schooling, these girls deliver a simple message. They are perfectly capable and incredibly passionate in seeking the same academic opportunities that will enable them to blossom into the next generation of Ghanaian leaders

Educate Your Girl Child

Educate your girl child, in the area of empowerment;
Send her to school, she may be great,
Don’t waste her time, don’t waste her talent, this is the time, send her to school.
Teachers we need, your girl child may be one, Engineers we need, and she may be one.
Lawyers we need, your girl child may be one, Nurses we need she may be one.
Miners we need, your girl child may be one, Pilots we need, and she may be one.
Doctors we need, she may be one, Oh yes, don’t waste her talent, send her to school. Send her to school!

"Filthy water cannot be washed." -West African Proverb

Pure, drinkable water has always bubbled from the hill near the village of Humjibre. This clean water source has sustained generation after generation of villagers through severe dry seasons and periods of drought. The town elders wisely decided to establish a perimeter around the coveted water inside which the discarding of trash, farming, use of pesticides and even the wearing of shoes are forbidden. 

These same practices continue to this day.

 As the community grows, so does the need for more efficient ways of retrieving and transporting water from wells to homes within the community.

During early morning and evening hours, you will see parents and children transporting water in large basins perched on top of their heads from the wells to their homes. All the water that is needed to carry out daily activities (such as cooking, washing, cleaning, showering...etc) is transported in this manner. In addition, most wells have not yet been motorized and require hours of hand pumping to fill these basins.     

GHEI has undertaken a project of raising funds to install motorized pumps and polytanks to supply Humjibre residents with fresh water. This past week GHEI staff and community members helped install a motorized pump to transport the water from a borehole into a polytank which will then be easily accessed by a row of facets that the villagers can use to easily fill their containers with instead of hours of hand pumping.

As the Humjibre community grows so does GHEI's efforts to help support and develop the community.

Photos by Mandy McConaha

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World Malaria Day 2012

Music boomed from the Humjibre Community Center and warm light spilled out of open windows and doors beckoning people to come and join the festivities. The day is World Malaria Day and in Ghana, Malaria is one of, if not the greatest health risk accounting for nearly a third of all deaths in children under 5. The most dangerous malaria parasite, of the 4 that infect humans, is by far most prevalent in Ghana where it accounts for up to 98% of infections.

These facts combined make this an extremely important day to spread the word in Humjibre as well as in the neighboring communities of Soroano and Kojina about preventative measures that each individual can take to protect themselves and their loved ones. Slowly people began to trickle into the Community Center and the seats began to fill with young mothers carrying babes on their backs, old women with lined faces hunched over from years of hard living, and the excitable, squirming bodies of young boys and girls. The music ebbed and members of GHEI's health team, Aggie and Mensah, stood before their community as role models and leaders explaining the causes and effects of Malaria. Nurses from the local clinics were invited to give animated talks about detecting early symptoms and the audience was encouraged to participate in a bednet demonstration as well as a question and answer session. The evening drew to a close with the showing of a short film, featuring a number of GHEI's health staff, that illustrated the symptoms and appropriate treatment of Malaria, and the importance of a proactive approach.

Malaria prevention is a main focus of GHEI’s Health Program and they have tackled this pervasive problem since 2006 by distributing insecticide treated bednet throughout Humjibre and neighboring communities. The beauty of working at the grassroots level is the ability to adapt and hone a program to the unique needs and demands of each community. Knowledge is power and the GHEI health team found that just providing bednets was not enough. Intervention was needed to educate each household on bednet usage with culturally appropriate material and Community Health Workers were trained to be involved in every aspect from planning, distribution, promotion and community support. The combination of these outreach programs and the empowerment of community members were a necessary step to successfully integrate bednet usage into the daily Ghanaian life.

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Planting a Seed

For the past 3 years, the GHEI Health team has motivated the youth in Humjibre to become involved in their hand washing program as Hand Washing Monitors. The Hand Washing Monitor's job is to encourage their fellow peers to learn the best way to prevent the spread of bacteria and germs by encouraging them to wash their hands with soap at the appropriate times. This may seem like a simple feat, however in a village with as limited resources as Humjibre, finding clean water and soap can be quite a challenge.

GHEI has provided 5 local schools with Polytanks that hold fresh water for this very purpose and conducted educational outreaches to help prevent the spread of illnesses caused by lack of cleanliness. Over the years, the program has increased to 13 Hand Washings Monitors who are selected by the head teachers of each school. These children make sure the schools provide both hand washing basins with fresh water as well as soap each day and act as role models to their peer groups, demonstrating the correct way to wash their hands at the correct times.

 To evaluate the success of this peer based program, the GHEI Health team conducted interviews with 129 students selected from each school to see if they could name the correct times to wash their hands. 96% of these students knew that after going to the bathroom was a crucial time, 75% of the students were able to list before eating as also an important time, and 25% said before cooking.

We here at GHEI believe that the best way to promote true change in a community is to plant a seed and cultivate it into fruition. We invest in the smallest individual to empower an entire community.

Above is the smiling face of a recent graduate from our Hand Washing Monitor Program, Godfred Gyening. With the help of the other Hand Washing Monitors, we bid him a happy farewell and all the best in the future. Enjoy!

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From Ghana with love...

I rolled into Humjibre one golden evening, drooping from the heat and trailed by an impressive dust cloud, disturbed by our taxi driver’s superbly honed pothole avoidance skills (or lack there of). A group of smiling children came to greet us and like any dutiful welcoming party, they demanded to help carry my assortment of dusty, mismatched luggage…on their heads!

  
“Akwaaba to Humjibre!”

In just 5 minutes of arriving in the village I will call home for the next year, I've already met a handful of adorable children and discovered a new skill set that just begs for countless hours of practicing! (I’ve already envisioned myself strolling through the airport, coffee in one hand, sweet pastry in another with my carry-on luggage exquisitely balanced on top of my noggin!).

My first week was one of orienting myself to a new community and learning the names and roles of each of our in-country staff. I was welcomed to the GHEI family with drinks at a local watering hole and had the chance to taste my first ‘tot” of the local ginger brew, Burukatu (Warning, the stomach calming medicinal values of the ginger root does NOT transfer over to the alcoholic uses of this plant). 

Our ECL (Early Childhood Literacy) graduation took place this past week and I had the fantastic opportunity to witness it first hand. Our ECL class is one of the newer additions to the GHEI Education Program and offers supplemental classes to primary school students who are falling behind in school.

Photos by Mandolyn

This group of rambunctious munchkins received congratulatory storybooks for excellent attendance and recognition for their hard work. The event concluded with some of the children’s favorite games: Dancing Chairs, the Ghanaian version of Musical Chairs where the children dance instead of run, and Alphabet Floor Tag, where letters are randomly scattered across the floor and the children must run and locate the correct letter that the teacher calls out. The afternoon sunlight streaming through the Community Center windows, illuminated the running feet and smiling faces of our lovely students. 

All in all, my first few weeks in Ghana have been…hot! But also stunning, thanks to my new GHEI family!

Stay tuned for more lively stories, photos and GHEI updates!

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This dynamic duo, who single-handedly change the world through books, blogs and beards, just celebrated their big THREE-OH! Chad (raised in Chad coincidentally), is our almost former Communications Director (almost gone but never forgotten!) and Lawrence (who just welcomed a new baby girl to the family!) acts as our fantastic librarian. These are some of our stunning in-country staff here at GHEI!

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Progress and Patriotism in Humjibre

Pictures by Mandolyn McConaha

On Tuesday, March 6, Ghana celebrated 55 years of independence.  Everyone had the day off except all students in Humjibre, who gathered in their cleanest school uniform (and nicest shoes) at the top of the hill.  Martial drumbeats were heard since early morning and by time Jen and Mandolyn and I made it to the street to watch the parades, students were assembled in rigid lines and were beginning their marching.  Even the very youngest ones, in their purple preschool uniforms, attempted a lock step march, but their big eyes mostly wandered to the raucous crowds lining the street. Teachers rushed alongside, scooting the straying ones back in line.

We followed alongside as the various schools began their marches through town to the football field.  The early morning clouds had lifted, and everyone was in a fantastic mood.  I kept running into people I’d met months back, now back from school or from working in the city and home to celebrate.  I kept getting further behind the festivities, and it began to sink that I am leaving this great place really soon and I have not taken any pictures of these kids! How am I supposed to blog about this?

Fortunately, Mandolyn was there.  Mandolyn McConaha is GHEI’s new communication director, replacing yours truly.  She has spent a lot of time abroad, and even worked in a communication director type role with an NGO in southeast Asia.  She also has a background in photojournalism, so her pictures were going to be way more awesome than mine that day anyways.  Remembering this, I went back to slapping hi-fives with rowdy dudes, and finding food (including someone cooking a “Flying Rat”.  Did you know that rats fly?  They do in Humjibre!)

The schools gathered on the football pitch to march once more, this time past the seated VIPs. As they passed, they delivered swift little salutes.  I asked a spectator, if he did this when he was in school. He told me, with a touch of patriotic nostalgia, that he was the lead drummer during his Junior High years.  I recognized some of the GHEI YEP students, leading their schools.  I spoke to an older gentleman who remembered Ghana’s very early years till now, “Fifty-Five years and not enough progress!”  He didn’t have much hope for seeing a drastically better Ghana, but he thought the kids marching today will. Ghana is still a young country, and people are proud of it.

by Mandolyn McConaha

As you can see if you take a look at our facebook photo album on Ghanaian Independence Day, Mandolyn got some really great shots that day.  I’m excited to see what she does with the blog, and excited for all of you to get a fresh perspective on GHEI’s work.   Even if you know GHEI’s daily grind as well as I do, and you have an idea of what life is like in a progressing Ghana, there’s always a new way of looking at it.   

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