So, 2 months here in Awutu and plenty to tell you about. Progress has been good and we are still on course for the grand opening of Awutu-Winton Senior High School in September. The local population are in dire need of a Secondary School with the closest one 6 miles away in Senya. The children from Awutu often have to walk this each day, setting off 2 hours before classes start, and arriving home well after dark. I have visited the school, and others in nearby Winneba and Kasoa. A hundred-plus children jammed into classrooms the size of a squash court, with three or four students hunched over a single desk. The stifling heat is too much for some who fall asleep slouched against their classmates, only to be awoken seconds later by the thwack of a cane across their arms, legs or neck.
I have spoken to many of the students, and their story is often the same. Michael is fourteen years old, he lives on the family smallholding, goes to school in Senya and plays football with his friends on Sundays. Which is when I meet him. He tells me that he is too tired to play today, so he watches from the side of he pitch as his team run around in the mid morning sun. He explains how he gets up each morning at 3 o'clock to do his study under a small kerosene lantern. But his parents cannot afford the fuel, so he has it very low and it is difficult to see. He works until the sun comes up, at about 6, then takes a large pot of Kenke [plantain and cassava porridge] to the bus depot to sell to passengers at 20p a portion. He must sell it all for the fees he needs to go to school - £40 a term. His parents cannot afford to send him but he has to go to school “for qualifications, to get a job”. When he is finished at the bus depot he must walk the hour to school come sunshine or torrential West-African downpour. If he is late, his teacher canes him in front of the class. When I speak to him on Sunday, next to the football pitch, he is sad because he cannot pay his fees anymore.
Secondary education in Ghana, like much of Africa, is not free. Meaning that only those lucky enough to be able to afford it can claim the benefits that education brings - such as literacy, job prospects and better health. Those who cannot afford it, the poor, are just left to their own devices. This is the so-called self perpetuating poverty trap – if you are poor, there is no way out. That is why our project here in Awutu is so important. Not only are we committed to the concept of a non-fee paying secondary school, but also to a high quality education that will impart tangible, practical, cognitive skills. We have built three classrooms, an air-conditioned computer room, a library, admin block and toilets all ready for the first intake of students in September. The rooms themselves are large and airy, with mosquito netting and fans. One of the biggest factors in reduced student performance is class size and ours are limited to 35 [at 3 classes per year group that's just over 100 students each year]. Another factor in student performance is resources. Like much of Africa, schools here are often very poorly provisioned. It is common practice for students to buy their own text books at a cost of around £10 each [and the poverty trap continues]. We will offer free text books, and will employ the latest Information Communication Technology in our computer room as an additional teaching resource. With the generous donations of the Winton School in Andover we have been able to stock the library with a good number of school books as an extra source of learning.
So that is the state of things here, now to tell you a little more about the Awutu-Winton Senior High School and Ghana itself. I arrived into Accra airport on Wednesday March 3rd, and was picked up by Eddie who is helping with the project and has since become a good friend. We drive through the city that I just saw from the sky. Busy little street vendors and the smells of barbecued meats drop in through the window. Its half ten at night and oppressively hot. Well, compared to the British winter I left behind only a few hours ago. We pass the 'god is great' 24hr mechanic and I smile at the sleepy chap outside. He waves back and I settle in to the drive to Awutu.
As chance would have it I arrived just a few days before Ghana's Independence day - a really big party. So no chance to get on with things, but a very nice way to get used to my new surroundings. We visited the school site which was huge, and much bigger than I had expected, a few days later. The school is being built in stages to accommodate year one this September, year two next September and so on. The first stage is just about finished. Just need to get the electricity and water connected, and give it a good lick of paint. Other than that everything was done. Septic tank. Toilets. Walls, ceilings and windows. The quality as well looked excellent and I was generally very pleased. By the following Tuesday, when the celebrations had finished, I visited Adams Nuhu, the District Chief Executive, to discuss getting the schools electricity connected. He has in the past said that it would be no problem, but has been continually stalling. He promised me that it would be done within three weeks, by April 1st. Yet here we are approaching the end of that month and nothing has been done. It seems he was pulling an April Fools trick. One of my main tasks now is to chase this up and pressurise Mr Nuhu to get the work done that he has promised.
By the end of my first full week, I was starting to get to grips with the size of the task at hand and had met the necessary people involved with the project. I was also getting to grips with life in Ghana; a county, I have to say, where the people really are as beautiful as the surroundings. I love to hear people laugh, so it’s lucky for me that everyone in Ghana does. All the time. It's fabulous!
It's also lucky for me that I do like to laugh. Because sometimes that's all you can do. Had a terrible night’s sleep on the Saturday and was awoken about half three by ants scrambling all over my bed, with nasty little pincers pinching my perspiring flesh. Lesson here is don’t leave mangos in your room. Got up and cleaned away all the things that I thought would be attractive to them [apparently they are quite fond of Bonjella, too]. Finally nodded off again about 5, only to be startled out of bed an hour later by two things that happened, almost simultaneously. First, a stereo fired up, with Michael Jacksons "Heal the world" blaring from its loins. Sometimes all you can do is laugh. And, so, I was laughing already when I picked the phone up a few minutes later. 'Hello James, it is Eddie'. 'Hello Eddie, what's up?' 'I am in a car. I am coming to get you. For breakfast'. I laughed a little more. 'Eddie, it’s six o'clock'. 'oh sorry, did I wake you?' 'Well. No. You...' he had a very good point, 'Ok Eddie, see you soon' 'Ok five minutes'. My shower was two minutes.
I met Eddie on the main road where he was waiting and he introduced me to a man of about fifty, in a bright green loin cloth and glasses who sat beside him in the front seat. The chief of the area wanted to meet and have breakfast with me. Though really all he wanted to do was show me his new phone, his young and beautiful wife and tell me that Michael Essien, the Chelsea midfielder, was his grandson. At about half six, with the restaurant just opening, the Chief waltzed in and barked orders at the petrified young men who were scrubbing the floor. They dropped their mops immediately and ran around sorting out the extensive order that had been placed. He ordered Guinness for the four of us, without paying much attention to my imploring that I couldn't. Though there is very obvious truth in the fact that one needs to be culturally sensitive and follow custom when visiting other countries, I did feel a strong urge to bide by my own cultural disposition that having a beer before breakfast is a good sign of a bad problem. Or, at the very least, acceptance that the rest of your day will achieve nothing of any note. Thankfully in the furore of the gargantuan breakfast and constant arrival of new people my drink got whisked away, while I sat caressing my coffee cup. The food was good and I was really full. They even bought me a pizza in case, they said, I didn't like the local food. The fact I had just eaten two plates of fish and Kenke didn't seem to be proof enough of my good feeling towards it. All the same, it was a very generous and thoughtful thing to do and I was very grateful. It was a lovely pizza, too.
Things at the school have been going very well, we managed to level the remaining land and get the electrical appliances fitted. The next aim was to get clearance from the local education board for us to be able to bring the container of school materials from the UK through the port in Accra. However, it wasn't until I arrived at Cape-Coast [3 hours away] that I was told the school wasn't in fact registered and as a result did not officially exist. Without this registration nothing would be allowed through the port. We arranged for a school inspector to visit the site the following day to write his report on the state of the school. As he did this I visited the Ghana Education Service [GES] to discuss the legal standing of the school and try to hurry things along. One of the most frustrating aspects of development work is the sudden and unexpected hurdles you come across which bring everything to a standstill. And so it was in this instance. Without the registration we really have got no room to manoeuvre as we cannot guarantee the school’s existence. So, begrudgingly, we have put a temporary halt to construction whilst we work to get the necessary clearance. I managed to get hold of the local MP, David Larby, who was very helpful in organising a meeting with a few middle-managers at the GES central office. But after a few meetings with them it became clear that they had not the authority to help us. At the same time I was chasing up by phone the Cape-Coast office to hurry along the school inspection report, which I was told would take just a few days, but to no avail. All I was repeatedly told was that the Director was out and would not be back today. So with things looking dismal, all we could do was wait.
A few months ago I read a good little book called three cups of tea about an American, Greg Mortenson, who has dedicated 30 years of his life to building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now I can sympathise a lot with the bureaucratic frustration he faced, but he makes special reference to the fact that on any number of occasions a completely fortuitous and unintended event would occur that, in retrospect, makes it impossible to imagine the project working had it not done so. And so when it happened to us I should not have been surprised. I had an email from a man called Christopher who worked in the Ghana Education Service in Accra. Christopher had met an EDP member in , of all places, Havana airport (!), completely by chance, and they had got talking about our project here. He was very interested and got my phone number and email. After a few emails back and forth Christopher said that he had managed to arrange a meeting with the Minister for Education no-less. Somewhat shocked, though realising this was an excellent opportunity not to be missed, I got my haircut and polished up my finest shoes.
The meeting was arranged for the following Monday at 2.00pm. Christopher and MP David Larby were there as well and we discussed at length the project with the Minster, Honourable Mr Alex Narh Tettey-Enyo. He was very impressed with the plan we had drawn up and the vision of a partnership between EDP and the GES. A stumbling block for this was that Ghana Educational Policy states that a school is either state run or private, there is no in between. This seemingly gave us no option but to run the school entirely ourselves. However after much negotiation and discussion over the following week we managed to reach an agreement that EDP would provide infrastructure, management and distance support whilst the GES 'agree to support the school with the services it normally renders to educational institutions'. This was a massive step for us and, with full government support, really goes a long way towards securing the long-term sustainability of the school in Awutu. The GES will now supply us with teachers and books as well entering us into their examination board. Finally, I received a signed and stamped letter from the department explaining the position in order for us to hurry along the registration process.
Buoyed by this success I got on my bus back home, only to be phoned unexpectedly by the Director of Education in Cape-Coast saying our school assessment report was ready for collection. Even more surprising, when I arrived the following morning, was the fact that not only was the inspection report completed but that it also came with a registration certificate.
So, there we have it, the school is official. 2 months later than we had thought but it is done now which makes for very happy reading. Still, quite a substantial amount of time has been lost and we really need to push on now. With just four months until the school opens we are going to be exceptionally busy We need the import certificate and to successfully get the container currently resting in Uk full of PCs, furniture , books and other education equipment destined through customs and to the school site. We need to draw up a Memorandum of Understanding to formalise the our relationship with the GES. The school still needs electricity and the ITC lab needs to get connected to the internet and linked back to the UK. We need to recruit students, teachers and to create a management structure and ethos for the school that is open and fair. All in all we have a lot to be getting on with, but with the sudden progress we have made, and with the help of the GES, I'm confident that Awutu-Winton School will be welcoming its first students in September.
James Riggs,
Awutu Bereku, Central state, Ghana.
April 30th 2010
Awutu Bereku, Central state, Ghana.
April 30th 2010
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