It is not only the second week in October but also, I am pleased to announce, the second week that the Awutu-Winton Senior High School has been open. It is great that, after so much hard work by many, many people both here and in the UK, we have finally been able to swing open the doors and welcome the first 35 students. Classes started last week, and have been a great success. But of course, its never that simple. The ongoing national census, which employs teaching staff, combined with the fact that the Ghana Education Service are still in the process of sending out Junior school grades and certificates from last year means that, nationally, secondary school openings have been put back until November. This second point is of most importance; not only can last year’s junior graduates not apply for further schooling without their certificates, but valuable teaching time is being eaten into. And with the current government reducing senior schooling cycles from 4 to 3 years [with the same content], then every minute counts. As a result, we have taken the step of opening the school early [or late, depending on your point of view], for older students from previous years who are in possession of graduation certificates. These students did not progress beyond junior schooling, often for financial reasons, and have been really enthusiastic about a free school that can give them opportunities to better themselves.
Furthermore, as the majority of the students are from the Awutu area and have been schooled at local, overcrowded and under-resourced, government schools it is important to brush up the basics before we push on with the course proper. And what with the majority of teachers busy with the census we find ourselves, perhaps fortunately, with no option other than to run introductory lessons in core maths, sciences and ICT for a couple of weeks using the handful of teachers we do have available. We are now just waiting, sitting tight, for the teachers and the certificates to be released so that we can start a full syllabus, and introduce a second class of 35 students from 2010 junior classes.
All in all though, it has been great to see the progress made over the past fortnight, and both the students and teachers are really enjoying themselves. The kids are all really committed and, though teaching is currently finishing at midday, [we start at 7] all are eager to stay behind in the library to study late into the afternoon. As a result I now find myself working as a temporary librarian.
So, that is where we are. And so now I shall start the journey of how we got here, since the last time we spoke, a couple of months ago:
In early August we ran interviews for the teaching staff, and selected the 6 teachers we needed to cover a full syllabus in year one. So, armed with our ministerial agreement, I sauntered off to Cape-Coast to meet the director of secondary cycles there to get the teachers signed over to our new school. As a Social-Democracy, Ghana's political landscape is highly decentralised and, as a result, decisions over such things as teacher allocations are taken on a more local level as opposed to nationally. The Director at Cape-Coast, whom I have met many times before, was very helpful and called his HR director into the meeting. We quickly agreed the transfer of the teachers we needed. A shake of the hand and I was on my way. Done! [ it was only later that we realized that EDP will have to pay for them as well!]
The next task was to get the oh-so-problematic container through the port. Despite my best efforts to get the pre-tax clearance documents in order and our import-duty waver form [see previous blog], as expected we came up against a few difficulties. The problem is that there are many, many departments that our forms had to get signed by and we could only start the ball rolling once we had the container’s 'bill of lading', which is only issued when the ship sets sail. So, with the ship leaving Southampton on a journey expected to take around three weeks, it was a straight race between the ship and Ghanaian tax and customs department. The ship won!
The container was in the port for three and a half further weeks before I got in to see it. I’m not going into what happened during that time, here, suffice to say I have a dozen more grey hairs on my head, and have now seen the inside of every office in the tax and customs department, and about two thirds of those in the social welfare department. Another couple of weeks followed of daily visits to the port. Usually these began each morning with a search for our guy - the most useless clearing agent in the whole of Accra - followed by a ridiculous battle just to get into the port. The clearing agent, officially, has the container in his name, and so once we realised how unhelpful the guy was we would have had to start the whole process again [another 6 weeks, at the standard port charge of $50 daily, whilst the container remained in limbo]. Thus we had no choice but to soldier on with what we had.
The port itself, Tema, is enormous and spending a little time in there was certainly an experience. Forty foot shipping containers are piled 4 or 5 high, in rows and rows that stretch for what seems like miles. An intricate network of deserted streets and passage ways exist between them where people are seen only fleetingly. The eerie silence is punctuated occasionally by the giant, giraffe necked, cranes that swoop along to pluck a container from its perch for emptying. Little teams of men emerge from their makeshift houses within disused and rusted containers and join the lines following the cranes. The containers are dropped in a smaller enclosure [still the size of two or three football pitches], and are 'inspected'. The men assemble in front of the container and ask if we need help unloading. What is in the container? Can they have anything? A computer? Do we need a driver? A truck? Where are we going? The tax officer arrives, signs some papers, checks the locks and opens the door. He pulls the first box down, takes a football from it, puts it under his arm, closes the door and walks off. Well, thank god the computers were at the back, right?
From here we had countless more forms, meetings, and signings to be done. Some of which I was allowed to see, others were conducted between the clearing agent and the various official looking people in private. I was told to wait in the car. This was boring. So I went for long, and frequent, walks around the port. The market for knocked off goods is so open as to be comical. Anything and everything is traded, swapped and sold, not so much off the back of a lorry as plucked from a giant steel box a top the seven seas. The teams of workers and labourers, operating in their little gangs, even have market stalls set up – some not more than 50 yards from the tax inspectors office. One of them had our football on it. A guard approached me and asked to see my security badge. Then he told me he could deport me for wearing flip flops. Off I trotted. Two more guards were in a bidding war for some Italian sandals. They eventually went to the jolly looking one for 10 Cedis [about a fiver], 'my wife will love these' he said.
By the time we finally climbed aboard a lorry [captain fantastic, the clearing agent, had lost his] it had been more than two months since the container had left the UK, and at least five weeks that it had been sat in the West African heat of the port. I was worried as to how the contents had faired [though I needn't have been as miraculously all but one computer monitor was fine]. When we eventually got out onto the road to start the journey back to the school, I settled down, beginning to think for the first time this ordeal might be over. Though of course, deep-down, I knew it wasn't. The police were very helpful, and kept pulling us over to offer advice, and generally be very pleasant. Every mile or so, we got the chance to introduce ourselves to a new group of young guys, armed and inquisitive. It was always good to stop and talk. Some even wanted to look inside the container, and they all liked footballs ! So friendly were they, in fact, that I didn't even notice that the two hour journey took us seven instead and our stock of footballs was severely depleted . By the time we got back, my primary concern was looking imminent. Rain. A lot of rain. We managed to get the truck along the dirt road to the school site, which in a few hours time would be an impassable mud ditch. But the clouds were threatening and now it was a race against the sky. As we only had two small cranes to get the container off the back of the lorry, everything had to be removed first. What followed was an hour long rush of pulling everything out, whilst trying to maintain some sort of order and control over where everything was going. Mercifully however, it was all finished just in time, and as I waved the truck driver off and set off to get a feed, the heavens opened and brought some welcome rest-bite from the mid-afternoon heat. It was fantastic!
The next few weeks were spent fitting out the ICT lab with the computers and getting the generator up and running in preparation for the grand opening. A lot of work had to be done, and I was very grateful to have the help of David and Martin who had come out to see how things were going. Whilst the three of us were together [ and once Martin had sorted out the issues of the building standards in regard to the phase two foundations which had just been started ] we started work on the pineapple juicer project that we hope will be able to raise some revenue for the school. A couple of fun days spent larking around with an industrial cider press and a trip to a huge local pineapple farm, Milani Queen, was how we spent the weekend. And as a result, last week, we opened a fresh juice kiosk in Awutu. The fantastically named [not by myself] 'Thirst for Knowledge' kiosk has done a steady trade in its first few days and feed-back has been encouraging. Next year we hope to roll this out further afield - though this requires a great deal of logistical and supply chain management, which gets even more complicated with fresh produce [especially in Africa].
So, that is just about where we find ourselves. The school is two weeks old, and going along nicely. The census, and its use of teaching staff to carry out the research, has meant that the Ghana Education Service have postponed 'official' openings until November. As a result we are currently a couple of teachers down, though they are set to return next week. But with the term up and running we all have plenty to be thankful for. All we have to do now is, get the electricity connected, start adult classes, iron out ICT server problems, expand the juice project, create an electronic school records system, recruit a second class, ensure a safe and secure learning environment, organise teacher contracts, print school badges, build second phase classrooms, meet parents, set up community management organisation, locate internet service provider, collect extra text books, build a fence with security gate, fix a broken water tower, build a road, get a bus and dig a football pitch.
Any volunteers?!
James Riggs , Project Manager
Awutu-Winton Senior High School
Awutu-Bereku
Central State, Ghana
October 9th 2010
Ps Some of you have been asking about Francisca, one of our first students and to hear her story again, so here it is ( see a picture of Francisca on the Gallery Section) :
Francisca Arhin, a small twenty year old, sits opposite me and recounts the story of her life with a matter-of-factness that is completely devoid of all self pity. Her mother, she tells me, died when she was young and, as a result, her father abandoned her and her six sisters.
Francisca is the youngest of seven girls and all of the rest are married, with children, and none have completed Senior School. After being all but orphaned from a young age, Francisca has moved around a great deal and lived with various relatives but, mercifully, did manage to finish State Junior School [JHS] in 2008. Her grades were good, and she enjoyed Maths and Science, but she never held out any hope of being able to afford the secondary school fees that are mandatory for all Senior Schools in Ghana [as in most of Africa]. Her dreams of going to University in Accra to study accounting seemed an impossibility. After JHS she was sent to live in a family home in Tema, the industrial heartland of Accra's port, as a home help girl. For four months she washed and cleaned and scrubbed and cooked, all for the price of basic board and a little food. She doesn't elaborate on why she left, saying simply, 'it wasn't good'. From there she moved back in with her big sister, 'the fourth born', and her family. Helping out around the house and working part time selling phone credit in Awutu. The latter she describes as 'boring, very, very boring!'
The last time I sat down and spoke to Francisca was three weeks ago to tell her that she had been accepted into the school [we have had hundreds and hundreds of applications and sadly only limited space]. A huge smile crept over her face and her eyes lit up like dazzling headlamps. An hour later, on my way home, I would see her skipping down the road back to Awutu.
A dedicated and hard working student, Francisca arrives early every morning to study for an hour before school starts and is once more beginning to think about a career in accounting. Perhaps I see a little glimpse of the fiery future professional when she snaps at two lads to be quite so she can concentrate; before correcting them on their grammar. But even then, the smile I first saw three weeks ago is still there. As it has been every time I have seen her in school. She tells me she is enjoying her classes and that she is 'so, so happy to go to school'. She wants to work hard for her future, a future that until recently was looking bleak. 'I have to work hard', she tells me, 'I am very lucky to have this opportunity. Many others do not'.
A close knit group of sisters, all the rest are hoping she does well. The 'forth born', told me when we meet at the school, 'we are all so proud of our little girl, she is blessed that there is a free school here in Awutu.' She looks round at her youngest sister and smiles the same family smile, 'she must work hard, but we all know she can do many great things'.
They hug, before laughing.
