Rainy Days = No Teachers in the Classroom

Today began our third day of teaching. It rained very hard in the early morning, which meant that the teachers and administration would most likely not show up to the schools that day. When I (Cinnamon) arrived at the primary school, some children were already there, and many others arrived shortly after to join my class. I quickly rounded the kids up into a classroom and began teaching them vocabulary, specifically the names of animals. It was an interesting barrier I ran into, learning that most of the children did not know the English names for simple creatures such as spiders, monkeys, etc. It was funny to realize how tough the English language can be to teach. For example, why does the "ph" combination make the "f" sound? These and many other complicated exceptions were hard to put into simple rules.

The teaching environment at the Maltiti girls school was similar. When I (Ryan) began teaching, I noticed that there were no rules or restrictions imposed on these kids. They were unruly, inattentive, and they did not understand any of the material. Gabriel and I attempted to teach them English and math, with the latter being much more successful. The kids knew the basic addition problems and some subtraction problems but had no idea what these processes meant. They couldn't grasp the fact that adding is combining two values or that subtraction involved removing a part of a whole. It seems that there is a huge problem with the primary education here in Ghana. The focus appears to be on memorization rather than understanding.

The last trip of the day was to the free medical clinic in one of the local villages. It was nice to see that health-care was being provided to patients in terminal conditions, such as leprosy and patients with a degenerating nervous system. However, the clinic still has a long way to go as far as technological development is involved. Also, because it is based largely on donation, its pharmaceutical supply is messy and unstable. One interesting fact we learned from our tour guide was that the clinic provides medication to persons with mental illness throughout the community by secretly mixing it into their food. Although this a nice gesture, it is completely against human rights. This habit may seem immoral in our culture, but within the context of Ghana, this is simply a way to ensure the the citizens do not cause harm to themselves or others. It is crazy that, even though we have been here for over two weeks, we are learning something new about Ghanaian culture everyday.