Sunday, 12 June 2011-Accra

Sunday, 12 June 2011--Accra

I am back at my rooms after lunch—fufu and thin soup with kenkey, courtesy of the ladies in the dining hall kitchen once again.  Getting up at 7:00 AM this morning felt like sleeping in a bit by the standards of the schedule I have been keeping.  I managed to do so despite the busy day yesterday and working on notes/blog until close to 12:00 again last night.  I had time to organize things in my rooms, type a little, and get ready for Osman sometime after 9:00.  When he arrived, it was raining, so we stayed here and talked about the coming week’s lessons.  First and second forms are well underway in current lessons that will be finished before moving on.  For third form I need to have them finish the Spread of Islam, but after that they (and the other two groups as well) will be moving on to the Slave Trade lesson.  Actually the second form is midway through the introductory part of this already.  We’ll just keep the third form introductory  activity to one day, so that we can move on and begin using some of our experiences from Elmina and Cape Coast in class this coming week.  The question of an assessment still remains—that is one area that Osman and I did not get to discuss this morning. 

We looked at some of the primary sources that I have stored on the computer and talked about how to adapt the general lesson outline on the Slave Trade that we had been developing before I arrived to classroom conditions here  Ordinarily in the U.S. I’d conduct the research portion of an inquiry exercise like this by having students work simultaneously in small groups with a variety of primary and secondary sources arranged at a number of different “stations” in the classroom.  Factors here that make this method difficult include the fact that we cannot make multiple copies of the different resources for students to use at each station as I would at my school.  Nor, given the number of students in the class, is it possible for us to have them move from station to station to work.  Instead, we’ll hold class in the classroom with the computer projector where we can show everyone each resource all at the same time.  They’ll still work in their small groups, but we’ll avoid having to physically move either the students or the resources.  Today and tomorrow, I’ll have to cull through the primary and secondary sources on the slave trade I collected before coming and get these into a form that allows them to be projected for the students to use.  I think we should have a nice variety of sources, which will tie back in to Osman’s (and my) teachings about the methods of history.  These could include statistics, oral traditions, secondary analyses such as BayoHolsey’sRoutes of Remembrance, traders and ex-slaves’ accounts, maps, and pictures.  We need to bring in material on the castles we viewed yesterday—Osman suggested that information from and about the castles will probably point well to some of the economic effects, to which it just occurred to me we could add political effects/ effects on power structures and relationships within and between communities in the vicinities of the castle.

While I may submit one of the other lessons I’ve used here to fulfill my IREX requirements, the Slave Trade lesson is the one that is going to be the most original coming out of my experience here and my work with Osman.  I’ve convinced Osman that a good article that addresses the effects on the African side of the Transatlantic Slave Trade would be quite unique, and probably could be published (NCSS’s Social Education?), as well as forming the basis for conference presentations.  We might have to think about pairing it up with a similarly structured analysis of the effects of the slave trade on American society, depending on how it shapes up as we work on it.  This is still in the developmental stages—the latter idea, for example, is one that just came to us as we were talking this morning.  

Almost exactly as I am writing this, now at 2:52 on Sunday afternoon, I have been in Ghana for one week.  It seems like I just got here, but it also seems like I have been here a long time because of how busy I’ve been and how much I’ve learned.   Osman keeps lining up great experiences for me, both large such as yesterday’s excursion, and small, like this morning’s activities.  For every one thing I learn, though, two more questions seem to pop up that I want to ask about.  This morning I made a long list of questions about AGISS and about education in Ghana in general that I want to ask about in the next few days, as well as thinking about some of the things I want to do and see and look for in my remaining two weeks.  We actually got on to a couple of the educational topics as Osman and I talked this morning.

AGISS has other student associations connected to each of the disciplines taught—science, geography, etc.  Few, though are as active as that of the history students.  AGHISSA students actually also form the Pan-African club.  The AGHISSA polo shirts were created to identify the students when they attend competitions such as that at the Dubois Center.  The group of students going there this Friday will be composed of students from all three forms—if we go.  The competition was delayed once from the 10^th to the 17^th, but Osman has heard from a separate source that it may be pushed back for still another week.  If son, it is not clear that AGISS participate as it may run into exams and revision week (kind of like a review week).   Next weekend marks mid-terms here.  In the U.S., the term “mid-terms” generally denotes a test given halfway through a grading period.  In Ghana, “mid-terms” refers to the break that students get at that time.  Osman says that Madame will post the schedule for mid-terms on Monday, and that it is likely to include next Saturday and Sunday, with students returning to the school on Monday evening.  This kind of flexible (aka last minute?) scheduling differentiates Ghana and the U.S., where school year calendars are set well in advance, and last minute changes/decisions about dates for events are rare.  Most girls go home for mid terms—there is no staff to provide food at the school during the break.  Some from distant regions stay for the three days with relatives here in Accra.  The exception to the rule of all students leaving applies to fourth form students during the final term, who are allowed to stay at school in order to continue studying for their West African exams.

The academic year here starts in September and is divided into three terms (though prep schools like Patience work on a four term calendar).  The time off between terms varies, slightly less than a month between the first and second terms for the Holy Days (what we call Winter Break or Christmas Break), around 3-4 weeks between terms two and three, and about a month and a half in August and September after the third term is finished.  The second half of each term includes a Revision Week, when students write revisions to their work (I need to follow up with more questions about this) and two weeks to write exams (another need for follow up).  Thus the second half of each term only allows about three weeks of additional teaching.  Exams count for 70 marks (70% of the final grade), while continuing assessment counts for 30 marks.  The latter can include homework, quizzes, classwork, and even class participation.                                                                                               

Our drive through Nima this morning produced a number of interesting experiences and observations, as well as lots of questions that I asked, as usual, of Osman, but also of Ibrahim, a young teacher at Patience Prep and Jr. High whom we picked up.  He lives in the Nima neighborhood and Osman had invited him to join us in able to be able to tell me more about the area.  We picked up Ibrahim right along Nima-Mamobi Road--=the construction that had made getting around the area so difficult last week has been completed and the road now has a brand new asphalt surface.  However, we managed to encounter a new series of obstructions this morning, causing Osman to have to perform several of his back and forth mid-street turnarounds as we were blocked by the presence of large temporary tents set up in the middle of different streets for marriage ceremonies.  These Sunday events each mark the end of a three day celebration, Ibrahim explained.  Friday and Saturday are for spent by the family and friends of the couple with refreshments and food.  On Sunday, the actual ceremony takes place.  The woman’s family brings the dowry and the father of the bride and the father of the groom come together to agree that the dowry is correct and that the girl is to be given to the groom and his family.  The women of the bride’s family bring her to the mosque around 6:00 PM, where the ceremony takes place.  Men marry at an average age of about 30, and women in their young 20s.  In addition to the portable tent, the standard accoutrements seemed to feature a large bank of speakers blasting music, and scores of plastic chairs for the guests, who were uniformly dressed up for the festivities.

Driving through the Mongo (sp?) area, which seems to be a sub-neighborhood of Nima, I noticed a numbered of uniformed school children.  Knowing this area, like the others with which it is contiguous, to be heavily Muslim, I asked if in such neighborhoods school ran Sunday through Thursday instead of Monday through Friday to accommodate the juma (Friday) prayers.  Ibrahim said that the students were actually heading to a Makaranda, a religious school for weekend instruction in Arabic and about the Koran, the holy book of Islam, and the Hadith, the sayings of the prophet Muhammad.  We saw one group of students heading to a school that is a part of one of the mosques in the area, and another group, whom it turned out were some of Ibrahim’s students, heading to the Al Shaihidiyah school where he teaches.  This Saturday and Sunday teaching is in addition to his weekday job at Patience Prep and Junior High, where he teaches math and science.  Instruction in Arabic may begin as early as age three, and although I did not see any student quite that young, almost all seemed to be younger than ten, some by several years.  I met several of the teachers and was invited to take some pictures of the school and students.  Lessons on the boards at the time included the Arabic alphabet, the names of the five daily prayers, and two others that I can’t recall at the moment.  The students, as students everywhere are, were eager to have their pictures taken.  All of the young girls had their heads covered, many with fuller scarves than I have seen on most women.  One of the scarves worn by a young girl was the stars and stripes, which should make a very striking picture.

Leaving Al Shaihidiyah, we went looking for a Forex (currency exchange office) as I have now spent most of the cedis I acquired at the airport on my first day.  Pulling up in front of the location of the place that Osman had used before traveling to the U.S., we found it closed, but a man in brown tunic and kofi jumped up from a seat in front of the building and came hustling over the car to try talking to me.  Osman ignored him, and taking his cue, I did no more than say “Hello” as we pulled back into traffic and away.  It turns out that he was a black market (unlicensed) money exchanger.  I didn’t really see why this would be the case, since the government does not regulate currency exchanges, so there is no official rate to try to better, but Osman and Ibrahim explained that he can give a slightly better rate because he doesn’t pay license fees.  Of course, he probably makes much more by passing off counterfeit notes, or by taking advantage of the ignorance of someone like me to pass off inflation-ravished old cedi notes, which were exchanged at a rate of 1000 old cedis for 1new cedi several years ago.  The Forex we did use was fast and efficient (and air-conditioned) with a rate of 1.45 cedis to the dollar, lower than the 1.5 rate because I exchanged small bills (twenties) instead of benjamins like the one that adorned the office’s sign outside.

Quick miscellaneous notes from the day:

·         There is no government aid of any kind in Ghana for the unemployed, or even the disabled.  This accounts in part for the sense of economic vitality, albeit small scale, on the streets—everyone has to work at something if they want to survive.  One of the major imams in Ghana is sponsoring some students school fees for tertiary education.

·         I just heard a plane taking off from the airport 2-3 miles away, as I have done several evenings around this time (10:30) while typing away.  If things run true to form, another will follow in a half hour or so.  I expect that one of these is UA 991, that I will take on my return to the U.S.

·         Passing through what Ibrahim identified as the Los Angeles sub-neighborhood, I spied a purple and gold wall with the word “Lakers” painted across it.

·         Religion-related notes:  At some point, as we were talking about Muslims and Christians and the similarities between them, I asked about Jews in Ghana.  Neither of the guys had ever heard of any Jews here.  We did pass Kizati (sp.) Roman Catholic Church, easily distinguishable by the statue of Mary on one exterior wall.  When I mentioned to Rejoice today how much I enjoyed the girls’ singing, but that I did not recognize the hymns, she explained that they are from the Methodist hymnal.

·         Seeing tro-tros parked on the streets of more residential areas, I asked who owns and operates them.  It turns out that there are two possibilities: some are owned and operated by private individuals, while others are parts of fleets owned by someone but with drivers who are merely hired and may drive a different vehicle and route each day.  I have not yet done enough walking around in areas with many of these vehicles, as well as taxis, to begin my project of photographing the slogans on their back windows in Arabic, English and Akan(?).

·         Question:  How many Ghanaians does it take to buy a shoelace?  Answer:  Apparently four, at least if you count me as a Ghanaian and if today is any example.  After the Forex bureau, we headed through New Town.  This was actually one of the last areas we came through yesterday evening on our way home, with the main road coming out just the next major intersection with Achimota Road beyond the Nima-Mamobi Road.  The area, as I’d noticed last night, and Ibrahim mentioned as we were entering it today, contains a concentration of printing, computer, cell phone and related businesses.  Today being Sunday, a number of them are not open, with Ibrahim noting that this is because many of those who operate the businesses end up being off at a wedding like those we had seen earlier.  We picked up another acquaintance of Osman’s along the road, and he lead us off to an area near the (?) circle as a light rain began.  We had to walk a little ways and Osman grabbed the umbrella he keeps handy in the car for me, but given that nobody else was using one, I was content to get a little damp as everyone else was doing.  We entered a small area of narrow walks beneath the circle that was lined with stalls on both sides composed mostly of shoe dealers.  Among them they had every style of shoe imaginable and it took just a few minutes to find someone who had brown shoelaces to replace the ones I have broken on my dress shoes.  Two laces = ₵1. 

·         We made a quick stop to buy pineapple, cassava and plantains.  Cassava + plantains?  I smell fufu for dinner. Pineapples - ₵1 each.  Cassava - ₵3 for a bag.  Plantains -₵1for three or ₵2 for five.  “Huh?” I thought.  It seemed like a rather screwy,or perhaps just mathematically challenged, pricing structure, though the latter seemed unlikely given the business abilities of all the traders here.  I had to look again to notice that the pile of three plantains that Osman and Ibrahim were negotiating for consisted of smaller plantains and the pile of five was made of large specimens.  I’m not sure if one variety or the other is better somehow for different uses.

Dropping off Ibrahim, we dropped the food at Osman’s—he had me stay in the car and told me he’d fetch Amina to come get it from the boot.  I wondered at first if this somehow fell under the heading of one of her domestic duties, even though he had done the shopping,  but I think he just wanted to keep me dry and have her come greet me instead of the other way around, as he did help her carry the bags back to the house.  Another of Osman’s friends who has heard of me previously wanted to meet me, so we headed into the same bar that I had visited earlier in the week near Paul’s home.  Making my way through the available offerings, I tried Osman’s favorite--Guiness Extra—which proved to somewhat darker and my least favorite so far.  Osman’s friend is a security driver for the University of Ghana, commonly known as Legon for the neighborhood in which it is located.  Paul came in a little later and the owner also joined in our conversation.  Osman and his friend were discussing a mutual acquaintance, who apparently tends to borrow money and favors, but not to return them.  This prompted a discussion of how we all tend to want to associate with people that we can rely on, which causes us to be selective in our friendships.  Osman’s friend asked me about the differences between life in my neighborhood and life in the neighborhood here.  I said that one of the main differences is in the differences between how much of what goes on in the two locations is public and how much is private.  Here, where one lives in a courtyard that is shared by other families, one sees people bathing and what clothes they hang out to dry.  One  smells what they are cooking for dinner, and can’t help but overhear their conversations.  In the U.S., much less is known of the intimate details of even our closest friends’ and neighbors’ lives.  Part of this is due to the climate, which requires that we have houses that can be shut up tightly, but part is also due to the nature of American personalities, which I think have been shaped by having great amount of space, and the resources to separate ourselves from others.  Paul, I think very accurately summarized my points by describing life in the United States as being more self-contained.  Ironically, perhaps, this is probably less the case in African-American communities such as those from which my students come.  I am both enjoying and getting a great deal of benefit from such conversations like this, as they force me to develop and clarify some of the ideas that I have emerging about comparisons between Ghana and U.S.  I made this point in a way to all the others by noting that while I am a teacher here in Ghana when I am at AGISS, when I am in other places here, I am also a student, making every one of them my teacher, and not only mine, but through me the teachers of my family, friends and students back in the U.S. with whom I am sharing and will continue share their information and views.  In speaking with the owner before leaving, I explained that Linda is an art teacher and that she would appreciate it if he could collect some of his bottle caps for me, something that he will be happy to do as they usually just get swept up into the trash otherwise. 

I took a nap this afternoon, the first I’ve taken since I’ve been here.  When Osman came later, he said he had done the same, even though he had taken some “small sleep” on the bus and praised me for not dozing at all.  I told him that that is just because I am afraid that if I doze I will miss something.

We stopped at Connie’s corner for a beer and conversation.  These are indeed opportunities for cultural research.  I think that we are both really beginning to realize that we have been very fortunate in our assigned collaborators for the TEA program.  Osman is very smart and very perceptive.  Sitting and drinking as we were, and I have only encountered males in these contexts, I asked him if he would be able to do the same things he has been doing with me if his American teacher was a female, thinking about Elizabeth and her time to come soon with Rafael.  Osman’s reply was that he thinks it probably depends most on the personality of the person and not whether they are a man or a woman.  It is more about how open they are and how interested they are in interacting with other people.  In that sense, with my anthropological background, or perhaps just my personal approach to new experiences, I am well-positioned to enjoy every opportunity that he has presented to me.  I will not write about it in the blog, but Osman thinks, and I agree, that Dave’s experience of Ghana, however varied and interesting, must have been limited somewhat by his accommodations in a hotel in Cape Coast away from WGSHS.  From what we saw of the school’s location yesterday (it is on the road leading to Kakum and thus directly away from the center of Cape Coast where any hotel that Dave is likely to have stayed at must be located), he must necessarily have been more isolated from the school and its activities than I am.

Amina’s dinner for us was fufu and thin soup with fruit juice and pineapple and watermelon.  I actually correctly identified the fufu without any hints.  Ibrahim joined us—I told Osman that I enjoy the fact that so many of the people that I meet through him during the day are also his guests at dinner, giving me more of an opportunity to speak with them.  We spoke about school fees—₵2 per month at El Shaidiyah—and much about

School admissions system—Basic Education Certificate Exam (BECE) given to finishing Jr. High students—national exam just like the West Africa Certificate Examination (WACE) given at the end of fourth form.  BECE is the exam that Osman supervised, and has been supervising, at AGISS earlier this spring.  This is truly high stakes testing—students test in six subject areas (=??????), hoping to get a first, or the highest mark of one on each.  Secondary schools are ranked into Class A, Class B, Class C, and Class D (?), and the school to which one is admitted is based on BECE scores.  First class schools like AGISS require a BECE score of no higher than 9.  Ibrahim estimated that there are over 10,000 students who take the exam each year.  Once these have been scored, students are assigned by computer to one of the secondary schools in the Class that is consistent with their test marks.

Most students stay in school up through at least 8^th level, but the BECE is a sorting device, and those who do not score sufficiently well for one of the available slots in the various classes of schools must then leave school.  They do have the option of re-writing the BECE, but in order to do so they must repeat all three levels of Jr. High.  I cannot imagine that many do so, both because of being so much older than the rest of the students, and because of the expense.  I did not ask if there are private tuition-based tutoring options or if there is any other shortcut to speed up the process of re-writing the exam.  The WACE exams operate in similar fashion with regard to university admissions.  I will have to ask about how many students are admitted each year, but I seem to recall that there are not more than about 5-6,000 university level students in the entire country.  This may or may not include non-Ghanaian nationals attending Legon and other universities.  The non-Ghanaians seem to fall into two categories—nationals from other West African countries who may wish to attend the school and whose WACE exams (which are indeed given across West Africa in either French or English) are high enough to secure them admission, and European and American nationals, perhaps just attending Legon for a year.  Osman’s friend from the university this afternoon said that many of these are centered in the African Studies Department at the school. 

Who is a Ghanaian and who is not can get very complicated very quickly in the Zongos.  (I’ve now learned that Zongo is not just a term that applies to Mamobi and Nima, but to any area throughout Accra where people who have come from other regions of the country, or from other countries in West Africa, have settled, including New Town and Madinah, which is apparently the next neighborhood over beyond New Town and comes close to the area of Legon.)  At least one of the teachers I met today at Al Shaidiyah is from Niger, for example, and spoke French with me for a minute.  The mix of languages that are used here, and that one would have to learn to be able to communicate with everyone, could be truly daunting to try and learn.  On the other hand, with so much interaction, I expect that many people know, and mix together in their conversation as I have heard Osman and others do, words and phrases from a variety of the spoken languages here.  After just yesterday learning, for example, that obroni means “white man” in Akan, today Ibrahim taught me that in Hausa the corresponding word is “baturi,” which is what I heard some of what turned to out to be his students saying to me as I approached the school.

Ibrahim was very informative both this morning and this evening.  I mentioned that one of the things that I’m having to work at figuring out is how to greet different people in different contexts.  I think the safest overall approach is to be reserved and as universally polite as possible, but the specifics can be elusive.  In addition to the variations in handshakes that I have described previously, there is also the issue of what to do with the left hand, and what happens after.  I have received several salutes upon their entering a room from younger men, including one at Osman’s this evening.  Yesterday, as Karim greeted me, while shaking hands with our right hands, he gripped his right forearm from below with his left hand.  On greeting one of the Islamic teachers today, after shaking hands, he raised his right hand to his chest, palm inward.  I am nothing if not adaptable, so I was able to remember to do the same when we shook hands upon leaving.  I guess I’ll just continue trying to follow the lead of those around me in such situations. 

Ibrahim noted after I’d mentioned a couple of these examples that because everyone recognizes that I am not a Ghanaian, they are generally going to be very understanding about any mistakes I make.  Osman added that something that he might do that would be construed as disrespectful, if coming from him, would merely be understood as a sign of my ignorance of the proper way to do it.  He and Ibrahim explained that, for example, in Ghana and their communities, it is impolite for a younger person to greet an older person with anything more than a “Good morning” or the like.  They should not ask the older person how they are or anything else.  As a sign of respect, it is for the older person to first ask the younger such questions.  Interestingly, this is just the opposite of what I experienced in East Africa, where a younger person, in the most respectful way of greeting an mzee, or older adult, in Swahili should speak first, saying “Shikamoo,” to which the older replies “Marahaba.” 

My knowledge of Swahili and my ability to apply my previous African experience in ways like this has been invaluable here in many ways.  My use of Swahili in the classroom, in addition to adding a valuable element to the lesson on the Bantu Migrations, has also served as an important social connection with my students.  Outside the classroom, the language has helped me to understand various words I see and here in signs and conversations—Ibrahim’s use of “juma” (Saturday) and “dunia” (world) today, for example.  Meanwhile, stories I have told of my previous experiences in Africa have helped me to develop a better rapport with a number of people I have met.Each day continues to add to my understanding of Ghanaians and their culture, and in particular the educational system.  I am starting to feel that by the time we get to the radio program, I will be able to speak with at least some level of understanding about the Ghanaian educational system as well as the American system.