Thursday, 16 June 2011—Accra

Thursday, 16 June 2011—Accra

Today I taught my last real class at Accra Girls.  At class time, the computer teacher had not yet arrived, so we switched back to the normal classroom, after pausing to get a group picture of me with the students courtesy of our photographer friend, who was here again.  Adaptability is just as important in teaching here as it is at home—without the projector, I could not show Barbot’s 1732 written account of the slave trade for the students to read, so instead we treated it as if were an example of an oral tradition, with me telling it to the students aloud, but just once, as an oral account might have been done.  Again, the students succeeded at this task wonderfully.  After reading the Barbot selection, and allowing them to work on recording details from the account in their PERMS organizers for perhaps ten minutes while I circulated around the room to observe and ask questions, I inquired whether anyone needed me to read the account again.  Not a single hand when up.  In part, I am sure this showed normal student reticence to admit that they might not have caught everything the first time, but I also knew from listening to them work, that they had in fact retained many very specific details from what I read, and were able to record these and discuss them with their classmates.

Listening carefully and recording information that is presented orally is another strength that these students apparently have.  In part, it seems likely that they have been trained in this skill though the way that Ghanaian education works, with is heavy emphasis on lectures for disseminating information, so that listening and aural retention skills are very important and much practiced.

We wrapped up the lesson by moving on to do a very abbreviated version of what would be the final assessment—answering the essential question “How would Ghana be different today if the trans-Atlantic slave trade had not existed?”  The students came up with a long and varied list of possibilities (I would have liked to see what the third form students could have done with this) that reflected well their prior knowledge of the slave trade and its effects, as well as using some of the ideas we had generated during the preliminary activity about the effects of population loss on a community.  The primary sources were also reflected in their answers, but to a somewhat lesser degree.  I think this probably owing first to the fact that we did not get to gather information from all the primary sources, and second that we did not have the time to work our way through the full implications of these materials.  I asked the girls to make a big leap from gathering evidence about the slave trade in Ghana before and after the coming of the Europeans to thinking about how the pre-colonial trends might have developed if the Europeans had not inserted themselves into this trade. 

Several of the answers addressed development related issues:  Ghana might be a more developed country now if it had not lost so many and such an important productive segment of its population.  (But also) Ghana might be struggling more with overpopulation now.  Leaders of traditional chiefdoms might have remained in power, so that there would not be a modern government.  More traditional culture would have survived.  There would not be Christianity, but instead just traditional religions.  Illiteracy would be higher because reading and writing would not have been introduced.  These are some good starting observations, and I wish we had had more time to discuss these points further and follow up with some of their implications.  Though to do this full unit properly would require more time than I have here, I am confident based on what I have seen that the students would have developed some well-nuanced answers that they would have been able to support amply with the available evidence from the primary sources. 

This is a lesson that Osman and I intend to continue developing and refining.  I think that it may become one of the centerpieces of our continuing collaboration because it has the potential to be a very good inquiry-based history lesson for use in both Ghana and the United States.  The U.S. element would be structured around parallel questions and sources to those I used here, so that the two elements together would provide a comparative look at the effects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on societies on both sides of the Atlantic.  Even though we did not get to complete all parts of the lesson in full, by skipping ahead to get a glimpse of the concluding activity as we did today, it has given me a chance to see how well the students were able to draw together the various elements of the lesson to begin answering the essential question that we began with.

Following lessons, we picked up Osman’s friend who had helped us find the shoelaces last week and headed into Accra Central—the heart of the downtown area.  We stopped into a couple of bookstores so that I could buy some materials related to the history, geography and social studies curricula in Ghana.  In one of the stores, a former AGISS student was working—it took just a minute or two of conversation to tell how sharp she must have been as a student, just as my students now are.  Accra Cental is the location of the Makola Mall and also of a large market centered around a 30 foot tall arch.  I had seen pictures of this arch previously on the internet, but did not know where it was located. 

Out next stop was the National Cultural Center, right along the coast a kilometer or two west of Independence Square.  The Center features row upon row of stalls selling every imaginable type of Ghanaian handicraft and a good variety of more contemporary decorative goods and clothing featuring traditional designs.  There is also, to be sure, some pure Ghanaian kitsch.  There may well be 500 or more stalls here—in the hour or hour and a half we were there, I saw just a small fraction of what was available, and so I hope to be able to return on Monday or Tuesday.  Osman helped negotiate a price for some beads that confirmed that I had grossly overpaid for my small purchase earlier this week.  I looked at some brass gold-weights to begin thinking about those, and then Osman and his friend spent a good half an hour trailing behind me as I went in and out of about eight different shops selling masks and other carved works of the kind that Linda and I enjoy.  I’ve never had the chance to look at so many and such a variety of African art in such a condensed time.  There is a little of just about everything from West Africa at the NCC, and I was gratified to find that all the reading and looking I have done over the years allowed me to correctly identify the groups that had produced perhaps two-thirds of the pieces I examined.  There were some beautiful items, but unfortunately in order for me to purchase any of these pieces I would have needed far more time to negotiate than I had available, so the best I could do was say that I might come back next week.  I did end up purchasing some kente cloth—a bag of assorted and somewhat worn strips in different designs from both the Ewe and Asante.  Osman seemed to think I was a little crazy for buying this collection, but because they were small pieces, and not a large uniformly patterned cloth of several similar strips sewn together, the price was quite low and I ended up with actual samples of kente in over thirty different patterns.

We rounded out our errands for the afternoon with a long trip in search of Peace FM, the radio station where my friend Kwami who visited my family and school in St. Louis in April, works.  Osman’s friend had lived out in the area where Peace FM’s offices were located, so he was our guide.  Unfortunately, to get from where we were out in that direction took us through a series of Accra traffic jams.  Some of these were caused by a highway construction project that was originally funded by a $500 million grant from the second Bush administration in the U.S., but that is taking a long time to progress (I won’t even say to complete).  The median barriers we drive by look solid enough, but I have to wonder about the quality of some of the other poured concrete construction that is the standard here.  Yesterday, I saw some large pillars on an unfinished second floor that had been built on inadequately reinforced cantilevers extending out from the front of the building, and that had caused these supports to begin crumbling under the pillars’ weight.  Jonny, whom we had picked up as we passed back near AGISS, told me that such construction is largely unregulated and uninspected.   Individual builders’ standards may vary, leading to occasional structural collapses.

After over an hour of driving, we arrived at the Peace FM offices…to find that they had moved.  Fortunately, the new offices were on the way back towards Accra Girls.  Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, Kwami had left, but I left a message and Osman’s number with the receptionist, who promised to pass it on. 

Miscellaneous notes while traveling, from observation and conversation:

·         The symmetrical scarring I observe on the faces of many of the women in the Nima area—two or three 1-2 centimeter marks on the upper cheeks or next to the eyes, are tribal marks that are incised during infancy.

·         Car models include: Toyota, Volkswagen (the Beetles here are the old style, made, I think, in Brazil), BMW, Suzuki, Land Rover (just one and driven by Europeans), Mitsubishi, Nissan, Kia, Mercedes, Leyland (truck), Ferrari (cross-over), Skoda, Ford, Mazda, Geo, Hyundai, Tata, Scion, Matiz (?), Dodge (old Caravans used as tro-tros)

·         Motorcycles commonly drive up the area between two designated lanes of traffic where such lanes exist, and where they do not, weave in and out of the four-wheeled vehicles, squeezing through the small gaps between cars that are trying to get by each other.

·         Public hospitals tend to be very crowded.  Private teaching hospitals, such as Kotiko (sp?) tend to provide better care.

·         Business name:  World Peace Refrigeration and Electrical Engineering Center

·         Nyame = “God” in Akan

·         West African Muslim women’s head coverings vary among a few different styles.  Some wrap their head turban-style.  Others cover the top and sides of their heads, but loosely, with a large gauzy piece of fabric that is thrown across under the chin and over the opposite shoulder, also covering the shoulders and much of the upper body and arms. The simplest covering is just a long piece of fabric that drapes over the hair and the ends of which dangle freely down the back, sometimes not even covering the back of the head fully.

·         Offices of the Ghanaian National Electrical service and water service are scattered about Accra.  Signs out front inform people that they can buy their pre-paid electrical and water credits inside.

·         Driving through Nima, when one hears a rhythmic clink-clink, pause, clink-clink of metal striking metal, it is usually one of the boys who trims toenails advertising his services by banging the two halves of his scissors together as he walks about.

I spent the afternoon preparing for my workshop tomorrow—organizing the supplies, making sure the PowerPoint would work as it should, and going over my presentation notes.  In the evening, after dinner at Osman’s, we stopped by the internet café to print out the handout of the PowerPoint slides so that we can copy it in the morning at the school.