Art Worlds in Ghana

My flight was delayed multiple times (I got to watch Picture This with Ashley Tisdale while I waited in the airport), but I am finally home safe and have been for a few days.

Sorry I’ve been so so terrible at updating this. Much belated blog posts to come soon. For now, here are a couple pictures of me with some of the kids from the play.

Andrews, Justice ("my husband"), Patricia, Diana, and Albert

Vic, Diana, Slim, James, Jennifer, Daniel, and that's David's head poking up at the bottom

It’s hard to believe it’s over. I’ve been amazed by my shower, sturdy buildings, organized streets that don’t smell like the sewers, and a clear subway system with a map and labeled stops. I miss Ghana though — music playing in the street, brightly painted houses, eating banku and stew with my hands, women selling pineapple off their heads, men with FanMilk carts of ice cream in plastic sachets, and stores with names like “Sure In Him Bakery” and “Blessed Spot.” I’m adjusting to people not staring at me, asking for my number, or calling out, “You are welcome,” or “Obruni, come!”

I’m happy to be home, but I miss my Ghanaian friends and family, and there’s so much more I wish I could do. And the prices, I miss the prices now I’m back in New York City. Yesterday I stopped by an upscale soda fountain near the Met museum. A milkshake cost $8.50, and I promptly left. You can get a whole meal off the street for 2 cedis in Ghana (about $1.50).

I just spoke to Kofi on the phone; he gave me a call to see how I was (my friend from the village/Gladys’s grandson who took care around the house). It was hard to understand him on the phone, but he said he misses me and can’t concentrate since I’ve left.

Last I saw him, he was wanted by the police for dating a girl who is 16 (he’s 23), except that he’s not actually dating her, they’re just friends, and her parents don’t know what they’re talking about. He couldn’t walk on the main road though because he might get arrested, so he had to come from behind the house. Oh, Kofi.

That evening, Gladys and I waited for Kofi to make his way through the brushes. When he arrived, he laid down on the bench across from us and rested his head on his hands. I saw that he was wearing two of my slim black hair bands on his wrists. They must have fallen out of my suitcase, and he’d found them in the room after I left for Accra. “But Kofi,” I said, “you don’t have any hair to tie with them.” He just looked at me and smiled.

Thursday, July 2

On Monday we finally had the Environmentalism Day I’ve been working on for the past couple weeks. It was supposed to be Friday, but it got pushed to Monday because of a sports day issued last minute by the Department of Education, which then got postponed due to lack of funding. But we kept our day on Monday anyway.

I’m really happy we did it. I’m proud of the kids and thankful to Ebinezer, Kelvin, and all the other teachers and sponsors who helped make it happen. Still, I have some lingering regrets, which I’ll get to soon.

David's group (David's in the striped polo) had their bags almost full before we even got to the beach

I came up with the idea for the day when I was going for a run on the beach. It was covered in trash. I was leaping over sachets and old flip flops, and I felt like I was in one of those video games where you have to avoid the alligators or hot lava. This is really sad, I thought.

I remembered a man I’d met at a recording session with the JAC the week before, who’d just been working in Ada Foah with endangered turtles. He said that there was not much environmental awareness in the area, and that people struggling to get food each day could hardly afford to care. It occurred to me, hey, I’m at a school, working with kids. I can do something about this.

I thought back to the diversity and activism days we’d had at my small Brooklyn high school, Berkeley Carroll (BC). I wanted to have a day like that here focused on the environment, along with a beach clean-up. I figured I could start off the day by talking about global warming and environmentalism; we could do a line-walk activity like the Walk of Privilege we used to have at BC (the whole school lines up and we read off statements like, “Step forward if you reuse your plastic bags and bottles,” or, “Step backward if you don’t have access to running water in your home”); we could train a group of students to lead discussions; and we could have a beach clean-up competition with sponsors and prizes.

Ebinezer and I got Brightest Restaurant to provide lunch to the winning team. Kelvin helped us get Club Rubstone (pronounced Robstone – also the place where we’re putting on the play) to throw a little party give sodas (“minerals”) and biscuits to the winning teams. We contacted the Department of Sanitation, and with only a week’s notice (we did this thing spoontaneously), it was too late for them to provide latex gloves. They would like to participate in the future, though, and they agreed to help us dispose of the trash afterwards, so that we wouldn’t have to burn it in a pit the way we usually do. (It’s seriously disgusting, you can’t walk through the town without smelling burning trash. Barbeques are never going to be the same to me. There is no adequate waste disposal here, so the people have no choice.

Ebinezer directed the kids back to school.

Ebinezer and I went by Radio Ada, the local station, and asked them to announce the day on the radio. Mr. Isaac, the nice man there, thought our project sounded great and invited me to come back and talk on the radio. That’s what I did this morning, which was pretty cool, though I didn’t get to hear the interview they put on tonight because I’m in Accra.

Ebinezer and Kelvin were all excited about Environmentalism Day and said they would continue it every year after I’m gone. I was thrilled. And then, I was disappointed, a little.

I led a couple of prep sessions with my Environmentalism Day leaders. I gave them a 101 on the environment (which they sorely needed), challenged their ideas (“okay, but why do you think that”), had them challenge me (some of them didn’t actually think global warming was bad at first. They said, “Hey, we like the sun.”), came up with discussion questions (“How can we deal with waste better and conserve more?”), and practiced icebreaker games (does anyone out there know the game, “I like people who like”?). It was intense, and we left the sessions feeling invigorated. I told them, “I’m counting on you to inspire your classmates.” They nodded.

On the day of, the kids had a blast with the beach clean-up. They got really into the competition and loved the prizes. They were collecting trash on the way over, and we had to stop them so that we could finally get to the beach.

"Step forward if you dispose of bottles or cans after using them, or backward if you leave them where mosquitoes can lay their eggs."

Mark, in the striped shirt, was one of the leaders running a group discussion. At this very moment, he might have been asking, "What causes global warming?"or "How much of a problem is waste? Is it a problem?"

In a break between activities, the kids chatted with me about what Ghanaian food I eat. "You like banku? And fufu? Oh, that is good, madame. And okra stew? And plantains?"

The kids played the drum to signal the end of break.

The environmentalism part, though, I’m not so sure they got. Listening in on some of the discussions, I could tell they didn’t always know what they were talking about. They would say things like, “We have to stop throwing our trash on the street because it is heating the earth.” They had all these concepts and information being thrown at them, and I guess it got jumbled. They were earnest and they meant it, but they didn’t really get it.

One of the discussion questions was, “Make a list of the top 5 problems in the world. Is global warming on that list?” Practically every group had global warming as number one, even though that morning during the line-walk, hardly anyone stepped forward for, “if you could have given a definition of global warming before today.”

“Really?” I said to the group. “You all think that global warming is the number one problem? Yesterday you didn’t know what it was.” They stared at me. “Why? Why do you think global warming is so important?”

Finally, one of the boys spoke up, “Because we need to take care of our Earth so that we can keep on living.”

(Interestingly, most of the groups’ other top world problems were natural disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes, and tornadoes. I guess things like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, America’s occupation of Iraq, the modern slave trade, incarceration rates, and even poverty don’t make it into conversation much here.)

Christian's group (Christian's crouching down in the pale pink polo) won for collecting the most trash.

Christian (here in the blue uniform shirt) and his group celebrated their win. Slim (in the striped tee and pink skirt), another group leader, was clearly pleased...

At the end of the day at Rubstone, we had an open circle where people could come forward and share thoughts, reflections, or something they’d learned, à la Berkeley Carroll diversity day. No one stepped forward. Kelvin asked the group leaders to say something, and they all spoke about how proud they were of their groups for the clean-up competition. None of them said a word about the environment, until Christian, the last leader, whose group had gotten first place. He just added, “and for helping global warming!” The kids cheered.

We gathered at Rubstone (pronounced Robstone) to share reflections and present the prizes, but no one had any reflections to share.

I don’t expect them to suddenly be environmental activists, and I know it’s going to take more than a day for environmentalism to sink in. I’m glad I helped to get the conversation started, and I’m glad they’re going to do it again next year. I hope a few of them go home and get their families to start recycling water sachets (there’s a company that will pay you for them!). I hope they try to reuse plastic bags and bottle more, and not toss their trash on the street. Maybe some people will take in what I said on the radio. Maybe a government official will hear my plea for better waste disposal in the area. Still, I felt a little sad as I picked up discarded biscuit wrappers of the floor of Rubstone, just hours after we’d cleaned the beach and talked about better waste practices.

I do think the day had an impact on some of them, though. For the others, I say, next time, and the time after that.

Friday, June 26 continued

About 20 minutes later, Mr. Caesar walked back in holding two students, one boy and one girl.

“See, we were just talking about students misbehaving, and look what happens when I leave the classroom to get some chalk,” he said, opening his palm to show two white sticks. “I come back and they are all fighting. Look what he did to her eye.”

The girl had two drops of blood in the corner of her eye. The boy was hanging his head.

“I told you I would try other ways, but this is unacceptable,” Mr. Caesar said.

“What happened?” I asked the students, getting out of my chair and sliding around the desk. “Wait, first, what are your names?” Let’s call them J and B. “You hurt her?” I said to J, crouching down so that I was at his eye-level.

He shook his head.

“What happened?”

I turned to the girl, B. She said he’d been mad at her for talking but she wasn’t, and then he hit her with his pen. I asked J, and he said he didn’t think she had been talking, he’d just turned around and hit her with his pen by accident.

“Well, I don’t know what happened,” I said, “but either way, you were misbehaving, J, and you hurt her, and that’s one of the worst things you can do. You should never hurt your classmates. Can you please apologize to B? Are you sorry for what you did?”

J nodded and mumbled something.

“I can’t hear you, what did you say?

He spoke a little louder and said what I gather was “sorry” in Dangme, the local dialect.

“Can you look in B’s eyes, and say it in English too?”

J glanced up and mumbled, “Sorry.”

The teachers were fidgeting at their desks. They itched for their canes. “Kneel over there!” one of them said.

“Give me this, please?” I said shrilly. “J, I’m trying to get you not caned. Please look at B and apologize like you mean it.”

This time he did: “I’m sorry, B.”

“B, do you accept his apology?”

She nodded. “I forgive you.”

“Thank you. Now J, what you did was serious. I don’t want them to cane you, but it can’t go without punishment. I need you to write me a letter explaining why you’re sorry and it won’t happen again. I don’t want excuses, I want to see that you understand and are truly sorry. If the letter is good, I will ask the other teachers to consider not caning you. Okay?”

J nodded.

“Bring it to me at your next break.”

“Yes, Madame.”

Mr. Caesar brought the students back to class, and I sat at my desk with a sigh of relief.

One small victory? Let’s hope that letter’s good.

Friday, June 26

Thursday morning, the social studies teacher (let’s call him Mr. A) brought three students into the teachers’ office and took out his cane. He snapped off the broken edge, held it out, and hit the backside of the first student.

“Oh!” I cried out, my hands clenched above my head.

He turned to the second student, flipped open her workbook, and said, “Zero.” He lifted the cane and brought it down, twice. There was a loud thwack, and the girl jumped and gave a quiet yelp.

“Oh my God! Stop!” I said. I had squinched up my face and my stomach was tense.

The teachers shook their heads at me and smiled. The first two students were standing in the corner. Mr. A approached the last boy and hit him, hard.

“Stop! You shouldn’t do that.”

Ebinezer motioned at Mr. A, who took the child outside. I couldn’t see the boy, I just heard thwack, thwack through the open door. I thought of Jennifer, sitting next to me on the patio and asking if they cane in America. I told her no and asked her if it hurts, because the teachers said it doesn’t much. “Yes, it really does,” she said quietly. I thought of the students lined up in French class, ready for their daily cane. I thought of my kids in the play and my Environmentalism Day leaders, who are so great and whom I could never hurt. The knot in my stomach was growing, my throat was choking up, and before I knew it, I was crying.

“Oh no, don’t cry,” the other teachers said.

Mr. A walked back in with the boy as I was slumped over the desk with tears running down my face.

“I’m sorry, don’t cry,” he said.

“You shouldn’t do that,” I said hoarsely.

“I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”

“But you will! As soon as I’m gone you will, and you shouldn’t.”

“Sister Robin, you are right and we will stop. Don’t cry,” said Mr. Caesar, the English teacher. He leaned over his desk toward me and looked into my eyes.

“I know I’m silly to cry like this,” I said, wiping away tears, careful not to smear my eyeliner. “I know you didn’t really hurt them that much. But I mean it. Caning doesn’t help the students, it only hurts them.”

“Yes, don’t worry Robin.”

“They’re such good kids, and they’re so well-behaved,” my voice rose. “They don’t need the cane, and it doesn’t help them learn.”

“We are sorry miss. We didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m okay, it’s not about me. It’s the kids.”

I pulled out my journal, composed myself, and started to scribble furiously. But I couldn’t concentrate. I set my pen down.

I walked over to Mr. A’s desk and started to ask him, “Do you ever think – ” when suddenly I was choking up again. “Do you ever think,” I said hoarsely, “of where caning comes from?”

He stared at me.

“It comes from slavery.” Fresh tears were running down my cheeks. “It comes from the cruel legacy of slavery. And you should reject that, not continue it.”

“Ahh,” said Mr. Caesar, rushing over. “So we are like the slave masters caning the slaves when we cane our students?” He looked at me brightly and blinked.

“I don’t think you’re like the slave masters, but that’s where caning comes from, and it’s cruel.” I rested my hands against Mr. A’s desk.

“I see, that is very interesting,” Mr. Caesar said. “Yes, but, it is different in our country. Where you come from, caning is unacceptable and illegal, but here, it is part of our culture. The government allows up to three strikes. We need strict discipline, or the students will not pay attention or do their work. We don’t have the support of their families. They don’t care about school. We ask the parents to come and talk to us and they don’t show up. And then the government blames us when the students fail.

“Just the other day, one of the students spat at a government official who had come to visit. We were all so embarrassed. We need to keep the students in line, and the only way they will do their work is if they are afraid.”

“I understand that it’s hard for you,” I sniffed. “And that’s tough the families don’t support you. I know they don’t give you enough resources. I know the classes are too big for you to always give them individual attention. When I have a French class of 30 kids, I can’t know all their names. For the play and with my Environmentalism Day leaders, I can get to know my 15 kids, and they want to participate and do their work. And you can’t always do that.

“But you want the students to want to do their work, not be afraid of you. The classroom should be a place of love and support. Learning should be something they look forward to. If you cane them, they’re not going to suddenly change or behave. You need to teach them why what they did was wrong, and then support them and help them do right. I understand the cane doesn’t really hurt them that much, but there are better ways of disciplining them.”

I told them about giving them detention, timeout, extra lines, even dunce caps; writing students’ names on the board; having them write letters of explanation; and holding meetings to follow up.

“You need to ask students what’s wrong and find out what’s going on in their home lives,” I said. “Because they’re not bad kids, and there’s probably a reason they’re acting out. Like Justice, he wasn’t in school for two days, so we asked him what was going on and it turned out his Dad was sick.”

“Those are very good ideas, and we will try them out,” said Mr. Caesar.

“Yes, we will do that next time,” agreed Mr. A.

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“No, we will.”

This was way too easy. “Did I really just change your mind?”

“Yes, I see what you mean. There are other ways of discipline. We need to help and encourage the students. They should love us, not fear us.”

“Yes, exactly,” I beamed. I looked between Mr. Caesar and Mr. A. “If you want to go back to caning, I suppose I can’t stop you, even though I disagree. But I’d appreciate it if you would try out these other ways.”

“Yes, yes, we will try.”

“Great! Let me know how it goes.”

“We will.”

“I hope I don’t seem like an outsider imposing my views and saying my way is right and yours is wrong, without understanding your culture.”

“No, I am learning a lot from you,” said Mr. Caesar. “I like this exchange of ideas.”

“Good! I do too.” I sat back at my desk and took out my journal.

Mr. Caesar headed out to class and said, “I look forward to discussing this with you more.”

“Me too.”

Monday, June 13

I saw children being caned today.

Often the teacher will walk around with a cane but not really use it, just have it as a threatening reminder. They’ve even asked me if I want one – not to use, they assured me, just to hold and keep them in line with. I of course refused.

Today partway through the French class I was sitting in on, two other teachers walked in. The French teacher asked the children to get up and stand in a line.

He lifted up his cane, a peeled wooden stick, and held it up above the first boy in line. He brought it down with a thwack, and the cane, already breaking, split in two.

“Oh my God, stop it!” I stood up and cried, my hands over my mouth. “He didn’t even do anything!”

The teachers and students laughed, and I ran over to try to grab the cane from the teacher. By then he’d picked up a fresh one off the top of the cabinet. He held it out to the next student in line, who obligingly stepped forward and turned her backside to the teacher. He brought down the cane three times, as the first boy proceeded to the next two teachers.

I’d been standing in shock this whole time, when the teacher grinned and asked, “Would you like a taste?”

“No,” I said shakily, and sat back down. I watched with my hands over my mouth, sometimes crying out, sometimes biting back a smile because the situation was so surreal I could only laugh. The whole class went through three rounds of caning, the younger ones jumping up, the girls yelping, and the older boys taking it silently.

The teachers weren’t hitting hard, but still, it seems awful to me. They were caning the entire class, which had done nothing wrong, simply to “keep them disciplined,” the French teacher said. The students did not seem to mind too much. They considered it normal and thought my horror was amusing. It was my first time seeing it, but apparently it happens almost every day.

In the U.S., we are taught from day one never to hit a child or hurt someone physically. Here, hitting is part of the education. They say they need it to keep the students disciplined, that otherwise they won’t do their work or respect their teachers.

Who am I to disapprove of their customs? Am I imposing Western standards or viewpoints? Isn’t it hypocritical of me to be righteous about a few light thwacks when I do nothing about the huge amounts of child labor I help to sustain as an American consumer? Is my liberal, “love-every-child-and-teach-them-with-kindness” attitude naïve? Can it be effective here?

These are the questions I am wrestling with as I adjust to the attitudes and ways of Ghana. I find that I am learning much about my ways at home by living and teaching away from home. I don’t think my attitude toward hitting children will change by the end of my time here, but I wonder how my viewpoints might shift or adjust.