Happy Golden Jubilee! Today is my 50th day in Ghana and boy what a lazy fifty days it’s been! Perhaps we were trying to compensate for our relative lack of purpose when Lysander and I decided to sponsor a child to attend a local private school.
The boy, Asiamah Frederick Appenteng, is fifteen and currently enrolled in the local, free middle school in Maase. At this school, beating and manual labor “lessons” predominate. When we pass, the students are usually fetching wood and water, or lined up awaiting their whippings from the schoolteacher. To compound this problem, when lessons are actually planned, quite often the teachers will fail to show up, leaving the students to entertain themselves. Instead of this education abyss, he will attend F’edem Mission School, the preeminent private school in Tafo, the largest town within reason. To those NMHers reading this, private school here costs about $50 a year with books and uniforms usually costing about $40!
This morning, on our way to Akropong School for the Blind, where Amoha works, we stopped at F’edem to meet with the headmaster and after he told us that Asiamah will eventually be enrolled—whether it be this term or next—I contacted my parents and they graciously agreed to cover all costs. If anyone has any clothes or books for boys 10-17, please give them to my mother and we will send them to Asiamah and his family. Asiamah is at the top of his class and this opportunity could do so much for him—let’s hope there is a space.
After finishing our business in Tafo, Lu and I boarded a tro-tro for Koforidua (“Kof-or-dia”) and from there another to Akropong. Amoha is the shopkeeper at Akropong School for the Blind which forces him to spend most of his weekdays there. Here he rents a simple room with a shared bath and he has offered us his bed, himself opting for a student mattress on the floor. At SftB we will assist Amoha in organizing the shop and assist the kitchen staff in anything they feel we are competent enough to do. The SftB is an initiative started by American philanthropy and perpetuated by USAid food donations and, presumably, financial contributions.
Our first day was relatively eventless since we got here a little late (and since Ghanaians think that obrunis never have to lift a finger). Let’s hope that tomorrow and, more importantly, the farms at Hohoe and Kumasi, have more work to offer, but judging by the Ghanaian perception of obruni capabilities, that may be a prayer unanswered.
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