Football, religion, money & politics

Just come from watching Man Utd - Chelsea, with a load of passionate Man Utd and Chelsea fans. In a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana. It's interesting that, unlike other continents I've visited, everywhere I've been in Africa people are only really interested in English football (there's a little bit of interest in Spanish, and no interest in Italian football). I think it's because of all the old colonial links. Most houses here don't have TVs, so I watched the game in a 'cinema' - a room with wooden benches and a normal sized TV.

On Thursday we had a very hotly contested football match between the Central Office of the charity, and the Education department - as the start of the leaving celebrations for the volunteers who are leaving at the end of November. I'm finding it a bit weird - after months of meeting lots of different people for short amounts of time, I've been with the same 13 people for the past month and now 9 of them are leaving. I've made some good friends though that I'm sure I'll keep in touch with. All their talk about leaving also made me feel a bit homesick for a while - the first time I've ever had that.

Went one of the many churches on camp this morning - strictly as a spectator of course. Religion is a huge part of life here, both in 'Little Liberia', and in regular Ghana, with every other shop havinbg a name like "Jesus Loves You Electrical Supplies". There was lots of gospel style singing, dancing in the aisles, and a full force African preacher. I've also met a guy who used to belong to a pseudo-Jewish sect called the African Hebrew Israelites, who's going to take me to their synagogue one Saturday.

My classroom management workshop hit a bit of a hitch due to those wonderful things, money and politics. To cut a long story short, between Central Office, the school, and myself, everyone wants someone else to pay for it. The school doesn't have the money, Central Office doesn't like spending money when there are rich Westerners around to squeeze for funds, and I don't want to pay on principle - one really important HIV workshop has already been cancelled after a lot of preparation work had gone into it, because Central Office wanted the volunteer to pay for it. But we've already donated $500 a month to be here, which provides 95% of the charity's income (and the salaries of the very comfortable executive). It doesn't help that there's politics between the Central Office and the school, over a pay dispute. In the end I've agreed to funding the workshop, but it's going to be a bare bones affair. I've now got a week to organise it from scratch.

Otherwise, I've been doing reading tutoring and a bit of HIV education, and I'm taking over from departing volunteers to help with Press Club, Debating Club and maths tutoring. Plus I'm going to work with one of the teachers who has really bad classroom management and often lashes out at kids. I'm really enjoying working with the kids, who are great. They love coming round to our house on camp to play, but can get a bit too much sometimes and really push our patience. I'm slotting right back into teacher mode, and find myself dealing with the naughty kids more and more. It's satisfying to me though, to see that they do respond to being spoken to (there's a theory that, because they are used to being beaten at home, that's the only thing they'll respond to at school and elsewhere). One of the other volunteers even resorted to chasing them away from the house with a stick when they got particularly bad, which I really didn't like.

Another difficult part of life here is the steady stream of people asking us for money. They usually have a genuine need, but I have to say no every time, for two reasons. Firstly, there are 45,000 people on the camp, all of whom need money - we can't give to everyone who asks. Secondly, they're only going to sort themselves out by learning t obe self sufficient and not to rely on handouts. It's tough to say no to hungry and sick people, but I have to just remind myself (and them) that I'm helping them in other ways.

In other news, one of the volunteer houses (not mine) got broken into, and a few things stolen, including a laptop and my phone (so you can't call me for the time being). There is a suspect - a local 16 year old girl who's a real trouble maker, and she was taken into questioning by the camp security force, known as the Vigilantes. They eventually released her though, apologetically explaining to us that they unfortunately are not allowed to torture any information out of her.

Anyway, I'm off to a restaurant on camp to eat. There's a great variety - egg sandwiches or spaghetti. Dinner last night was spaghetti, breakfast an egg sandwich and lunch spaghetti. So I guess dinner will be an egg sandwich!

Sorry, I meant to keep this short. Good on you if you made it this far!

Organised chaos, without the organisation

It's been far too long since I've written on here, which is because I've been so busy. That also means I've got lots to say but you’ll be happy to hear I'm just going to give an overview. I can’t believe I’ve been here for almost 3 weeks already (or that I’ve been traveling for almost 4 months) – it’s gone so quickly.

The camp is an incredibly intense place. The buildings are really close together, and there are people on the streets 24/7. The claustrophobic atmosphere (although I’m not getting claustrophobic yet) is added to by the noise – which starts with the local preacher and announcer on their megaphones at around 5am, through to the next door neighbours putting their TV outside for very loud late night screenings of films for the whole neighbourhood, and continued through the night by the roosters who don’t wait for dawn before crowing. There’s a great community feel here – people I’ve met will always stop and say hi when I walk past. The kids from the school will shout “Brother Simon” and kids that don’t know me will often shout “Abruni” (‘white man’ – not in a derogatory way) and want to hold my hand or play.

(By the way, thought I’d share with you that I’m being slightly distracted and disturbed by two African guys at the computer next to me looking at hardcore porn)

The school was a bit of an eye opener. It’s different to the school I went to in South Africa in a number of ways. There’s enough furniture for all the kids, and the teachers almost always turn up for lessons (although sometimes very late). Otherwise, the school would qualify for the term ‘organised chaos’, if it wasn’t so disorganised. Unlike the school in SA, where the kids were brilliantly behaved, the kids here are OK for some teachers, but absolutely terrible for other teachers – which is down to the huge disparity in teaching ability. At break time, there is no teacher supervision, and the violence between the kids is incredible. It’s like all out warfare, with kids wrestling, drop kicking, slamming each other on concrete, whacking people with bags – but they don’t get upset, it’s normal.

Having seen the poor classroom management of some of the teachers, I’ve agreed with the Principal to run a workshop on classroom management for the teachers (concentrating on some of the good techniques I’ve seen the better teachers using). I’m not surwe about the praise stickers I’ve brought – I don’t know if they’re ready for that yet. I just hope the workshop will help the teachers control the class without resorting to violence or ritual humiliation. The first of these is officially banned in the school, but we (the volunteers) suspect this is only the case due to pressure from the permanent volunteer presence. Although I don’t think formal corporal punishment happens much, I’ve seen teachers – including the Principal – using sticks and fists when they don’t know I’m watching. In some ways, however, I think the ritual humiliation is worse – examples including making kids stand at the back of class with their hands in the air, stand on their desks, and kneel at the front holding their feet behind their backs. I don’t want to be too harsh, as the school is doing amazing things, and I don’t blame the teachers – most have little training and are probably just replicating what they went through at school. All of which makes the workshop a big but important task. Unfortunately, term ends soon and by the time it restarts I won’t be around to help the teachers implement the strategies.

Socially, I’m having a great time. Making friends with locals and also with the other volunteers, who are all great (have to say that, they have this blog address). Cooked dinner for the volunteer house the other night (we do it on a weekly rota) and the Persian food was very well received. On the Persian theme, found out that to get my visa for Iran (my next stop) I have to get a letter of invitation from an Iranian resident then undergo a medical!

Anyways, that’s enough for now, I’ll try to write soon so I can keep it short.

Life on Camp

The only thing I'd heard about Ghana that stuck in my head was when I friend who'd been here described it as the 'sweatiest place on Earth'. I think she might have been right. I've been in Budumburum - the Liberian Refugee Camp in Ghana - for about 2 days now, although I'm feeling so settled it seems like I've been here much longer. My arrival in Accra, the capital, had both good and bad omens. I was sitting next to a Ghanaian on the plane, who gave me his number and also, after I asked him if there would be any cash machines in the airport, insisted on giving me some Ghanaian cash just in case! Then, while standing in the immigrattion queue (hot and tired and wanting a bad and a fan) I realised that my visa wasn't valid - by extending my stay in S Africa It's expired. Was nervous going up to the desk, expecting some frustrating African beaurocracy, but I guess the guy either didn't notice or didn't care - he just stamped it. It was interesting that the only poster in the hall was welcoming all visitors to Ghana, except peaodophiles and other sexual deviants, who are not welcome, are subject to strict punishments, and should go elsewhere. Found out later that homosexuality is punishable by 8 years in prison (by the way, another of the volunteers says she drove past a stoning by the side of the road last week). The bad side was that both the taxi driver from the airport, and the hotel, saw a tired tourist late at night and tried to totally rip me off. They wouldn't haggle at all, knowing I had little choice, and wouldn't even banter or be friendly. I had to pay the taxi, but ended up finding another hotel (the hotelier prefered to send me away rather than budge on price, at 10pm in an empty 1* hotel). That kind of thing happens all over the world, but I hadn't had it in Africa yet, so it caught me off guard and annoyed me. Everyone I've met since then has been lovely. The refugee camp is a really friendly place. It's not what you would imagine a refugee camp to be: it's been here for about 15 years, and has 45,000 residents in mudbrick houses, although very densely packed (I think it's about 1 square mile). The biggest surprise for me is that there are shops and stalls everywhere. The Liberians can't get the papers to work outside the camp, so they've got their own thriving little economy going on (although not enough to support the camp - most still need handouts). The organisation I'm working with - Children Better Way (www.childrenbetterway.org) - is only one of a number on the camp, including the UN (although they're pulling out because the situation in Liberia seems to have improved). I'm with 14 other volunteers from around the world, all of whom I already really get on with. CBW runs a number of projects on the camp. They run the most affordable schools here, the only free wells, a library, micro-loan scheme, sanitation services, and HIV/AIDS counselling/education.

I'm mainly going work with the school (shovelling sh*t with the sanitaion crew didn't appeal), helping with maths and hopefully also helping develop a behaviour policy (they're the only school on camp that doesn't use corporal punishment - possibly because there are always international volunteers there, who won't stand for it. The drawback is that the kids' parents are quite heavy handed with them, so nothing the school can threaten them with will deter them. So I think they need to develpo the use of praise more and I've come here armed with lots of stickers. Of course, I'm saying this without having spent a day in the school yet, but the volunteers who've been here a while agree with me).

I'm also going to work with the HIV/AIDS team. I went out with them to see what they do yesterday, when they were doing 'outreach' - approaching random people in the streets and educating them about HIV/AIDS and other STDs, and showing them how to use condoms. It was a wierd experience, and interesting seeing people's reactions - they're more open about discussing such things here, but still abit embarrased, the young men want to act 'cool' about sex, but underneath they want to know about it. The problems encountered were shown buy a guy who told us he didn't believe in HIV, it's just a conspiracy by America and the West to try and stop Africans from having babies.

Can't wait to get started - I'll keep you posted when possible...