GGYN, Yebeshia Bio

I'm writing this post while listening to "Feliz Navidad," shivering from the cold, and watching my mom make Christmas cookies.

Sigh.

I'm back.

The good news (besides seeing family and eating missed foods, of course) is that not only do I still have a lot to post about, but America has internet that's lightning fast! Woohoo! For my friends' sanity, I'll probably also need an outlet for Ghana reminiscing for a while, so this blog is perfect.

As you can imagine, it was really hard to leave on the last day of school, but the day itself was one of the most fun yet. GGYN celebrated the end of the fall term with a program last Thursday to highlight's students' achievements and talents. Credit for these pictures goes to my friend and fellow volunteer, Emma Mattesky.

James (volunteer from Canada on left) was the event's MC along with Gloria, one of the teachers. 

Class four students prepared things to do in front of the whole school. Princess sang a song.

And Ransford had memorized a poem.

One of my favorite parts of the program was a dance performed by a group of students dressed up in traditional clothing. In case that wasn't cool enough, get this: the song they chose was "Homeless" by Paul Simon. It was awesome.

After the "talent show" portion of the program, the teachers presented gifts to the top three exam-scorers in each class and various other deserving students.

The gifts presented to the students included a lot of souvenir trinkets (keychains, baseballs, pens, etc.) that Elaine had brought from her hometown, Washington D.C., as well as candy and even a few small books. The teachers put the gifts together and wrapped all of them up.

This is Esther, who won "hardest worker." She's fifteen and just started school this year, but she's made huge strides in her English and is starting to read as well.

Besides the program and the other last few days of school, I spent a lot of time toward the end of my trip finishing up the map and the other murals, which were so exciting to see completed! Well, almost completed: I unfortunately realized a bit too late that I forgot the Caribbean. Oops. Maybe I can use that as an excuse to go back? "Yebeshia Bio" (the post's title) is Twi for "We will meet again."

Sorry, Cuba.

Emma and I came up with the idea for this wall together. I love that it's not only colorful and inspiring, but also has words that will be good for the kids to learn to read.

Mollishmael asked me to add "School" to this wall to show that GGYN isn't just an after-school program like it was years ago, but that it's now a real school.

Here you can see all three completed murals! I took the picture standing on the path that goes by the school, so this is what anyone passing will see.

So far I would say that being back is best described as just weird: there's good things and bad things about it, but it doesn't really seem real yet. Or maybe I should say that Ghana doesn't seem real, like it was something from a dream. Either way, there were some other things that happened over my last few days at GGYN that would be interesting blog posts, so even though I'm home I feel like I'm not quite done. I'll also be in contact with my friends from the school, so I'll let you know how things are going when I get word.

If the past couple days are any indicator, I'll probably spend the meantime sitting here at my kitchen counter looking through my pictures. I'm sure the reality of things that I should be doing in regular life will be kicking in sometime, but until then I've found this as a pretty good means of surviving this culture limbo. Well, I guess I could also help my mom with those cookies, too.

Where in the world is GGYN?

I think this is probably the most exciting blog post I've written yet because...

Da da da daaaaaa!

The map-of-the-world mural isn't quite finished, but it's so close! I'm so, SO happy with it and I feel like it's already taught the kids a lot. For example, now they know where their country is!

And they know where I'm from!

We've been playing this game where I'll say a country and they'll all run over and hit it. Although that often results in kids being thrown on the ground in mad stampedes, they seem to really enjoy it. The map's only been up since this weekend, but many of the kids already know a lot of countries that they didn't know before. 

They were having a tough time finding China, so I told them it was red. They're getting there!

This painting project ending up being a MUCH bigger deal than I thought it would be, but I've honestly never been so proud of something in my life. A lot of us volunteers joined together to get the job done, and the results have been incredible.

I've realized that this project has real significance not just for the school, but for the community, as well: while we were painting, everyone walking by the school would stare and even pause to absorb the new mural.  Several adult Ghanaians came up to talk to us and asked things like, "Where's Ghana?" or "Is this a map of Africa or of the world?" I've never really considered the effect that the lack of such a simple resource can have on a person's world view, but how would you know those things if you never have access to a map? Maps seem to be all around us, but what if you're never encouraged to look at one?

You can't not look at this map, though. We put it on the biggest wall of the office building, which is right in view of any spot on the path that goes by the school. Also, the colors turned out so beautifully; they really brighten up the whole school yard. The placement on the wall and the colors make the map look like anything but a school assignment, and the hands-on activities that it allows has made learning the different countries into a game.

One difference between Ghana and the U.S.that I've found interesting is the focus on learning about the whole world: I know that my grade school made learning about different cultures a priority, and besides that I'm exposed to a lot just by my family and friends' ethnic backgrounds. Here, though, you don't have much exposure to other countries apart from the remnants of British colonization (for instance, the country's official language is English and Christianity is HUGE here) and modern western influence (hip-hop, Obama, styles of clothing, etc.). Even other African countries don't seem to be studied much, so it was especially fun to show these two kids, Ishmael and Adjo, where Togo was, as Ishmael was born there and Adjo's parents emigrated shortly before they had her. I'm hoping that the kids can understand that where they are right now corresponds with the country they see on the wall, so we'll be painting "North," "South," "East" and "West" in their respective locations around the school yard.

As we're wrapping up work on the map, we've started painting other murals, too. Since this post is getting long, I'll save the explanation of what we'll put there until we actually finish it, but here's Princess (class four, age 11) standing in front of what it looks like now:

 

And since I finally found my missing camera charger and was able to take these pictures, we tried to get a nice group photo of a bunch of kids (the whole school is much bigger). After about twenty minutes of picture-taking we had one beautiful shot, but all of the others turned out with kids pushing each other over or jumping in front of the camera, or someone wasn't smiling because they were telling others to stop moving. When I showed the pictures to my friend Emma (who is also a volunteer teacher), she pointed out to me that the whole set of pictures really captures the spirit of GGYN: things go right, but never the way you originally want them to. In light of Emma's wisdom I put up a bunch of the not-so-perfect pictures as well. This isn't all of them, but the speed of the internet here makes uploading things a bit of a battle. You'll get the idea, though.

So here's the really nice one. You can see lots of faces, most people are smiling,  and it's still pretty funny. The guy with the baby in the middle is Mollishmael.

I think Mollishmael was telling kids here that if they push someone over, they can't be in the picture.

After this we tried to tell them to keep their hands down. That didn't last long.

More kids started coming into the picture which was great, but a bit more chaotic. The guy who stands out on the right is James, a volunteer teacher from Canada. He's been here since late November and is staying until Christmas. He decided to come volunteer literally two weeks before his plane left, and he's been such an incredible help to GGYN. He studied education in College, but I think that his evident love for the kids is what makes him really indispensable. I wonder what he'll think when he sees that I'm introducing him with this picture.

Some kids in the back fell off the bench. Don't worry: they recover quickly here.

And then Fernando joined in the back right. I like this picture a lot.

When we took this picture, Mollishmael had all the kids say "CANADA!" Apparently Lovina (blurry in front) likes Canada a lot because she started jumping in front of the camera for the next several photos.

CANADA!

CANADA! CANADA!

CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!

CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!CANADA! CANADA! CANADA!CANADA! CANADA! CANADA! 

Ishmael (front, blue shirt) is from Togo and has possibly the best smile in the world. Lovina, Maxwell (red striped shirt) and Adjo (on left in uniform, also mentioned earlier) are giving him a run for his money, though.

Despite all of the fun above, it is still (bum bum bah!) exam season at GGYN. Standardized exams are a huge deal in the Ghanaian school system as they determine where you go to junior secondary school, senior secondary school, and beyond, so they start taking them really young. The tests this term are just to get students used to taking exams like the standardized ones they'll take later, meaning that the teachers wrote them in notebooks and I copied them into Microsoft Word. The clip art is what makes them really professional.

There usually aren't the resources at GGYN to have worksheets or written tests, so most kids have never had a real typed-up paper for their personal learning like the kind that I had in grade school. Normally tests are held like this, where kids copy questions off the board into their notebooks:

Anyway, this post has been super long. If you've gotten this far, I feel like I need to say thank you so much for your interest in GGYN. It's become such an important part of my life and I can't believe I'll be going home in a few weeks. I'll be trying to post often until then, but as I've said, the internet isn't really my friend here.

In other news, the GGYN website is currently being remodeled! It'll soon have a lot more information about the school, including a spreadsheet of the november budget and expenses. I'll keep you updated!

A short history of GGYN, including how the school impacts youth in the US

In my last post I mentioned GGYN’s mission statement: "The Global-Ghana Youth Network is a local-global organization working to educate, empower, and inspire youth in the U.S. and West Africa."

Someone asked me why the mission statement included “youth in the U.S.” and that made me realize that my blog hasn’t gone that into the details of exactly what GGYN is and how it’s run. There’s some information on the school’s website and in the short film “Under the Mango Tree,” but both are a bit old and the website is actually being remodeled right now.

To be honest, I feel like I keep learning new things about the school’s history and workings every day, so I’m sure from now on I’ll be updating you with stories about GGYN’s past along with the stories of me being here.  To begin, here’s a brief history of how the school got to where it is today:

Back in 2003, Mollishmael was part of a drum and dance group that began helping international students at the University practice for their drum and dance classes (rhythm-less white people represent!). As they practiced, kids would come by not just to watch the group, but also to dance along outside the yard where the group was practicing. According to Mollishmael a lot of those kids were even better then those in the group, which I definitely believe after seeing some of today’s students dance. Mollishmael and Ian, a student from Maine, decided to organize a group just for these 15 or 20 kids, and that’s how the Maine-Ghana Youth Network (GGYN’s old name) was formed.

Over the next month, Mollishmael and Ian began to help these kids with schoolwork as well, and they quickly realized that most of the kids didn’t even go to school. They recruited some other American students from the University to help with the tutoring, but of course those students had to go home at the end of the semester.

When Ian and the others left, Mollishmael continued to run MGYN on his own – dancing, academics and all – for a year and a half. Mollishmael was nineteen-years-old when the organization began, and during the first few years of MGYN he was still catching up in school himself: he had needed to take years off in his early teens to work for his own tuition money.

Mollishmael knew that a lot of the kids in the group came without eating every day, so he started buying them gari, or ground cassava. Gari is a food that you usually cook with other things like beans or stew, and although it is filling, it is tasteless and basically nutrient-less. It’s so cheap that there’s a local idiom that if someone is not doing well financially, you say that they’re “eating gari.”

Ian returned to Ghana after that year and a half and came to visit MGYN. When he saw that Mollishmael was running everything himself, Ian began to recruit other volunteers from study abroad programs at the University and then from Maine when he got home.

Ian got in touch with one girl, Erin, who came over to Ghana in 2005 with funding from her church. She stayed for about a year, and during that time her church sent money to help the organization pay for better food for the kids, books, and other resources that they needed. MGYN had started teaching the kids what they called “entrepreneurship” (basket weaving, etc.) by the time Erin had gotten there, and with her money they were able to hire professionals to come and teach the kids. Beyond the finances, she also helped MGYN immensely with its administrative organization.

When Erin returned to Maine in 2006, she helped set up what has really enabled this organization to "educate, empower and inspire" American kids – an American fundraising tour for Mollishmael. He headed to the States in late 2007 and began speaking at grade schools and high schools around the country about MGYN, education and life in general in Africa, and also about making a difference in others' lives even in the U.S.

Mollishmael says that kids in the U.S. don’t seem to know much about Africa beyond the stereotypical (for instance, they ask about problems that the school has with lions), but that they’re genuinely interested in learning about life on another continent. Schools all over the U.S. have raised money and collected supplies for GGYN, and Mollishmael has also raised money by teaching African drum and dances lessons at these schools. 

When Mollishmael isn't in the U.S., the kids at GGYN have still stayed connected to some American schools through class pen-pals and skype. However, sending letters can get pricey given the school's tight budget and the internet isn't very reliable, so those sorts of connections can't happen very often.

The film “Under the Mango Tree” was created in 2008 (Erin was interviewed in the U.S.), and shortly after that Mollishmael changed the organization’s name to Global-Ghana Youth Network. By that time the organization had grown substantially: about fifty kids who weren’t in school would come for breakfast and lunch, and after the schools let out there were up to 200 kids coming daily.

Until the summer of 2010, GGYN had been sponsoring up to over forty kids to go to different schools in the area. Since there was never enough to pay every kids’ tuition, Mollishmael decided to put that money toward teacher salaries and books for a new school, the GGYN of today. The meal program stopped this past August due to a lack of funds, which unfortunately means that a good number of the kids come with no lunch.

So that’s a very general overview of an organization that’s obviously undergone a lot of changes over the years. There are currently three Americans that Mollishmael met in the U.S. who serve as the board by organizing a lot of the American side of GGYN, meaning that they help set up an itinerary for the fundraising tours, find donors and volunteers, and plan the budget for donations. Mollishmael will be coming to the States to fundraise again this upcoming January through most of spring. He’s still in the beginning stages of planning where he’ll speak, so if anyone knows any venues that you think would work (schools, churches, colleges – really wherever), a contact would be really appreciated! American fundraising has had a powerful impact on GGYN's success, and based on what I've been told from those who heard Mollishmael speak, hearing the story of this school from the founder himself can have a powerful impact on an individual as well.

Friday Games and Sunday Painting - The School Back on Track

Sorry about not posting in a while, but I’ve had some bad luck finding working internet here lately. It’s been over two weeks since the school has been back in action, and I fortunately have a lot more time to teach since I just finished classes! Things are close to being relatively back to normal at GGYN, but I do realize that “normal” isn’t all that comprehensive of a description for those of us on other continents. Therefore, I feel that I owe this blog a bit of an update.

The extra time that my friends and I now have to help out definitely couldn’t have come at a better time, as one of the teachers has just had a baby. The count of professional teachers is now down to four, then, and there really should be at least 6 classes. If there aren’t any volunteers on a certain day, one teacher will have to essentially go back and forth between two classes, lecturing one while the other does an assignment on the board. The two kindergarten classes (which they call nursery and KG2) have to be combined, which is difficult when their ages range from two to about nine. The KG2 class is learning how to read (and many of them are pretty good!), but it’s hard when the classes are combined; all of those forty-or-so little kids are a lot for one teacher to keep an eye on.

As you can guess, these teachers are pretty amazing people. They’re clearly teaching at GGYN purely for the love of the kids, as they receive less than US$70 per month for teaching at least six hours a day, five days a week. Last week I had mentioned to them that my favorite Ghanaian food was “red-red” (a dish made of fried plantains, beans and ground cassava), and on Thursday one of them brought in a big bowl of red-red for all of us to share. My friend Katie and I told them we would make them an American dish in return, so on Friday we showed up with guacamole, which, of course, isn’t actually really American. It was the best we could come up with what we could find at the market on campus, and when I think about it, I don’t really know many foods that you could consider “purely” American anyway.

Even though some of them were afraid, a few of the kids tried the guacamole. I told them that it was from Mexico and asked if they knew where that was, but it then occurred to me that I had never seen a map at GGYN. My friends and I had been thinking for a while that we would love to paint a mural on the home/office walls, so we decided that a big map of the world would be perfect! We started working on it yesterday morning, and a lot of the kids came by to help out. The school has a donated projector that we’re planning on using to paint the map, but unfortunately the power was out (which happens randomly and often), so we didn’t get started on the actual map. We did get all the paint we need, though, and we started painting backgrounds on other walls. Hopefully I’ll have pictures of the finished product to post within the next few days. In the meantime, though, here’s pictures from school on Friday and painting on Sunday:

On Friday morning the school had classes as usual, but the afternoon started with a game-show type competition between the top three students in fourth grade and the top three students in third grade. The rest of the school watched. It was the first time GGYN has done this, but it went really well! Even the younger kids were pretty engaged in what was going on.

Third grade fiercely awaiting their questions. 

And third grade won by one point! The other kids went crazy celebrating for them, which is funny because I'm pretty sure they would have done the same if the fourth grade had won. They got candy as a prize, but since it was so close, fourth grade got some candy, too.

Enjoying the guacamole! Left to right: Me, Katie, Gloria, Gifty, Precious (three of the four teachers) and Emma.

Mollishmael with one of the really young kids at the school holding her lunch of rice, a huge staple in the Ghanaian diet.

Since there's no running water at the school, if anything needs to be cleaned the kids get water from the well and carry it on their heads in these buckets.

After the game show, we spent the last hour of Friday afternoon playing games as a whole school. Madame Precious taught us how to play "There's a fire in the market," which is basically a much more energetic version of "Duck, duck, goose."

Katie trying not to get tagged. 

Since the kids are far more active than I could ever be, there was no need to go easy on them. I was trying hard and some still caught me.

There's only a small fraction of free time at the school when there's no one playing with my hair.

There are seven kids in the Ossei family, and six of them go to GGYN. Only Emmanuella has a uniform for GGYN yet, so most of the other kids wear uniforms from the school they used to go to. Forsen (in the back) is the oldest but he had never been to school before GGYN. Forsen, Bridget and Bright (twins in the blue shirts) are all in the second-grade class.

The rest of these pictures are from Sunday. Here's Emma and the kids painting what will eventually be the wall that says "Global Ghana Youth Network" really big, as it can be seen most easily from the path going by the school.

Andrew, Will and Bryan painting the background for a wall that we want all the students to help paint on later. At the top of the mural we're going to write the school's mission statement: "GGYN is a local-global organization working to educate, empower, and inspire youth in the U.S. and West Africa." The kids will paint underneath.

We brushed off the walls as best we could before painting. This is the wall that will have the big map of the world on it.

Me and some of the kids.

Koby, a second-grader.

We took care of the high parts on the wall and the kids did the low parts. Teamwork at it's finest.

We had to wait for the background paint to dry and couldn't get started on the world map, so we spent the rest of the day playing games. Arm-wrestling is a favorite.

I still can't really believe these pictures are real. Some of the students were literally just running and doing flips in the air.

Why I wish I were Ghanaian.

Emma with girls who came to help.

The neighbor's dog likes to come by the school, and I'm in awe of its ability to stand the attention of up to twenty grade-school kids at once. We've been calling it Obama (or Obi for short) because when we originally were trying to come up with a Ghanaian name for it, we figured that naming it after Ghana's favorite politician would be close enough.

Emmanuel (second grade) went to get us what are called water sachets ("sah-chayz"). Since you can't drink the tap water in Ghana, they sell these little plastic bags of purified water that you drink by tearing off the corner.

The Ossei family owns this first-grade American social studies text book which my school definitely used when I was in grade school. It was fun to have something to read to them, but of course all of the stories were about Thanksgiving, the Revolutionary War, etc. and referred to the U.S. as "our country."

The book had the "America the Beautiful," and Mollishmael asked us if we could sing our national anthem for the kids. We did with the full vigor of true patriots.

Will and Mollishmael in the mango tree. Some of the mangoes are finally ripe!