Pictures of the school from the day before the flood

School started again today, but I realized that I forgot to put these pictures from before the flood up earlier. It had rained in the early morning of the day that I took these pictures so many students did not come to school.

Although it had stopped raining, the ground stayed wet all day.

We started school late to decide if school should be closed or not, but even though there were so few kids we had classes anyway.

Mollishmael shoveling water out of dips in the ground.

Anything that fell on the ground was done for.

Mangos on the mango tree!

The four from my class who could come! Left to right: Happy, Hannah, Emmanuel and Kobby.

We drew pictures of our families and labeled each member with their name and age.

The first grade wanted to draw pictures, too, so I ripped them some pages out of my notebook.

Hannah wants to be a teacher so she decided to correct the first graders' work.

Gloria, a local teacher, with the fourth grade.

Elaine, a friend from my study abroad program, teaching third grade.

Second grade presented their drawings to first grade.

The kids and me showing off our work!

Why Wear Uniforms? (A Question I've Asked Since My Grade School's Plaid Jumper)

Although I have no real updates on the school since my last post, someone recently asked me why uniforms were considered so important when GGYN struggles with other resources. I found this a very valid question, especially considering that I've spent twelve years of my life in a school uniform and couldn't give a good answer. I asked Mollishmael about it and he gave me several reasons, some of which surprised me.

For one, a dress code deters students from judging others based on what they wear and from worrying too much about what they wear themselves. This is one of the main justifications that I've always heard when questioning why I had to wear a uniform, although back then I didn't appreciate the beauty of putting no thought into what I wore beyond the three different colors of polo shirts available. The use of a uniform as an equalizer is different here, though; in Mollishmael's words, "Some students own five outfits and some only have one, so the kids who always wear the same thing feel bad about themselves compared to those who have different clothes every day of the week." I would actually say that the majority of the students who don’t have uniforms do wear the same outfit everyday, so single uniform for them would also be a huge addition to their wardrobes. 

Another purpose that uniforms serve is to make the school appear more united and professional. This is something that I also learned back in my uniform days when a nun told fourteen-year-old me that my jeans with ripped knees made me look "like I belong in a dumpster." With Sister's encouraging words in mind, I do definitely see the merit in having uniforms to prevent distractions and promote taking school seriously. This reason is again taken to another level here in Africa, though, as virtually all schools have uniforms, including government schools. As a side note, one thing that I've actually found really adorable here is that school buildings are often painted to match uniforms, so the government schools are painted light-orange on top and brown on the bottom to match the uniform shirts and shorts/skirts of the respective colors. As GGYN does not have a building, the uniforms are especially important in giving the school a distinct professional appearance. GGYN helps kids who have no other choices for school, yet their uniforms remind them that they belong in a school just as any other uniformed student does. 

Finally and most surprisingly to me, the uniforms also apparently have safety purposes. One thing that I've noticed here is that kids are often independent when they're very young; as in by the age that I could cross the street without holding someone's hand, many of these kids could have been helping sell things at the market. Students at GGYN who bring money to buy lunch go off on their own to buy food down the road, and the kids - some as young as two and three who are helped by older siblings - also all walk to and from school along busy streets. According to Mollishmael, if something were to happen to one of the students when he or she is off alone like this, someone could recognize where the child goes to school and therefore know where to bring the student for help. I never would have considered this reason, so I'm really glad that I asked.

If anyone else has any questions about GGYN, I would be more than happy to answer them! Feel free to comment or send me an e-mail at madelinemclennon@gmail.com.

Goodbye Water, Hello Mud

I went back to the school on Sunday and there’s unfortunately still a ton of work to be done before classes can start again. I stepped over the gutter into the schoolyard and my shoes began sinking into the mud (and sinking and sinking) until I got my way over to the path that someone had cleared over the weekend. From the path you can see that the rest of the yard is covered with a good foot of mud that has somehow stayed wet in the incredibly hot and sunny weather. Beside the mud, there are ruined notebooks, torn apart benches, pieces of the destroyed fence and garbage from the river scattered everywhere.

The path dug out from all of the new mud and weeds hanging from the power lines.

The schoolyard. There was a fence on the left side but it's been washed away.

No worries, there are still chickens here.

The home and office building. You can see the line of dirt above the door that marks how high the water reached.

Broken chairs, tables and benches.

Kids' notebooks were scattered everywhere. Many of the students have these pink notebooks that say "Ghana Schools" with Obama's face on the cover.

What the river looks like now.

I was in Togo this weekend so I didn't get to see the effect that the flood had had on the office building before it got relatively cleaned up, but dirt on the wall shows that the water reached almost up to the roof. Apparently there was also mud a foot deep inside the building, but that has all been cleared. The school's books are always kept on a very high shelf, yet they all had some contact with the water and many were destroyed. 

The house is fairly cleaned and school supplies that could be saved were piled on tables.

All of the books got wet, but many are still usable.

Mollishmael (center) looking at the damage done to the office, which also serves as his home and a place for volunteers to sleep. The books and notebooks were all kept on those shelves, yet you can see by the line of dirt high up on the wall that the water almost reached the ceiling.

Things that the water fortunately hadn't taken away.

And some more things saved from the mud. The building has this small kitchen, the office/bedroom, and a bathroom. 

As I've said before, I've met an incredible number of amazingly giving people through GGYN. For instance, I learned that the man who had woken me up the night of the flood was literally just a neighbor of the school. A construction worker who's been building a house next door has been working especially hard this weekend to help clean up the school, and when I had finished taking these pictures he paid for a cab to take us over to the neighborhood where Karen lives and even escorted me to her house. There's an Akan saying, "Woforo dua pa a, na yepia wo," that means "When you climb a good tree, you are given a push." If you can measure the goodness of something by how much others are willing to help you out, then GGYN is off the charts.

I went back to the school today to help clean up the mud, and a lot has really gotten done. However, school still isn’t scheduled to start until Monday as the benches, tables and fence need to be fixed and we have to buy new books and supplies. The effects of the flood will obviously be felt long after classes start again, but what I find the most heartbreaking is that this flood is not a one-time thing. GGYN has suffered this much damage before, and unless the school building is built before the next huge storm, there’s not much that can be done to prevent this from happening again.

Teachers, friends and neighbors all came to help get the school put back together. 

The majority of the mud has been cleared from the yard, but there's a lot to do before students can return. 

Books and notebooks drying out in the sun to be used later.

Siza clearing the "gutter" that provides some drainage around the school.

After One of the Most Eventful Nights of My Life, I Really Understand Why We Need a School Building

Yesterday I brought my camera to school for the first time for no particular reason. Unfortunately, though, it was one of those days were very few students come to school because it had rained hard the night before. Since only four out of my fifteen-ish students showed up, I decided to try doing more hands-on things that were hard to do with lots of kids. We started the day by reading a story with first grade, then we drew pictures of our families and labeled each member with their name and age. We ended the day with a science lesson about climates, and I had students come up to the board to circle different words like “penguin” and “mango” with different colors to show what climate they belonged to.

Even though there were so few kids, it actually ended up being a good day to take pictures to show what school is like when it rains. I imagined writing a blog post about it to point out the difficulties the school faces with bad weather, but I had no idea then that those weather problems were NOTHING compared to what would happen only several hours later. So, there went that blog post, and here’s a much more noteworthy one:

A little over a week ago, a 19-year-old Californian came to volunteer at GGYN for a few months. He’s been planning this trip since Mollishmael spoke at his high school years ago, so yeah, he’s a pretty incredible person. Anyway, Mollishmael has wanted to have volunteers over to the school for dinner for a while now, and last night Fernando made a big dinner of these delicious lettuce-wrap things. It was a pretty last-minute get together, so several people who had been hoping to go couldn’t because their dance exam went too late. Being someone who rarely turns down free food, though, I headed over for what I thought would be a little bit, but it started pouring while I was there. Since the school office has bunk beds for volunteers to use and I didn’t want to have to wait for a cab, I decided to just spend the night and head back in the morning.

However, these plans changed quite a bit. I went to bed around one a.m. and woke up about an hour later to a stranger handing me my bag, saying, “The water is rising; we have to leave.” Obviously I was confused to say the least, but I looked around and saw everyone else packing bags and heading out into the pouring rain. I followed, got to the door and stopped: since the electricity at the school had been out for a few days, all that I could see were faint reflections of the moon on seemingly endless water. It was actually pretty beautiful, but the rain was only getting worse and the flood was nearly at the door’s threshold. I stepped into the water and carefully headed down the stairs that were no longer visible. When I had reached the ground, the water was literally at my waist. I pushed through the flood as fast as my jeans would allow me to go and walked through the gate and onto the path.

At this point the water was only to my knees, but navigating here was tough: the narrow, uneven and winding path drops off into a steep “gutter” on one side and into grasses and bushes on the other. Of course, the flood made the dirt path both treacherously slippery and completely invisible. I slipped a bit once, so the stranger who woke me up grabbed me by the arm and led me to the street where my friends were huddled under the awning of a small store. I’m still not sure who that guy was, but one thing that I’ve encountered many different times at this school is that there are so many people who, like him, will do extraordinary things to help out virtually anyone. We waited by the store while Siza (Mollishmael’s brother who’s teaching me to paint) and some other strangers went back to the school to grab as many important things as they could, then we headed to the intersection down the street to wait for a taxi under another awning.

What the path looks like on a normal day. The gate leads into the schoolyard.

 When we reached this storefront, I was surprised to see several students of the school standing there with their parents. They were all soaked and wearing no more than what they would normally wear, so we put our arms around them to keep them (and us) warm. It’s really hard to say how long we were waiting there (maybe 30 minutes or more?) until we got a cab. I piled in the cab with five or six other people, four of whom were kids, and we headed to where my friend Karen lives with her dad and brother. Siza and Mollishmael walked from the school and met Fernando, the kids and me at the house. Karen gave all of us clothes of hers to wear for the night and we hung up our wet things to dry. We all scattered on couches, beds and cushions on the floor throughout the house and finally headed back to sleep probably sometime around 4 a.m.

I woke up before seven this morning to find that Mollishmael and Siza had both gone back to the school to assess the damage and grab any other important things that had survived the night. I spent an hour or so entertaining the kids (we cut snowflakes out of toilet paper!) until the two returned. Luckily enough, I had arbitrarily left my camera on an upper bunk where it had stayed safe all night, so I had it to take pictures this morning. The only things that I lost were a cheap watch from Walmart, my room key (but I happen to have a spare), and my flip-flops. It turns out that the two-year-old, Fernando and I were the only three who weren’t smart enough to grab our shoes when we left, but Mollishmael insisted on buying us new sandals before we went anywhere.

The walk from Karen’s to the school was pretty devastating: the stream was now a raging river, mud was everywhere, and there were even small houses overturned and sheds thrown in the middle of the street. We couldn’t get all the way to the school because it was still so flooded and muddy. I had class this morning at 9:30 and was already late at this point, so we got into a cab to get back to Karen’s quickly. However, within two minutes we were dead stopped in traffic. We got out so we could just walk, but it turns out that traffic had been stopped for a pretty interesting reason: the president of Ghana, John Atta Mills, had come by apparently to see the damage from the flood. Not many people seemed happy to see him, though, I guess because the government had not paid attention to the area’s regular flooding problems until such a severe instance.

The stream by the school that makes the flooding so terrible. It's normally a fraction of this size.

A view of the stream from the other side of the bridge.

Community members observing the change in the stream's size.

An overturned house near the stream.

Damage from the rain.

Upside-down food stand.

More over-turned houses.

There isn't supposed to be anything in this street. These sheds are small stores that are normally on the side of the road where you can see some other buildings.

We ran into Katie (on right) when we went to go see the school. She's studying abroad with my program and teaches at the school, too. Fernando's in the white shirt and Mollishmael's in the blue hoodie.

Fernando, Katie and I tried to get close to the school with a random boy who was hanging out nearby.

This is about as far as we could get toward the school until we decided that the water was just not safe to walk through. This is the path leading to the school, and the school is in the distance to the right.

Siza (pronounced like Caesar) was responsible for getting us up and out of the school and he also saved tons of important documents and electronics. We decided that he's today's hero, and this is apparently his hero pose.

President John Atta Mills is in the white and pink shirt behind the guy in the purple stripes on the left. After I took this picture someone told me to put away my camera or the guards might take it.

When we eventually got back to Karen’s, she had gotten together a bucket of water, soap and a towel for me to wash all of the mud off of myself (the house, like the one at the school, doesn’t have running water), and our excellent hostess also made all of us breakfast. While we ate, Mollishmael told us that when he had gone back early to go to the school, he saw the kids’ parents with the other people who we had left under the awning when we got the cab during the storm; none of them had left that spot all night because they had no where else to go.

The kids who stayed at Karen's with us, all dressed in Karen's clothes. Left to right: Dennis (age two?), Kobby (age 9), Princess (age 11), and Prencilla (age 9). Kobby, Princess, and Prencilla are siblings.

Leaving Karen's house in the morning. Princess was carrying Dennis and Karen said she was jealous, so Fernando gave Karen a lift, too.

Buying Dennis shoes.

Princess and Dennis.

I eventually made it to my class about an hour and a half late, clad in ill-fitting gym clothes and still fairly muddy. I’m exhausted now, but I’m so glad that I got to experience the sort of struggle that has really been putting this school back. I’m not sure how much has been destroyed or when school will resume again, but I’m hoping to go back as soon as possible to start help cleaning things up. I’ll try to keep the blog updated on what happens next.