"This Is Ghana, Oh"

I broke down and bought more credit for my Internet after only a few days. It’s definitely not a necessary thing to have and I may go more time without it in the future but for right now it has put my mind at ease about when I will do summer job applications, how I will prepare for teaching the nursery school children, and what e-mails I need to send to set up the pen pal program.

My first exam is tomorrow. This means that of course when I got home today we didn’t have electricity. The two pretty much go hand in hand. This is also why I started studying for the exam on Sunday. Luckily I live close enough to the A and C mall that I packed up my things to go and study for a few hours and have dinner, and by the time I returned the lights were back on. “This is Ghana, Oh.”

I was talking with Grandma about my day at Tot To Teen (a very hectic one) and she started using this phrase – “This is Ghana, Oh.” I think it perfectly describes what happened today while I was teaching. First, it was brought to my attention in Class Four that one of the students was vomiting all over the floor. What to do? I really didn’t know. Here’s the thing if this had happened with a student in the U.S. I can imagine myself grabbing a trash can, forcing it under the student’s mouth, and sending him out of the classroom while also sending another student to get a janitor to clean. However, there are no trashcans in the classrooms and I didn’t just want to send the boy out until I knew he wouldn’t be creating a mess along the way. I also had no idea if they had a nurse at the school or who was supposed to clean. So my mind was running through what to do but at every possible option there was a roadblock. Finally one of the students told me his father was a teacher in another class and I went to tell him. When I returned I asked the students whether they really wanted to be looking at vomit all day or if they would rather clean it up – they chose the later.

No more interruptions in Class Four. But Class Five was another story. All of the sudden (and by all of the sudden I mean that in a class of thirty-six students it is difficult to know what is going on at all times in the room) a boy was on the floor crying and grabbing his leg. From what I could understand between his muffled cries another boy had jabbed him with his pen in the leg. This didn’t really surprise me as I see the students rough-housing with one another all of the time and it’s not discouraged. As soon as the boy was able to stand up I sent him out of the room and we continued with the lesson. Or at least we tried to. But Class Five is a difficult group of students. Thus I ended up writing students names on the boards to show them that I was serious that if they did not do their work they wouldn’t be able to participate in our pen pal program.

By the end of teaching four classes I was exhausted (especially since none of the rooms have fans and the days are very hot in March).

However, these moments in the classrooms are learning moments for me as a teacher. What works, what doesn’t work, and how to negotiate the differences that exist between cultures.

“This is Ghana, Oh” – I’m living it.