The downside of rains
The NGO-affilliated cafe we’ve been working with finally planned, irrespective of weather, to head out today to the school they support. This school is a ways outside of Cape and when it rains hard the passage to the school is cut off. We’d planned to go on Friday last, but rain made it impossible. Ditto Monday. So today it was decided we would go no matter the weather.
We’d wanted to go when the road was passable so that we could interact with the kids. The volunteers working with the cafe have a bunch of donations (clothing, rugby balls, games, etc) and it would be much nicer to donate these directly to the kids and see their enjoyment.
We appeared on time (for Africa, anyway) in the morning and soon after we all departed in a single car for the school. This involved some creative arrangement to get everyone inside the car (Miranda rode half on my lap and half on the lap of one of the female rugby volunteers) but we were at the school soon enough.
Everyone at the school was very happy we’d come, and the kids were great. Our day there started off with several songs, one of which was to the tune of “the wheels on the bus,” but was about washing your hands and bathing and various other hygieneic activities.
When it came to be rugby time, they were pretty clueless with the rugby balls, but it was cute to see them interact, and by the end of their rugby drills lesson most of them could reliably catch the ball from the kid on their right and then toss the ball to another kid to their left. Considering they were ranging between 3 and 6 (mostly) and probably many had never touched a ball before, I think that’s pretty good. Ruggers apparently have these donut shaped plastic ‘tees’ they use to hold the ball upright for kicking, and the kids all thought they made fine hats.
After drills we went back inside and it was time for the clothing donation the auntie who runs the cafe. The cafe supports this school (and the kids in it), quite literally a brick at a time, and today was clothing donations from the cafe and friends/family of the Irish volunteers (affilliated with the cafe). The kids were amazingly orderly as the clothing was distributed by the teachers, one kid at a time.
The process was basically that each teacher would choose an item of clothing and then find a kid that it would fit, or perhaps be slightly large upon. The teacher would then physically put the jumper/shirt/whatever on the kid. I found it a bit comical that I was pouring sweat off of my body and these kids were having a second layer put upon them. People here don’t seem to sweat 
as Miranda and I do — I have no idea if it’s acclimation or a genetic mutation or what, but my shirt was literally soaked through and all of the Ghanaians around me weren’t even beaded at the brow.
After donation the kids got lunch (served by Auntie Molly of the juicebar/cafe) and the headmaster took us to see the path the kids must take to school. The last time it rained was two days ago yet at points the water on the path was well over a foot deep and maybe 10 or 15 feet across (and moving … this wasn’t so much a puddle as a creek in places). He said they are working to build a foot bridge in places for the kids. Normally there are about 70 students, and today there were only 25 or so, thanks to the rains two days ago. Since Ghana only has two seasons (rainy and dry), that’s pretty serious; half the year these kids can’t attend class regularly.
Of course, before this school many of these kids were walking around selling kenkey (a maize dish that is sold in bundles), so the fact that the school even exists now (it was started after a donation from a volunteer Auntie Molly worked with, and is named after the volunteer) is a huge start, but it’s obvious they are eager to improve conditions for the kids. They’ve built a second building (seeking to expand their age range) and it felt nice to be a part of documenting their progress — everyone was so thankful we could come, meanwhile we were busy thanking them for asking us to come!
We took care of some other errands today, nailed down times for things we have to do later this week (everything seems to take so much longer here … you must call someone five times and they never answer or their phone is always off or the phone company gives an error message, until eventually you give up and just go by their office a few times, I say a few times because the first few they won’t be there and people they work with won’t know when they are returning and will urge you to “come back,” and then eventually you will find them, nail down a time, and well, there ya go). We’re shooting for a couple of more days in Cape, then off to Accra to pick up our visas, back to Cape for the weekend, and then we fly out Tuesday for our whirlwind trip to the UN (before coming back to Ghana for the measles campaign).
Also, the publicity of the measles campaign is officially ratcheting up — we were actually at this press conference the other day (and met with Dr. Eleeza afterwards).
