Back to school

Hi again!

Long time no see I know but at least I'm writing a few lines here right now at 4:48 p.m. I'm in Madina, the place you go to if you live in New Legon and wants to use the Internet. It takes 30-40 minutes here with a tro-tro, a small, dirty, smelly, crowdy minibus. Not suitable for a man of 1.86 meters with long (pale) legs. It is however, dirt-cheap, and a the only means of local transport in Ghana.

Anyway, life down here is becoming better by the day. Mostly because I have more to do in my project now. So what do I do? Well, I'm working as a teacher. The thought was that I would teach French to some classes in the school (1-2). But since I prefere to teach older students (easier to help, listen more to what I say, don't give me as much head-ache etc) I'm at the moment teaching mathematics to classes 5 and 3 as well as English grammar to class 3. In addition to that, starting next week, I will be giving extra classes after school to classes 5-6 for free. The subjects will vary but my main goal is to teach the students how to actually speak a little bit of French.

Cause as it is now, the French teacher, a Togolese, enters the classroom, writes grammar on the blackboard and then gives the students homework. The students behave as living question-marks, do the homework, mostly fail and get lashed for it. And no one can speak at aaaall.

Otherwise, there are huge differences in knowledge among the classes down here. Some students in class 5 and even 6 can barely read at all. And some students in class five should really be in class 3 and so on. The difference between a normal school in Ghana and one in Sweden is huge. More of that later though.

Teaching is not easy, my pedagogic skills are at best average and the respect for a white man among the pupils is not great. Nevertheless, since I try I feel that it gets easier every day. I'm very lucky that I have a project in which I'm actually needed and where I could take any amount of initiatives in order to help the students. The more you do, the funnier it gets and the more you learn. Unfortunately for some other volunteers, they have ended up in projects where they are not needed. And when our host organisation, pardon my French, is quite fucked up it is difficult for those volunteers to change anything at all.

Well, that's all for now. I'll try to write more soon. Actually have (slow) Internet on my cell-phone now, so I can stay connected a little bit more. Yebeshia bio!

Nordgren