Week 7

This week Patrick and I went back to Yendi and then continued onto Zabzugu. In Yendi we go to go visit a girls club, which was really neat! These clubs are created mainly in junior high schools to help teach girls the importance of their own education and as a support network for school work and other challenges they have. The clubs are also used as a tool for community sensitization and they perform plays, poetry or songs at community events to demonstrate the importance of girls education to parents. The clubs put on one of their role plays for us and the whole school watched. The play showed three girls in school, 2 of whom dropped out of school to go to Accra and become porters (they call them kayayos) and the third girl stayed in school and got a scholarship. Then it shows the girls again in 5 years. The girl who stayed in school becomes a doctor and has to tell one of the other girls that she is HIV positive, and then tell the parents of the other girl that she has died from a self induced abortion. It was neat that they touched on so many sensitive subjects and they were all very animated and involved. The patron of the club and the head master were both men but they were both very supportive and the girls obviously liked them and felt comfortable around them, so it was neat to see how men are getting involved as well.
Then we got to talk to the girls education officer for Yendi, who was out of town the last time we were there. Her name is Madame Alice and she is very knowledgeable and interesting to talk to. She is retiring in July, which is really too bad.
On Wednesday we woke up at 5 am and went to go catch a tro-tro (a big van that they cram lots of people into) to Zabzugu, and we ended up waiting for it for 3 hours. When it finally came, we piled into it and in a van with 30 seats, they had 51 people, not including the various small children sitting on parents laps, or the three men that rode on the top of the van with all the cargo. It was pretty claustrophobic and the ride was super hot and bumpy, which didn’t help. We made it to Zabzugu and then met with Elvis, the long term volunteer, and the girls education officer. We went to visit a few schools. One of the schools had a feeding program and we got to see how that worked. Then we went to visit an all girls school where there was a girls club, but it was not very active. It was interesting to see the difference between a club where the patron was so involved, vs. a club where the matron was not as supportive. The clubs depend so much on the support from the patrons/matrons and teachers.
We made it back to Tamale on Wednesday evening and it was nice to be back and get a good nights sleep. For the rest of the week we are going to be working on our research and our reports. Two of the American girls that we met are leaving Saturday morning so we want to hang out with them on Friday night and then there may be a Ghana national team game in Tamale on Sunday. On July 1 it is Republic Day in Ghana, so that will be a holiday. I hope there will be some celebrations or events that we can go check out.
Take care everyone!