The Hokey Cokey

Today I returned to 94 and successfully managed to interview 11 children about the work that they do after school.  It seems already that looking at the jobs that their parents have, and the amenities that the children have in their homes, they are somewhat poorer than the children in Kasoa school.  So many children at 94 seem to sell after school, it is doubtful that I will get to speak to them all, but I plan to return to do some more tomorrow. The work is generally always to sell, and a lot of the time they are doing it to help their parents, as they are usually selling the same products that one or both of their parents has been selling during the day.

Following this success, I went up to the eldest class in the school- Junior High 2, to hand out the questionnaires for my mini-project on career aspirations, and chat to them about the types of work they would like to do in the future.  My dissertation questionnaires have informed me that almost all of the students want to complete their education by going all the way through to university, indicating that they have hig aspirations.  The students eagerly completed the questionnaires, and a number of highly prestigious occupations seemed to come up as preferred, including doctors, nurses, lawyers, journalists and footballers! After they had finished they taught us some Fante (a local language), we attempted to teach them Spanish, and I even cracked out a little bit of Swahili!!  They then asked me and Sophie to sing our national song- with no other ideas we broke into a beautiful performance of the Hokey Cokey, with full participation from the students, and even managed to pull together a few lines of our national anthem, which was then put completely to shame as they recited all of theirs! The girls then attempted to teach us a game called 'Ampe' which they play against each other- it essentially involves clapping and jumping before putting one foot into the middle.  If you both put the left foot one person gets a point, and both right feet the other does, I don't quite know if this is a foolproof system, but it seems to work for them so I wont question it!

Following this bout of activity we popped down for a chat to Sunday, the tuck-shop lady at 94 who told us a lot about the local area and it's history- Kasoa is named after the man who started the market I think, but Kasoa also means market, so I don't know if this all fits in! Sunday seems to know a lot though, and today she was with her brother, who has apparently been scouted for an Italian football team, and was videoed playing- he is now waiting to get a call to go over there! The story seems a little bit too good to be true, but you never know, perhaps it will work out for him!

The afternoon was filled with a lack of electricity, which meant that I could not get much of what I wanted done, but it was restored in the evening, and so some time was made up. This is Africa after all!