Literally the longest day ever!

Today me and Tutu were to go to a new school (still Omega) in Kasoa, so Ken picked us up at 8 and took us there. The school is much more compact than 94 but is nicely painted with the school song, the national anthem, and various pictures of animals, birds, colours and so on. We have decided that we want to replicate this in 94, and so plan to talk to Ken! I spent the day with Junior High 2 observing their lessons, and filling in Andrew's observation sheets- something I was concerned about as I did not want to criticise too much, however the lessons were all great and so I could write lots of praise! I watched French, Basic Design Technology, Social Studies, Science and English. The English teacher, Mitchell, was my favourite, he had been testing his students, and was calling them out on all of their mistakes- very old-school! He also took the time to chat to me about my time in Ghana which was nice, as some of the teachers did not even introduce themselves! The social studies lesson was also interesting, as the teacher was telling his students why they should not be lazy, because this leads to poverty, and poverty apparently then leads to prostitution and armed robbery- a simplistic but motivational speech!!  I think that when I hear discussions of this nature it brings to light the importance that these people place on education, and their desire to improve their own destiny- something which is lacking in English schools!  During the lesson I also browsed the social studies textbook (which was not being used) and found a whole section about ways to end poverty, why democracy is important, the benefits of capitalism and various other developmental strategies.  This was very similar to what we had been learning about in the Economics module, and I was surprised that the ideas were closely matched by what we agreed upon.   The girls in the class also asked me to sing for them, but I managed to dodge this opportunity all day, phew!

For lunch we tried out a very "local" cafe down the road, which offered three meals, so we went for chicken stew and rice. This was actually really nice, and really cheap! A basic tomato sauce with carrots, cabbage and peppers, with a fried chicken leg and some rice! We returned to the school to complete the observations.

Andrew had told us that we could do our research after school finished (2.45pm), for Tutu this involved getting kids to send emails to her school in England, and for me, interviews. However Mercy (the school manager) said that I could not interview after school as the children had to catch the bus, so I helped in the ICT lab with the hope that I would have more luck tomorrow. The computers were a semi-nightmare though as the connection was very slow and they regularly crashed. By the time all of the children had got email accounts a lot of time had passed, and it took even longer for them to send their messages! By 5pm we were frustrated and tired, but had managed to get at least a few emails sent, so called it a day!