Family life in Ghana

Written by Caitlin Stamford, GapBreak 2009 - Ghana
Maadwo (good afternoon),

I wanted to share a little bit about my Ghanaian family with you. Aunty Mary, who is 65, runs the household and the school. She used to be a teacher but got really ill, retired early and set up the school I am teaching at, which now has approximately 150 students although they never all turn up. She is very kind, and has had many volunteers stay in her house and teach at the school – we are the 8th or 9th volunteers to come here. She is a monster with the cane, but you wouldn’t pick it. She wears a wig and paints her lips purple (she has an illness which has turned her lips pale, so she dyes them).


Rita is in her early 20s and does most of the cooking and is studying to be a nurse. She is on holidays at the moment so she’s around all the time. I love her – she laughs all the time and secretly wants to be a ‘Rasta’ (Rastafarian, think Bob Marley music, dreads made with wool). She is always commenting on how ‘beautiful’ Julie and I are, even after we are covered in dirt and smelling like urine after an afternoon at the orphanage.

Paa Kwesi just turned 16, but could be 18. He is about to start Junior High School and spent his holidays teaching at the school here. He was school prefect and all his friends are much older than him. He is super smart and, like all Ghanaians, is really into football (soccer). The Youth Soccer World Cup is being held at the moment and everyone here is watching it. You know Ghana is playing when there are 20 people crowded around the televisions in town and whenever they score Julie and I can hear yells and screams from all around our village. If they win, people run around between the houses with shirts over their heads.

Mercy is 11, but seems a lot older. She does a lot of the cooking and cleaning (without complaint, Mahalia!) after she gets back from school. Doreen turned 10 on Monday and is always joking around and seems to rule the kids from the neighbourhood who are always hanging around our house.

I cannot explain to you how they are related. None of them are siblings, but all are connected to Aunty Mary in some way. And of course there are always other people around, some of who are related to the family (Paa Kwesi’s father and grandfather come here often and some kid showed up the other day who turned out to be Rita’s son) and others who are friends or teachers or neighbours and there are some tenants staying here as well and the school kids and neighbourhood kids are always around. You never get lonely in this house and I always lose track of who’s who but everyone seems to know my name which is nice.

The house itself is basically one corridor with rooms coming off it, with the exception of the toilet and shower which are around a corner. The doors are closed all the time, so it can be very dark and we can't see the stupid cats. The gas tops are on the floor in the kitchen and some of cooking is done outside, like stirring banku over coals or pounding fufu in a huge mortar and pestle or grinding tomatoes and chillies on a flat rock with a smooth stone. The water runs for most of the day, but usually does not turn on till late morning and stops at about 6 - 7. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, but the family keep water in huge barrels and have a reservoir under the ground for rainwater. They drink the tap water, and so do the students at the school. The neighbours pay about 4 cents to fill a bucket. The electricity fails only very occasionally, and not for very long at all, but there are no lights in the shower (or toilet) so we try to shower before 6 and take a torch after that. We have a flushing toilet and a proper shower, when the water is working. Otherwise its the pit toilet and bucket showers. The water is always cold and there is no sink. They burn the rubbish behind the school and don’t use bins – they drop food scraps and empty containers and whatever on the ground where they are and sweep it up later with a broom made of twigs if the chickens or cats don’t eat it. When we wash clothes we fill a couple of buckets with water and hand-wash everything with Omo and blocks of soap. It takes forever and trying to hand-wash a super absorbent towel is a battle lost before it’s started. Ghanaians eat with their hands, which is fun but can be very messy.

I have a funny story. The kids at the school use the pit toilet and one day last week anyone who went in there came running out talking about noises coming from the pit underneath and they quickly all became too scared to go. Turns out the monster haunting the sewerage was one of our cats which had fallen in somehow and was mewing to get out. It made its way out later that day and the poor thing has since been dubbed ‘poocat’ for obvious reasons. It smelt as bad as you can imagine and it was white, but came out brown. Its okay now, but I still don’t want it anywhere near me. Even its mother was hissing at it if it got too close.

Teaching has been okay, but I am having serious problems with discipline. Aunty Mary has positioned the nurse next to my class with the cane at the ready because I refuse to use it, despite the nurse and another teacher taking me aside yesterday to tell me that I had to hit the kids because they are ‘so stubborn’ and ‘are fooling’ and ‘are scared of the cane’ so they will be quiet if I use it. I’m not making an argument about the efficacy of the cane, it is the fastest method I have ever seen to keep a class quiet. Really, its incredible. But also the fastest way to make them frightened and start crying and hate coming to school. I wrote a list of rules on some card and went through them with the kids today, using actions and rhythm so they remember. It was so excellent! Teaching win, for sure. My four golden rules are: 'Listen to the teacher' (this one is first intentionally) 'Keep your hands to yourself' (ie don't whack each other over the head or snatch things out of my hands) 'Ask before you leave the class' and 'Stay in your seat'. I'm hoping this will improve their behaviour, or at least quieten them down enough so they don't get caned by someone else.