A daily routine in Ghana and a not-so-typical church visit

Written by Caitlin Stamford - GapBreak Ghana, 2009

A typical day in Ghana looks something like this:

4:00 - 5:00 Rooster starts crowing and sometimes someone wakes up and starts singing or banging buckets around or whatever
6:00-6:30 Whole family is up and getting ready for the day (sweeping, etc) so I get up around then. Usually a kid is crying if they have been dropped off at school early.

6:30-7:00 Shower if there is enough water (someone stole all of the water from the underground tank thing last week with a siphon during the night so we were short if the pipes weren't running until the rain came) and breakfast
7:00-8:00 Getting teaching things together etc
8:00 Go outside and get mobbed by my class who all want a hug and to play 'round and round the garden'.
Bell rings anytime between 8 and 8:30

On Wednesdays the school has worship for about an hour, where they sing and dance and pray and are preached at by the Lady from the nursery.

Any other day my kids help me set up the chairs and tables on the balcony, if we are writing or drawing and we begin the first lesson.
We do maths in the morning, so either counting numbers up to 20 or writing numbers in books. Sometimes we have an art lesson - the other day we drew suns and caterpillars because we have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and we have also been looking at birds (wings, beak, feathers etc) so yesterday I made a talking beak out of paper for the kids and we drew on eyes and wings and feet etc and stuck on coloured feathers. It was fun! Then we have singing followed by story time and then outside games if we have time.
Break is at 10:30 and is supposed to go for half an hour.
Then we are back in class and either doing colours or shapes. They get served lunch between 11:30 and 12:00 and then go and wash their bowls and we put the chairs and tables back in the classroom, everyone gets a high-five and I finish teaching for the day.

In the afternoon on Wednesdays we have our obruni meeting in town and that's when I usually stock up on essential supplies like biscuits and happy cow cheese and go to the internet. Any other afternoon is just whatever, visiting people etc. I help with dinner when I can and we eat at about 5ish and if I haven't done so already I do my lesson plan for the next day. My puzzle books are slowly filling up and I have run out of books to read, so I normally just talk with the family and help my two sisters with their homework. Shower and then I'm usually in bed by 8.

If we are going somewhere on the weekend we leave on Friday (sometimes we take the day off school if we are going far) and get back in time to do some washing on Sunday and back at school on Monday.

This last weekend I stayed with my family. Julie (my house buddy) went away and so I did all the normal weekend things with my family - cleaning and scrubbing and sweeping and going to church. Church in Ghana is an experience. Lots of singing and dancing and amazingly coloured clothing. As I walked in with my older sister Rita to sit with the women on the right (the men sit on the left) the pastor stopped his sermon so he could instruct the entire congregation of about 150 to turn around and greet me, the obruni. He remembered my name from the last time I attended his service about a month ago! Somehow we managed to sit right up the front and the pastor, who is lovely, kept trying to include me in his sermon. It was SO embarrassing. He spoke to the congregation in Fante, so every time he directed a question in English at me to answer I was usually not paying too much attention and got all flustered. And then he took a break from preaching because he decided he wanted to give me another name. Names in Ghana have meaning and everyone has a couple of different names so he, and the rest of the people in the church, wanted to give me a special name. The name they decided on means 'God's gift'. Oh God. I could have died. And then when I gave my offering (you give 'collection' to the church and then give 'offering' to a cause, last week's sermon was about the plight of pensioners but the offering was to retired pastors, judge all you like) everyone cheered and he shook my hand. At the end of the service the distinguished members of the church walk out first, but when the pastor walked past me he beckoned me over and made me walk out with them! And I have to go back before I leave, he made me promise so he 'could give me a proper send-off'. It sounds more then ominous - I'm terrified.

I'm off to a place called Kokrobite Beach this weekend, which I have already visited but is amazing so I'm keen to go back. Full of Rastas and beads and fishing boats and street kids and drumming.

I don't have long left in Ghana - only 3 weeks of teaching left! I'm so sad - I've fallen in love with all of my students. And then we have 2 weeks of travel and then its safari in Kenya and Tanzania! Whoah!