Education in Ghana: a university for the rich kids and a K-12 school for the orphans

So, I'm in the country (allegedly) for university. Here are some of my thoughts on how that's going (excerpt from a letter cause I keep finding myself explaining everything many times to many people). This semester I can taking traditional dance and traditional drumming, which have been a blast and are really just for fun and to get some more cultural competence. I'm also taking 2 lecture classes fro credit: Ghanaian Literature and Rural Resource Development, as well as auditing 2 for fun: Art History of Africa and Foragers and Farmers in West Africa's Prehistory. They all sounded very promising and interesting, and to some extent they are, especially the reading. My lectures, however, have not been as super interesting as I’d hoped. Not sure I’m into the education style here. There isn’t a lot of discussion and the classes tend to be straight note-taking. Plus, it seems a bit basic right now. It’s still sorta the first few weeks of class, but it is also the 3rd week in only 12 weeks of instruction. Since we only meet once a week for 2 hours, by the time I feel like we’re really IN the class, it’ll be time for exams. Finally, many of the readings, while really interesting, are 20-30 years old (not as big a deal for lit classes, but definitely more so for my rural resource development class).

Despite the disappointment in some classes, I'm still learning a ton. I see the infrastructure problems firsthand, every day. Sometimes the ATMs have no money. The Internet comes and goes, as does the water in some buildings. There is no toilet paper or soap in any but the nicest bathrooms, so you bring your own or do without. Managing the maze of class enrollment took days. As we say, everything in Ghana is a process. So it’s really interesting to see what people have to deal with and how insurmountable the challenges are. It also really makes you appreciate how other things work. For example, I rarely have to wait long for a tro-tro wherever I want to go and they are so inexpensive. This is not the case for buses in downtown San Jose. Also, despite transportation and refrigeration difficulties, you can buy freshly squeezed (the one on my desk was bottled on the 1st of September and expire on the 7th) Blue Sky pineapple and mango juice all over the country.

Another thing about education in Ghana is that, to go to university here, you need to be fairly wealthy. There is a huge class difference, where most houses I see are either tiny one/two room shacks that look like they have been made out of storage containers or big fancy homes surrounded by a tall wall with barded wire or shards of broken glass embedded at the top and sometimes even private security.


Here's where most of the kids I volunteer with live (more about them below). It's about 10-15 sq feet and has no windows. I have no been brave enough to photograph the rich houses yet, I'm afraid someone will yell at me.

I know there must be some in between, but I have not seen it. So most of the people in my classes are at the top of the heap, money-wise. That's not to say that they are snobby. That actually doesn't really seem to be a Ghanaian concept. They are all down to pile into a tro-tro and buy cheap fish at Madina and all the rest. Still, the stratification is mind-boggling.

I also see the flip side, when I do my volunteer time at Mawuvio's Outreach Programme in the little village of Kissehmah (or Kisseman, I've seen it spelled both ways) inside Accra. The school was started by a Ghanaian called Kwame and a ISEP student called Renee who came over from Iowa two years ago. They started with 15 students and now have 2 addition teachers and 54 students (ages 3-16) and have to send some children away for lack of space. The 2 Ghanaian teachers are paid and, thanks to a donation set up by an ISEP student last year, the kids get a free lunch every day that school is in session. Another donation bought them all uniforms, which they do a pretty good job of keeping clean. All these donations are important, as almost all of the kids are orphans and street kids and none of them can afford to pay the fees required to attend the Catholic and Christian schools here (I've heard those fees can be 100-200 cedis a year, per child, but I'm not positive about that number).

Kwame and Renee are dedicated to giving these kids as good an education as possible. Kwame especially is very passionate about helping these kids achieve their dreams: they want to pilots and lawyers and doctors, and the idea that even one or two of them might get to go that is incredible. So it's really great to get to go out there and see the other side of education in Ghana. Like the university (though more understandably, in my opinion), things are haphazard and improvised. The kids, of course, are at all levels of learning and abilities. But that also gives the school opportunities to deviate somewhat from the strict hierarchy of learning. There is Math and English, of course, but there is also plenty of time devoted to play, art, music, science, dance, civil education, and religious education. I feel like the looseness of the curriculum is as good for the young kids as a rigid university structure would be for me.

Check out some pictures we painted this morning!




A collaborative effort between me with crayons and a boy I don;t know yet with a paintbrush.


I told Isaac I like pineapple juice and he made me this. (Sorry it's backwards, I had to photograph it with Photobooth. No scanner; I live in Africa).

Mawuvio is currently building a full school building (they are on a porch and in a courtyard right now, and have to cancel school if it rains too hard) with dormitories for the students and teachers and 6 individual classrooms. They are hoping to fund this through some of their past fund-raising (donations and selling jewelry made by the students) as well as getting some people to sponsor some of the students and send enough money for all their meals and clothing. Check out their website!

Also, buy some of their jewelry! Perfect for all occasions!