Another week flies by

The temperature has risen rapidly this week. We have slept without the fan since November. Now we have to have it on all night. At the hottest part of the day, temperatures exceed 40 deg C. It does not seem to get much cooler at night! The smell of the baked earth in the middle of the day is not at all unpleasant - and very distinctive. This ia another memory that will seem so far away once we return to the UK.

We have completed our final headteacher workshop. We have had 65 attendees in total, and we are very pleased with the feedback received. There are certainly some very talented and committed headteachers in the area. Their pay is very low, and teachers pay is even lower. There is a real job to be done by the government in raising the status and self esteem of school staff, if Ghana's millennium goal of universal education for all 5-14 year olds is to be achieved.




Our families have raised significant sums of money for our work and this has been used to provide resources for our workshops. Paper is a really expensive and precious commodity here. It all has to be brought by road from Accra. We have provided headteachers with printed materials that will enable them to share learning with their staff, undertake key self evaluations, and work on developing more appropriate learning and teaching strategies. The workshops have given them much to consider in improving their leadership and management of their schools.

People at home have also collected and sent out computer components. With replacement hard drives we have been able to bring some ‘old’ computers back to life. Education Service staff are slowly plucking up courage to come to the resource centre to practice their typing and mouse control skills.

Using money sent from home, we have also assembled over 100 scissors, rulers, tape measures, marker pens, string, pegs and geometrical instruments. These are all bagged up ready for distribution to all primary and junior sedondary schools in the municipality. This equipment will enable schools to produce classroom displays and a wide range of teaching and learning materials. Here is Haydn bringing the pegs and balls of string from the local market.

School walls are concrete (where there are classrooms!), so display is an issue. With string and pegs, teachers are able to hang up visual displays and resources which make for much more interactive learning. Many thanks to our families for making all this possible and, of course, to our Education Service colleagues, who are seen below, bagging up all the equipment.

One of the local volunteers has been collecting all the cardboard he can get and is cutting it into rectangles, painting the pieces black and encouraging their use as mini chalkboards. This enables students to demonstrte their understanding and therefore helps the teacher to assess their progress. As paper is so expensive, the small chalk boards are an innovative and helpful resource that costs very little to provide.

Our new volunteer colleagues arrived last weekend and are settling in to their new environment. Joanne is now sharing our house with us; Maureen moves in when we go. The house will then be theirs.

Joanne is a teacher support officer - and the first VSO volunteer from Gibralter. She is the one who will eventually distribute all our resource packs to schools. Joanne is working with us, as a direct replacement for Melanie. She is focussed on helping the schools to develop more creative and effective teaching practice. She will be the catalyst to ensure that the packs we have provided will be put to good use. She will work with Education Service staff to give teachers ideas about learning resources that will help stimulate interest and thus aid learning for the students.

Maureen is working at the Regional Education Office on the development of the curriculum for pupils with special needs. To many in Ghana, "special needs" still equates to disability and the concept that some students are slower learners than others, is new. She will have some great challenges ahead.

Short term, there will be another resident at our house. He will actually move in next weekend. Greg is a US engineer from Seattle. Greg is working with the local office of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). The government has bought agricultural equipment and his role is to help local people get the equipment working in the local environment. His key project concerns the combine harvester, mentioned last week. Now we have a photograph of the combine harvester working in a rice field.

.....and a couple of the Combine harvester at the local MoFA headquarters.

Greg has an instruction manual in Chinese, and one of his tasks is to investigate every last cog and screw in the combine harvester and to produce an instruction manual in English.

To get this complex piece of machinery into small rice fields is a real challenge. The government has encouraged farmers to assemble plots of land into blocks, so that the combine can harvest a big area and the farmers can then share the resulting grain. The cost of such machinery is way beyond the reach of farmers and some form of co-operative arrangement has to be worked out. A problem appears to be that the World Bank, and international support agencies for agriculture do not like the sound of co-operatives, generally. They want the machinery owned by private individuals and not by the government. Currently there is no Upper West Region business that can afford the capital involved. The combine is certainly beyond the reach of any individual farmer in the Upper West. Brand new tractors lie idle at the MoFA HQ, because no-one can afford to buy or run them. The way forward has to be farmers sharing equipment costs and any resulting profits.

We end this week with a few early quotes from Maureen and Joanne.
“Its hot ................and it's all goats and gutters”
“Aren’t people friendly!”
“How on earth do you find your way around without road names and maps?"

Traffic & Transport

We are now beginning to understand the meaning of “hot”. The dry, Harmattan season is gradually drawing to a close and humidity is gradually increasing, together with temperatures up to 40+ degrees centigrade. We just sweat all the time, and within 5 minutes of having a cold shower, we are sweating again. Even the Ghanaians are complaining about the heat. However, we are coping pretty well with it, and actually enjoying it. We just have to slow down and do everything at a much slower pace. It is great to ride our bikes, because this gives us a lovely breeze.

As the development of Ghana’s infrastructure, including improvements to transport, is essential for the future, we decided to say a bit about transport in this blog entry.

Our 17 hour bus journey from Accra to Wa and our 19 hour bus journey from Wa to Kumasi have featured in earlier blog entries. These are not typical, we have just drawn a short straw on our long-distance bus travel. There are no operating passenger rail services in Ghana, so the bus is the only affordable option for long-distance travel. There is an airport at Tamale some 7 hours south of us, from which you can fly to Accra for many, many, times the bus fare!

The government-owned Metro Mass bus services cover the whole country.

Private companies also operate on some local and inter-city routes.

Ticket prices are very low, even for quite long distances. It costs us the equivalent of about £10 to travel to Accra. There is a proposal to privatise the Metro Mass company. We wonder how long, under private ownership, the company would keep all routes open throughout Ghana. At present you can travel to anywhere in Ghana on this service along the major roads - provided you don’t mind being squashed into the bus with at least 100 other people. This always makes travel really interesting, because you really get to know your fellow passengers.



Once in a town, transfer to a trotro is very easy. These vehicles leave bus stations, known in Ghana as lorry parks, when they are full - and we mean full. We travelled on the one pictured below. It was licensed to carry 27 people; 6 rows of 4 behind the driver and a front seat for 2. With the passengers come babies and every sort of luggage.

On the roof of trotros you will see sacks of grain, charcoal, baskets of fruit, bicycles and goats. When we travelled to Accra from Koforidua over Christmas, we bought an extra seat for our luggage. People are happy with this. The driver gets the money for the seat and the trotro is full earlier, so leaves earlier. Below is a row of trotros at a lorry park in Wa waiting for passengers.

Most drivers and passengers appear to feel comforted by quotes from the Bible or Koran that are painted on their vehicles.

In the south of the country, there are more cars than in the north, and the traffic jams make the M6 hold-ups seem insignificant. One can take 4 hours to travel 10 km in Accra at some times. In our first week in Ghana we had first hand experience of this in moving by coach from our hotel to the VSO offices, a distance of 5km. It took over 2 hours.

Catalytic converters are not common and hence air pollution in the large cities is horrendous. We are pleased to be in the quiet north with our bicycles.

45% of road deaths in Ghana, are of pedestrians. The rule is that driving/riding is on the right hand side of the road, but generally people just drive wherever there is a space. Pavements, road signs and junction markings are all needed. A recent conference on road safety made the link between poverty and road accidents. Poor people walk everywhere and are vulnerable to being hit by vehicles. After pedestrians, the second highest proportion of deaths comes from tro-tro accidents. Again, it is poor people who use these services most. For young men, road injuries are the second leading cause of premature death after HIV/AIDS.

In our first week we bought bicycles. We were well advised to go for second hand bikes without gears. If a bike has been on Ghanaian roads for some time, then its components are robust and easily repaired. Modern, cheap imports from China have complex gearing and flashy additions which break down and fall off in a very short time. Wa is flat and we do not require gears. We need a bike that can carry our shopping. Our purchases are often heavy, as things to drink are very important (and we do not mean alcohol in this heat!). Our bikes have served us well; a few punctures and one collapsed and rebuilt wheel is all we have had to cope with so far.

Being in the North, there are many bike repair shops, so each time we have had a puncture, the equivalent of 20p has enabled a repair without even getting our hands dirty. One particularly heavy parcel of computer components caused three spokes to snap on Haydn’s back wheel. By the time the bike was taken in for repair, there were many loose spokes. In the UK, the wheel would have been deemed irreparable. The equivalent of £1.50 was the cost of a wheel rebuild, and it has held up well ever since!

Cycling is very popular in the north of the country. Most people can’t afford motorbikes, known locally as motos. Certainly cars are out of the question for 99% of the population. Mitsubishi, Toyota, Nissan, Ford and Land Rover, 4WD vehicles, SUVs and pick-ups do exist, but it is only the business owners and directors of NGOs who can afford to run these vehicles, let alone buy them. The pictures below show two contrasting vehicles!

Motos are popular and we love to see the families on the way to school in the morning, with 4 or 5 children being carried on one motobike - a picture we have yet to capture!!

Goods are brought to the Upper West mainly on heavy lorries. It never ceases to amaze us to watch the variety of goods that are unloaded from one truck: reams of paper, boxes of tomato sauce, sardines, Blue Band margarine, bicycle tyres, bags of grain, foam mattresses, and the list goes on.

We have recently had a new volunteer working in Wa. He is an engineer and is helping the government agency for agriculture to bring into use a combine harvester imported from China. During its first major outing, the drive belt snapped 8 times as the ground used to grow rice has never been properly cleared for mechanisation. The heavy soil and stones were too much for the belt to cope with and it kept snapping.

Replacing a combine harvester drive belt proved an interesting logistical exercise. The first time it broke, someone drove from Wa to Accra and back again (712 km each way) to buy one. He did have the foresight to buy 4, but they only lasted a week. The next consignment was ordered by telephone. The package of belts was put on a bus and the delivery was in Wa within 24 hours. Things do get done - in the Ghanaian way!

A footnote for all sports car enthusiasts - we have yet to see one in Ghana! I wonder why?

Planning for road improvements is going on, but the finances are unreliable. There are 32,000 kilometres of road in Ghana. Of these, 26,000 kilometres are dirt roads. The abandoned roadworks around the country are testament to broken promises. In 2007, a national conference on road building and road safety, argued for better strategic planning and used the following quote from Ghana’s first president:
“Thought without action is empty. Action without thought is blind”
Kwame Nkrumah

Our Neighbourhood

The headteacher workshops continue. We are delighted with the response we are getting from participants. Their eagerness to learn is so satisfying for us. They actively participate throughout and are full of questions.

We always seek feedback in order to improve what we are delivering. We ask at the end for participants to share key learning with the group and to indicate what actions they will take as a result of the workshop. Work on leadership styles has been an amazing eye opener to most, and headteachers have all sorts of creative ideas about how they will use their learning with their staff.

Sometimes the feedback we get leaves us speechless. One male head said that an action he would take following the workshop was, “to review his relationship with his wife...” We did not know what to say or expect as he continued, “....seeing you two working together, I realise the woman can take a lead and it makes me think that I should treat my wife differently”. What on earth could we say in response to that!! This could actually be our greatest success in Ghana, as he said this in front of 13 other, predominantly male, headteachers.

We have lived in Wa for nearly 5 months and it is about time we shared some pictures of our house and local neighbourhood:

This is the house in which we live.




Ayisha comes every weekend to help us with the cleaning and washing. She is the carer for three younger siblings, all in local colleges at the moment. She had to suspend her own education to see the others through theirs, after her mother died.



At the moment we share the house only with the wildlife. We have four or five of these friendly chaps who eat many irritating insects. Just occasionally a lizard will eat a spider ...etc. etc!



A lovely family lives behind our house. Farook (below) is the man in the family. One of the delights of living here is listening to the girls sitting behind our garden wall in front of Farook’s house singing each evening. Another regular sound is that of the children playing football. All the local children seem to play happily 90% of the time. Their laughter will be something we will miss when we return to the UK.



This delightful family lives to one side of us. Osman is Headteacher of the Dodyiiri village school, featured in a previous blog entry. Osman attended one of our headteacher workshops and is very pleased with the insights it gave him. His school is really challenging. He has one teacher working with him to teach 4 classes.



On the other side of us is Fatima, a local teacher. She is a real gem, always warm and friendly, and full of questions about the UK. She is feeding her granddaughter in the picture. She is going to teach us how to make tofu from soya beans before we leave.



We all live along the road pictured below. Fatima's house is on the left, behind the blue container, which houses a welder's business. If you need a gate or railing, this is the place to come.



Below is our “corner shop” under a mango tree, run by Memuna. Every time we pass we get a very warm hello and wave, and every time we buy something, a delightful smile. Like all the other local shopkeepers, hawkers and farmers, Memuna speaks Waali and no English.



Just a few metres further on is our local “supermarket”.


Once the shopping is done, a few more metres brings us to the Countryside Spot. This is our local “pub” at which we spend some lovely early evenings absorbing the sights and sounds of the local life: bulbul birds with their fabulously cheerful chirpy song, the laughing doves, the scurrying lizards and, of course, the local goats and chickens.



Most local people are Muslims and the mosque is only about 200 metres from our house. The call to prayer at 04.00 is very gentle indeed and another sound we shall take home in our memories.


Last but not least, we have the local bike repair shop. These lads have helped us out on a number of occasions. For the equivalent of 20p we can have a puncture repaired and not even get our hands dirty.



On the opposite side of the road to us is a beautiful forest in which we walk occasionally, taking binoculars to look at the birdlife. In the recent dry spell a fire tore through the undergrowth. The tree pictured below fell two weeks later. It had clearly been smouldering from the inside until the trunk was weakened and it fell.


The sunsets and starlit skys are fabulous. This scene is outside our house virtually every evening.



Next weekend we have a new VSO volunteer coming to join us in our house. We are looking forward to meeting Joanne and being the experts on Wa. It will feel good to explain how we cope with the water supply and get gas for the cooker and electricity for the meter. It all seems so straightforward now. Joanne will be a teacher support officer, and we will be working with her for 4 weeks before we leave.

A week in the life....

This last week has been interesting, exciting and challenging.

The Harmattan wind is still blowing and there is dust everywhere, inside and outside. We even have to dust the papers and booklets before using them at our workshops. It is impossible to keep shoes clean. We were daft enough to bring black shoes and white shoes. The only suitable colour is red/brown.

It is now gradually getting hotter, as the Harmattan season draws gradually to an end. March is likely to be the hottest month of the year before the rainy season begins in April. All this means that the nights are no longer cool, and a cold shower is bliss!

Water is clearly being rationed, and supplies to our tap in the garden are much reduced. Previous volunteers told us that last year in February/March, they had 9 consecutive days without water. It is now Monday evening and we have had no water since last Thursday morning. Fortunately, we still have some stored in our barrels, but we have to count every drop. All of this means that people in the villages are experiencing really hard times, walking greater distances to get water, and getting water from anywhere by any means.

On Sunday 31st January, we started the week by joining a group of Ghanaians in a local Spot (Bar) to watch the African Cup of Nations football final, Ghana v Egypt. Despite losing, we, and most of our local friends and colleagues, were delighted that Ghana reached the final. They are now looking forward to the World Cup in South Africa. Football fans will have noticed empty stadia in this competition. This is no reflection on the enthusiasm of local supporters, just a sign of the impossibility of African people being able to afford to travel to distant lands, let alone pay for accommodation and football tickets.

During this last week, we have had a volunteer colleague from Accra, Jude, staying in Wa. Jude is working on developing the school curriculum, so it is important that he sees the conditions in the schools in the north of the country, as they are so different from Accra. We have spent some time this week taking him round to various schools, so that he can talk with headteachers and observe some lessons.

Last weekend, we spent a great evening with Jude and our VSO friend, Cameron, sharing our experiences and generally having a good time. In the picture, Linda is serving bananas in bright green jelly. Our previous housemate, Mel, sent us a lovely box of goodies from Australia, including 4 packets of jelly. This led the four of us into a whole load of reminiscences about our childhood. We all used to think that jelly only came in the shape of a rabbit and, believe it or not, we all used to fight over getting the tail!!

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this last week, we ran the second of our 2-day workshops with a group of headteachers. Last term, we circulated headteachers with a questionnaire, so that they could identify their development needs relating to leadership and management. We received a huge response. Sixty -five headteachers expressed an interest in attending our workshops. This includes quite a number of headteachers from out in the villages, who have quite a journey on rough roads, in order to get into Wa.

Like the previous week, the first day of the workshop focused on particular aspects of leadership and management, such as leadership styles, team building, developing a vision for the school, time management etc. Day 2 was spent mainly on developing coaching skills, which is what these particular headteachers had requested. Institute of Education colleagues will recognise the activity in triads!

We had a great group of 13 headteachers who participated actively and enthusiastically and we thoroughly enjoyed working with them. (This time, we didn’t forget to start and end each session with either a Christian or a Muslim prayer!!)

We had a number of invitations to visit schools. Unfortunately we won’t have time between now and the end of March to follow up these invitations.

In conversation with one of these headteachers, she told us that the reason that she really enjoys being a head is that she is in charge and can make decisions, whereas at home, her husband is the “master of the house” and she has to do as she is told. She told us that she really liked the way “you white people have equality between the sexes”. She is a really dynamic person who is doing her bit for equality in Ghana.

The next workshop will have a specific focus on accountability and the following two workshops will focus on learning and teaching.

Another of the highlights of this week has been visiting some of the schools and some of the market stall holders to give them printed copies of photographs that we have taken of them. Local people are so delighted to see pictures of themselves and they get so much pleasure out of having a picture that they can keep.

Friday of each week is “dress up day”. This means that we are expected to go to work wearing traditional clothes or clothes made out of the Ghana Education Service material. Our colleagues were insistent that we follow suit, so here we are in our Friday gear!

In the education office, we share a base room with 3 colleagues: Yakubu, Mary and Gladys. In conversation with Mary during the week, she discovered that Linda’s Mum will be having her 90th birthday on 9th April. She immediately told Linda that she must have Ghanaian dress (a bright, colourful long skirt with matching top, called an “up and down”) to wear at her Mum’s celebration, in order to bring her Mum good luck from Ghana. There was no argument to be had. The next morning, she brought in a local tailor to measure Lin (so that didn’t take long!!) We’ve no idea what material she will choose or what design - so look out Mum, Lin will have to wear it!!

Women and Children

Ghana recognises that gender equality is a key priority for the nation. The “millennium goals” for Ghana include:

• Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger
• Achieving universal primary education
• Promoting gender equality and empowering women
• Reducing child mortality
• Improving maternal health
• Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

The current measure of poverty places the upper poverty line at 403 dollars (£248 approximately) per year i.e. the equivalent amount that a person has available to spend on keeping her/himself alive. The lower poverty line is 314 dollars (£193 approximately) per year. Below this line, people are said to live in extreme poverty. The proportion of people living in poverty in Ghana, i.e. below the upper poverty line, is highest in our Upper West region at 88% of the population. Across Ghana, 18% of people live in extreme poverty.

Women and girls face discrimination in all aspects of their lives. In addition, they have to suffer a range of cultural/traditional practices, which are now illegal, but still continue, especially in the north of the country. (All the quotes below are taken from a very recent publication from UNICEF, called “Children in Ghana”.)

Women have very clearly defined roles within the family, especially in rural areas. They are essentially the “property” of their fathers and then their husbands. It is often believed that a well educated girl will not be able to get a husband and would therefore become a liability to the family. Hence, the enrolment and attendance levels for girls in school are well below those of boys:

“The gap dividing boys and girls in enrolment, completion and achievement has long highlighted a significant disparity in the education system. In many parts of the country, the barrier to girls’ education is closely linked to cultural beliefs and social expectations that do not apply to boys............. This is particularly significant in the three northern regions and in the rural areas in general, where girls face the greatest obstacles to attending school......... Parents continue to prefer investing in boys’ education, and this preference is due to the social and economic status of the boy in the family. The girl, by contrast, is often considered the man’s property...... Messages from the society and family around her are that her place is in the home and she should focus on becoming a good mother and wife.”

In the 3 northern regions, about three quarters of girls are taken out of school during the primary years.

“Studies show that the need for children’s labour is frequently cited as a key reason why poor parents fail to enrol their children in school. Girls are often kept at home to help mother raise younger siblings and carry out other domestic tasks.......Once they reach eight or ten years of age, parents often take them out of school to help at home, in the market, on the farm or elsewhere......Many parents, particularly those in subsistence agriculture make their children stay at home to work on the farm or earn money in some other way, and young girls are often taken out of school to help at home or work for others in domestic service......The poorest children are the most likely to drop out of primary school.......Across Ghana, a socio-economic divide in educational opportunity is emerging fast........This is a serious inequity issue.”

We have come across numerous examples of young girls working during the school day as hawkers, wandering the streets selling anything from chewing gum to yams. Many of those that do attend school have to get up early to collect water from the bore hole. Then they have to go hawking at the end of the school day, before returning home to carry out domestic chores.
These schoolgirls are carrying packets of water for sale. This forms part of a cottage industry, carried out by many families. Water from the bore hole is filtered and then packaged in plastic bags in the home and then sold on the streets.

Fasuma is a nine-year old girl living close to us. She seldom attends school. Each morning and evening, she has to walk to the bore hole several times, fill her bowl with water and return home.

There are many traditional practices that impact negatively on girls. Girls in many areas still have to endure female genital mutilation (FGM). Young boys and girls are also subjected to scarification, whereby various tribal cuts are made on their face and body. The majority of adults and some children in and around Wa have these scars, and this includes a number of our colleagues at the education offices. Both these practices are now illegal, but there are very few ways in which the law can be enforced, especially in the villages. Some teenage girls that spoke to us recently indicated that both these forms of abuse had been done to them. In addition, some of their scars are the results of cuts made to “release evil spirits” when they were sick.

“Some ethnic groups have a particular way of naming children who are born to a couple who have lost a number of babies in succession. It is believed in such circumstances that the same child keeps coming back into the world after dying, to torment its parents. In such cases in very traditional settings, parents may subject the child to severe scarification with ugly facial marks, and give her or him an uncomplimentary and insulting name such as “toilet” or “refuse”.”

The Government also recognises that it is important to improve water supplies and sanitation in schools, as evidence suggests that these are also factors that reduce the attendance of girls, in particular. (Across Ghana, only 58% of primary schools have toilets and only 42% provide safe drinking water.)

Another danger that female school students have to face is that of sexual harassment and abuse by male students and teachers. Ghana’s policy is that any teacher proven to have sexually abused a student will be reported to the police and the situation should not be handled internally by the education service.

“Much of the sexual abuse and exploitation of girls and women is due in part to their upbringing in a society in which male dominance and control are widely accepted, and women and girls are trained and perceived to be dependent, passive and accepting of their status..........Despite the existence of clear regulations forbidding teachers and other staff from engaging in immoral relations with pupils, some teachers pressure young girls for sex, threatening them with examination failure if they refuse, and also using corporal punishment as an opportunity to molest girls.”

Within GES, Wa, there is an excellent “Girl Child Co-ordinator”, who is working hard to raise the awareness of women and girls in schools about these issues, and to investigate any incidents of abuse. However, most girls do not report incidents for fear of shame and/or retribution.

In many areas there are traditional beliefs about “spirit children”. Children born with physical disabilities and twins, are often returned to the bush and left to die or they are ritually clubbed to death.

“Children born with physical abnormalities are often subjected to cruel treatment. For example, children born with congenital defects are seen as “spirits”, who must be returned to the bush, from where they are believed to have come. The parents of such children call upon a specialist who either administers a strong potion to kill the child or clubs the child to death with a ritual object. Among traditional homes in some regions, twins suffer a similar fate”

In the Upper East region, we visited an orphanage run by the Catholic Church and staffed by a priest and four nuns. This orphanage tries to rescue children who are being poisoned or left to die in the bush, either because they are twins or because their mothers died during or soon after childbirth. These children are believed to have caused the death of their mothers. They are said to be “cursed” and therefore the family wants to be rid of them. Orphanage staff take quick action when they hear of the death of a mother at childbirth, or of the birth of twins.

The orphanage keeps the children up until the age of 3 years. During these years, the staff try to build relationships with some members of the extended family, encouraging them to get to know the child. Then, they can usually persuade some relative to take the child, when s/he reaches 3 years of age. Below is a picture of 2 year old Jessica and her friend Benjamin at the orphanage. The possibilities of Jessica being returned to a relative are very slight. This is because an older sister took her home to the village for a visit and soon afterwards this sister also died. Therefore, no-one will have her near them. The orphanage will need to look for adoptive parents in the community.

Another illegal practice that continues in some regions is “trokosi”. This is a form of ritual slavery, where a young girl is given over to the priest of a local shrine. This is done as an offering of thanks to the gods or to ensure good fortune in some future undertaking. The girls remain in the shrine, sometimes for life.

Child betrothal and child marriage are also illegal, but continue in some areas. Poor families with daughters often do this, because the prospective husband (or husband’s family) then assume financial responsibility for food, clothing, education etc.

In this subsistence farming environment in north Ghana, women and children do most of the lifting and carrying. They walk long distance with heavy loads on their heads. Huge logs are carried, as these, together with charcoal, are the main sources of fuel for cooking.

The picture below is of Fatima outside our house. She grows paw-paw. She spends each day hawking these around the area

Each day at the GES offices, we have several women bringing food and other items for sale. We always have a supply of boiled eggs available to buy.

It is women who carry their goods to market and sell them in the market place. These pictures show the women with their market stalls, where we regularly buy our vegetables.

Ghana has made progress in recent years in passing legislation that aims to improve gender equality. However, the enforcement of the law is extremely difficult, especially in rural areas. In addition, HIV/AIDs is having a significant impact.

“The HIV/AIDs pandemic has the potential to undermine gains made in every area of national development and thus poses a unique threat to today’s children and youth.”

On World AIDs Day in December, events were held with young people throughout the country. In Wa, several hundred young people were informed by a nurse about the facts associated with contracting AIDs, and a number of the students performed plays to convey the message about safe sex. They were given the opportunity to have blood tests for HIV and several took up the opportunity.

The secondary school curriculum now includes reference to all the above issues. The government has encouraged the setting up of “girls groups” in schools, so that they can discuss these issues, support each other and educate their parents and members of the community. On a really positive note, in our work in schools, we have certainly met a number of very bright, assertive young women, who are extremely well-informed and determined to put an end to illegal practices, promote gender equality, and work towards developing their country.

Gold

For those interested, here is an entry, without pictures, about Ghana's economy. Many thanks to our volunteer friend, Anthony, for his research, thoughts and ideas.

A recent article in the Times Newspaper predicted that in 2010, “...the gold bubble will burst. Gold is one of the most overpriced assets. The precious metal serves no purpose and pays no income. Despite this, its value keeps going up and up. ... Gold is considered to be safe and is thought to hold its value in inflationary times. But price rises remain unlikely over the short term. Investors may discover that holding gold could mean large losses.”

Ghana is Africa’s second biggest gold exporter (after South Africa). Ghana relies on gold as the country’s most important source of foreign exchange.Today, as in the past, Ghana barely manufactures anything. It has to import almost all manufactured goods and pay for them through the international markets based abroad. To pay for these goods, it is almost entirely dependent on gold and cocoa.

Government elections were held in Ghana in early 2009 and there was a change of government. The previous government, confidently riding on the booming price of gold, and eager to earn another term in office, increased public sector wages. (A fully qualified secondary school teacher at the top of the pay scale now earns just under £100 per month). It also gave increased funding to schools and hospitals. For example, to increase school enrolment, all primary and junior high school students receive free school meals. They lost the. election. The new government, as part of its manifesto, made a key election promise to increase fuel subsidies.

Climate change is manifesting itself in Ghana, as in other parts of the world. It was a bad year for rainfall in 2007. As most of Ghana’s electricity is produced as hydroelectricity, this led to electricity shortages. The previous government was forced to respond by buying expensive foreign oil to supplement the electricity supply. The new government has estimated that the previous government exceeded its forecast budget deficit for 2008 by nearly seven times.It is therefore unsurprising that the new government accepted an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan of $600m in July 2009, the same month that Barak Obama visited Ghana. This is not unusual. Since 1984, there have only been nine years when Ghana has not received money from the IMF. In total since 1984, Ghana has received $13,424,373,622 from the IMF.

The IMF, to ensure that their loans will be repaid, attaches conditions to all of its loans. The idea is to adjust the structure of the Ghanaian economy, so that the country improves its income, repays its debt and makes the need for more loans unnecessary. As a new loan was necessary in 2009, the previous sixteen structural adjustment loans over the past twenty five years have, presumably, failed. Let us hope that 2009 is different.

The following is from the IMF website: “Ghana’s public sector wage bill has risen sharply over the past decade, in relation to GDP. Planned reforms to the wage structure will be complemented by steps to strengthen oversight and control of recruitment, and initiate a rightsizing of public agency staffing.”

A number of VSO volunteers are already experiencing some of the outcomes of this “rightsizing”. For example, planned training for teachers in the Upper East Region on science education has been “postponed”, even though a range of resources for the training have been delivered. A VSO colleague phoned the education department in Accra to find out what was happening and was told that, “...due to government cutbacks, the money is delayed and the project is on hold”.

It also has to be assumed that “planned reforms to the wage structure” is not going to mean a pay rise for the teachers. It also has to be assumed that the “rightsizing” of public agency staffing is not going to mean training and recruiting more teachers, despite the huge class sizes.

The road leading from Accra to Kumasi, Ghana’s two main cities, has to be seen to be believed. There are diggers and steamrollers littering the roadside alongside girders and concrete. Traffic, which belongs on the promised three lane highway, bumps its way along the dirt, next to the half finished construction project. There are no markings on the red mud and, seemingly, no rules. What should be a fifteen minute journey takes two hours. The new road has been under construction for over five years. It is like having a section of the M40 between London and Birmingham diverted along a farm track. The effect on the economy must be enormous.

Why, everyone asks, doesn’t the government sort the problem out? Also from the IMF report:“The fiscal deficit, which had already risen to 9 percent of GDP in 2007, rose to 14½ percent of GDP in 2008, boosted by strong pre-election government spending growth, notably including high public sector wage increases, petroleum product subsidies, and new infrastructure projects.”A condition of accepting the 2009 loan from the IMF, therefore, is that the government is not allowed to spend money on “infrastructure projects” such as the Accra to Kumasi road. It also means the new government cannot deliver on its promise to increase fuel subsidies. This is causing a great deal of anger, and people are talking about corruption and lack of trust in the new government’s promises.

The transfer of power from one democratically elected leader to another took place for the first time in Ghana in December 2000. Ghana therefore has a short history of political stability and, during the very close and very tense election last year, some VSO volunteers were temporarily evacuated for their safety from one of the larger towns, Tamale, during the run up to the elections. Clearly, anger at politicians for breaking their promises is not good for the future of political stability, in a relatively new democracy.

The big hope on the horizon is oil. In 2007, Tullow Oil announced that it had discovered 600 million barrels of oil offshore. The IMF report states that “.... the start of oil production in 2011 is projected to generate new budget resources of up to 7 percent of GDP, on an annual basis. The government intends to dedicate revenues partly to reduce Ghana’s fiscal deficit and strengthen debt sustainability, and partly to finance growth-promoting infrastructure investments.” So the oil money in 2011 is going to be used to pay off the loan in 2009 that was needed to buy oil for electricity in 2008. Whatever is left can be spent on that Accra to Kumasi road.

Unfortunately, the IMF admits that “proven oil reserves are modest, and peak production could be relatively short lived [so] there will be a premium on using oil wealth wisely.” This presumably means that there’s going to be none left for increasing teachers’ wages, reducing class sizes, enabling the training of teachers to take place, and generally improving education, so that the country can make progress on the 30% illiteracy rate, 30% unemployment rate etc.

So, despite all the oil hopes, the country is still reliant on gold for foreign exchange. Over 90% of the countries gold output comes from the Ashanti region of the country. In 1993, the IMF, as a loan condition, insisted that the nationally owned industry, Ashanti Goldfields Corporation (AGC), be privatized. A British company, Lonrho, bought the operations and now extracts gold using bacterial oxidation – a relatively environmentally friendly method. The remaining 10% of gold output is from small scale miners. One of the conditions of the 1989 IMF loan was that government regulation of unregistered gold mining should be lifted. Government regulation was to prevent people doing it illegally and to collect the tax revenue.

With the current price of gold being high, there has been a large increase in the number of (now) unregulated gold mining operations. A VSO colleague lives in Bolgatanga and nearby, there is one of these unregulated gold mines. Young boys mine here to earn money for the family. Some do it to pay for their senior high school fees. Now this mine is unregulated, mercury is being used in the extraction process. Young boys tip several drops of it into their hands and smear it into the mud. The mercury forms a partial amalgam with the gold. This, being larger and heavier than the small grains of gold, makes it easier to separate the gold from the silt. It is then heated to evaporate the mercury, leaving the gold behind. Needless to say, this can cause significant health issues – mercury is absorbed through the skin and mercury vapour is absorbed through the lungs. It also causes environmental damage when released into the water supply.

There are other dangers. On Tuesday 10th November 2009, fifteen people were killed when an unregulated mine collapsed in western Ghana. Despite the dangers, people continue to scrape a living from these unregulated mines. So if, as the Times predicted, the “gold bubble will burst in 2010” and investors make big losses, it will have to be the unregulated mine workers and the Ghanaian economy that will get our sympathy!