Chapter 19...The serious side!

As you all know unlike my past travelling adventures this one is not all about fun, sightseeing and the odd spot of partying! Well there will obviously be all those things over the next year, but they will not be my main purpose for being in Ghana!

I haven’t ‘officially’ started work yet as we are given the first two weeks off to get settled and find-our-feet (or ‘bumming around’ as my sister calls it)! I did however spend two days in meetings at the office last week just so I could suss everything out...the first was a VSO review meeting on Tuesday, which was very interesting and helpful for me as it included some strategic planning for the future, which is exactly the type of Marketing I love to do! The second was a focus group meeting on Wednesday to try and find out more about school girls and their parents views on education. The aim was to delve deep into what they thought about the Ghana Education Services inclusion and treatment of girls in school and whether any improvements had been made...! 

So at the focus group meeting the parents and pupils were split, with the group of 10 parents being taken to sit under one tree for their group discussion and the group of 11 girls (aged around 11-13) taken to sit under another tree for theirs. I spent the morning observing the parents and the afternoon the girls and some of the issues being highlighted by both groups were just unbelievable and at times very disturbing! 

The young group of girls that I observed!

The parents mentioned issues to do with ICT and lack of resources; teachers being late for lessons or not turning up at all; infrastructure of schools being inadequate; teachers being drunk; teachers beating children (harshly) as punishment; overcrowded classrooms...the horrendous list of concerns just went on and on...!

My afternoon spent with the girls was even more of an eye-opener and much harder to listen to! They started off talking about girls being pregnant at school, often not through choice, but by meeting boys at jams (mainly funeral parties where it is traditional to play loud music and to party into the early hours)! One girl talked about being able to handle herself, which is why she hadn’t got pregnant at a jam! Others talked about some parents letting their daughters stay late at the jams and not really caring about what happened to them! This all got very intense for Damien (another volunteer) and I so we steered the conversation onto lighter things to do with girls and boys chores before school and whether the girls thought it fair that they have more chores than boys so are often late for school, therefore missing out on vital education! But before we knew it the Ghanaian male teacher leading the discussions (with a female Ghanaian teacher too) had steered the conversation back onto pregnancy and what the girls had learnt at school to do with puberty and before I knew it we were talking about abuse and sexual harassment in schools! The girls talked about some male teachers asking them to be their girlfriend and if they said no they would then face ridicule by that teacher in lessons! If girls became pregnant by teachers they would have to terminate the pregnancy or drop out of school! They also spoke about harsh beatings from teachers, so much so that some didn’t go back to school the next day if they had received a beating! One girl mentioned teachers being drunk and how she could smell the alcohol on their breath or ‘just tell by their face!’ The list of negatives just went on and on...!

I knew before I went to the meeting that these were HUGE issues in Ghanaian schools and that they are very often over-looked with male teachers who sexually assault their pupils simply being transferred to other schools instead of being removed from the education system altogether! But to actually sit with a group of girls where it was clear to see who had experienced such abuse at school was just astonishing and something I never expected to be experiencing so soon into my placement!

I gave myself Thursday and Friday off work, as I felt it was all very emotional and intense and something I need to get my head around properly before deciding what action to take! One thing is for sure though...I will definitely be asking to help run the ‘girls groups’ in schools, which are designed to educate girls on all the things they discussed in our focus group meeting and fingers crossed I can also do some mentoring and even just be a friend to some of these girls so they feel they’re not alone!