Eating breakfast at Nkabom House in Okurase. A typical breakfast included hot oatmeal, a thin omelet, toast w/ jam, fresh fruit, coffee &/or hot chocolate. A nice way to start the day!
Check out that net! This is the soccer goal net that we made out of recycled pure water sachet bags. Here we are just adding a few more strips to the net to make sure it is the correct size to fit properly in the goal.
The group with all of our completed batik shirts - so neat to see the final product of the day-long batiking process!
This was the main day that we visited some of the schools in Okurase. We brought two soccer balls, a ball pump and extra pump needles, and two trash/recycling bins to donate to each school.
These were the items that the MA advisor groups donated and collected over the past few months at school through the MA upper school International Project for 2016 called "Growing with Ghana". It has been exciting and satisfying to see those donated items go to schools and a community that are really thankful to have new equipment that will be well used and go toward further bringing the community together.
We also broke into three groups of four students and one adult each and divided up to go into different classrooms and deliver the message of picking up trash to keep your environment clean, why that is important (for good health, good soil to grow healthy food, take pride in your community, and more), and how you could reuse the pure water sachet bags to make sports nets (soccer and volleyball), make a fence for your home to keep your animals in your property (many families own a few chickens &/or goats), and we even taught some of the teenage girls later in the day back at Nkabom House how to make reusable sanitary pads out of the sachets. This is a huge thing for them since girls are not able to go to school during that time of the month. Having pads that they can use (which aren't normally available/are too expensive to purchase) allow them to keep going to school, which is an obvious benefit to them, their future, and family. The girls who learned how to do this can then teach other friends how to do it as well - the benefits of this kind of pride in learning something so useful can be very positive and far reaching!
The students seemed so happy to see our group visit their school and they all wanted to say hello and have their photo taken!
Students from our group educating some Ghanaian students on why it's important to pick up your trash, clean up the community, and recycle items for reuse.
"Di wo mantem ni" is Twi for "Keep your community clean". This is the phrase that we had printed on the bumper stickers that we brought with us from Minnesota that we stuck to the new trash/recycling bins that we donated to the schools and greater community. In this particular group Mrs. Johnson wrote on the blackboard while the MA students spoke to the Ghanaian school children.
It was both interesting and gratifying to be at the schools and speak to the students, but also a bit difficult at the same time trying to correctly communicate a newer idea to the students. We had support from our friends at Project Okurase (Nana and Ben) in translating our messages in English to their more understandable language of Twi, which was extremely helpful to us while in the classrooms. It was such a memorable day of learning for all of us in the group.
Back to Nkabom House after spending the morning at the school to participate in a traditional West African drumming workshop! Powerful is in the center (in the yellow shirt) and he led the drum group in different ways to strike the drum to produce the different tones they can make. After we learned the three basic tones, then we learned some traditional rhythms and all played them together - it was really cool to hear and fun to participate in!
We also got to each create our own rhythm on the drum and everyone copied our rhythm as a group and played it back to us - pretty cool! I heard several of the students say when we were done, "I really did better at the drumming than I thought I would... I wasn't too bad!" After the workshop was over, almost everyone in the group purchased at least one drum to take back home as a souvenir or gift for a loved one. The drums were handmade and beautiful carved by local villagers. What a cool memory of our trip to be able to bring home!
We ended the day with a much anticipated soccer match with the community soccer players. The MA group members that chose to play were dispersed between two teams that also had Ghanaian players on them as well. Several other of the group members sat on the sidelines, cheered for the players, and enjoyed hanging out with some of the kids from the village, laughing, taking pictures, and more.
After the game was over, we hung out for a bit on the field with the players and everyone that came to watch, took pictures with our new friends, and just had a good time being together. Once again, a very memorable event - one of many on this special trip!
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