Lucky to be me

After that last post, the flowers immediately shriveled up and in swept the Harmattan. I have been thinking about inventing windshield wipers for my eyes (sandshield wipers?) with Visine as wiper fluid. Everything is filtered in a layer of fine dust so that you keep blinking to try to get Ghana back in focus. Someone described it as Accra being a “smudge” and that seems accurate. It’s a bit cooler because the sun is also a smudge, though today is like a thick sauna out there. But some people are wearing sweaters, which we can’t even imagine.

Madina library writers pretending to be "detectives."

I have promised a description of what I am doing at the libraries. First of all, I am one lucky woman. Kathy Knowles of the Osu Children’s Library Fund is allowing me to create little Writing Clubs, and I feel like falling to my knees next time I see her, I am so grateful.  

At Madina, the library closest to us, I go every Monday and Tuesday afternoons. The kids come rushing up to me shouting, “Madame Theresa, Madame Theresa!” and their little fuzzy heads are suddenly in a big crush around me. (A student volunteer from Canada, Dominique, also gets mobbed.) At Osu (Wednesdays), there are more boys than girls and they are a little more reserved, but equally as excited. 

Prosper putting the finishing touches on his book cover.

What do we do? The idea is to generate creative thinking, as well as writing skills. Kids here learn mainly by rote. There are few, if any, textbooks, so most of the learning in classes of 80-plus kids comes from a teacher writing on a blackboard, and then students copy it in their exercise books. There is not a culture of reading or writing for pleasure.

So, lucky me, I get to jumpstart their imaginations, and throw in a few writing skills at the same time.  

The “Writing Club” kids have written stories about random animals in weird settings (e.g., goat driving a trotro, leopard scoring goals for the Ghana Black Stars ), they have learned how to create characters and settings, and then come up with problems and solve them without making the solution too easy. They have written about their earliest memories, and last week in Osu they made “Menus for your worst enemy.” (Thank you to Teri Hein of 826 in Seattle for that huge hit!) Things like that.

One challenge is cultural differences. So, for example, one day we played Scattergories while waiting for all the kids to arrive. A card says “In the Garden,” and the other card says the letter “C.” A kid yells, “cassava!” while I was thinking “carrot.” And “A Girl’s Name” brings yells of “Persephone,” and “Patience.” We were writing about the library yesterday, and some began the story, “One Harmattan day … .” 

Earliest memories had a lot of “and then I was beaten” in them, as well as many pots of hot soup spilling on them. But also lots of “my brother pinched me,” a universal early memory!

Culture aside, I figure kids are just kids. Those menus? How little-boy is this: “Toasted penis soup.” Or “scorpion brains with rice.” “Snake teeth with mud.” (The little girls had a bit more trouble, they are too nice to their enemies.) 

Now we are embarking on creating some actual books. This week, we made an “About the Author” page complete with photo (thanks to our chugging-along portable Canon printer) – huge excitement! 

One lucky woman at Kathy Knowles Community Library in Osu.
Photo by Deborah Cowley

As I say, I am soooo lucky!