Larabanga Kids Development Project School on July 4, 2007
Catherine and Peter Bishop visited northern Ghana with their sons Stephen and Tom, and Tom’s wife Saundra. Tom and Saundra have spent parts of 3 summers volunteering in Larabanga, staying for 6 weeks at a time. Catherine writes:
As part of our visit to Larabanga, we were given a choice of volunteer projects. The “young people” chose to work on the community’s farm. We “older folks” thought we would stay out of the sun and avoid such hard labor by volunteering our time in the school for street children.
The street children of Larabanga are famous. On page 364 of The Brandt Travel Guide to Ghana, it says, “When I arrived in Larabanga, I was immediately swamped by children…wanting to show me round. I resented having to hand out money…”
These children cannot attend the “free” public school because their parents are too poor to provide the required uniforms and books.
Just getting to the school was an adventure. We were introduced to the director of the Larabanga Kids Development Project, a very impressive man called Atiti. He said that the first thing we had to do was collect the children. We walked through the village, collecting children, feeling much like the Pied Piper. The elderly white folks (us!) were an object of great fascination, and we soon had 4 or 5 children holding each of our hands, asking our names and telling us their names.
The pictures show you what the school looked like. We were assigned to the middle class. If you look in the background of some pictures, perhaps you can see the “infants class”. They were taught by the head teacher at the school, and he was clearly a pretty good teacher. In the background of other pictures you can see the buildings that the school had at that time. They were used primarily for storage and also in case of a sudden rainstorm. Atiti said he built them himself.
Peter taught a math class. The children understood quite well. English is not their primary language. They speak Kamaran, which is a language spoken only in Larabanga and one other village. But since English is the official language of Ghana, the children are all learning to speak it at the school. Many of the adult villagers we met did not speak English at all. This includes the village chief and his wives.
The children’s math skills were varied. They could all count to at least 100, and they could add and subtract. Several of them did well at the more advanced addition you see on the board, and these same ones were also doing some multiplication.
When it was Catherine’s turn to teach, it was clear that the children needed to move around, so we had a lesson on English body part names, using everyone’s favorite song for such occasions, “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”.
After the children left, we spent several hours with Atiti. He explained his vision for the school and his other hopes for the Larabanga Kids Development Project. We taught him a song about Martin Luther King, and the necessity to “keep walking, and walking, and walking…or you won’t get there at all.”
