A Lively-Minded Journey Pt. 1

It was my first visit to the Nkwanta North district and it began like any other day. My mission: to support other members of the Lively Minds Technical Team to set up the GES Lively Minds Programme in the district. We were at the stage of Training of Mothers popularly called ToM. At 7am, we left the hotel and drove into the town to get breakfast. When the cars stopped, one of my colleagues walked over to our car and informed us that those in the first car were going to eat fufu but he wanted porridge. Fufu at 7:00am? I asked. Interesting. "But there is also waakye and ‘raster’ porridge," he added. I told him I had taken a cup of coffee and I had an apple in my handbag. The driver burst out laughing. “Hahaha!! We’re talking of food and you say you have an apple?” We all laughed. Everyone eventually bought some food and the fufu team returned to report that it wasn’t ready. So we drove to the education office to meet the district team (DT) and begin the day's work. 

I met with my assigned District Team Member (DTM) and set off to a village called Binabrido. We were to supervise a community meeting at the village school. He was wearing wellington boots and we immediately asked if the place was waterlogged or if we were crossing streams. He said both were correct. A few of my colleagues suggested I get similar boots to wear but I wasn’t enthused. Instead, I told him when we set off that he should take me back to our hotel so I could wear some crocs and put away my shoes. So we did and set off at about 8am on a bumpy, washed-out road bordered by deep chasms and crisscrossed by malicious rills and gullies. But for all that motorbikes were speeding past us at incredible speeds, twisting and turning at grotesque angles. I began to wonder how long we would be travelling on such a track. I immediately asked how long it would take us and he said it depended on the nature of the rest of the road. He had not been on it since the rains began and it was difficult to tell. It could take up to two hours. Today be today, I thought as I clang to the motorbike. 

About 30 minutes later, we turned off the main track and joined a dirt road that seemed better than the one we were on. I began to hope for better times. This was short-lived as less than 500 metres down this road we came across an area covered with water. It was like a flooded area and difficult to tell the edges of the road. The water covered over 50 square meters and we couldn’t even tell in which direction it was flowing. Luckily for us, a woman had arrived at the opposite bank at the same time on a bicycle. She got down, tied her baby firmly to her back, and began wading through the water, pushing her bicycle. I immediately got down, pulled my trousers above the knees, and started wading towards her. I wanted to use her as my compass through the water. We met roughly in the middle and smiled at each other in greeting. The water was just below knee level and there was no mud under. It was all gravel and firm. We got to the other side unscathed and I was intending to remove my crocs and wash the gravel out when I noticed an old, noisy, and smoking tractor coming through behind us. I jumped on the bike and we sped off.

Roughly a kilometer from there, we turned off the dirt road into a village. If I had any suspicions of that being our destination, they weren’t allowed to hatch. The DTM said to me over his shoulder; “Now we are starting the journey”. "Oh ok", I replied and adjusted myself behind him. In my head, I was asking; if we are now starting, what the hell have we been doing over the past hour?

From that village, the rest of the journey was on a farm track, the description of which is beyond my skill. I got down several times as we landed in pools and puddles and laboured on through mud and clay, bumped over tree roots, and skidded off the track into the adjacent vegetation. At a point, the DTM told me that I should just sit well and let him try to manoeuvre his way because the condition of the track was the same and I might as well walk all the way if I want to get down at bad sections. All this while we were going further and further into no man’s land. He had already warned me that the village we were headed to was bordering the Republic of Togo and that the track was often used by Togolese immigrants to enter Ghana.

After about 30 minutes of riding from the village, we arrived at a stream. There was a motorbike packed at the opposite bank and two young men waiting nearby. The DTM shouted a greeting to them and told me that they were teachers from the school we were visiting. According to him, he had called them to come and help us navigate the stream because it was treacherous. Of course, I had to get down and wade through again. The two young men directed us where to pass and warned us not to turn to the left or to the right as those places were deep. The water was only knee deep and we were able to cross over safely enough. After a hurried exchange of pleasantries, the young men hopped on their motorbike and led the way. We took off in pursuit. I could not have believed one could travel at such speed on such a track. It was like a jungle race! What with all the twists and turns, the bumps, the muddy patches, and the overgrown bushes on either side. They were soon out of sight. We followed nonetheless. Whenever they got to a particularly bad section of the track, they would wait to direct us where to pass. This happened about three or four times before we arrived at Binabrido.

The village of Binabrido is made up of about 12 structures; mainly square or rectangular-shaped rooms built of earth or clay bricks and roofed with corrugated iron sheets. Two of the houses were completed 'compound houses'. The rest were either L-shaped, I-shaped, one room, two rooms, or three rooms with a mud wall joining opposite ends to form a courtyard. The road led to the front yard of the first house before turning to the school located about 150 metres to the right.

The school is a single pavilion constructed with local materials and roofed with the same thin iron sheets as the houses. It must have some time had short mud walls dividing it into two classrooms but all the walls had collapsed leaving only a small portion of the middle wall against which a wooden blackboard was leaning. In front of the blackboard were several dual desks crammed into about 4 x 6 square metres of space shaded by the roof. The portion behind the blackboard, which should have been the second classroom was unused and the roof was torn allowing water to fall directly through. There were over 30 children crammed inside. There was a huge tree near the pavilion under which the teachers were standing. I was later told that the shade provided by the tree was the office cum staff room.

Testing the Waters

After exchanging pleasantries with the teachers, we asked for a situation report. The teachers said they had informed the whole village the day before but started lamenting that many people were gone to their farms to make yam mounds for the next season. One further added that he was afraid we would not make the minimum attendance standard of 50 community members required for the meeting and would probably not get the minimum standard of 30 mothers to run a play scheme. Overhearing him, I turned and asked how many pupils they had. “Oooh, we have many students” he replied and proceeded to add, “the houses and the adults are few but they have a lot of children. Each woman has 6 to 10 children”. “In that case, we would have to enrol every woman in the village along with their grown daughters because I can see that the children will really need the play scheme”. I said in reply and moved to the DTM to prompt him to ask them to send the children back into the village to call all the people. 

Eventually, most of the children along with all four teachers moved into the village to mobilize for the meeting. I was left with the DTM under the tree office and about 10 small children sitting in the pavilion classroom. Suddenly the sky grumbled and we turned to look at the mountains in the east. Rain clouds were gathering! The DTM began explaining to me that rain was very frequent there and so those ugly-looking clouds were likely to bring rain. In less than two minutes the sky was dark and rain clouds were brooding menacingly. We turned towards the village and could just see children in school uniforms walking about. The teachers were nowhere to be seen. We were standing in the school compound with 4 motorbikes, five backpacks, a couple of training manuals and several little children. We didn’t know where to go and so I asked the DTM to take our bike and get into the village to call back the teachers so that they would show us where to take shelter during the rain. The man had hardly rounded the first house when the rain began falling.

The children were clustering in the centre of the pavilion classroom to escape the rain and I gestured to them that we should run to the village. I had nowhere in mind to go but realized we couldn’t stay there. So putting on my crash helmet to shield my head from the rain, I grabbed all the backpacks and followed the children as we run across their playing field into the village. All the children run towards their own homes and I followed two small ones into a shed. It was the cooking area of a compound house!

There were two women and a couple of children huddling in there and I joined them. I said good morning in English and one of them responded and asked how I was doing. I said I was doing well. The rain was then falling heavily and silence engulfed us. I was wet, still wearing my crash helmet, two backpacks, and clutching three others. My arms and shoulders began to protest but I held on. Soon the cooking hut was half flooded. Its two openings served as a drain for the water falling in the compound to run through to the outside so we had to stand clear of its path.

About 15 minutes later, two young men arrived dripping wet from the farm where they were working. They joined us and finding no place to stand, went straight to their rooms.  One of them soon returned and told the children to collect my bags. I gladly handed them over and the children run through the rain into a room on the opposite side. I began thinking about the situation at hand. I was puzzled at the disappearance of the teachers. In my mind, I expected that since they knew that they had guests at their school, they should have made efforts to return to the school when the rain was starting and to show us a place to hide during the downpour. But they made no attempt to return to the school and neither did the DTM who went to find them!

Lost in my thoughts, I was awakened by wet hands tugging at my sleeve. I looked down. It was a small boy sent to lead me inside. I was wet from the rain and shivering from the cold, so I followed him across the yard to the opposite side without a word. There, on the veranda, I brought down my backpack and removed my crash helmet. A man inside the room motioned to me to step in but I declined indicating I was dripping wet and would rather try to air-dry myself outside on the veranda. However, after standing there for 5 – 10 minutes kicking my legs and arms to keep warm, when the man repeated the invitation, I didn’t hesitate to step inside. 

The Adventure continues.......

Watch out for the second and concluding part soon. 

This will cover:

• What I saw in the room,
• The Community Meeting,
• The Fufu party
• Gift Giving
• Crossing an overflowing stream and 
• The mad ride!