Village boy Impressions

It was a small room about three or four square meters in size and with nothing to sit on but the bed. The man himself and a small boy who came from the school with me were lying on the linoleum-covered floor. The man motioned me to the bed, partly shielded by a curtain and I sat on the edge of it. The roof was leaking right at my feet and he placed a tin bowl there to collect the drops.  I would have liked to look around the room but it felt disrespectful to get too curious about my benevolent host’s domestic space. At first, I was uneasy about being in a strange room in a faraway village where I could not speak a word of the language. After a few minutes, however, I chided myself for being stupid. Villagers are typically decorous towards their children’s teachers and it is probably the same courtesy that they were extending to me. How could I meet such a kind gesture with suspicion and mistrust? I, therefore, looked up at my host and smiled. He returned my smile and said a few words t

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 me

Hello folks, I hope you have not given up trying to learn your beloved language Buli. It is one of those things that we cannot afford to turn our backs on and I encourage you all to keep trying.  A couple of days ago, I got a call from a young man who had found this blog whilst searching for information on the Buli language online. He wanted the Buli equivalents of the names of the parts of the human body and a couple of other domestic articles and animals for educational purposes. It seems that teaching children to name the parts of the body is becoming a norm in early childhood education and that young man is only one of many others who have called me from the University of Education, Winneba at one time or the other to ask for the Buli Language equivalent of many everyday things: numbers, domestic and wild animals, agricultural activities, family relations and the like. I have often prepared such things for my callers privately but I have now realised that I could reach a larger aud