A Country of Beggars

I really hope Ghana will develop the country in the not too distant future, but in my prediction it won’t happen in the next 100 year unless they acquire the sense of shame. I am a dreamer but I am not an idealist. As far as I’ve seen Ghana so far, I can’t find the light for future in people around me. I would say that Ghanaians are beggars. I know you would get me wrong but I must say it in order to encourage and inspire people in developing countries. What I mean is that Ghanaians are very “dependent”; even if Ghana has got the first independence in Africa in 1957, the independence would never bring up the sprits of modernization and change habits of people automatically. As long as people are dependent, Ghana won’t develop the country by the hands of Ghanaians in future.

I talked about difference between countries and societies and manner is also included in it. There are cultural manners and social ones; the former means local rules and the latter means universal etiquette in the world. In Ghana, when you hand on money to someone, you must use right hand because left hand is regarded as unclean. Since it doesn’t happen in my country, this is cultural manner. And as I mentioned before, when we Japanese are walking on streets, some Ghanaians say, “Chin, chon, chan”, mimicking Chinese language, in order to make fun of us or become friendly?! Whatever reasons are, this sort of behavior is not acceptable in any society in the world, namely this is out of universal manner. But why can some Ghanaians do it? I’ve never heard the words, rude or impolite in Ghana, and when I asked colleagues about the sign language for it, they didn’t know it. This shows that in Ghana people don’t care about rudeness. It’s a matter of sense of shame.

In psychology human emotions are categorized into the 1^st emotions, pleasure, anger, sad, happy, fear etc. and 2^nd ones, shame, honor, pride, respect, humility etc. And animals like dogs, cats, monkeys, seem to have the 1^st feeling, but not the 2^nd ones. So if you don’t feel ashamed at all, you might be closer to animals. In Ghana people, from children to any adults, don’t feel ashamed to beg things and money. On my way to Savelugu town, children always scream to me “Buy toffee!”; some unknown adults say at first time, “Give me a computer”, “I want to go to Japan, please take me!”; even a school staff said about a broken school car the other day, “You pay to repair it”. I know they say it as a joke, but the problem is the mentality they don’t feel shame at the act of “begging”. This act is still socially accepted in Ghana, so they should bring up social manners to develop country. By contrast, begging is the most shameful act in Japan, so even the homeless never beg on streets. And whenever financial issues occur at school, teachers always seek for donation, as if it were human rights, and never think to make money by themselves. I say to my students, “Don’t expect donation but you make if you want it”. Without righteous spirits, Ghana would stay the same for 100 years.

At the dawn of the modernization in Japan, Eiichi Shibusawa, who is regarded as the father of Japanese economy, grieved about mean attitude of people without the sense of shame; people in Edo period were used to being mean. And he considered “Pride” was the essential spirit of economy thus educated people with “pride and the sense of money”. He meant the pride was the sense of fairness, justice, and honesty in economical activities; lie, deceit and betrayal meant no shame and no pride. And today this spirits are inherited to Japanese business men who sustain the Japanese economy. By the way, if you can lie, it means you have no shame, so you’re closer to animals, however if you’re good at Politics, you’re surely human beings because hypocrisy is part of the 2^nd human emotion too.

Mariamtu

 

A new term for students started weeks ago and the last term for me also started with them. Normally homesick comes after you leave your beloved place but my homesick has started with the new term. When I think of the days that I will stay with them and teach them, my memory flashes the days that I spent with them. Some are so sweet and some are so bitter. However when I see their faces in my class, the bitterness disappears and my memory is softly embraced by ambiguous joy of life. And when I close my eyes, the smiles keep flashing to me and my memory is vividly flashbacking with beautiful moments. It is not oblivion but the truth of life, the truth that I can perceive from my old memory living in my heart. Life is alive in oblivion and dies with memory.

In the last few writings, you would’ve got tired of such topics, which will continue in the next few writings. So this time I’ll take a break. In the late September, 17 volunteers left Ghana for Japan after fulfilling their duties in Ghana, and I thought, “Well, I was supposed to go back then”. Thanks to the extension of my stay, I am still in Ghana with my students, but it will end after 3 months. You may feel that I am a bit sentimental, but yes! I am very sentimental everyday because I am in my homesick to Ghana, living in Ghana. It will end. It will end in December. When I think of it, I feel that every single moment is so precious and every single incident is a gift from God. This is the first time and last time to teach ICT (Information and Communication Technology) to deaf children in my life. In life you must lose something important sometimes; this is the law of life for all of us.  

Since I started my work here in Savelugu School For The Deaf, I’ve been running and forced my students to run, but now I finally got time to walk with my students. When I was running, I was trying to build good relationship with students, but some accepted my approaches but some refused it. In the mid of last term, after I’ve spent 1 year and half, I felt that I was accepted by students finally. At the beginning of this term, some girls knocked on the door to greet me with their true pleasure to see me on their faces. This kind of small incident is a big gift from students. And I make a habit of taking a cup of coffee outside in the morning, a boy who had been refusing me for a year and half came to greet me with full of obedience and respect toward me. This is a souvenir of life for me. I haven’t work for reputation from students but if they refuse me, I feel sad and if they accept me, I feel happy naturally, but I don’t seek for a fake relationship. I’ve tried to construct the true relationship with students. After 2 years, I am truly accepted by them, so my efforts weren’t in vain.

Mariamtu is one of students who refused me, saying “I don’t like Computer”. Students know that if they like it or not, they must study all subjects but this is the way to express their refusal toward a teacher who put pressure on them. Last week she came to my house, saying “I’ve been afraid of knocking on your door”. I felt a bit of regret that I’ve put too much pressure on her shoulders. Imagine that a deaf girl fears to knock on a door of a teacher. It won’t be a beautiful scene of life at all. However she confessed that she had felt fear toward me for such a long time. As I mentioned, I give the 50-Computer Terminology to all students and she was one of those who refused it. In the last term, I changed the way to teach and she also changed her attitude toward me and ICT, and finally she passed the test after a lot of struggles. I was so happy then. And last week she knocked on my door and helped my choirs, cleaning and doing my laundry. She opened her door of heart and accepted me. Now I’m so happy and so is she. People change, things change, interest rates change:)

Please Donate Infrastructur

 There were many things that surprised me when I started the new life in Ghana. Some were cultural differences and some were social differences. I love to see the former but the latter can make me sad from time to time. I always enjoy different smiles in different culture like Vietnam, Poland, Lithuania, but when I went to Ukraine, I encountered heritages of the Soviet Union, which made me quite sad. Buildings were pretty tired, roads were so rough, and seats in buses were torn up like rag and so on. People are innocent and live life in peace but they suffer from social system. Yet I was really touched by Ukraine people bravely living with beautiful smile in the heritage.

Please recall the relationship between software and hardware: if you don’t have hardware, you can’t use software and vice versa. It is applied for anything in human activities. Suppose that you study at university, without rooms, chairs, desks (hardware), you can’t study and without teachers, subjects, administration (software), you can’t learn, so you need both. I define hardware as anything you can touch and Software as a set of ideas. So what are Hardware and Software to develop country? The hardware is infrastructure and the software is people, more precisely spirits of people.

In my definition, Economy is: “Movement of things and people and money is lubricating oil to reduce friction of the movement.” Therefore infrastructure for movement is the priority to develop countries such as roads, railways, ports, water and electricity supply. When I took a bus from Accra to Kumasi (1^st and 2^nd biggest cities in Ghana), which is extremely important for the entire economy of Ghana, I was really shocked by the unbelievably miserable road. Although so many vehicles were going and coming on the road, it wasn’t paved for several kilometers long or more, so the bus was shaking, pitching, waving, and swaying on the bumpy road for hours. I wonder why it hasn’t been paved for such a long time by government or foreign aid. By comparison, there is a well -paved road from Tamale to Bolgatanga passing in front of my school and I heard that this road was built with the help of Japan, and Japan also organizes several projects for agriculture like rice farming.

It is said that the money “given” to Africa after the World War II is over $ 30,000 per head. There are many help from Western countries but they mainly give aids in the field of education and health, but not in agriculture and infrastructure. Why? It is highly related to structure of their economy. In Western countries, government subsidizes agriculture and they export agricultural products to developing countries. As infrastructure is a tool to make products, if they gave infrastructure and agricultural knowledge to developing countries, African countries would make products on their own, even export agricultural products in markets. If it happened, Western countries would lose the big market, “Africa”. That’s why Western people don’t invest on infrastructure and agriculture but bring completed products, because developing countries are big customers for them. They are willing to give political independence but not economical independence. Imperialism does die hard.

To tell the truth, to develop country is very easy, just donate infrastructure. And in fact this is what Japan had done in Korean peninsula and Taiwan. When Japan annexed them, the Japanese administration first of all invested on social infrastructure and brought up industries, as much as it did in the mainland, because they were part of Japan. Thanks to the infrastructure, Taiwan and Korea are successful in modernization of country. If you really want to help developing countries, you don’t need to donate hearing aids without sufficient training, but please donate infrastructure.



People of the Hypocrisy

Last year, there was an event in Tamale when the 1^st term was approaching to the end, and all children of our school were invited for it. Our destination was a hospital and when I arrived there, I saw our children sitting on chairs in white tents and several white people working in a tent, and when I entered the tent, I realized that they were Audiologists, fitting “hearing aid”. It was the international NGO called “Starkey” that donated hearing aids to the deaf in developing countries.

According to a staff, they stay in Ghana for a week as a part of African tour which lasts about half a year with funds from governments, companies, donations Starkey gets. So people in developed countries would appreciate their job and they also enjoy such good voices from people in “developed” countries. What they are doing seemingly nice, but the reality is not simple like that. In my class I teach that software needs hardware and vice versa; if you don’t have hardware, you can’t use software; if you don’t have software, you can’t use hardware. This is essential. So what is hardware and software for hearing aid? Hearing aid is hardware and training to speak and hear is software.

The problem is that they only give hardware. The staff explained that to my surprise they invite more than 300 people a day. And I said, “Wow, so many people. Some of them would profit from hearing aid”, and he answered, “Yeah, a lot of them”. Um?! A lot of them?! I said “some”. What did he mean by a lot of “them”? “Them” means a lot of people in his carrier as an audiologist? Or a lot of students in my school? And I gave the next question, “So how do you train students to speak and hear?” He said, “It’s teachers’ job!” I said, “So how do you train teachers?” He pointed a building to go and when I enter, Ghanaian staffs were teaching maintenance of hearing aid. ?! I asked  “How to speak and hear?” Did he misunderstand? No way, he knew that training was the most important and difficult thing to use hearing aid. I do admire what they’re doing, but they don’t either supply software, or instruct teachers. Isn’t that irresponsible? This brought a mess in my daily routine.

Anyway I had to supply software to my students in my class and out of class. But the term was ending and I had many things left to teach in the last 2 weeks. It was very confusing. When attendance, I spared time to call names with voice and taught greetings “Good morning”, “How are you?”, “My name is…” I always lost 10 or 15 minutes in my class, which are 20 or 25% of class time, and I always prepared music when they worked on practical lesson. However in spite of my efforts, the number of using hearing aid reduced little by little. After 1 week, it was half; after 2 weeks, just 3 students in a class, and in my last lesson, O, ZERO. No training, no profit; without profit, students don’t use it. And what’s worse, some students complained that hearing aid didn’t fit from the beginning and now painful . Who would use it? This result is just predictable. He said “A lot of them”, so he would’ve meant “a lot of people in my 20 years of work as an audiologist”. In my observation,  “some of them” would profit from it. So are they professional? Isn’t that irresponsible? 

They know people don’t use hearing aids without software, that’s why they invite so many people for an excuse and make tours to escape from their responsibility. This is the trick. And they don’t spend any money, but get salary and good reputations in both developed and developing countries, What a nice business! It’s an example of actual activity of NGO in the name of “International Development”. However one day some students yelled to me “Daigo!!” with their voices and I felt “My deaf children call my name! What a nice gift!” Their hypocrisy sometimes helps other people:)