“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

My last exam at Savelugu School For The Deaf took place on the 2^nd of December, 2013. In one day I had 3 written and 2 practical exams from 8 am to 2 pm without any break. This was quite tight schedule for me but not for other teachers because they helped each other to conduct their exams. However I couldn’t ask for their help because I knew they didn’t fulfill their job at all; when they conduct exams, they don’t check cheating properly. It’s a paradise for students. I never allow students to cheat because it’s the beginning of crime in future and I always give prizes to those who get good results in order to motivate them. Therefore I had to have the tough day without any help.

The exams used to be organized in different days class by class, but now all classes take the same exam in one day. They say that it’s better for students to follow the timetable of BECE (Basic Education Certificate Examination), which is the national exam for all JHS-3 students in Ghana, but to my eyes it’s better for teachers to be able to finish exams in a day. In Ghana, surprisingly enough, teachers can feed family by working a couple of hours in a day and a few days in a week, namely 9 - 12 hours per week. It’s a paradise for teachers. And even in this paradisiacal situation, they try to reduce their workload and complain to their salary. Actually there was a strike last year and teachers boycotted their classes, insisting that they came to school and didn’t teach and this is the only language that the government understood. However next day no teacher came to prove their words and this strike brought them a 2-week vacation. I think it would be just a social difference but when I think about future of Ghana, I can’t help weeping for the future indeed.

And In this term, I didn’t teach primary classes because essentially class teachers are supposed to also teach the subject ICT, but they’d totally depended on me and refused to teach it. Although last year they promised to start teaching ICT from September, but they didn’t, which is a big lie. The thing is, the headmistress doesn’t force them to take its responsibility and the Ghana Education Service (GES) allows them not to teach the subject and give them salary without records of teaching ICT. According to the headmistress or GES, all teachers must work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (and needless to say they must come everyday), but they don’t work as much as required like the above, rather they try to reduce workload, skip their classes, and come late and go home early, and what's worse, there’re some teachers who don’t care about students at all. It seems to be a paradise for teachers today but it’s a debt for future of Ghana and someone will have to pay for the bill someday.

I’ve spent for more than two years and devoted myself to contribute to development of Ghana, thinking about 100 years later of this country. I know it’s not very good to talk about bad aspects of the country where I live in and work for and this is actually a complaint to Ghana. But whenever I witnessed such hopelessness of ordinary people in everyday life, I couldn’t help feeling really sad and what I’ve been doing is in vain. What am I here for? And in the last 2 months of my stay, to tell the truth, I’d been sick and tired of those irresponsible matters and really irritated and frustrated by insulting words on street “Hey, Chin Chon Chan!” and begging words of local people, “Give me money!”, and even some school staffs say “Give me your computer, buy me a camera!” I wanted to love Ghana but those little tiny things destroyed my dream and I’ve faced the reality and difficulty of International Development. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” Future of country is made by the hands of people living today. What do you want to leave to your children?

LDG: Link The Deaf Ghana – Sign Language Video

It was in April that the story started. My colleagues, Daniel and Lansah, invited me for a sign language class held in Tamale. When I arrived at the place with them, I saw parents of our deaf children sitting on benches under a tree. This story started with the warm hearts of the colleagues.

I make a habit of seeing off students at the end of term. On the last day of term, students go home by twos and threes from morning to evening and students who come from far towns hire a bus and leave school in a group. And it was 2 years ago that I was really shocked by the words of students. When I said to some students “You’re happy now to go home!”, they answered “No”. They explained that their family didn’t know sign language and they couldn’t communicate with their family. Imagine that you live in a family without communication and that are isolated in your sweet home. Nevertheless I realized that I was regrettably helpless for this matter because it’s a family business.

When I was talking with Lansah and Daniel about the sign language class for parents, I suggested making a sign language video and distributing it to parents for their self-learning at home, which would help deaf children and parents to communicate each other. And I asked my colleagues if they wanted to work on it. And since they did agree to the idea of the project, I declared that I would be an assistant and all responsibilities for the sign language video belonged to them. I’m a temporally volunteer at school and leave the country when time comes, but the sign language video is supposed to have several volumes to cover necessary vocabularies and expressions for fluent communicate with the deaf. Therefore I thought that they needed to start and carry out the project by themselves and I ought to help them as less as possible, otherwise they wouldn’t acquire sufficient skills and knowledge to complete the project by themselves after I leave Ghana. Yet the story wasn’t that easy.

After we agreed in May, I suggested firstly listing the vocabularies we had taught by then, which were just as many as 20 or 30, and writing them on a piece of paper, but to my great surprise, it took them to list them up for 2 months. In the meanwhile, what I did was to advice what they should do and to threaten them what would happen if they didn’t do it. For this is “their” project and result is theirs; if they complete it by themselves, it’ll be their confidence and experience, but if I lead the project, they’ll NOT be able to make video by themselves and keep being dependent. In Ghana people are in general dependent; they always expect that someone helps them in both funding and doing. That’s why I didn’t help them unless they started. As a result, they did nothing for 2 months and just before the end of the term they started. Anyway I was happy that we could shoot some video clips before students went back home, otherwise we would’ve lost the time of whole vacation.

It was a battle to teach them making video anyway. They didn’t come; they never accepted their mistakes; they couldn’t understand some concepts in computing; they easily forgot and so on. We had quarrels sometimes and they even boycotted the job, yet in October they finally finished editing and made copies of DVD. It was a long way which took them for 6 months, but anyway they made it. And at my last day of sign language class, some parents told me that they started communicating with their children thanks to the sign language DVD. I can’t express my feeling in words when I saw their smile. May deaf children find a paradise at home. And the project continues by the hands of Lansah and Daniel to save all the deaf children living in Ghana at last as they put their wishes in the project name LDG: make a like between all the deaf and all the hearing people living in Ghana.

 

LDG (Link the Deaf Ghana): Sign Language Video: http://youtu.be/QhIUHSIwbgs 

 

 

Sheeda The Angel

I am still in my dream of Ghana so I want you to be with me to share my dream for the time being. In the last term, JHS-2 (currently JHS-3) students worked on making video, which is the final destination of my activities and helped us make the film “Walk Together”, and their performances were very good in making video. And the current JHS-2 class tried the same job in this term, however since the academic performance of this class was pretty low, I’d been worried about their performance. And there’re some students who misbehaved in everyday life like cheating, stealing, braking school rules, so as a result 11 students (out of 18) could participate in making video in this term. Firstly students must pass the 50-Computer Terminology exam at the beginning of term to join my class, otherwise they have to continue to work on it until they pass it. This is my rule. Then students must behave properly in everyday life, following school rules because school is a place to learn right behavior in real society. This is education. Lastly students can harvest fruits of pleasure; “No pain, no gain”, without your efforts and decency, you wouldn’t be able to get anything in life.

And in the process of making video, there are 3 steps done by students: planning, shooting and editing. In the first step, students must discuss about contents of video such as story, action, location, actors, caption etc. and bring all the ideas to me. And the second step, shooting, is the most enjoyable for most students, except those who can’t memorize lines and act well. And in the last phase, students complete video by editing original clips, however there are a couple of students living in daydream with fairies in this class, who don’t need to play with such a metaphysical matter, so those students couldn’t handle the first and third steps, strictly speaking they didn’t “make video” but just “acted”; as a matter of fact, only 2 students could understand how to edit video, so we should’ve relied on the leaders. Making video is not such an easy job for some students.

And one of the leaders, called Sheeda, brought a story that first of all “dance”, then “dance”, and lastly “dance”. Well, I understand that it’s not easy for them to bring a story, but it’s not good enough to work on it, because they should be aware of feeling of audience. Even if actors and dancers enjoy it, if audience can’t enjoy it, it’s meaningless. Therefore I had to give them some ideas to make it interesting, which is a kind of cheating as a teacher, though. Based on their idea, I advised to add some trick to enhance fun. When some problem happens, an angel suddenly appears and gives a candy and starts dancing. And other people also follow her dancing, and when the angel thinks enough, she disappears and the problems are solved. It’s a magical fantasy of daydream. And fortunately some of members, Rafiatu, Amoabil, and Moidib, who can’t understand editing video, are daydreamers and the leader “Sheeda The Angel” is very good at computer and has her devotion. Thanks to the efforts of students and help of fairies, they could create an interesting original video. I think you can enjoy it, please take a look! “Show People for Fun”: http://youtu.be/iFWw83AAPKs

By the way, in Ghana, at least in our school, there is neither an event nor album for graduation; students keep memories of school days only in their mind. Ghanaians may have different mentality for such a thing, but I feel a little bit sad for the situation, so I make a graduation video for JHS-3 students. And I always carry a camera with me and take photos and videos for graduation video whenever I have a chance. There’re lots of cute and adorable scenes in the graduation videos that you would enjoyJ Anyway I also uploaded the videos on YouTube, so why don’t you give it a try!!

  

<< Graduation Video >>

A Seed of Tampopo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_LVnBDyWWM

Collaborate The all action Together:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoKQC0-Mjfc

Live and Let Live:
http://youtu.be/NPXDyAJp3aE

 

<< Students' Video >>

 A friend in need is a friend indeed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q08EPSKAHCY

Peace as Deaf:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7lfo80SIbA

Patience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEMGF9AUdGk

Show Dance Azonto:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I0aZ2Vsdfw

 Show People For Fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFWw83AAPKs
 

<< School Demo Video >>

 

Savelugu School For the Deaf Demo2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d2f_TmxyJQ

 

Who Makes War?

This is a conversation with a German guy at a birthday party in Berlin, Germany. When I entered the kitchen, he was making a cake and said, “You know, German men know how to make not only war but cake”. It was self-torture, but is that true? Do you know how to make a war? And in Czech, I had a conversation with German men in a bar that local people talked in whispers when they talked in German at a bus stop. The Germans said that they didn’t know exactly what the people talked about but they could perceive negative atmosphere. Is it bad to talk in German in Czech Republic?

Another conversation. When one of my German friends, a historian in Jewish studies, introduced herself, she said “I’m from Germany.” And I said “Oh, you’re GermanJ” but she continued, “I’m from Germany.” She didn’t want to identify herself as a German. Do you know why? It is because of historical matters by the Nazi. However I’m wondering if the Germans living today are guilty for that? Do you wish that Germans living today should live with some sort of negative feeling in life? And should they inherit responsibilities for different generations, due to the fact that they’re just born in the same country? It is obvious that they have nothing to do with the Nazi but they shoulder burdens of the Nazi unwillingly and unconsciously. Some might say that Hitler was elected by votes of Germans then so Germans are guilty. But can election reflect all the wills of citizen in a country? We should logically and rationally consider it. In my opinion, this is an elaborate trick to brainwash Germans and it would be a well-planned conspiracy to suppress and control them by “white people”.

These conversations reminded me of the WGIP(War Guilt Information) program conspired by GHQ (General Headquarter) in Japan after the World War II. America wanted to smash the confidence of Japanese, thinking of the post-war, so they set the program to plant the mentality of self-torture in the mind of Japanese during the course of occupation in Japan. In this program, they brainwashed Japanese as Japan was wrong and Japanese were bad people by all means. And Ooe Kenzaburou received the Nobel Prize in literature because he wrote novels with the perspective of self-torture, namely the Nobel Prize worked as a tool to brainwash Japanese and assist this program. “Thank to” the program, Japanese are not proud of the brave deeds of fathers during the WW II, which smashed imperialism and colonization of the West and led people in colonies all over the world to the emancipation. By the way, I must apologize to you about the link; as you know, although normally I put a link in Wikipedia when needed, as for this WGI program, there is no page in English nor any foreign languages, other than in Japanese. Is it a taboo or something behind it?

In the Cold War, both sides, America and Soviet Union made so many nuclear warheads, and what happened after the War is that they’re dismantled and dumped. Be sure that there’re some people who made money in the process of both “making” and “destroying” the weapons. Do you remember the Narcotic Business Model? Imagine that both sides are friends, pretending that they are fighting. Isn’t it an example of the model? Even if it’s impossible in the scale you have, it’s possible for those who have a different scale. Joseph Goebbels once said, “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.”

So who makes wars? Can German men make a war? No way! Do you really think that ordinary people have the power to make a war? A president? No. Even the most powerful president in the world can be assassinated by a single bullet of gun. Why ordinary people need to feel guilty for wars in the past? My answer is those who are behind administration of countries, namely “white people”.