The Street Academy is a battered wood building at the back of the Accra Arts and Culture Center. To reach it, I have to bicycle through the rugged terrain of the Arts center, skirting stones and sewers and ignoring the calls from Rastas in their shops. 'Its free to look, its free to look! Why don't you mind me?' I don't know why they mind me, they see me everyday, they can't imagine that I'm here to shop.
Sometimes I have a cup of tea or koko (porridge) on a rock that overlooks the sea. Then its time for school. At 8:45 they ring an old dinner bell and the kids have to line up. Then, line by line they stream in to the school, to the beginner, intermediate, or advanced classroom.
These classrooms are actually just sections of the room partitioned by big wooden boards. Often, the teacher teaching the next class over is just as audible as I am. Even louder is the sound that one of these partitions makes when a bored kid pushes it over. When I was bored in class I doodled in my notebook, but these kids like something a little more dramatic.
Also, they like to fight. Words escalate to blows escalate to class room engulfing brawls remarkably quickly, and everyday I have to plunge through a thicket of flailing arms and pull the combatants apart. But if their tempers are quick, they subside as soon as the heat of the fight is lost, and if anyone child bears a grudge against another, I haven't noticed it. There is no bullying, for instance, and the girls can more than hold their own against the boys.
These are 'street kids', kids who, if they were not in this tuition-free school, would, likely as not, be out on the street hawking water or snacks to passersby. I'm sure many of them are out there as soon as class ends.
I teach the advanced class, and my pupils are a charming bunch. They vary widely in age, and there are even a couple boys older than I am, although, for lack of proper nutrition, they look younger.
There are a few trouble makers in my class, but I hold nothing against them. One reminds me of my old girlfriend, and the other is a singularly good dancer who just likes to try and steal the attention from me. When the secretary of the school, Mabel, is around, she flourishes her wood switch and administers a whistling blow, but when I am alone I have a harder time controlling them. The first time I tried to teach math, the class united in mockery of me, and one boy erased everything I wrote on the board. But I have been gaining their respect and losing the nerves and hesitancy I had when I first stood before them, and things are going more smoothly now.
I trade turns teaching with Mabel and a social worker there, but as I learn the ropes I'm taking over full responsibility for the class. Its actually pretty terrible that they don't have any real, qualified teachers in the school, and kind of ridiculous that they're floating ideas around for relocating and, get this, a school bus, when they don't even have any real teachers. There is one teacher last year, but he never showed up after the Christmas holidays.
I teach English and Maths in the morning. The classes are necessarily short, due to the short attention spans of these kids. Then I take most of the boys over to the soccer field for a while. I usually take part in the games, and my barefeet and ankles are white with dust before the match is up. I need to remember to bring my sneakers!
Or sometimes I sit in the shade of one of my Rasta friend's booths. We sit on a table, invisible behind the colorful pants he sells, and he teaches me phrases in Ga, the traditional language of the people of Accra. I just got a book on the language, and I'm hoping he will give me more formal lessons.
At twelve its time to for lunch, and I am given a plate of seasoned rice just like all the rest of the kids. I wash my hands and 'chop' with my fingers. I just love a country where its ok to eat with your fingers, screw silverware.
Then its time for reading. I write something on the board and the kids chant it out in unison as I tap each word with a pencil. Repeat, repeat, repeat, I hope they're learning something. More sucessful is when everybody has a copy of the book, 'literary treasures' (what garbage!), and we all sit outside and read it together. Thats fun for the kids and me, although I still have to get up and admister smacks and taps to the kids skipping to the wrong pages or punching their friends.
Then school is over. I am always tired by the end of classes, but I can go relax and unwind with my drumming lesson with Sammy. Drumming is very therapeutic!
More on the Street Academy soon.