Where Shaving Your Hair with a Razor Blade and Eating Tooth Paste are Survival Skills

My experience working in a school in Ghana

Every morning the children were lining up in front of me. Each of them a toothbrush in their hand. Some of them busy shaking the dirt and sand off the brush. It wasn’t uncommon to see the toothbrush lying on the ground, in the sand. But hey, I had started something. At least during school days, these kids would get their teeth cleaned.

It was a different world over there. In the very north of Ghana. Where you were hours if not days of traveling in broken down and overfilled minibusses away from a supermarket, proper hospital, internet cafés, and any other luxuries of the modern world.

The struggle was real. Where water got carried in buckets on the head and electricity was not available. But not for the people living there. It wasn’t a struggle for them. Not in their eyes at least. They had the biggest smiles on their faces, all the time in the world, and were never shy of stopping by and giving you a lift. On the back of their bicycle. Or on a bike, if you were lucky.

I left all the comforts my upbringing in a western country had offered me behind and ventured off into the wilderness. The raw life of Africa. Where chicken sit under your seat in the bus and you hear the hooves of the sheep on the roof when making a turn.

My Vision

I was 21 years old and just finished my bachelor’s degree in education. With the mind of an overly confident young adult and a lost soul of the German education system, I wanted to help children in Africa.

Like everyone else. Thinking we’d be heroes if we look after some African children and help the world in its incredible uneven equality of privileges by going to a third-world country.

How wrong I was. I was the one learning the most out of this trip. I got taught these people don’t need our help. If we help them, we make them dependent on us. Forever.

Sometimes I think that’s what we want. We, the western world.

I lived from day to day. I learned many things in life can’t be planned. I learned to step back in life and take a deep breath. I learned to teach maths with a few rocks from the African soil as my only tool.

A Different Childhood

And I learned the only reason why children wouldn’t come to school was that they were hungry. When they were too hungry and weak to get up and walk to school. And school meant everything for them. Education was and still is the only way out of poverty.

I learned what it means “to be hungry.” Not because I experienced the real feeling of hunger. But because I saw it. I saw children cutting open my “finished” toothpaste tube and eating every little bit that was left in it.

Because toothpaste meant food.

Often those children walked back with me and the other volunteer to our house. They didn’t really have a home to go to. Some didn’t have parents. Some lived with their aunts. Some lived on their own.

A twelve-year-old was the head of one family. Doing all the chores in the house including preparing food, fetching water, and washing clothes. Looking after his two younger brothers and feeding them with I don’t know what to survive made this guy way more adult than I was at that point.

So when they would follow us to the place we stayed we often sat with them. Played a little. I would fix some of their clothes. Or backpacks. And they would watch us eat. Our host father would bring us, volunteers, a huge bowl of food.

He would often give the school children also a plate of food. A plate half the size of ours for 5 of them. They still appreciated it. But they also knew the drill. We would only eat a bit and wait for the host dad to leave the yard.

As soon as he vanished behind the clay walls the other volunteer would get up and stand by the gate. Standing guard. Leaving her plate of food for the older children. They would devour it in no time. While I was spoon-feeding the younger ones. Off the food on my plate.

My host dad didn’t like us doing it. Not because he doesn’t like the children. But because it was important for him we would eat enough. So we found our way around him. Without upsetting him. And by still feeding the children.

The School

Our host dad was actually the founder of this school. Together with an organization, he got the foundation for a school building but not enough funds to pay a teacher. He was often himself in class and did some lessons.

But most of the teaching was done by volunteers. Like me. Volunteers who would come for a few months to do some work with African children. Which was here, compared to other projects I was in beforehand, desperately needed.

Schools in Ghana are for free. But parents still need to buy the school uniform, pencils, books, and many other things. The children who were going to this school didn’t have those funds from their parents. Many didn’t even have parents anymore.

And most of these children had to work already. On the streets. Or the market. Selling tomatoes. Or sweets. Or anything that could pay for their daily bread.

By creating this school my host dad made the agreement with the parents (or aunts and uncles) of those children that the children have to come to school, but they will have time in the afternoon to work at their farms or on the market. This is why the school had to finish by 12.

The volunteers who were in the project before collected some funds to build windows and doors into the school building. I paid later with funds of my grandma's, benches and tables. Yes, in the beginning, I was teaching while sitting on the floor.

When I came to Ghana the Ebola outbreak was happening in other western African countries and many volunteers canceled their planned stay. Therefore I ended up being the only one for most of the time.

The Children

The school had two classrooms and a total of 25 children. Plus or minus. As mentioned before they didn’t always come. Not all of them. The children were between 3 and 15 years old. The skills of each individual on a different level.

One time I had a one-year-old in my class. Her sister couldn’t leave her alone at home. So she had to bring her with. Some mess happened that day in the classroom. Diapers are not something these people can afford.

As different as these children were, they all had one thing in common. They loved going to school. School was the best thing for them. This school was the best thing that ever happened to them. And they all loved coming to school.

They wanted to learn.

Of course, they were still children. They were teasing each other. Laughing and joking in class. The children were sometimes loud. Other times too tired to study and fell asleep on their books.

I had it all. But I let them be.

They never cheated. Since I mostly gave them each a different task. I had to. If I wanted them to improve. The one child I was teaching how to hold a pen properly while the other one was figuring out calculations I almost needed a calculator to correct them.

Their skill levels were as much apart as their personalities.

One day, one of the older girls carried the three-year-old to school. From afar I could see how red her face was. She was glowing. With a high fewer. I got upset and shouted at the older one why she would bring her to school in this condition.

Until I understood I was the reason why she brought her. There was no hospital in town. Just a small clinic. But an appointment could obviously not be afforded.

Being white meant here in the north I could do everything. From teaching any subjects in class to collecting money for any needed cause to fixing clothes and healing wounds.

Children would often hurt themselves playing soccer on the playground having many rough objects in it. They would then just walk off into a field, pick up some random piece of plastic and stick it to the bleeding wound. Yes, they would put dirty trash full of bacteria onto their wounds.

Because they had nothing else.

Nursing

It was here when I regretted having studied education instead of medicine. How much more could I have helped people in this corner of the world if I would have learned to be a doctor. But that doesn’t help me now.

Another volunteer had left behind a big suitcase filled with medicine, bandages, and disinfectant materials. I didn’t fear blood. And had done my basic first aid course.

I did what I could. In this case, it was giving a three-year-old a pill of paracetamol. Yeah, she slept well during school in case you were wondering. That tablet obviously knocked her out.

But it also made her come back to school the next day. Running and jumping for joy. A relief for me. While I was worried the entire night about what would happen with a toddler when overdosed with paracetamol.

On other days I was cleaning wounds. Cut open toes, broken nails, and whatever children do to themselves when left out and about. Sometimes I had gloves on. Sometimes I didn’t have gloves.

The one time there was a boy who had a nasty wound. I think I decided it needed stitches. Since I refused to touch it I convinced him together with the other volunteer and the help of our host dad that we would take him to the local clinic.

There were no doctors in the clinic. Only nurses are working here. But they did a good job. We paid for it. And for the after check as well. The boy did go to the follow-up appointment two days later. Against our expectations. With our hopes.

The Hairdresser

Another time one of those boys living by themselves came to school with a clean cut. Or bold. However, you call it. His hair clearly got shaved. By whom I asked. Knowing they didn’t have money to go to a hairdresser.

By his brother.

With what?

A razor blade.

I immediately jumped off my chair (there were three chairs in school and the children insisted we would sit on them, but most of the time I sat with the children on the floor). I jumped off the chair and inspected this little boy’s head.

I was sure he would be bleeding somewhere. If his 12-year-old brother shaved off his hair with a simple razor blade. But I didn’t find a single cut. And since I didn’t believe him for doing this he brought this dirty and broken razor blade to school the next day.

After school, they all came to our house again and the older brother showed me how he shaves another orphan’s child his hair. With this dirty and broken razor blade. And without me seeing a drop of blood.

So please add to the list on top of this kid’s skills next to cooking, cleaning and washing, hair cutting as well. I’m still speechless. Between incredibly impressed by his skills and unbelievably disgusted by that razor blade.

Another lesson learned.

Final Words

My time in Ghana had been a very complex one. I experienced every day so many different and new things. I constantly walked around with wide-open eyes and got left speechless behind every second corner I was walking.

It wasn’t all just bad or backward. Many behaviors and especially their mindset was something that taught me to live in the moment and be grateful for what I have. All the privileges I take for granted. To appreciate them. Make use of them.

I’m not going to write about every day’s experience out there over here. Because I would have something to say about every day. But it would fill an entire book. It did fill an entire book.

I wrote a book about my time in Ghana. In German though. And while I am getting more confident in my English skills I’m starting to share moments out of this book with you here.

“While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.” — Maya Angelou

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