Let's Get Serious for a Moment

I spent a couple of hours today with the Headmaster of the McCarthy Hill School, Ben, discussing ways to enroll children to their school who don't currently go to school. We also discussed ways of earning more money for the school. He said the best way to earn money for the school is by enrolling new students.

(PS....I have never met a person more dedicated to a cause than I have witnessed in Ben. I will dedicate an entire post to him soon.)

There are obviously problems with every school you go to; especially in a third world county. However, the problems at McCarthy Hill would be so easy to fix if they had just a little money. When parents/guardians come to visit the school they usually base their decision to enroll or not on two things; oddly enough, the play area and the tuition fee. The tuition fee is reasonable and pretty competitive. However, the play area is a pretty big deal breaker. There is a school not too far from McCarthy that enroll more children based off of their play area. Both schools have good teachers and are pretty equal in tuition but because of the better play area, McCarthy loses out on students.

Currently, this is the only play area the kids are allowed to play on because the "real" play area is not safe for play. As you can see, not only is the area tiny but the toys are for tiny kids as well (You've seen pictures that I've posted that show kids playing on the other toys and that's because they were allowed to play out there with me on my first day).

Here are the toys that need some fixing.

Here is a picture of the total area of where the children can play once they have safe toys to play on and a safe ground of some sort.

A full landscape is only about $300. I plan on traveling to the market on Saturday to buy tools to fix the swing but even then, the kids are not allowed to play until the ground is taken care of. I know there are non-profits out there that donate to school playgrounds but I haven't done the research yet to locate them. If anyone is aware of an organization, please let me know. $300-$400 is nothing to us Americans but means the future for the little Ghanaian babies and for this school to survive.

I thought I would share a few more pictures of the school...

Here is the lunch area

Bathroom-nice big hole in the wall...I want to try to fix that as well.

They don't have running water so the bucket's are used to fetch water and bring back to help flush the toilets out.

They wash their hands from the buckets displayed in the next picture.

You fetch the water out of this well.

Here is the library. Also, if anyone knows of an organization who donates reading books, please let me know.

Typical story about the way some of the people here in Ghana are...

Beautiful tree growing on the playground at the school

Well, the gardener got tired of raking up the leaves; which is what he gets paid to do, so what does he decide to do...

...burn the base of it so that it dies and kills off all of the leaves.

Lovely.

Classrooms

Stairway

Front office

Uncle Ben (Headmaster) worked an extra job to save up money to buy two keyboards for the school. He wanted to bring a music program to the school and he teaches it free of charge every Saturday.

Here is where the kids dump the garbage...also where one of the little boys went wee-wee.

View from the classroom. *Note the windows are always open in Ghana.

This is where the waste drains from the bathrooms when they use the buckets to wash the toilets down.

The kids call it "the poo-poo leak".

This is located just off of the path to the play ground. When it gets full, it drains all the way down the drain, past the play area and into the street. If you look close at some of the photo's I've posted, you'll see two little boys pushing each other on a little car right through the poo-poo leak area.

...or I'll just post it again

As adorable as this picture is and trust me, I didn't take it to show off the drain, but this gives you a better idea of how close the poo-poo is to the play ground.

But just like this picture shows, the kids are as happy as they can be! Just hearing even the smallest child say, "the poo-poo leak" gives my heart and soul sooooo much joy.