Our first visit to Kpedzke Senior High School
After receiving our luggage very early today (shortly after midnight), the world looked completely different this morning. Freshly showered and in different clothes, we set off for Kpedzke at 8:30 am. There, about 30 km north of Ho, is the new workplace of our long-time partner, Headmistress Ernestina Peniana. First we were greeted in typical Ghanaian fashion. The welcome follows a very specific ritual and includes everything important: first, the members of the board were introduced to us in detail. Normally, someone from the group is designated to take on this task. In this case, it was Stanely, who performed this task in a very humorous way. The „leader of the organization“ then „has“ to give a comprehensive description of the purpose of our visit, the individual delegation members and their personal backgrounds. Last but not least, a brief description of the history of the organization and its goals follows. The whole round of introductions usually takes at least half an hour. We have become accustomed to this by now and appreciate the fact that everyone can then get a good idea of who they are dealing with. According to the motto „start slowly act fastly“, we then got to the important points quite quickly. Thanks to Ernestina’s good preparation, the management quickly made the decision to work with us extensively and enter into a long-term cooperation. We also quickly agreed on the next items on the program. Everyone was aware that we had to use the remaining days as efficiently as possible to complete the preparatory work. Two highlights are on the agenda: Tomorrow we will hold a workshop with almost 70 teachers to find out their goals for collaboration. The aim is to include this input in the Memorandum of Understanding. The most important event for everyone will be the signing ceremony on Wednesday. Preparations for this are already underway. You can follow both events in the next travel reports, almost without delay.
The next item on the agenda was a tour of the existing IT infrastructure in the school’s own computer room. To cut a long story short, there is a lab, but whether it is actually used remained more or less open. How could it be? Of the existing computers, around 8 are working and can be used as stand-alone computers by the students. Not only is the equipment in the worst possible condition, but the entire room is also in need of a complete refurbishment. There are holes in the „raised floor“, the furniture is unsuitable, everything is dusty and the adjoining rooms serve more as a dumping ground than as preparation rooms or storage space for spare parts, etc. The second designated room is in an even worse state. Everyone quickly realized that it was not enough to ship 80 computers to Ghana and install them, but that a great deal of work would first be necessary to prepare the two rooms so that we could use them. A work plan was drawn up for this purpose. It also became clear that different trades would have to be involved in order to prepare the rooms. Just how quickly this can be done was demonstrated to us in the afternoon: trees have already been selected on the huge school site (160 hectares), which will be felled to make new furniture for the two computer labs.
He made it clear to us – from his point of view – that it is not always due to a lack of financial resources, but that the mindset of those involved is of crucial importance. Using the example of a library that he set up for the school, he made it clear to us that a great deal can be achieved without external funding. The prerequisite for this is that those involved want it and find ways and means to take on the challenges. For example, he mentioned tidying and cleaning the rooms. He believes that a lot can be achieved if everyone pitches in together. We can only agree with that. We are delighted that Julius will be one of our main contacts. With his knowledge, he is an English teacher, IT and social media-savvy and, above all, his passion for improving things at school, he is exactly the right person for us. We are very much looking forward to working with him.