Computer Training, The Enskinment of a new Chief, and a video on Elephants in Mole

So, second update post from work. I decided to split up the last two projects and so I’ll talk about the excel classes I’m running in this one, and the meetings in the next one. I realized it was a bit dry on it’s own, so I thought I’d throw in some pics from the Enskinment of a new chief, which is basically the ceremony that makes him a chief.

 But first, back to business. In my initial interviews with people, computer training came up all the time. It was something everyone seemed to want, especially training in Excel. They even had two extra computers in my office (which I know was tremendously difficult to get) so that I could spend some time teaching people. At first, I just let people come into my office when they were free and work through the Scala guide (a guide that EWB made back when it was running computer training centers in the Philippines). Eventually though, interest got really high and people started complaining that they couldn’t get access to the computers because it was always busy. Also, it was taking a lot of my time and, as much as I wanted to teach them, I had other work to do.

So I decided I needed to make this a bit more efficient and organize classes. My peace corp. friend David works at the IT Centre at the local high school, and helped me set it up with the school so that the classes would take place at their computer lab, which was huge because finding 15 computers in a single room out here is harder then finding a needle in a haystack. I started telling people at work about it and everyone was pretty hyped. I went through and edited the Scala guide for excel, making the content Ghanaian and changing some of the exercises to make them more applicable to the District Assembly. After talking to it over, we (senior management) decided to charge a token fee of GHC 2.50 (about $2) just to get people to show some commitment. The money would be donated to the high school as a little thank you gift.

 I didn’t want to make the classes during work hours, but I wanted to make sure everyone, especially the women, could sign up. So I asked them and they said that 2-5 on Sundays would work for them as they could still go to church and still should be able to cook dinner. The sign-up list filled up pretty quickly, though I went around advertising it quite a bit, making sure people I wanted signed up, and in two days I couldn’t take on any more people. Because of the high volume of people, I asked Wumbei and Adigun (Budget and Planning Officers) for help, and also thought this would be good for reinforcing their skills. Adigun was busy preparing for a workshop, but Wumbei was free and happily agreed.

 The Saturday before my first class I went to the high school for a few hours to set everything up for the next day, make sure all the computers worked and install the necessary programs. I also sent out a text message to everyone who signed up to remind them about the class and tell them to show up on time because we had a lot of material to cover. I also reminded them to bring the fee to the first class because I hadn’t collected it at the time of registration.

 Sunday rolled around, and Wumbei and I went to the school around 1:45 to make sure everything was working. Then we waited for students to show up…and waited some more. The first guy showed up around 2:30, and another 2 people showed up by 3. By this time, not gonna lie, I was pretty pissed. I was sort of sick and skipped lunch, which didn’t help my mood, but to find that I had dragged my ass over to that class for 3 people was really disappointing. The three who did show learned quite a bit (with 2 teachers, they got all the attention they needed) and they could tell I was pretty disappointed, the whole time they were saying things like “you should know our people” and “they don’t appreciate learning”.

 Monday was an interesting day. I was still sort of pissed and had decided to talk to the people who had signed up, collect the fee and express my disappointment. But yea, I’m not exactly big on confrontation, and when people told me their reasons (I was out of town, my in-law was sick etc.) I was pretty forgiving, told them not to worry about it, said to get me the fee as soon as possible and make sure they attend the next one because they were pretty far behind.

 Then, we had a meeting with some reps from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). They had run a survey of the district and were presenting their findings. The meeting was attended by all the senior officers, a lot of whom had signed up for the class. At the end of the meeting, the UNDP people were presenting their next steps, and said that they were interested in teaching some senior staff data analysis skills with Excel and some other programs. I was tempted to bring up how I had tried that and failed pretty miserably, but decided not to publicly shame people and talk to the UNDP after the meeting about my experience. Wumbei though had no such reservations, and proceeded to explain what had happened with my classes, and rip into people who said they wanted classes now when they had turned down the opportunity just yesterday.

 After that, I (and a lot of other people in the room) just felt really awkward about the whole thing. The people at the UNDP said they would consider what had happened when determining who they were inviting to their sessions. After the meeting (and the days after that) a lot of the senior officers came to me and said how they “had disappointed me” and would try to make the next class. I said it was fine, just text me if you can’t make it, try and pay the fee etc. I also tried to see if time was an issue, and some people said it was, but couldn’t recommend a better time.

 Next Sunday, Wumbei and I went to the class again, this time we actually went a bit late. When we got there at around 2:10, there was already someone at the school. He had also been at the first class, and said he wanted to get an early start to try and practice more. I apologized for being late and was really pleased that this guy expressed so much interest. But by the end of class there were only 2 students who had shown up, the number actually dropped from the week before. Monday, I got a lot more “we have disappointed you” and very similar reasons for not showing up.

 LESSONS LEARNED AND NEXT STEPS

So, what did I learn from all this? Honestly, I’m still not sure what caused the low attendance or what I could have done to remedy this. I’m adamant about not doing the classes during work hours, and people, especially the women, are busy in the evenings, so all I’m left with is weekends. Saturday was basically off because I go to Wa every couple weeks to get some internet and do some banking. I leave Friday night and come back Saturday morning, though often I can’t make it back until Saturday afternoon, and I didn’t want to risk missing a class. Sunday mornings is Church, and a lot of my students are Christian, so Sunday afternoon was all I was really left with.

 I think I’ve identified a couple of key mistakes I made though. The first is that I did not collect the fee when people registered. The reason for the fee was to give that little bit of incentive to show up, so that people will think “Oh, I did spend the money already, might as well go”. But a lot of people did not have the money when they wanted to register, so I let them register and told them to get the money at the first class. Because of this, a lot of people lost the incentive and to this day more then half the people haven’t paid me. The second mistake I identified was chasing after people to get them to register. I had in my mind people that I wanted at the lessons, so I went after them to make sure they signed up. The one person who has shown up both classes though was someone I didn’t even know, someone who saw the flyer and came to see me. I think I should have just put the flyer up and did some general promotion, but allowed those who were interested to come to me instead of chasing people down.

 In general, I think that the idea of having a class may have been wrong. Maybe I should have offered my Sundays for individuals, or groups, to sign up for lessons. I could still use the high school if a lot of people signed up for the same time, but it seems like the computers in my office would suffice.

 So what am I going to change going forward? I’m not sure yet. Our EWB team (Governance and Rural Infrastructure, or GARI) is in meetings this weekend in Tamale so I’m going to try and get some ideas from people here. I’m actually happier with smaller classes, it’s a lot easier to teach and people definitely learn more that way. I don’t think I’m gonna spend any more effort trying to get more people to come. I may switch to the “offering my Sundays” idea. It might cost me more time, but it would be way more effective and may even allow me to help more people. We’ll see how it goes.

 Anyways, so I realize that was a bit in-depth and wordy, so I thought I’d throw in some pics from an Enskinment ceremony I went to (when they make someone a chief in Northern Ghana, they say they’re “enskinning” him because he sits on a chair wrapped in some animal fur). It was pretty amazing, I missed the night before, where they danced from 11pm-4am. But Sarichi (my host brother) took me to the ceremony in the morning, and there was more dancing. Also, here’s a link to a youtube video that Adam from U of M made about our trip to Mole: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G33okIzQZOA. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Gajan

A glimpse of the intense sound system for the Enskinment

 

The chief being raised on the shoulders of people as he is carried to the celebration

The crowd of people parading down the streets for the enskinment

 

The Chief being carried into the ceremony

 

The Drummers leading the parade