Media Centre for Volunteer in Ghana

Matthew Horne

"Daily life in Brenu starts early: we live in a small apartment in a shared compound and we tend to be woken at an early hour by the swishing of our neighbours' knee-high palm leaf brooms as they sweep the yard. After clambering out from under our mosquito net, turning off our vital and having a quick cold shower (we try not to waste water as our water tank has to be regularly topped up from the village well by some of the kids we teach), we leave the compound and walk about 5 minutes along a sandy path until we reach the seashore and Brenu Beach Resort. This is where we eat all our meals and the resort's restaurant, to our surprise and delight, has won several national awards. Every day we are served interesting local staples for lunch (including banku and fish head soup, fufu, kenkey, yam and red red (fried plantain and beans stew) and other such delights), but can dine in the evenings on delicious fresh fish or lobster, washed down with a cold bottle of Star beer.

As well as providing quality food, the restaurant is superbly situated: under tall swaying palm trees next to a sandy beach onto which giant waves powerfully crash. In the afternoons we often make use of this haven: swimming or body boarding in the surf, playing games with kids on the beach or chatting with some of the staff, including Auntie Aggie, the exotically dressed, chuckling resort owner; Kwesi, the humourous and thoughtful Dostoyevsky-reading resort manager; and Isaac, the exuberant, tiggerish, Westlife-loving resort guard.

The resort is situated a couple of hundred metres to the east of Brenu, a fishing village, on Ghana's southern coast, about 15/20 minutes drive from Elmina/Cape Coast and about 3 hours from Accra. Its people are friendly and welcoming but poor and uneducated, mostly living in concrete compounds or mud huts with little access to electricity. Soon after arriving, we were taken to meet the chief, a tiny man with a surprising love of Schnapps who thought it hilarious that I, like him, am called Mathew and was born on a Thursday (Ghanaians usually have both a Christian name and a name based on the day they were born, eg Kwesi = Sunday born).

After breakfast we go straight to Brenu school, where Morri and I are spending 12 weeks as volunteers, our stay organised by GVI and the Sabre Trust who have both been supporting Brenu school for the last few years by providing finance for infrastructure projects and volunteers to help in the classroom. Brenu school consists of a junior secondary school (JSS), a kindergarten (KG) and a nursery, all of which are situated between the village and the resort, and a primary school which, thanks to Sabre Trust's support, has moved to new buildings on a hill overlooking the village.

We spend most of our time in KG, where our designated role is to assist the teachers, but where, because of the quality of the teachers, we end up doing most of the teaching. The KG teachers all speak poor English and their writing, reading and grammar is even worse. Their ignorance is the major stumbling block in our attempt to introduce into KG the method of learning to read and write through phonics (ie learning letter sounds eg 'ssss' not 'ess' for 's' and then blending them to form words). The standard of English both spoken and written is remarkably poor throughout the school, up to senior JSS students, and it is hoped that this new method will give the children a better foundation. Some children are beginning to improve and we have started remedial classes for the slower kids so that they can catch up through closer attention.

Morri and I are both loving teaching. There are about 40 kids in each of our classes, aged between 5 and 8, so far I can honestly say that we are fond of every single one of them. They can be an absolute pleasure to teach: when they sportingly clap my feeble attempt at drawing an elephant; when they enthusiastically join in my flat singing of 'heads, shoulders ...'; when they flash a wide smile upon receiving a sticker for good work ... And we always enjoy their excited reactions when they see us enter the school grounds each morning: as soon as we are spotted there are cries of 'Teacher Mathew' and 'Madam Morri' and the children sprint towards us, laughing joyfully and competing to be able to carry our books, hold our hands or hug at our trouser legs.

In the afternoons once we have recuperated on the beach from the morning's exertions, we return to our apartment to host the increasing number of children who want to practise their drawing or, now that the 50th anniversary of Ghana's independence is approaching, make Ghana flags. When we have finally managed to convince them all to leave then it's the evening: a relaxed dinner, cards with Kwesi and Isaac, and a peaceful stroll home under the starlit palm trees. At these times, we are always glad to have a break from the children's attention, but we still think of them as we discuss, plan and look forward to the next day's lessons."