Bernard Postcard

“I have been volunteering at a school of sorts in a village called Kissemahn attempting to teach children who otherwise cannot afford to go to school. All of the children crave attention so much that sometimes when I try to teach them they only want to show me that they can recite the alphabet, but then I try to ask them if they know what sounds the letters make they kind of shut down and try to play with my hair. They'll often grab my glasses and put them on themselves upside down. I've explained to them that those are my eyes and that I am the only one who can wear them. If they're wearing my glasses I can't teach them anything. One child, Isaac is very smart and tries very hard. He helps us to corral the smaller children (sometimes they get pretty rambunctious). A very small one, Joshua is known to steal pencil sharpeners from time to time, but the other children will often take them from him and give them back to us. Right now, class is basically held on a porch outside of a nice woman's house. It's not really ideal conditions for them to learn. The school has recently become an official Non-profit organisation and has raised enough money to buy land and to build a building. Hopefully with desks and chairs the children will be able to concentrate. That's really the main problem. They're so easily distracted and it's difficult to get their attention when you’re teaching them outside. I really don't know how effective I am at teaching them anything. I feel that my purpose may be better served filming them and trying to raise money. I've only really been a few times, but I've really come to care about them. All of us who volunteer there have. I can't describe the feeling when one of the children’s faces lights up and you know that they truly have learned something.” This is an excerpt from a journal entry I made during my semester abroad in Ghana, a country I had no prior connection to, and knew nothing about. Since my time there, I have thought a lot about these children and how they contrast with the images I see in magazines and on television advertising the poverty and misery of people who live in third world countries. For most of my life, these were the only images I had of these people. I have now been blessed with a radically different view. I have been blessed with faces and names and personalities and likes and favourites and abilities. It upsets me that even in a seemingly progressive culture such as ours, Ghana and countries economically similar to Ghana, are treated almost entirely as charity cases. What is lacking in our society is true knowledge about these places. It is my hope that through these portraits I can show the other side of the coin. In order to do this though, it must be emphasized that this work is not about Africa nor is it about Africans. It is about individuals, particularly, these individuals I met and have come to love. I want to honour these children and allow the viewers to know them as I have. Taylor Brown Nov. 10th, 2010