Wedding in Zebilla 2

I am invited to pose with guests for a photograph

Immediately after this, Bukari's parents and relatives left, heading back to their neighbouring home town of Bawku. At another date, a similar ceremony will be held there and Sandra will become part of her husband’s family.

Meantime, those staying took the nearest  paths to the site for celebrations, marked out with three  large gazebo- type open tents and rows of seating, arranged around a cleared space-which was to be a dance floor.  While guests were given take-away cartons of food and canned drinks, the music began- a loud selection of Ghana’s current favourites,- and the bride was joined by other women in dance. Impressed guests and anybody from the local community, who wanted to join in, could run into the dancing throng and “pin money”- either coins or notes- onto the bride, or other dancers. One relative had been given the task of collecting all the money as each song finished.

The scene was one of jollity, shared celebration and a chance for socializing generally. In this part of Ghana, baby naming, weddings and funerals are key events for meeting, for new introductions, even “courting”.

Vendors of drinks and snacks, mainly children, with plastic boxes and small wooden, glass fronted cupboards on their heads wandered and watched. 

 Men occasionally joined the dance, preferring to observe and take photographs with their mobile phones. 

While I was there, Sandra appeared, changed, then reappeared arranged in different outfits.

 After a couple of hours in the baking heat of the middle of the day, and as others were arriving, it was time for me to leave.

Wedding in Zebilla

Saturday came and I prepared to attend the Islamic wedding of work colleague, Sandra.

Haruna and I are invited as part of the Ghana Education Service contingent. (Special Needs Officers)

 Uncertain what to expect, I was guided by Haruna, who advised wearing a best dress and taking an envelope containing some money as a gift.

My overwhelming impressions were of gorgeously colourful clothes, easy informality, shared joy and welcomed hospitality. 

Sandra shows her henna decorations before dressing in her wedding clothes

We first went to the courtyard of Sandra’s family, where relatives and special invited guests waited for the bride to appear. Men from the local mosque arrived, knelt together and recited a prayer.

Seated guests line the three enclosed sides of the courtyard

Sandra then appeared to greet her new family, her guests and to pose, with her husband and others for photographs. 

Bride Sandra, husband Bukari and best friends.

Global markets

In Zebilla market, I was searching for some African print fabric, to reflect the West African culture. The choice can be overwhelming at first, and you feel like a child in a well stocked sweet shop.

One stall caught my eye, and I wandered over, to see that the design I thought was truly authentically Ghanaian was produced in my home city, Manchester.

Zebilla market stall, Bawku West district, Upper East region, Ghana.

And on closer inspection:

Ho Ho 3

Training GES staff and teachers is the logical next step after screening and referrals. To date we have focused on a preparatory session on disability rights, actual classroom management and methodologies coming later.

Haruna and I training the Circuit Supervisors, the local inspectorate of schools.

A lunch time discussion:-teachers must uphold the rights of every child- to life, to education , to social participation.  Teachers must explain disabilities using scientific and medical terms- modern Ghana has outlawed traditional spirit practices.

In parts of northern Ghana, alongside medical advances, the introduction of routine ante natal and post natal care, and an encouragement to attend hospital for childbirth, traditional beliefs persist, below the surface, explaining a child born with disabilities, apportioning blame and guiding courses of action. If a pregnant mother sleeps outside in full moonlight, her baby may be born blind; if she bathes in a certain river, or similarly other innocent and random activities, any disability in the child may allegedly result.  Most seriously, although this practice is not openly talked of, difficult to quantify and increasingly challenged, the child born with disability is described not as a child but as a “spirit”, and as such must be returned to the spirit world.

Photo- from internet- Ghanaian undercover reporter Anas Aremeyaw Anas, a Banksy type figure and committed undercover investigative journalist. He works with Africa News, Africa Investigates, Al Jazeera and heads a Private investigation firm, Tiger Eye.

In 2012, Anas Aremeyaw Anas came to northern Ghana, to Sirigu,(in a neighbouring district) to film a documentary about the spirit child, the soothsayer who identifies the child as a “spirit”, and the concoction man who prepares a potion which he will administer to the “spirit”, before returning the body to the forest, to a special burial place. The documentary, aired on Al Jazeera, includes a sting operation, conducted by Bolgatanga Police, using a child as decoy and a convincing substitute dummy of a sleeping child, to capture a local soothsayer and concoction man and bring to justice under Ghanaian law.

The Bolgatanga based charity, AfriKids (with dual registration in Ghana and the UK), has also worked successfully on an extended project in Sirigu to end this practice, supporting those who previously made a living out of this practice into alternative enterprises and empowering local women to resist condemnation and blame associated with birthing a child with disability.

Photo- AfriKids- Sirigu Project

Talking about these practices and beliefs requires patience, sensitivity and respect for circumstances. But as Special Needs Officers, open discussions must be held, views aired and challenged in a constructive manner.

At one school meeting, we listened quietly as an older teacher recalled her experiences 21 years previously when she gave birth to a baby who did not develop as normal in the first few months of life. Her baby was declared to be a spirit, and killed.

I broke down and cried in a head teacher’s office, when, after meeting with a 13 year old boy, troubled with a huge abdominal hernia, under-development of facial features and the additional burden of sickle cell disease, Haruna and I were then told he had been abandoned by his father, his mother was divorced and fled south, the father later returning to try and kill his son, only to be beaten up and sent away by other family members.  The child is doing well at school, is openly included and is supported by Social Welfare funding.

In any country, rights for persons with disability have to be fought for, and guarded, never taken for granted. I am reminded of the grim humour and underlying attacks on persons with disability and chronic sickness in the UK today, in my favourite response to the death of Baroness Thatcher.  A spoof newspaper article declares her fit for work, under the ATOS managed Work Capability Assessment, the piece concluding:

“Accused of showing a total lack of compassion, ATOS released a statement saying, “It’s what she would have wanted.””

Disability Rights UK and many other campaigning groups, families, friends, professionals ( I count myself here) all have a job of work to do!

Photo- internet

Hi Ho- 2

In Ghana, children with severe Visual or Hearing Impairments (VI and HI), are taught in specialist boarding schools, where teachers are skilled in Braille or Ghanaian Sign Language, and use adapted teaching methodologies. Sending a child away to school for a whole term is a wrench, a serious separation, and contrary to the African custom of close family ties and communal living. But with extreme difficulties and the expense of transport, and a shortage of appropriately trained teachers, the boarding school option is at present the only realistic compromise.

Explaining to parents the importance of specialist education:- Haruna advises  parents of two children who are deaf. The parents are subsistence farmers and without education. The schoolboy with the bicycle acted as our guide to this remote rural location

The children who we want to enrol into Gbeogo School for the Deaf.

For children with mild to moderate VI and HI, and with other disabilities, the local mainstream school is the only option. Actual attendance depends on many factors: the child themselves, family commitment to education, teachers able to accommodate within school, location and logistics. With class sizes of 50 to 100, and schools equipped only with basic classrooms, chalk boards, minimal text books, and often, but not always, furniture, teachers face huge challenges.

Atimpoka:-an admirable young woman, attends her local school- travelling either on her adapted tricycle, or when her machine is "spoiled" dragging herself in a crawling movement across rough ground and into school. Haruna and I visit her at home to arrange Social Welfare support- and give a timely warning to the extended family about sending all the other children to school.

Atimpoka taking her place at school. The head teacher  welcomes all pupils into his school, setting an ethos of inclusion.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go

As reported in a previous blog, my work relates essentially to the implementation of Ghana’s Disability Act, regarding education and rights of children and young adults, along with Ghana Education Service’s (GES) policies on Special Education and Inclusion.

With my counterpart, the Special Education Officer for the district, Haruna, I am based in the district’s GES office, but for the majority of the time we are “in the field”, in any of Bawku West’s 97 Primary and Junior High schools, in communities and sometimes travelling to neighbouring districts.

Haruna and I ready to travel- journeys can take up to two (buttock aching) hours to reach our destination. The motorbike is the cheap and flexible option for rough terrain.

Our school screening programme is underway, identifying children who have visual or hearing problems. Our screening materials have been extended to include checklists for possible delayed development and learning difficulties. As the schools have minimal accommodation, with little or none to spare, screening takes place where ever a suitable location can be found.

Lack of spare classrooms- screening under the trees.

At this school- we used a partially built classroom-  second above- one pupil indicates the direction of the "legs" of the letter  E- above-pupils await their turn.

Finding somewhere quiet, in buildings made of concrete, with solid floors, zinc roofs and open spaces for windows, is  difficult. But as Ghana schools conform to standard design, each has a store room behind the head teacher's office, giving a space, usually crowded with items, in which to conduct the hearing screening. The teacher distracts the child, while the tester using a set routine of sounds, stands behind, at an angle, to the right, then the left ear.

An opportunity to de-stigmatise (or to use the development phrase-sensitize) screening for possible disabilities came when the local Customs, Excise and Immigration Officers, on 24 hour duty at the Customs checkpoint on Zebilla’s road which links a principle border crossing from Burkina Faso with the important northern city of Tamale, and on to Kumasi, made a request. A Snelling Reading Chart, used for screening for vision, was left in their safe keeping for Haruna and me to collect. Their curiosity was aroused, they asked questions, and we made an appointment to screen all their staff.

Ghana Customs and Excise Officer- vision screening

Similarly, a  Screening Day was arranged at the GES office.

I screen the Bawku West Director of Education- hearing test. The Director's office was suitably quiet. Her raised hand indicates she has heard the sound made.