I was waiting in the beat-up blue truck while it was being loaded with wood, tools and a wheelbarrow, watching the town passing by: children in ironed uniforms on the way to school, women in long colorful dresses balancing baskets full of loaves of white bread on the head, morning porridge was sold in plastic bags, sad faces, triple hand-shake ends with a snap, goats, chickens, fufu, banku, kenkey, mango, papaya,banana, and loudspeakers blurring something from moving trucks. Later we drove to Prosper’s farm and loaded the truck with cassava for the community and cassava leaves for the goats.
It takes a community. They are so poor. They live in small mud houses with no electricity or running water. They are small farmers like many others in the interior of Ghana. They eat mostly cassava and their kids suffer from malnutrition and infectious diseases.
However, they are at the building site early morning. Men with shovels and head pans. Women, babies tied to their backs with water pans. Men, strong muscular black bodies, mixing the cement, molding the blocks (800 per day) and digging the foundation in this hot and humid weather. Women walking back and forth to the borehole, fetching water. Children pumping the water.
Benny needed 60 wooden poles to hold the pillars, and the kids arrived to school, carrying 6ft branches that they cut from trees. Amazing how much was accomplished in one week. All manual work, no machine.
At lunch the women brought bowls with banku and hot sauce, they dipped the banku in the not sauce, eating with their hands. They served me with a portion of banku. My hands were greasy and my mouth burnt from the hot sauce.
We asked Ida, the headmistress, to stop caning the children. Following the morning assembly the children lined-up for caning. Two female teachers with long tree branches whipped the fearful kids. They were caned for being late, dirty hands, hair or clothes. An awful site.
No more. Ida promised that they will stop caning the kids.
Three children were sent home, their bodies covered with ringworm. There is no medical facility at Airfield.
I am teaching everyday now, working with all the teachers. We start every morning with an hour of English, followed by an hour of math. Most of the children cannot read or do simple math. English is the official language of Ghana. But the Ewe tribe of the Volta Region speak their language and most of them do not understand English. I made flash cards and word games and hope to see progress by the time we leave.
There was a meeting at our hotel this week. Five community activists and John, the hotel owner. Benny plans to form a strong PTA at Airfield school, to ensure quality of education for the children. John, our hotel owner, is willing to lead that group. He is well respected in the community.
Benny is running the show here and his enthusiasm is contagious to anyone who is around him. He already made significant impact on the life of the community and demanded that all teachers come of time and teach. "We are not building a school here so that the teachers will have a more comfortable place to snooze." They fear and respect the white-hair Yavu.
Benny used to tell me that he loved program management. I did not see it during the years that he worked in corporate America. I remember a lot of frustration, sleepless nights and stress, pressure from management, frequent reports and reviews, project were underestimated and overran and the bottom line was to show quick profit for the share holders.
Witnessing his endless energy, his leadership, the respect he gets from the community, his ability to move the community and teach them how to work up to his standards, I realized a simple truth that could probably be applied to many people: You try to manage Benny and he takes the back seat; you try to push him and he resists; you let him lead, and he shines.
