June 20

Sunday late afternoon we arrived in Dambai after Kwami Akoto made transportation arrangements for us and then had a very good meeting with Mr. Opong, who is the head teacher if Dambai Demonstration School, and his colleagues. Monday morning we had a fine meeting with a the staff who work with the letters and also the students.  It was a beautiful day and fine meeting.  We were struck by the willingness of the staff and students to persevere with the letter writing despite various challenges, including spotty internet service in the town.  Board member Elizabeth always seems especially at home at Dambai and made an especially good friend.

We were also heartened to see how much progress the school had made, with no outside help, at building a new block of classrooms for its junior high school.  Nearly two years ago Mr. Brando Akoto told the school leaders during out visit that although Yo Ghana! would not simply build them a new building, if they started it, we would help.  Last year the foundation was in place.  Now there is a fine cement floor, a strong roof, and the start of some walls, all because of the work of the school’s PTA, led by Mr. Stephen Benyanase.  Brando also pledged that we’d be partners and friends for decades to come.  It is so good to see the fruits of his vision ripen.

Yesterday was a big day.  We (Lucy, Wendy, and David) had a great time, as always, at Angel’s
Academy, where school founder Mr. Ernest Opoku-Ansah and head teachers Mr. Justice and Mr. Daniel showed us the new computer laboratory that the school built on its own initiative. Yo Ghana contributed a very, very small part to it, well under 5 percent of the cost.  We were very excited to learn that at the school’s graduation ceremony on August 6 the lab will be dedicated to Mr. Brando Akoto, who passed away late last year and was a great blessing to Yo Ghana! and everyone else he met.  We also got to meet many of the students briefly.  Mr. Ernest started this school many years ago in his living room, for poor students who could not afford to go to school otherwise. 

Then it was on to L & A Academy (see photo), where Mr. Kankam hosted us and brought us up to  date on how the Yo Ghana! partnership went this year.  Mr. Kankam is one of our most dedicated coordinators and consistently has more than 100 students writing, which is a massive amount of work.  He is the first  Ghana teacher I met, nearly five years ago, and it is always good to see him. L & A Academy is another school that started out as a free school for poorer students, on a slab of cement, and now has grown into a very impressive institution without forgetting its humble roots.

Then Mr. Frank got us safe and sound to the University of Education, Winneba, where board member Dr. Eric Ananga and his very able research assistant, Miss Berthy, sat down and we worked out the details of the conference to be held there July 1 and 2.  The conference hall is very impressive, a grand building in every way, and we are setting aside classrooms for the smaller sessions.  They have done a wonderful job working with the university to provide excellent facilities (sleeping, eating, and meetings), and we are all very, very excited about the “Sharing Our Stories” conference, the very first one Yo Ghana! will have in Ghana. Dr. Ananga is one of the busiest and most dedicated persons I know, and Yo Ghana! is blessed that he takes so much time for us.

Elizabeth arrived late last night, and it is great to have her energy and intelligence and positive outlook on hand.

First Day in Ghana: Anani Memorial International School

After arriving late Thursday we made our way with our old friend, the taxi driver Mr. Frank, to Anani
Memorial International School.  I first visited this school in Nima five years ago, and it is a remarkable place. Scholars of development and a bit of observation tell us that slums in developing countries are full of hopeful, hard-working people who often succeed against great odds.  Anani School is one of the reasons that they do. It is one of Nima's strong institutions that provides a very strong education in both the fundamentals of education and the arts; its children are skilled dancers, for example. They have also, for the second year, been the leaders in letter exchanges, this year sending five sets.

Lots of fine dancing was on display for Wendy, Lucy, and I. The welcome was a bit overwhelming. Then we had the pleasure of presenting the school's Principal, Mr. Kofi Anane, with his Yo Ghana! star award, as he was one of six awardees this year. Mr. Anane started attending the school as a child; his father started the school to educate children from poor families after being cheated in a financial transaction. The school survives against great odds, somehow offering a first-class education to families who struggle to pay the fees.  The students embraced the award as their own, and shortly after the presentation poured onto the floor in a celebratory dance.

It was a special occasion for a wonderful and unique school and person.

"There Are Other Kids in the World" and Let's Hear it for Teachers!

It's that time of the year when Yo Ghana! disseminates and then receives back roughly 2,000 student questionnaires.  One of my favorites answers so far, responding to the prompt of what she or he had learned about Africa from exchanging letters wrote: "There are other kids in the world."

Our world faces daunting challenges and stunning inequalities.  Smart, good people who devote their lives to studying these issues often disagree profoundly with each other on what course of action we should take.  But certainly an essential first step--and one that Americans, in particular, often neglect--is the realization that there are, indeed, "other kids in the world."  Who knows what that realization will lead to?

This is also the time of year of graduations when, in my role as Yo Ghana! go-fer, I drop by some schools at the year's end here in the U.S.  Today I got to see a student who had graduated the night before thank a teacher who had played, it seemed, a critical role in keeping him in school and helping him to graduate.  Our teachers in both the Pacific Northwest and Ghana and, for that matter, across the world, are often privy to a lot of suffering that the rest of us get to ignore.  But they also experience the satisfaction of knowing that their stubborn devotion to a student can be the difference between success and failure.  One of the very parts of being part of Yo Ghana! is getting to hang out with teachers.  Thank you, teachers for inspiring not only your students, but the rest of us.

I'll soon be in Ghana, along with our co-founder Elizabeth Fosler-Jones and with my life partner, Wendy, and we'll be traveling and meeting with hundreds of members of the Yo Ghana! community there, so in about week I'll be blogging every day or two.

How Do We Know When We've Been Successful?

One of the reasons that I don't think that sports necessarily prepares us very well for real life is  the dramatic difference in how success is measured and recognized.  When I prepared for a marathon, for example, I could measure exactly how successful I was simply by noting my time at the finish line.  As a parent or husband or writer, success has been much more difficult to measure, much more subjective.  That is also true of teaching and particularly of online teaching.  There is something artificial about communicating with people via emails and discussion boards but seldom meeting them.

So I was presently surprised this week when not one but two of my students appeared during office hours for a chat.  I was struck by their dedication to learning and to their families, and it was very, very encouraging to hear them talk about both how the course has prompted them to think and write more precisely and how they have applied elements of the course to their own lives in ways that I would not have predicted.  It was a wonderful gift they bestowed on me.

I had two take-aways from this experience.  First, I resolved to more often let people know when they have taught me something worthwhile, as these two generous students did.  Second, I was struck that in the midst of performing what can sometimes seem like an extended clerical exercise (constructing a syllabus, building a website, answering student emails, commenting on student post, sending feedback on student work) I was in fact facilitating, at least occasionally, something much more profound.  It is a bit unsettling to realize that we probably unaware of when were are doing the most good--or bad.

Every day we are presented with innumerable opportunities to contribute something meaningful to each others' lives; often our largest contributions will pass without us having any idea of their occurrence.

Yo Ghana! Celebration a Week Ago

Some 180 of us honored Mr. Brando Akoto at Yo Ghana!'s second annual celebration May 14 at Africa House.

Brando believed strongly that we--that is, human beings--are here to care for each other, and there was a lot of that going on.  Djimet Dogo opened the program by telling us that Africa House was our home, Madame Victorine put a lot of love and care and energy into her food, and the ladies of Portland International Church donated a dozen diverse and delicious West African dishes.  The Obo Addy Legacy Project threw themselves into a thirty-minute set that had everyone clapping along.  Lilly Akoto (above) helped us to remember the man we miss so much, her husband, as did one of Brando's friends from childhood, Ibrahim Abubaker (also pictured above), who drove down from Canada to be with us.  Among our many volunteers, we are particularly grateful to Aaron Jones and Wendy del Mary for somehow being everywhere at once.  We are also grateful to the more than fifty generous people who donated to us before or during the event and to Agbey Gedza, President of the Ghana Assocation of Oregon, for taking such amazing photographs.

We honored six big-hearted people with Yo Ghana! Star Awards: teacher Ginny Hoke; headmaster Kofi Anane; volunteers
Dominic Fordwour and Essan Weah; and founding board members Dr. Kofi Agorsah and LeeAnn Bronson. Board Member Komi Kalevor emceed with his usual grace, co-founder and board member Elizabeth Fosler-Jones showed her vivid video from her trip of last year, and TreNeasha Shearer of St. Andrew Nativity School spoke on what sharing letters with a student at St. Kizito Basic School in Kpandai, Ghana had meant to her.  Board Member Harriette Vimegnon presented each of our attending teachers, and two students standing in for their teachers, with Kente stoles that Dr. Agorsah had arranged to be woven for us in Ghana.

One of Brando's many slogans was: Take care of relationships, and everything else will take care of itself.  Saturday's celebration was a beautiful illustration of that adage.  Brando, we miss you so much.  It was an honor to honor you.  And thank you for showing us the important things to remember, both as individuals and as an organization.  We shall never forget you.

Brando Akoto: A Life Poured Out

When I think of Brando Akoto, whom Yo Ghana! will be honoring a week from tomorrow, at our Annual Celebration, I think of a bucket that never runs dry.

Think of your life as a bucket of water.  Most of us would be worried about losing any of it.  We would want to wrap our bodies around the top of the bucket on a sunny day to keep any from evaporating.  We would want to make to make no sudden movements, lest some of the water be jostled out.  Certainly we would not want to share our water with a thirsty stranger or friend.  It's our water, after all.  We need to make it last!

Brando was forever pouring out his water to the rest of us.  He loved giving things away: his time, his attention, his possessions, his care.

My wife likes to talk about the "scarcity model" of life in which he hoard and guard our resources.  Brando followed the anti-scarcity approach.  And for all the water he poured out on the rest of us, his bucket always seemed to be full.

I get to hang out with a lot of people like Brando in Yo Ghana!  People like Mr. Daniel, who took time out from the preparations for his father's funeral to personally print and deliver letters to a school that lacked a printer, or Ms. Ginny who makes time between her extensive work and family commitments to coordinate more than 100 letters, or Ms. Elizabeth, our young co-founder who lavishes her time and hard-earned money on us, or Mr. Essan, who sets aside entire days to visit our classrooms.

I hope you can join us May 14, 3-5 p.m. at Africa House in NE Portland.  Here's a link to purchase tickets.  We'll be honoring Brando, a man who poured out his life for others, and the room will be full of others who do the same.