Building a School in Adowin

1:22 PM 13 July

We spent this morning helping to build a school in the village of Adowin, which is about an hour drive from Cape Coast. The current school is too far away for the children to walk to and subsequently, most of them do not go to class. Adowin received a land donation for a school to get built upon and the whole community has since helped. When we got there today they had a few trenches dug out for the foundation. They don't dig a big hole like they would at home, but instead dig a trench in a rectangular shape, and then subdivid the trenches to represent the division of rooms within the building. When we got there at 9AM the trenches were dug and just a bit more digging was necessary. The women and children of both sexes were carrying buckets and pans filled with rocks and dirt from the ground and mixing it with a bag of cement. Then pouring water over the mixture and with shovels mixing it all up. Some of the men were standing in the mixture with their shovels barefooted. One man had on goloshers, others just in sandels. As they mixed the concoption the women just rested. Once mixed, we all stepped up with buckets and pans and the men standing in the cement pool shoveled it into them. We carried what we could to the trench where other men were standing ready to receive it. They used a wooden plank to straighten out the dumping of the cement and level it. There were so many people helping. We were six set of hands and there must have been 15 community members. The women from the village were able to carry so much more than us on their heads. Some of the women were quite old - 50+ and were carrying probably three times that of the weight i had. Another woman was carrying cement mixture while carrying a small child strapped to her back. That's what the women do though - they makeshift a backpack out of fabric, which the child is then slung in on her back. Because of this, the children tend to spend a lot of time with their mothers. And there have been studies done that examine the way we childrear our children in the West compared to here in Western Africa. I am interested in looking more of this up when I get home. It makes sense though - the child spends the whole day with Mom, going through the everyday motions of her life. I wonder what effect this has on the child branching away from the mother and her way of life. I say that in the thought process in terms of progression, or even just diversity of female roles.

The village members were so thankful for our hard work, and they said a prayer for us at the end. The Christian religion is so prominent. Once the school is built, it would be nice to send some school supply donations. Perhaps I'll try to maintain some sort of contact to receive updates on its progress.