Amma's Ghana Adventure: Tema Tech Weeks 2, 3 and 4

Our "office" at school

I felt good at the end of week 1 that we were really on track, had figured a lot out and were on a good pace. Week 2 was the total opposite. We began to experience the reality of the Ghana "work challenges" which are not very conducive to meeting deadlines. During this week, we lost the internet b/c the cables were stolen, lost the power (it just happens and they were doing work in the area), found out about a teachers strike which was causing the school to close unexpectedly for 2 days and learned that our Principal/key sponsor would be leaving the country - as it turned out for the remainder of our project.

Each day, sometimes each hour brought a new piece of news compounding the previous. The reality of the project work was that there were really only 16 true working days so losing a few days matters. But we figured it out and kept readjusting. Our core guys that helped us coordinate everything were awesome and all the staff really responded well to the training for eSchool and the process of editing and administrating the web content.

For the Tema Tech team, they are used to such interruptions and delays with no clear understanding of when things will get fixed. Each day it's a wait and see process. Interestingly, I have found since that stealing cables to sell the copper inside is also not so unique to Africa. I had heard one version of this from an IBM colleague in Kenya explaining the unreliability of conference calls and phone lines in Kenya. The doormen in my apartment building tell me people steal lines in the Bronx/Queens where they live, my parents tell me it's common in Puerto Rico and I've heard counts from others too.

So in the end we built a website from scratch with over 50 pages of content and dozens of pictures and we successfully expanded their ability to electronically store and track student information and financial information. I feel good about the tangibility of what we did, what we left behind and hopefully the impact on inspiring how to work differently. Obviously there are so many details under this but too much to write it all down.

Mr Mac-Kusi and his students = the photo team

I continued to really appreciate the fact that our project involved students, I loved each day interacting with them and talking to them. The Photography team was really cool, they ran around the whole time taking photos for us to put on the website and would come in and give me their catch each day. They had a student week celebration while we were here which had education, sports and a trip. It was fun to see them having fun, doing tug of war and other contests. It was nice to see their pride in their school.

I also had a really positive feeling from the teachers who seemed very genuine and involved overall.

Lunch each day was always a time usually with our core guys Mr. Inkoom, Mr. Nars-Saam and Tony and usually involved cultural comparisons and sharing b/w all of our respective worlds as well as catching up on next steps or things we needed to get done. The kitchen staff was super friendly and went out of their way to make us comfortable.

Our Ghanaian outfits and Kente cloth gifts

The final week we wrapped and gave a final presentation summarizing the work that we did. In addition to all the core management and department heads of Tema Tech we also had officials from the Ministry of Education, heads of other schools and the school chair of the board attend.

We got to deliver our final presentation in outfits tailored by the students in the Tailoring department. Tony (one of our core guys) took us to get fabrics from one of the main producers which the school is associated with and the tailoring department made us beautiful outfits. It was a great way to showcase the products of the school programs. And they gave us my favorite gift which was a Kente cloth weaving with our names in it as well as made us other pieces from fabrics that they hand made in the school called Batiks which is hand printing. Really special items to help us remember them always...

Some additional scenes from the school below....