Orientation, Akwaaba!

Mr. Mensah, IBM Country Mngr & Mr. Ezeh, Min of Education

On Monday we got all dolled up in our professional attire and were taken to a nearby hotel for an orientation.  This was our first opportunity to meet key representatives from our project clients in person.  Barbara (our overall Ghana liason through NGO CDC Development Solutions) kicked off the day, the IBM Country Manager said a few words (he grew up in Ghana, lived in the US for many years and returned to Ghana to take this role as the Ghana office opened last August...he is also an ex-Loti).  Then we got an overview of the Ghana education system and some of their challenges from Mr. Ezeh from the Ministry of Education.  The rest of the morning the clients presented overviews of their organizations and what they hoped to accomplish through our projects.  The afternoon we broke out with our clients to discuss the SOW's (Statement of Work) which were given to us a month or so ago.  We revised as we better understood their requirements and could map that with our skills and available time to deliver.  We got our schedule worked  out for the first week and then all teams shared their results with each other.

Akwaaba means Welcome, each speaker and nearly everyone we've met since here begins by saying to us " You are very welcome "

Orientation, IBMers and Leaders from our project Orgs

There are 3 clients that my team is working with:  Tema Techincal Institute (called Tematech which is my project) which is a vocational training school.  They teach 13 different courses ranging from carpentry and construction to photography, textiles and business studies.  They are hoping to add catering and fashion to their curriculum soon;  SOS Villages is an organization I had never heard of but love what I've learned so far.   Instead of the traditional orphanage, they build a family unit with a mother and siblings for children that have lost both of their parents.  They raise them in 'villages' until they are legal adults with the love and structure of a family.  They have branched out into education (and they offer the International Baccalaureate or IB program which I did in high school, they say its still well used) and have prepared/sent many kids to schools like Harvard and Yale.  The 3rd organization is ECG, the primary electrical supply company for Ghana.  They are the most like a regular IBM customer - large with lots of politics.

3 of us are working at Tematech to help them build a website/presence and figure out how to help manage student data and accounting information.  The SOS team of 2 is also building a website and the ECG team is helping IT with a series of governance, risk and IT policy/processes.  There was a 4th organization but they dropped out last minute so ECG got 2 project teams for a total of 6 working with them on 2 different projects.

Shin & Shikha with the Principal and key Tematech team

Tematech had 4 people at the orientation: Mr. Provencal, the principal of the school, Mr. Narh-Saam, the project coordinator, Mr. Inkoom who heads the ICT (their term for computer department - teaching not internal IT though they do some double duty), and Mr.Tony  the head of the Textiles Dept where they teach weaving cloth, design and printing of fabrics.  The Tematech team was eager to work, brought energy and ideas to what they wanted to accomplish.

One of the funny stories of the day, over lunch Tony was telling us his normal work schedule, several evenings during the work week he attends church services (which I have noticed in general church is an extremely prevalent part of life here).  I asked what type of church he attends and he said "Charismatic".  I have no idea what this means, we all look a little confused and he proceeds to explain, "Charismatic is you know...a lot of jumping and clapping and singing..."  Writing this out doesn't do the moment justice w/o the physical demonstration but I quickly got I think it's something like what we'd know in the US as a gospel church typical in the south.  He offered to bring us so we are hoping to take him up on this offer after work one evening.

Barbara (left) and Edem (right) from CDC, the NGO liasons

Orientation ended and we regrouped at the hotel and went out for our next outing at trying Ghana food.  The universal hit of the night was the KeleWele (plaintain fried with red pepper) recommended by my friend/colleague Erica who was on Team 2 in Ghana several years ago.