Emissary: CHi-YAN Shang

My Africa

Chi-Yan Shang
KGSF Emissary
September 2002 to June 2003

Flying over the Sahara at 30,000 feet…my first visit to a traditional shrine with a Paramount Chief…straining to be heard over the driving rain while teaching an extra class…crossing the beach with twenty other people in a thirty year old Nissan Patrol to take a student to get eyeglasses (the first time in her life)…the African sunsets over the school…

My year in Kopeyia. My year in Kopeyia began in September of 2002. Where else can I begin to make you understand?

I suppose the most logical place from whence to begin would be the school. I was originally sent to teach Mathematics and to balance some budgets, a simple task really, but that was when I was being briefed in June. When I arrived, I found the school in a village which would become home and work for the upcoming year. But it is at school where I prefer to dwell since that has become one of the centres of the village and the focus of my experience.

While visiting the school during my first week, to my dismay, I was introduced to the Mathematics teacher who was sent to replace the Science teacher. As they say, “this is Ghana.” It was then that I was told to become the Science teacher. I was given a laboratory with a few odds and ends: some microscopes, some chemicals, and a great deal of litmus paper. In other words, a treasure trove for improvising experiments, even more so after making friends with the local butcher.

In hindsight, the experiments were probably more central to what I did that year, than anything else. At first, the children had a very difficult time understanding the purpose of an experiment. The notion that what I as a teacher had to say had to be proven, as per the scientific model, left them totally aghast. So we started slowly. First with demonstrations, then with actual “practicals” as they call it in Ghana.

The importance of the weather was not lost on the children, but studying it by applying something from school was. The rain had always come, after which the children would help their families plant crops, and the cycle would eventually end with a harvest at different times of the year depending upon what crops were in their back yard. But eventually, the students learned that certain clouds yielded certain weather patterns and we were well on the way.

After weather patterns we made the exotic leap into litmus paper. Asprin, paracetamol, antacids, Sprite, oranges and the like. The light in the eyes of the students when they “discovered” something was truly amazing.

The next activity, the separation of salt from sand needed a little extra planning on my part. We lacked test tube holders, funnel clamps and ring stand assemblies. Curiously, I had brought with me a certain amount of coat hangers which when bent into the proper shape, can be used for almost everything. I remember receiving more than a few inquisitive looks from the other teachers at the school as I bent my lab equipment into shape. After a couple of days’ work, we had ring stands and test tube clamps. All from about two dozen or so coat hangers. The kids were thrilled when they had equipment which most other students wouldn’t even see until Senior Secondary School (practicals are only required at the Senior Secondary Level so for them to be doing experiments by themselves was something quite different).

In between all of this I think I remember dissecting a cow’s head to demonstrate the structure and placement of the brain in the skull. I don’t remember this as much since I was recovering from my first bout with typhoid and malaria. What a sight, I must have been, performing this dissection with a machete and full of antibiotics and host of other medications prescribed by our able friend, Dr. Nkansah, in many ways, our lifeline in the village.

The crowning achievement for the students, however, would have to have been the dissection of the cow hearts. When my friend Sylvester went to pick up the forty or so hearts, the butcher was very concerned. Afterwards, I learned that an unspoiled cow heart is what used to be used in traditional juju (magic) to incapacitate another person. Sylvester, in all his good humour, explained to the butcher that a crazy yovu (“White”) teacher was trying to show students where the different chambers in the heart were. That settled, the cow hearts arrived en masse and the students dutifully dissected them, exposing each of the chambers and valves. The final test, they inserted blue and red pipe cleaners to show the path of oxygenated and de-oxygenated blood. Gold stars for all, and cow heart stew for most.

As I sit at school now, a teacher in Edmonton, Canada, I look out the window onto the snow filled parking lot and the streetlamp lit ice covered road where kids are playing street hockey. I have running water, electricity, overheads, the internet and easy access to most resources. But sometimes when I close my eyes, I can hear the rustle of the coconut trees along side the Ewe songs of the school children as they make their way to school, all bright eyed and eager to learn from a crazy yovu. There are days when I would gladly give up the flush toilet and the overhead projector to be in the open classroom and struggling to be heard over the driving rain, in front of students who are trying as hard as you and for a community that is eager to grow and give back. They are truly alive.

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