Monique Power(Australia) volunteer of Better Life Aid and Tours from July to August 2013. The first day I taught of travelling to Africa to volunteeer, I always wanted to volunteer and tour around in another country. I came Accra Better Life Aid. The time I visited sirigu bridge school, I was surprised about the whole project with the Better Life and Tours Orphanage School. At that time, the children couldn’t attend the classes, since their teachers were farming as the rain season started. At that time, the children couldn’t attend the classes, since their teachers were farming as the rain season started. That was a very good opportunity for me to start teaching! When I arrived, 5 children were waiting, but as they saw me, they started calling the others to come as well. With 25 children in the room, I started introducing myself “My name is Monique Power”. When I asked one of the children about her name, she said: My name is Mounique Power… Oh no, they can’t speak English and I can’t speak their native language! I don’t have pencils, paper nor handbooks. How will I ever be able to learn them something? They only thing I could think about was learning them the name of their clothes: slipper, trousers, … slowly by slowly they understood.
Alot of women passed by to see what was going on in the school and they dropped of their smaller children as well. At the end of the day there were almost 40 children, aged between 3 and 12 years old.
Then I arrived with my bicycle on the second day, the children started dancing and shouting. So happy they were! I realized this is the work I want to do here!
When they all sit down, most of them on the ground, since they don’t have enough benches, I see we are with even more children today one girl stand up and says: “Good morning Madam, my name is Patience!” I can’t describe the feeling. That went through my body, but I was so proud of her she saw it, and also got a big smile on her face.
That day I learned them the different parts of the body. We also play a game where they have to touch each other’s nose, hair,… We go outside and learn all the names of the different animals in the field (they in English, me in Frafra) Apart from teaching English we also did some mathematics, which was much easier since they knew all the number in English.
After a few days, I decided to see what they still remembered from the first days. Wow, this was really above all expectations. They could tell me al lthe parts of the body, all their clothes, different reached this level with 60 children.
English