Student finds 'Hope' in Ghana

WHO: Sarah A. Parker, 22, a Cape Vincent native who taught English at the Village of Hope, an orphanage of 600 children in the village of Gomoa-Fetteh, Ghana, for two months.

Miss Parker studied photojournalism at the Rochester Institute of Technology for two years after graduating from Thousand Islands Central High School, Clayton, in 2005. She is now a senior at SUNY Geneseo working toward her dream to become a high school English teacher.

She left for Ghana, a country in western Africa, on Oct. 28 and came back to the United States on Dec. 18.

How did you end up teaching English in Ghana?

"SUNY Geneseo has a connection with Ghana. The dean of education is Ghanaian. They started a program last year and we were the second group to go to Ghana.

"My teaching certification will range from sixth to 12th grade. So I was teaching the sixth grade while I was there. And fortunately, English is their national language so they all spoke English already."

How are the living conditions there? What is the orphanage like?

"They are a developing nation and there's extreme poverty next to people who are living really well.

"Even within the Village of Hope there's kind of an extreme of kids who have nothing and kids who have a lot.

"The orphanage is funded through an American church. So it's actually one of the nicer schools. Besides the kids who were there because they were orphaned, there are people who pay to send their kids there. So you have the kids who are there because there were orphaned and in really bad situations mixed with boarding kids."

Tell me about your students at the Village of Hope.

"The kids are so self-reliant. They make their own food. They have a lot of chores. They have to wake up at four in the morning and start their chores — they have to cook, they have to clean, they have to do their own laundries, they have to chop the wood, they have to cut the grass. They have to do everything.

"A lot of the kids who were at the orphanage, 21 of them while I was there, were rescued from slavery. Slavery is illegal there but there's still people who own children. Child trafficking is really prominent in Ghana, especially in the Lake Volta region. It's just mind boggling. You have really advanced stuff going on and then there's child trafficking and child slavery. It's really crazy.

"The resilience of these kids was just astounding. Three of the kids that were there — Famous, Gabrielle and Sakura — were slaves on Lake Volta. They were obviously having a really hard time and they weren't sure if they were going to survive. It got to the point where they were like, 'We are going to die if we stay here.' So, in the night they went out and stole their master's fishing boat and rowed to safety. And they were only nine when they did that.

"The girls who came from the lake had a much worse fate than the guys did."

What did you find difficult while you were teaching in Ghana?

"Well, I got malaria. So that was difficult. But the students were actually a lot like American students. They were just as wild once in a while. Just trying to get through each student and making sure everyone understood, it was kind of the same teaching struggles I would have in America.

"Sometimes there were language barriers. Because a lot of the kids, especially the ones who came from the lake, they didn't know English until they came to the school. They only spoke Twi or Fante, which are Ashanti tribal languages. I learned a lot about rephrasing myself and slowing down.

"There are cultural differences. Trying to explain something that's a totally foreign concept to these kids, like sledding, was sometimes a struggle. I was trying to explain sledding to a kid. But it doesn't snow there and where we were, it was really flat. You have none of the basic ground concepts that you would build upon. I had to really step outside of my American cultural box and figure out ways to reach everyone.

"There's also the whole thing with technology. There, it took me half an hour to do this activity that should've taken 10 minutes in the States if I had materials, like a printer. Every little thing like that you learn not to take for granted."

Do you plan on going back to Ghana sometime to visit the kids?

I really would like to if that ever becomes financially possible for me to go back. I would love to go over and bring back more stuff for the kids. If I could, I'd take two outfits for myself and fill two suitcases full of clothes for the kids."

To learn more about the Village of Hope, go to the orphanage's Web site: www.gwam.org.

If you have an idea for a Times Q&A, contact staff writer Jaegun Lee at jlee@wdt.net .