It has been an action packed 10 days in Bolgatanga (affectionately known as Bolga by the locals), and this update is long overdue. The student team arrived in Accra on June 5^th to one of the city’s heaviest rainfalls in years. Since it’s rainy season, we expected rain, but this a deluge that lasted over 7 hours and made the front page of the Ghana news.   With more rain to come we were happy to fly north to Tamale, and from there a 2-hour shuttle to Bolga. Arrived at the Comme ci Comme ca to a very warm welcome.

A bit about the project.

We are working with the Nabdam School District, a new district that represents the Nabit language group. The goal of the project is to develop culturally relevant resources for the local schools so we are taking traditional Nabit folk tales and turning them into books. The team is working with junior high school students who, in their English classes, have discussed, collaborated, and agreed on a total of 7 favorite folk stories, which have never been committed to print before.

Robyn Giffen’ s master’s research is to construct a writing system for the Nabit people. Nabit is presently an oral language, and Robyn’s work begins the journey to develop a written language. This work is in keeping with the Ghanaian Government’s initiative to include mother tongue languages instruction in school curriculum.

As Robyn’s work progresses alongside the GRIP students’ project, the community is hoping to include a few Nabit words in the first editions of these folk tale books. The team plans to leave the digital form of the original books as well as printed copies when we leave; as the written language develops, the next printing of the books, we hope, will be bilingual. The school kids are enthusiastic about the projects, and with their teachers’ support they  are providing much of the illustration for the books.

The team was also invited to provide a Professional Development workshop around encouraging a more student-centered pedagogy in the classroom. The GRIP students, Cindy Bourne, and Project GROW representative Josbert Zure, provided this workshop. While it was a challenging day on many fronts, the feedback was excellent. There is a desire for more UBC sponsored workshops… Perhaps next time we can do a full on Maker Day!

Last, but not least, we held a bike repair workshop which ostensibly was to provide an opportunity for the adults who own bikes in Project GROW’s home community, Nyobok, to learn how to maintain their bikes. Best laid plans seldom work out the way we expect and we arrived on site to find more than 100 bikes in need of repair – each bike a different model, ranging from substantial need of repair to unfixable. The goal of a well-ordered workshop went quickly out the window and all of us spent the better part of a hot day bent over repairing brakes, warped wheels, flat tires and a host of other issues, We had to turn many away, but managed to get more than 50 back on the road. Our team was grateful to the 5  local Nyobok students, with whom we are working on our book project, pitched in and helped. It was great – simply providing the tools to the students was all we need to fix all kinds of problems.

We plan to leave the tools with those high school students, and with the blessing and support of school headmaster, Francis Saapat, Stephen will spend one afternoon teaching them some of the things they need to know in order to carry on. The opportunity for these young people to start a village bike repair business on Saturdays was too good to pass up.

This week we focus solely on the folk tales (although Stephen has also decided to lend his carpentry skills. and with the help of some students, will fix broken desks in the schools).

It is very hot, there are many challenges, but we are all having a great experience. The pictures tell it all.