I spent three weeks this August volunteering in OCLF libraries in Ghana. I spent the first week in the Kathy Knowles Community Library [KKCL] in Osu, Accra. I stayed with the head Librarian Joana Felih above the Korle Gonno Community Library and commuted there every day.
Before I arrived, I bought some games (Guess Who? and Dominoes) as well as a puzzle and two copies of a simple chapter book that I love. I gave these to the children when I arrived and they loved them, especially the Guess Who? In the KKCL, we did adult literacy classes in the mornings which I loved because the women I worked with were super eager and therefore fast to learn and really appreciated my help. We did lots of sound work and I also loved how much material progress they seemed to make with the learning while I was there.
I then spent the next two weeks in a very small fishing village up the coast called Goi, working in the KKCL there. I lived in the guest house of the library and worked there from 9-5 every day. The first few hours of the morning I read with individual children helping them not to skip over words they didn’t know and also pushing them to read new books. This is how I got to know the children best as they were shy at first to read to me but became more confident and much stronger readers. For the rest of the day I would often help to create and lead dictations for the children at varying levels of difficulty and mark them after. I also introduced the idea of making the children re-write all of their spelling errors that they made in their work so they wouldn’t repeat them. We played lots of games together as well as creating word-searches based on the most popular books at the library which they really enjoyed. I also taught them how to make mini books and told the younger children to make, for example, ‘My A Book’ and write words beginning with A on every page and draw pictures. For the older children I told them to write about who they are and their families, which again helped me to learn more about them.
I spent my time with Paulina, a wonderful young librarian there, and we ran every morning, visited the beach when people were buying fish, went to church and got to know many people in Goi.
Overall, I had an incomparable experience where I gained so much perspective because of each child was so eager to learn, bringing themselves to the library each day, and I also loved getting to know so many people in Ghana who will be lifelong friends of mine. I certainly plan to go back as I would love to see the development of the children I met and the librarians, as well as longing to help more.
Hailey