The First School Screening

Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- Mariam Hotel Restaurant

Today was our first outreach to a school instead of the village, Dahin Sheli School. With all the students dressed smartly in a uniform of brown and yellow, there were TONS of them in a single classroom. Separating ourselves into two sections of a large classroom, we had three charts on each side. Even with six people doing charts, the lines of kids seemed to never stop, and at one point, I’m sure all of us wanted to give up. Most of the kids were quite good with reading the charts after a quick explanation. So, I suppose that helped to keep us going to the end, which was around 2:30 PM.

The trouble came when we handed out our first pair of sunglasses. Seeing how “cool” people looked with sunglasses, students started being very clever of making it known that their eyes “really hurt” when they were in the sun. Thus, we had to be pretty cautious to find the frauds.

After some rest time eating some Ghana crackers and drinking Guiness Malta, which is a bottled beverage that almost tastes like Frosted Flakes, we headed back to the house to relax after a long day. Most of the team went to a bar to have a couple drinks, while I spent some time in Mariam Hotel for internet. I came back to seeing Marti and Dr. Wanye chatting in the living room. Good thing Marti was there or the Dr. would have come to an empty house. We talked about various things, including how he got his car from Virginia (off a really rich guy that wanted to get rid of his Jeep. Apparently, it’s only about $2k to ship a car from the US to Ghana by boat), some interesting Russian cuisine (since he has a Russian wife), some more tidbits about Unite for Sight and how we’re essential to the organization, etc. The rest of the team came back 30 minutes after the doctor took his leave. Dinner was white rice with a rich Ghanaian tomato sauce (which everyone has developed quite a great liking to), Fried Chicken, and some veggies. That ends today.