Munganga Secondary School and Tamsalu Gymnasium have a long history of partnership. As the latest activity, NGO Mondo volunteer in Kenya and Uganda Olle Kaidro and WEFOCO school coordinator Sophia Malaha organised a fun workshop for Munganga pupils and Anne Kraubner from Tamsalu gather her students to discover the pictures sent!
Step one – Receiving letters from Tamsalu’s students
Step two – Answering to Estonian partner school
Step three – Receiving letters from Munganga’s students
Hello! We are St. Stephen’s Eshiakhulo Secondary School in Kenya. Our WILD Nature activities involved groupwork around two tasks – messages of plants and making dolls with reused materials and natural materials. All students could work on the project they liked!
We hope our partner school, Toila Gymnasium will see them and organize their project work around the same topic.
Here you can see the pictures we draw. The most important plants in our nature are sugar cane and lemon tree with local importance and coffee tree as an international export article.
The second group worked on making dolls. We used materials that we could easily find – plastic bags, seeds, plant fibers. It was really fun to get creative and make something with our hands! The ready-made dolls we brought to our younger siblings.
You can see the process from these pictures:
One group got very artistic with their poster while using the colors of Kenyan national flag!One group got very artistic with their poster while using the colors of Kenyan national flag!
One group got very artistic with their poster while using the colors of Kenyan national flag!
On December 2nd 2015 Zopeliga Primary School teachers along with form 5 and 6 students organized a food day at their school. They prepared two foods: ngbegira (beans cakes) and tentaareh (chips from beans flour).
The first dish was Ngebegira. The ingredients needed to prepare this dish were the following: cowbeans (soaked overnight), water, sheabutter, onions, saltbitter and pepper.
The soaked beans were ground and then saltbitter was added to it. The children rolled small cakes out of the dough and put them to cook on clean grass on top of boiling water. The cooking took place over hot steam for about 20 minutes.
Until the cakes were cooking, the students prepared the sauce: melted and heated sheabutter mixed with small slices of onion. The natural taste of sheabutter and onion did not need any other spices added to it.
Once the cakes and the sauce was ready the cake should be dipped into additional pepper (if needed, spices up the taste) and the sauce and it is ready for savoring!
Take a loot at the whole process explained by Zopeliga’s students.
Before the students started the second dish we had a nice talk about food: the students introduced themselves, explained who cooks at home, what they like to eat in general. The discussion was interesting and took place outdoors, hence you can hear the Harmattan winds blowing and how the nature has tried up.
The second dish, tentaareh was unfamiliar for many teachers too, the dish originally comes from Zuarungu area between Kongo village and Bolgatanga town. For this food the students used ready made beans flour that they mixed with salt and water. The paste was smeared on a then placed again inside a pot with clean grass and boiling water. The cooking process was similar to ngbegira, they used hot steam, but the cooking was a lot faster. The cooked dish was then scraped from the walls of the calabash with a spoon and could be eaten as a side dish for dinner or as lunch.
The Zopeliga cooking event was as success not only because the students could show their skills and teach them to the Estonian volunteer who could then in return try to prepare it at home with Estonian students, but local teachers also learned more about their own culture. Both teacher Alice and Mary were positively surprised and wanted to cook it also for their own children.
The primary school class 5 students from Miina Härma Gümnaasium draw pictures of their school lunch and sent them with two Estonian ladies to Kongo, Ghana for a display at Kongo Primary School.
The Mondo teacher John Bire organised the exhibition on 15th of December 2015. But first the pupils had to discover from the pictures the items of food that are common for both Estonian and Ghanaian students like chicken, tomatoes, cucumber, bread and carrots. But there was also a lot to discover for Kongo students: beloved fruits like cherries were even unknown for the teacher. Another aspect the pupils found bizarre was the fact that most Estonian students drink milk with their lunch.
Kongo Primary school is one of the lucky schools that benefits from the national school feeding programme. Not all schools and students have this luxury. When you take a look at the poster, notice also the section dedicated for hygiene in the lower left section and how all of the family is involved in the process: father is farming, mother is cooking and children are happily in school!
Take a look at the menu and go check what foods were banku and okro! Also compare the menu with yours at school and to the recommended food pyramid.
Estonian pupils are eager to receive replies to discover more in detail the Ghanaian food!
Logre Primary School’s headteacher Solomon and Mondo teacher Prosper decided to organize the food project one day before the annual Farmer’s day. This is a public holiday in Ghana and celebrated every first Friday in December, this year on 4th of December.
The tradition of celebrating this day and started in 1986 as a recognition of the important role farmers and fishermen play in the national economy. During that period, agriculture formed about 30%, one third of the country’s GDP. Two consecutive years prior to the first Farmer’s Day celebration, the country had suffered severe drought and wild bush fires, so the agricultural sector needed a boost of moral. So the second purpose the government had was to encourage and motivate the farmers to produce more. (GraphicOnline)
This day is a vacation day for all workers and the whole public sector, a day off to enjoy literally the fruits of their own input. The best farmers and fishermen are nominated for prizes and they receive high recognition. The first best farmer received two machetes, a pair of Wellington boots and a preset radio (GraphicOnline), but nowadays the prizes are bigger and bigger. In 2015 the winner was entitled to a house and also took home a huge sum of money, a laptop and a car (Ghanaweb).
Every year the celebrations take place in a different region and city. This year it was special, because the 31st National Farmers’ Day celebration took place in Upper East region (UER) in Bolgatanga which is the closest bigger city to Kongo village. The theme of 2015 was Transform Ghana – Invest in Agriculture and almost 78 people were honored altogether (Ghanaweb). Bolgatanga is the town where Solomon lives and all Kongo was talking about the big event. The prominent people and elders were all invited to attend the celebrations.
The positive side of having the event carried out in Bolga was that the whole country turned their eyes towards their region. Upper East is the poorest of regions where the nature is the most severe and the famine and lack of education is the most prominent. However this was their occasion to show the hospitality of the locals and their warm hearts and positive assets.
The UER exposed the people of coming in to the agricultural potentials of the region and farmers got well informed about the eco-system, soil types as well as the weather and climatic conditions of the region. The winner of 2015 pointed out the hospitable nature of the people commending them for their religious tolerance. (GraphicOnline) This is one of the aspects one could really feel coming to Bolga, Kongo or Logre site.
The period that Logre organized their food project was already the Harmattan season. The most flourishing rainy season came to end at the end of October, in November the surrounding sites started to dry up. In December it is when the crops really start to lack and the famine sets in.
The Harmattan is a dry, dusty strong wind that blows from the Sahara from December to February. It appears like fog but it is dust and the dust is so dense that it covers the sun. Some people could even describe it as pleasant because the small particles of sand dims down the heat coming from the sun. But for the locals it causes problems from drying the land completely to drying themselves: skins starts cracking and people suffer from occasional and sudden nose bleeds. Shea butter is the best moisturizer for dried skin and lips. (Easytrackgahan) Remind yourself how Sekoti Primary School prepared shea butter last year.
In 2015 the Harmattan started to unusually early.This is one of the consequences of the climate change. The result? The farmers are fearing that the Harmattan could dry up cocoa seedlings but Ghana is one of the two biggest cocoa producers in the world.
So due to Harmattan, it was rather difficult for the school to organize a preparing of the food or show the harvesting. They idea was to show the readers of the foodblog the local culture through some farming songs. The first step is that the group headed to the garden of the PTA chairman Mister Naab Dok. His family was planting pito (vegetable used not only to produce local alcoholic drink but the leaves are also used as vegetable in soups and stews) and tomatoes, even his smallest children were at the site with parents.
The garden was small but lovely, the had used millet sticks to fence it and protect from wild animals. On the way there we could really feel the Harmattan blowing. The headteacher was even about to cancel the event in fear of having bad audio quality and visibility. We still carried the project out in order to honor the preparation work the pupils had done but sorry for any inconvenience the sound may cause. Still, the picture depicts well the seasonal aspects.
The pupils were grouped by their duties, some of them were planting, some carrying water and watering, some accompanied with singing to keep up the good moral and the rhythm. Afterwards the group came together and started dancing to celebrate the end of work.
The headteacher translated the songs sung by the children. They were manly about honoring the works the parents do (the parts of all the participating pupils are farmers). Children need to respect the family and help out with farming activities. Sadly, it often implies skipping school for days do to the planting or the harvesting. Still, having food on the table is the second most important thing to survive after having clean water to drink.
As in the Northern part of Ghana the farming can only been done when the water is present, during the rainy season, parents are looking out for alternative ways of providing for their families. So the often crack stones or go mining gold to earn their living. The translations of the songs and the seasonal aspect of farming is also explained by the headteacher.
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