The structure that serves as a classroom for the Basic Three pupils of Anafobisi D/A KG/Primary ‘A’, a public school in the Bongo District, is more or less a shed.
The structure has only four layers of blocks forming its sides, with a lot of space left open on all four sides from the middle of the pillars upwards.
The blocks do not cover all sides. And there are cracks in them. Some of the pieces of wood used in constructing the roof framework are disintegrating. And while its floor is covered in loose stones and sand, the schoolchildren can see the sky from inside the classroom because a number of its roofing sheets are missing.
A middle-aged tourist, who caught sight of the structure some time ago while passing by the fenceless school, is quoted to have asked: “How come even a stable, where horses are kept, is better and safer than where these children learn?”
Media Without Borders learns the pupils have fewer instructional hours to spend under that shack in the rainy season between May and August. When it rains, they struggle with a torrential leakage from the top and a rainwater splash from all sides.
To avoid the familiar misery, or devastation, which mostly accompanies such weather conditions, they always take shelter in a near-congested Basic Four classroom, which is on a nearby cement block.
Currently, the Assemblyman for Anafobisi, Albert Akanmiim Agariga, is mobilising resources and leading some members of the electoral area to construct a 3-unit classroom block for the school because of the condition under which the schoolchildren learn.
When the classroom project is completed, the pupils will no longer have their lessons under that shed-like structure.
“I put together a development planning committee made up of members from the five sections of the electoral area to build a 3-unit classroom block with office accommodation and a staff common room. What we are doing now is on our own. We don’t have any support from anywhere now; it is the community themselves.
“We come out, do our communal labour, contribute our own money, buy our own food and all of that. I organised a durbar in the community and explained the rationale to the entire community and those invited. So, people started contributing seriously to it. Some have donated sand and cement. That is what we are doing now,” he told Media Without Borders on Friday.
Watch the video of the classroom below:
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana
