Smile

Photo credit to Jacob.

We had the new benches made just in time. When Jacob and I arrived at the office Wednesday morning we found a mob of SHS 1 students, all arrived a day or two before they were due to pay fees at their new schools. I don’t know how many students we ran through, but we laid out around 9000 GHC in school fees.

This is the big crunch for the organization, the time of year when the office always has at least one person waiting in the foyer. Samson and Benedicta skip lunch. We improvise, lining up students, scrawling names on pieces of scrap paper and holding them up for database photos, associating names with faces. It’s easy to confuse them. Seems like everyone has the same haircut.

Ran out of ink in our whiteboard marker. Ran out of space on the camera. Ran out of the office to grab water for twentysomething people.

Today we’re picking up the bits and pieces. Everyone we couldn’t get to yesterday comes back. The photos are all processed. I’ll pick out a couple of students to interview, good talkers with a bit of energy.

Entering girls into the database, taking down names that I still don’t hear right the first time – could you spell that? Trying new ways to make them laugh, or relax, loosen up. Interview technique. Learned the dagbani word for smile – it’s lama. I think they’re only smiling because I make such a mess of the word. But a smile’s a smile so I can play it up a bit and get what I need. Everyone I meet here is someone who’ll talk a bit more when we roll by the schools in a week or so, collecting interviews. Everyone who smiles here opens up a little more next time.