Triple Helix

One of many cell phone towers in Kumasi stands by the road.

Tonight is our last night in Kumasi. We’ve accomplished and learned a great deal, but it is obvious that this is just the beginning. We brought a SMS condom-finding service, thinking that there was a problem of information, not acceptance. We now realize that most people know where the condoms are, (and those places are close-by) but the stigma and anxiety over purchasing a condom is a major deterrent. We will not be installing the SMS system before we leave, but will use it as a starting point for continued research.
We must now look for ways to 1) reduce the stigma surrounding condom purchasing and usage. By incorporating regular condom use within a culturally-informed ad campaign that uses well-known local symbols, we aim to change popular perceptions about what it means to use a condom. 2) We must provide a way to make condom purchasing less intimidating by providing anonymity and convenience. We hope to achieve this by setting up condom vending machines in private places. To be sure, we do not want to drive condom purchasing into the shadows- rather we want to make it easier to purchase condoms using a variety of methods that have differing levels of human interaction and publicity. This also opens up opportunities for social entrepreneurship (managing vending machines)

In working with the students at the Ayeduasse school, it occurred to me that their work with our software would be much easier and much less frustrating if they were using mice instead of the track pads. I mentioned this to Ron and he thought it was a good idea and today, finally we were able to fit the time in to make the trip to the market and purchase them. The shop we went to was very reasonable in price – Enoch had suggested that between 7 and 10 cedis should be the price and the store charged us 8 cedis. Being at the low end of the range we accepted the price and a few minutes later we departed with 10 brand new mice, still in their boxes for the school. In addition we also picked up 2 usb keyboards because two of the machines at the school have stuck keys. It seemed that this was the easy low tech way of fixing them – rather than ordering replacement keyboards from the US and then having to figure out how to make the installation.

The market is quite a place. So many people and so many small shops – it’s like a huge flea market in the US except that this is really the only place people have to go to do their shopping. No big box stores (thankfully) just small shops. It’s something to consider how many people are currently making some sort of a living off of selling whatever merchandise that would easily be handled by one super center. At a stroke, many thousands would be destitute if a big box store came to town.

After picking up the computer mice and keyboards, we went to the Ghana cultural center. and took a tour of the museum there. We learned about the Asante kings and the artifacts that he museum has on hand. I was also able to pick up a book on Adinkra that very nicely explains all of the different symbols. I am certain this will come in handy as we work to create an Adinkra site that includes the cultural aspect of the symbols as well as a CSDT that students will be able to use to make Adinkra symbols that will simultaneously teach the math concepts in the shapes.

Back at the Guest house, both Gyasi and Enoch had a meeting with us about how they thought things went over the past week and a half. I was already pretty confident that they felt as good about the time we spent with their students as we did, and it was nice to have those feelings confirmed. Gyasi and Enoch care deeply about what they are doing and frequently encounter obstacles in their work that would not happen to us in the US. For example Enoch needs to take 4 cars to get from his home to the school – I’m not sure if that would quite be cars as in taxi’s or as in buses which they call tro-tro’s. The tro-tro’s are independently owned vans that we routinely see packed full of people on the streets here in Ghana. Either way, it is an expensive and possibly unreliable means to get back and forth to work each day sometimes resulting in Enoch spending nights at the school for lack of a car. We encouraged them to eat dinner with us and it proved to be yet another wonderful experience as we got to know them better outside of the classroom. We wished each other well, and with that our work here ended. Tomorrow we head for home.

This is our last day of work at the Ayeduase school and saying goodbye is never easy, especially this time, because we seem to have made so many good connections both with the students and the teachers. Enoch told us that the students were all wanting to know if there was going to be a class with us tomorrow, and upon hearing ‘no’ they were sad. Dan and I both feel conflicted – on the one hand we’re very pleased at some of the research results that we have obtained, and the thought of heading home to publish them excites us, but at the same time we are sad at leaving our new friends so soon. In addition I look forward to returning to my family who have been terribly neglected the past few weeks with my trip to Africa and everything that needed to be done to get to Africa.

Today we were late in arriving at the school so we jumped right into working with the Graphiti Grapher software and had the students work at creating Adinkra patterns with it. This was an enjoyable activity because it weaves local culture into learning math concepts such as graphing and the properties of lines and arcs. The students made some pretty designs and proved to be pretty adept at the software. This is the third software tool that they have used in the last 10 days and are no comfortable with figuring out the differences between them. For example, they had no problem figuring out how to save their work. The only tricky part in Graphiti Grapher is that to apply color to a shape, you need to have the ‘Group’ selected, or else you are actually applying the color to the line.

When needed to finish our work making Adinkra with enough time to conduct the post test for Kente Cloth and a half hour seemed sufficient. While the students worked on the test Dan, Isaac, and myself worked at copying all the data off of the netbooks and onto my computer for the trip back home. Once the thirty minutes were up, we began saying our goodbyes with the students. They love to get their picture taken and jump at any opportunity to do so. We took some individual photos and then assembled everyone for a group shot. After a ‘Yedasse – pa’ which is the plural form of ‘thank you (Yedasse) very much (pa)’ – from me, they were off to their next class and we were on our way back to get ready for the trip home.