The Creche

Before I walk down the street where the daycare center for Street Girls Aid sits, I pause and take an exaggerated deep breath. I pat down my uniform, a dirty pair of pants and a t-shirt that will never see America again, and transfer everything from my pockets (which the children’s curious hands can’t help but reach into) to my backpack. However, the desire not to get violently ill compels me to keep the all-important, life-saving hand-sanitizer close to me at all times. I have to maneuver around the scattered Muslims who are sprawled out on mats facing Mecca outside the neighboring Mosque to reach the gate of the center, the narrow alley amplifying the screams of children playing and crying amidst the rusty slides, the metal swings without a seat, and the bare foundation of a teeter-totter that neither teets nor tots.

The crèche usually cares for 140 children each day and unfailingly half of those kids will attack me on all fronts as they greet me and fight for one of my hands to hold on too. The trick here is to keep moving. A high five here, a ‘hello’ there, and a couple consoling pats on the head to the ones who are crying and make it to higher ground…fast. My first day I made the nearly fatal mistake of kneeling down to the children’s level and start to play with them a little. The kids tackled me and I found myself drowning in a cesspool of snot and tears. No matter what, I end up walking across the playground with a child grasped to each finger and two timidly clasping the back of my shirt following my every move.

Admittedly, I have not learned most of the children’s names, but I have given them my own endearing names. Clutchy is like a trained predator who will find me wherever I am in the crèche and when he finds me he will never-ever let go. This usually does not fair well with Ms. Territorial who will fight Cluthy or anyone else who reaches for my hand. I always keep an eye out for Crabby. Crabby is not a grumpy kid rather he runs after me in a crablike motion, clasping his thumb and fingers together in a pinching fashion, and repeatedly chomps his teeth together as he fearlessly jumps into me for the quick thrill of being placed back on the ground or to annoyingly use his pinchers to entangle himself in my shirt. Crabby is like a wind up toy and I’ve found if you lay him on his back the impulse to be a menace will diminish and he will just tire himself out until the next sight of me winds him back up again. Cutie will always greet me with a big smile and a hug while Sherry will customarily offer all the other children her snacks. Precarious likes to worry me by balancing on the jungle gym on one foot and copycat… well she never gets tired of pretending she’s a kitten. And then there is the sad pack. This group has a few regulars but generally varies by the day. You are considered a proud member of the sad pack if you cry when you are outside a 3 foot radius of me and consequently I am the Grand Marshall of a never ending parade of whimpering and wailing.

Assembly time marks the formal beginning to the day and it also allows me ample time to reflect on my inability to dance. Everyone will congregate in front of a drum and we will sing songs to bring in the new day. It usually culminates with the drummer bringing her beat over to me and another attendant grabbing Clutchy off my shirt for me to showcase my moves. Everyone seems to enjoy that a whole lot and I am left contemplating how the little kids who can’t cross the playground without falling on their face can dance so much better than me.

Formal class then ensues and I transform into “Teacher Brian”. I work in a small classroom with lots of 4 & 5 year olds, with few resources, and the inability to speak the student’s language. I work alongside Teacher Mary who has the remarkable ability to be really sweet and terrify you all at the same time. Corporal punishment is definitely in vogue these days in Ghana and its prominence has imparted me with a notion of utter helplessness marked by the inability to stop the pattern of abuse and my own ability to discipline the children. I watch parents beat their children as they drop them off at the crèche and then I watch parents slap other children as they leave. In class, Mary threatens “shut up or I’ll beat/cane you” so frequently that by the end of the day it is no longer comes across as threats rather a tired inevitability. The children have realized that I am not going to hit them and accordingly treat me with the same amount of respect I showed my teachers growing up. D’OH!

After class the staff (including me) help prepare the children’s meals. During this time the favorite topic of conversation is my marriage. This uncomfortable subject manner is exacerbated by the fact that one of my colleagues is, well… stalking me. At first, I accepted the repeated calling and prodding questions as harmless social differences but the invitations to her daughters birthday party and her insistence on taking me out ever night has become a little excessive. So when the nurse walks in and says “you’re so handsome one of these girls should marry you” I grit my teeth and curse the vile woman under my breath. The other favorite pastime of lunchtime is encouraging me to eat inhumane portions of food. Not finishing my plate is a sign of weakness and to a certain extent disrespect, so I always end up eating portions that would make Andre the Giant think, ‘I better not’. Today was rice with pallava sauce (cooked yam leaves) and a piece of an unidentifiable fish. After thirty minutes of continuous eating I was visibly sweating and holding back tears of pain but I was encouraged by the noticeable dent I had made in the trough that I was feeding out of. Then, that damn nurse snuck up behind me to mercilessly add another bowl of rice to my portion telling me “you better keep eating so you can be big and strong for your new wife” D’OH D’OH!

Soon all the children slip into happy little food comas and they sleep, ten to a mat, on the classroom floor. After they wake up parent’s begin to pick up the children or astonishingly, the pre-schoolers are allowed to leave by themselves if they know their way home. I don’t mean to sound cynical about my work because the crèches that S.Aid has set up (totaling six servicing over 750 kids) are, quite frankly, saving lives. Most of the children at the center where I work live in one-room wooden structures in shanty towns and their parents work long hours for a minute allowance. During field work I have seen the dismal alternative to the crèche. Mothers will pay 4,000 cedis (about 40 cents) a day to have their children looked over by ‘minders’. A one-room wooden structure with no windows, no lights, and no stimulation houses dozens of these unfortunate kids who will peak their heads out of a narrow doorway to stare at you with their glossy eyes and reveal their perceptibly malnourished bodies. Each crèche of S.Aid contains a resident nurse who monitors the growth of the children and provides them with proper medical care should they fall ill. The children are also fed two nutritious meals and a snack each day.

I’ve still been trying to discover my niche at the crèche. Two days of the week I work at a house of refuge for pregnant street girls (worthy of its own blog entry) and am accomplishing more sustainable work like the development of a website for the organization and a curriculum for their literacy and health classes. Whether it be circumstantial (only 7 adults attending to 140 children) or societal, the adults at the crèche are mainly there to discipline the children and their interaction with the kids manifests in shouts and occasionally hitting creating an atmosphere of ‘every-child-for-themselves’. The children themselves are abnormally aggressive. I’ve discovered that what I can offer them is reassurance of their well being when they fall down and consoling when they start to cry. I can tie their shoes when they fall off and congratulate them with a high-five or offer them some security from a tormentor. What these kids seem to need most is love and dependability and hopefully I can fill in a small part of this void. If not, I’ve still become pretty successful at teaching them funny faces and farting noises!