This page is to contain information about my school Nkoranman Senior Secondary School (NKOSEC). NKOSEC is a senior secondary school in a rural village, Seikwa, in the Brong Ahafo region here in Ghana.
Senior secondary school (SS) is basically on par with an American high school. There are however key differences. SS is not required and students have to pay to attend. Here in Ghana West Africa most students cannot afford to pay the tuition and, typically, only complete junior secondary school (JSS) which is government supported. I get the impression that many of my students are from well-to-do families. There is also no age limit on the students in SS so some of them are older, the oldest being around my age. The material is quite ambitious being more reminiscent of junior college that high school.
Ghanaian schools operate very differently from American schools. For one thing Ghanaian time is somehow different than American time. In America people move around set schedules but here in Ghana the schedule is made around the people. So if there is a staff meeting at 10 AM it will never start on time it will start at noon or 1 PM maybe. Superficially it seams like total chaos but there is some underlying order that I have yet to understand. One thing that is clear is that the lifestyles here are very different. The daily tasks are manual labor intensive and there are many uncertainties. For example you may go to fetch water for your bath washing clothes etc. You get up at 5:30 AM then go and wait for the water to come. It may come or it may not, I may come for 20 minutes and only a few get water. This is just one example of what the Ghanaians are dealing with. The funny thing is that the Ghanaians just live with it they don't complain or do anything about it they just live with it.
