A Visit to Asempaneye
The school’s setting has great contrasts. On one hand, there is the Mensah Kumta Village, a modern community with state of the art facilities, including the International School of Ahafo, and on another, just outside the camp gates, there is the authentic Africa with villages, people and experiences very different from the ones we are used to. Undoubtedly, there is so much to learn out there and the school tries as much as possible to foster out-of-classroom learning by tapping into the tremendous benefits of field trips.
To this end, a group of Year 5 & 6 Class (Gye Nyame) students, a parent and their class teacher, visited the Asempaneye Village on 24th April 2018 as part of the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) unit on Settlements. Asempaneye is a small farming community which is located some 20 minutes’ drive away from Kenyasi.
The first lesson we had to learn was Ghanaian cultural etiquette on greeting elders. We learnt to always greet people from right to left and always with our right hand. This order must be followed, regardless of the age, gender or status of the people you are greeting. Once we had passed this test, the elders also reciprocated the gesture and welcomed us formally to Asempaneye. Thereafter, we had an opportunity to interact with the elders of Asempaneye and to learn a lot about the history, acommodation and life in Asempaneye.
The highlight of the trip was the short experience of life in a typical village. The children walked around, played with the children, fetched water from a borehole amd helped a farmer who was drying cocoa beans. They even came close to feeding a turkey and poking the fire in a traditional tripod stove.
A very kind cocoa farmer also demonstrated weeding to us and gave us some ripe cocoa pods to bring back to school.
We will not forget all the children who came out to interact with us and are currently exploring opportunities for community service with the school. They gave us a slice of the proverbial Ghanaian hospitality. We are grateful to the elders of Asempaneye and all who helped in diverse ways towards a successful trip.
