Oh hello there! Today was another busy, but amazing, day filled with many, many, exciting patient assessment and treatment sessions. We continued our therapeutic strategies with patients who had returned from yesterday and developed new strategies and assessment tools for the unique cases we saw. One case worth mentioning was an adolescent patient with an unilateral vocal fold paresis who had immediate success utilizing the various techniques we taught him!
While the groups continued to evaluate and treat patients, Dr. Crowley and 2 students attended the opening of the Stroke Unit at Korle Bu. They were included in the meeting to introduce themselves and provide any useful information to the intramural team. They also were able to view the renovated building (which looks amazing!) that began in 2009.
After we completed the sessions, we went to the Dean’s House for lunch accompanied by HALF of the SLPs in Ghana (Albert, Clement, Josephine, and Nana). Clement and Josephine revealed their experiences of becoming SLPs, while studying in the UK and returning back home to Ghana.
Then it was off to the Accra Market, where we all bought elegant kente and batik fabric. On the way home from the market, the lovely George discussed the Ghanaian flag, the colors and their significance: green (the land and its vegetation); yellow (the gold); red (the blood of the forefathers); and black (signifies Ghanaian wishes to become the “star” of Africa, and has ties to being the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence).
Until tomorrow!
Thanks to Melissa Roth and Henry Gordon for the post.
This morning we left Sunyani for Accra to visit and work in the largest hospital in all of Ghana. After landing in Accra we immediately boarded the bus and headed straight to the only mall in Ghana to refresh our snack supply. We headed to Korle Bu Teaching Hospital to provide speech and language therapy to both adults and children.
Today was an exciting day! We headed to Korle Bu Hospital bright and early and immediately started seeing patients. We saw many new and some old faces as some of our previous patients came back for a second or even third day of therapy. Throughout the day we continued to work with patients with autism, language delay, articulation disorder, hearing impairments, vocal fold paresis, and patients who have suffered from a stroke.
Today was the third and final day of our 3-day Professional Development Retreat. All teachers who attended the retreat received a certificate and a bag of materials/supplies donated by us TC students and our friends and families. From the teacher surveys, we were all excited to find that most teachers found all of our talks and activities over the weekend to be tremendously helpful and beneficial to their students! Many teachers were eager to make AAC market cards, name tags for students, communication passports, and community request cards, and all were even more eager to implement the materials in the classrooms. We were truly grateful to have had this wonderful learning and sharing experience with the brilliant teachers who care so deeply for their students.
As our Professional Development weekend continued, we later presented on various strategies such as how to incorporate the use of a daily schedule and calendar within the morning routine in the classroom. It was awesome to hear how teachers have been using these in their classrooms. Some added physical movements to their “Days of the Week” song and displayed their own hand drawn daily schedules!
After the 10 hour transatlantic flight and a 4 hour bus ride, we have arrived! Our first days in Ghana have already been filled with learning and a range of cultural experiences. We rang in the New Year in a country new to most of our group by attending a local church service where Dr. Crowley spoke about the purpose of our trip and our work. We also got to unexpectedly share in the celebration of a young man’s completion of his apprenticeship by participating with his family and friends in pouring baby powder on him, and joining in a drum and dance circle on the beach that we drove past.
En route to Sunyani for our Professional Development Retreat weekend, we made a few stops and learned some more about Ghanaian culture and history. First we stopped to see some coffins on the side of the road. Sounds bizarre right?! Well not in Ghana! In Ghana, funerals are a celebration and the coffins reflect that! For example, if a man spends his life as a priest he may be buried in a coffin that is shaped as a bible, or if he spends his life as a farmer he may be buried in a coffin that looks like a piece of corn. We were able to see a few examples of such coffins and it really was a cool insight into the Ghanaian culture. Then we stopped at Ancestral River Park which is where the slaves took their last bath before they were moved to the slave forts and then later sold. It was so moving to see this place that has now become a museum.
Today we got to choose what we wanted to do for the morning at Korle Bu. Some of our group headed to the Children’s Ward where we played, read, colored, and just tried to have fun with the children who had bandages on different parts of their bodies due to burns and other complications. A 3-year old child named Janice was coloring a picture with her bandaged hand and identified each color of crayon she used. We noticed that she produced /s/ as /θ/ so we had an opportunity to work on her articulation. We practiced producing /s/ by telling her to “trap the snake in the cage,” meaning keep her tongue behind her teeth to produce the sound. The patient from yesterday’s cleft palate operation was also there. She seemed to be doing well; she had an IV but her parents were giving her water orally, which was a good sign that she was recovering well.
