Tumu #2

Quite the journey to reach, Tumu is a practical town in a vast land of farms, villages and bush. Much of the town’s commerce supports agriculture or the trade passing to and from Burkina Faso. Just outside of town is the Tumu College of Education, a college that trains elementary-level teachers. The student body largely comes from these small communities across northern Ghana.  After graduating many of the new teachers will be placed by Ghana Education Service out into these same communities for their first year of teaching. This year, 2023, that job pays $167 per month.

The entrance to Tumu College of Education, Tumu, Ghana

This winter’s trip was my 5th visit to Ghana. I met quite a few college students in the city of Wa in 2018 and ‘19, a few hours’ rough drive south of Tumu. They were invariably outgoing, friendly and generous with conversation and smiles. Conversation was easy because English is a national language in Ghana, having been an English colony until 1957. This does make learning any of the numerous languages here difficult. In Tumu, of any 10 people in a room Sissale, Dagaare, Frafra and Twi will be spoken by someone or a several, but all will speak English.

I was teaching middle school math online during covid. There were enormous problems with that as everyone knows. But the one thing we all learned was how to manage our work online. And as we learned the technology for doing that work online improved immensely. In Ghana telecommunications were improving as well. Internet connections there are made through cell towers - government officials use their phones as hot spots, and a business might have a router with a SIM card connected to cell service. And the service is good. If within range, and, yes, if the electricity’s not off for maintenance or whatnot, WhatsApp calls or Zoom meetings are as good as from next door.

How this connects is: In the US, before the pandemic there was a need for academic tutors - especially in upper elementary and middle school math. Post-pandemic that need is urgent. But academic tutors or tutoring services in the US are expensive and out-of-reach for most of us. I’ve been quoting $35-50/hr as a rough cost for a math tutor. Some outfits charge more. The thought occurred to me that those affable and engaged college students I met in northern Ghana would make excellent tutors for American students. And, given the extremely low cost of living in Ghana, tutoring could both be affordable to a single parent making a wage in the US, and provide a very good income for the tutor. As others have pointed out many times, a win-win.