For all the schools in Ghana that run the international curriculum, the long vacation is here…finally!!! The 2021/22 academic year is over for the next 8 weeks; so that all of July and August, all thoughts of school and schoolwork are banished. Or aren’t they?! Well, what’s for certain is this: there will definitely be no need to wake up at dawn (literally) to get ready for school.
Yes, let’s heave a collective sigh of relief for just that!!! There are 12 months in a year, divide that by 4 and that gives us 3 months a piece, making it four quarters in a year. Follow me…there are 3 terms in an academic year; each of those terms is made up of approximately 12 weeks, bringing the total number of weeks we are in school to 36.
And there are 52 weeks (average) in a year – deduct the school weeks from this and we have 16 weeks remaining, out of which 8 are for this long vacation and the remainder 8 will be spread over midterms and public holidays, I estimate. What’s my point? 8 weeks is a lot of time for anyone to have and not plan it out well, won’t you agree? I hear my nieces and nephews go: “N-O for NO”, in jest, even if it’s half-hearted.
As the saying goes, the devil finds work for idle hands (surely, you must have heard this expression) so we must stay active or busy to stave off the devil (whatever shape it comes – be it eating till we can’t fit into our clothes anymore, or sleeping ourselves into a state of lethargy).
With so much time on our tweenage hands, exactly what can we do with our time that’ll be a) worth our while b) make the world a better place? Let’s see if I can help out with a few suggestions:
Life skills
I do consider almost anything one can learn from – outside the classroom – a life skill; life skills are those that you need to have to live or participate fully in an everyday life, loosely translated.
Language: there are over 7,000 spoken languages in the world today, out of which Ghana has between 60 and 80 languages (depending on which source you find), excluding English. Now, that’s a lot of languages – I agree – and I’m not about to suggest that you learn them all, but to speak just the one language out of the lot (either local or international) limiting your horizon. Take up another language during this long vacation and do your best to master it. For Ghanaian languages, I say start with your own – you live with your parents/guardians with house keepers who speak at least one other Ghanaian language in addition to the ubiquitous (and official) English.
Food: I thought I didn’t like cooking when I was growing up…too much work, I’d say! I have come to learn that I actually detest washing dishes, and rather love cooking. For the number of years that I was away from home, studying and working abroad, I thanked my lucky stars for learning how to cook because while it saved me from eating out every day, it also became the glue that bonded my school and work colleagues. Ghanaian foods, if you can cook them well, are a hit among any international audience you find – it can be a conversation starter as well. Learn how to cook basic foods you can survive on – boiled rice, tomato stew, chicken soup, boiled/fried yam/plantain, fried or boiled egg. Trust me, you will be doing yourself a world of good knowing how to feed yourself and friends when the need arises, which is every day.
Sew far sew good: when the button on your shirt comes off, what do you do with the shirt? Discard it? And if the seam on the bottom of your favourite shirt or dress comes undone, do you take it to your mom and leave her to magically fix it? Right…when your mom or whomever fixes it for you is no more available, what would you do? Ever pictured that? Finding somewhere to learn how to sew shouldn’t be hard; head to your mom – we usually have our clothes made by seamstresses and designers. You can spend a day or two in a week there to learn the basics, and who’s to say you could be unearthing a hidden talent even you didn’t know you had! Find something to learn this vacation that will enhance your life, and enjoy the process. Oh, and bonnes vacances!
