Wa School for the Deaf

I'll write this next blogpost in English, since I think it will be of particular interest to my Canadian family and friends.
While in the regional capital Wa for the regional conference on health last week, we drove by "Wa School for the Deaf". It was a big compound with quite a few houses - but it all looked very empty and non-functioning. My curiosity made me go there to check it out anyways though. -And how surprised I was! -What I visited was a well-functioning,  good-looking school with 276 deaf students of all ages. I was taken on a small tour by a very friendly headmistress, and even got to speak the small amount of ASL that I remember from my stay in Canada. -From the looks on their faces and all the big laughs, the students were quite surprised too:-) -mainly because of Kasper, the little white boy of course!
It turns out that there is a school for deaf children in all of the 10 regions in Ghana. The students accommodation is within school grounds, and they get food at the school. The cost to send a child to this school is only 6 GhanaCedis (= 4 Canadian dollars = 20 Dkr) per year for the parents. The rest is paid by the government. There are universities for the teachers to be educated at, and on top of that, many churches teach sign language. -Why that is, I never figured out. I have also noticed that the news on national tv quite often have sign-translation.
If there was something I did not expect coming to Ghana it must have been this! We even laughed a bit driving by the sign and talked about how that school most definately was not really there. Well, I'm glad I went to check it out and got a very positive surprise that day in Wa:-)