My name is Brigitte Schraut. I am 48 years old and had the chance to get to know the Midnight Sun School in Langbinsi and the Bindifrim family with Sabine and Jonas. This enabled me to realize a long-held dream.

Inspired by stories and letters from my great aunt, who worked for years as a nun in a school in Zimbabwe, I always wanted to experience “real” life in Africa. When Sabine told me at a class reunion about her possible trip to Langbinsi, I quickly decided to accompany her.

Thanks to the very open and friendly nature of our host family, we got there quickly. Our first stop was the school. It was Sunday and everything was empty and deserted, so we had the opportunity to explore everything in detail and were amazed to see how much had happened in the 2 years since construction began.

School started on Monday. After hesitant observations from the children and from us, we quickly became closer and were always greeted with a friendly “hello munzinga (white woman), how are you?” everywhere. It only took 1-2 days and the whole village knew we were there.
The basic equipment for a schoolchild here consists of 1 notebook and 1 pencil. The question for us was how we could store the many colored pencils, wax crayons, etc. that we had with us. We quickly realized that we had to adapt to the circumstances and build on the experience of the teachers. The students quickly learned to use the new selection of colors and were very enthusiastic about painting pictures. We were very happy that the colored pencils now make it possible to fulfill the curriculum and to bring a little more color into the children’s lives.
The children sat on school benches that were connected to the tables. I was very familiar with these from my father’s stories and from old school buildings. I often had to think back to my father’s stories about school and noticed many similarities with school life here in Langbinsi.
Although I don’t have much experience with children, I felt very comfortable at school and in the company of so many children. I was enthusiastic about the kindergarten, where the children sang all day and learned English in a playful way.
It was also a completely new experience for me to be able to achieve so much with very few resources. This was evident during lessons, but also when we built the wall that we built around the school grounds. Using only a shovel and manual labor, the concrete was mixed, stones were produced and a wall was built from them. All without electricity or machine assistance. It was physically demanding, a bit time-consuming, but very interesting that you can get by without much resources.

That is also the conclusion of this stay in Ghana for me: it is nice to know that you can get by with very few resources. This trip made me realize how unimportant some things are and that it is extremely important to give the children here a chance to develop further and lead an independent and good life in Ghana. This can only be achieved with a good education and we can support this with limited resources and a little personal commitment.

I will remember these 4 weeks in Ghana for a long time and am happy that I was able to have this experience.