For Ghanaian school teacher, Prince Asante, going back to work on Monday was a huge relief after being out of a job for nearly a year, sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic.
He told AFP: “It was really difficult for me to survive.”
“I became an Uber driver and on weekends I helped my wife with her small business selling clothes to survive. Things were not easy.”
The West African country introduced a lockdown and closed schools in March after the first confirmed COVID-19 case in sub-Saharan Africa was confirmed in neighbouring Nigeria and eventually spread to Ghana.
In the coastal capital Accra, the lockdown was lifted in April but strict measures to help contain the spread of the virus remained in place.
After a 10-month closure, children wearing face masks flocked to the gates of Asante’s Christ Vision School with mini hand-sanitisers attached to their school bags.
“I’m happy to see my friends but I’m scared. We can’t do most of the things we used to do anymore. I doubt school will be fun like it used to be,” said primary school student Anita Gyampo.
Despite mixed feelings, many are glad the days of homeschooling and virtual classes are over — for the time being.
“We had virtual classes through Zoom but it wasn’t effective. Sometimes I waited for over 20 minutes without hearing or seeing anything on the screen,” secondary school student Andrews Lomotey said.
“My parents didn’t always have money to buy data for online class. Thank God I can now learn while taking safety precautions,” said another secondary school student, Emefa Dzakpata.
Schools and universities closed around the world but a report by UNESCO, Unicef and the World Bank published in October found that children’s education in countries like Ghana were more severely affected.
“Schoolchildren in low-and lower-middle income countries were the least likely to access remote learning, the least likely to be monitored on their learning loss, the most likely to have delays to their schools reopening and the most likely to attend schools with inadequate resources to ensure safe operations,” the UN children’s agency said in a statement.