This week’s image is from the time when I spent a year in Ghana with the Red Cross just after I graduated from secondary school. While I worked for both a local NGO caring for disadvantaged children and a primary and junior high school, most of my time was spent teaching ICT at the school. The computer lab was located on the same courtyard as the school’s kindergarten/preschool so I often had children come running into the lab and in between lessons I sometimes sat on the porch and chatted with the teachers.

I took this image on a February morning when the heat of the dry season had led the preschool teachers to move their activities out into the shade of the airy porch. Together with the children they read a storybook on a mischievous crow. Looking at the text now all I can remember of Twi/Fante is that ‘nsu’ means water (which matches the picture) and ‘nkakrankakra’ is probably onomatopoeic for the croaking of the crow.

I have a colour version of this image in the Ghana gallery in my portfolio but since Google made their Nik suite of software free about a month ago I have gone through some of my old images and given them a re-edit. It is a bit of a counterintuitive step with this image considering the vibrant colours of the storybook in the original, but I still liked the result.

Taken with the Pentax K-r and DA L 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 kit lens at f/4.5, 1/400th sec. and ISO 400 at 40 mm. Edited in Lightroom 6 and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.