Hitting speed bumps

The roads in Ghana are bad. Really bad in comparison to those back home. They are riddled with potholes and used by drunks and tro-tro drivers who are always in a hurry to get somewhere. This results in a lot of deadly accidents so the government has started a new awareness campaign where they post large billboards advertising the vehicle accident death tolls of the previous year to try and persuade drivers to be more cautious. Cities have also taken action by installing patches of speed bumps, 5 or 6 in a row, along all of the main roads that run through heavily populated areas. Hitting these speed bumps in a fast moving, old vehicle hurts and usually the vehicle bottoms out. I wouldn't say it makes cars drive much more slowly though.
I have been hitting my own speed bumps lately. As lovely as Ghana is, there are a few things that have really started getting to me, especially at placement. The violence and lack of respect for authority at the school is ridiculous. I have witnessed students beating students, students hitting teachers, and students verbally insulting teachers. While this was tolerable with the knowledge that my students are becoming pretty manageable with the new "good behaviour" guidelines, we had an incident at the school last week that really threw me off course. On this particular day my teacher was the only one in her classroom. The others had gone off to waste more of their students' time and left their classrooms unattended. At one point a student came into my class to get the teacher for something but she quickly returned. Myself and another volunteer were teaching math when we heard screams outside. We ran out to see a little girl (maybe seven years old) lying on the ground while she was beaten by a ring of boys. They were punching, kicking, and whipping her with their belts. The other volunteer grabbed the girl while I pulled three of the biggest boys off to the side to discipline them. When I went to talk to my teacher about it she just shook her head. She said the little girl had been caught in one of the empty classrooms having sex with one of the boys. My teacher had stopped them but after she left the students started to taunt and beat the girl. She said this is common. What made things worse is that the boy involved was 15 years old. They weren't having sex, he was raping her. And then she was beat for it. She had absolutely no idea what was going on. She was so petrified and confused. It absolutely broke my heart. I was shaking in rage. My teacher assured me that the staff would deal with it and offer counseling to the girl. I didn't believe a word of it.
Yesterday nothing had been done about it yet, so I went to report the issue to the headmaster. He claimed he had no prior knowledge of the event and called my teacher in to explain what happened. He asked her to speak with the assistant headmaster and then organize a staff meeting with the students involved to deal with the issue. On the way back to my classroom I had to break up a fist fight between two students in a new volunteer's classroom. One of the fighters was the boy who raped the little girl. While I attempted to haul him out of the classroom he just flopped on the ground and smiled up at me. I felt so sick to my stomach. I called another teacher in to deal with him. The teacher simply looked at the boy then looked back at me and said "He won't do it again", then smiled. I stormed out. In my classroom I just started crying. I don't know how to help these kids. They are surrounded by bullying peers and teachers who don't give a shit. They want to learn so badly, but the environment here is poisoning them.
I'm taking a couple days off placement to sort things out. Today I helped build a school in a small community and tomorrow I am climbing Mount Afadjato. Hopefully I will be able to climb the mountain at Gbi Special School too. Wish me luck.