Inter-House Athletics and the All Vol Conference

---

---

12/14/08
It has been a couple weeks since my last post and a lot has happened in the meantime. I’ll try to cover everything yet be a brief as possible. The first major event was the inter-house athletics competition, which is better known as track and field in the US. As far as the track, equipment, and other facilities go, a picture is worth a thousand words and I took tons of pictures so you’ll have to take a look when I come home for Christmas. The track was supposedly 300 meters, but I’m not sure how accurate that is because the lanes were grooved out with machetes the week before the event. The track was on the soccer field, which I have already illustrated was a mix of dirt, rocks, long grass, and rolling hills. For the javelin the students threw bamboo poles. The long jump and high jump pits were dug out and filled with sawdust from the local carpenter shop. The most surprising thing to me was the fact that over 90% of the students competed in bare feet or with just socks on.
I was much more organized and knew what was going on this competition as a house master. I managed the house dues well and we had more than enough money to cover cost of refreshments and tent rental, unlike some of the other houses. At the end of the first day it wasn’t looking good for house 1. Overall I think we were in third place with a lot of ground to make up. In good fun some of the other house masters were talking trash but they can’t always back it up so I just said that we’ll see. Amazingly, house 1 blew everyone out of the water on the second day, and we moved into first place with one event to go. The other house master suddenly had nothing to say, and all I could ask was “what happened?” We finished strong and house 1 was named champions of inter-house athletics. Just like in the football competition we saved our best for last and came from behind on the last day to become champions. I am now regarded as the “foreign coach” and I am 2 for 2 when it comes to inter-house competitions. Being the gracious winner that I am, I let the other house masters know that talk is cheap because I always seem to win. I get along really well with a lot of the teachers and it is fun to go back and forth with each other.
Right after inter-house athletics I headed back to Bunso Cocoa College for the All Volunteer Conference. The Peace Corps conveniently timed the conference so that it would take place during the Ghana presidential election just incase violence broke out like in Kenya, although it was expected to be peaceful. The conference was held as a PEPFAR conference, which is the Presidents Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, or something close to that. The conference was 5 days so we had a number of sessions on HIV/AIDS and how we can get/use PEPFAR funding to do different projects.
The most memorable events occurred after sessions had closed for the day. On the first day of the conference a bunch of PCVs were on the soccer field throwing a football, playing frisbee, and knocking the soccer ball around. Mike, a 50+ year old volunteer that has been in Ghana for almost 5 years, jammed his finger while trying to catch the football. When he went to pick up the football he noticed that his pinky was at a 90 degree angle and the bone was sticking out of the skin. His finger wasn’t broken, but he did have a compound dislocation. Unfortunately I was playing soccer at the time so I didn’t get to see his finger. A Peace Corps SUV took him to Koforidua, the capital of the Eastern Region, and he went to 3 hospitals that didn’t have any doctors on duty cause it was the day before the election. Then he went to Accra and the doctor(s) had already gone home for the night so he had to wait until the morning to get his finger set, stitched, and braced. It only took 18 hours after the injury for him to receive treatment. Mike was in great spirits and back at the conference the next day.
One night we had Peace Corps Prom with the theme Ghana Fabulous. Despite the extremely reliable forms of communication in Ghana (sarcasm), I was not informed of that we were having a Ghana Fabulous Prom. As a result I didn’t have anything Ghanaian to wear. Luckily my roommate let me borrow a 2-yard and a Ghanaian shirt to wear. Next time I’ll make sure I’m prepared with an amazing outfit. A bunch of people have ridiculous outfits and it felt like dressing up for a college party. We had a blast and danced the night away. I have plenty of pictures so you’ll know what I’m talking about.
We also had an entertainment night where it was basically just an open mic for anyone that wanted to get on stage. A few people sang. Some of the songs were humorous and others were actually really good. One volunteer did a stand-up routine centered on being a PCV in Ghana. There were a couple interpretive dances. I participated in a funny skit about being a “real man” since it was talked about in one of the sessions at the conference.
My personal highlight was when we played an Education vs. Omnibus soccer game. Omnibus is made up of all the sectors except Education, which include SED (small enterprise development), Wat/San (water sanitation), and Environment volunteers. The Omnibus team definitely had better individual soccer players, but Education played better as a team. In the end we won 3-2 and it was a genuinely good game. It could have gone either way, but I locked it down defensively in the second half and we pulled out the win. For the first time, I didn’t get injured during the game.
In the room where we held all of our sessions there were a number of large doors that were left open to facilitate air flow. There were also a number of ceiling fans that were on full blast to move around as much hot air as possible. Fairly regularly, a sparrow would make its way into the room and would continuously fly in circles trying to find a way out. Watching these stupid birds fly around running into the walls and ceiling trying to find a perch to rest because they were so tired was funny enough, but it got better. I would say that 75% of the birds met their demise by flying into one of the ceiling fans. The first time it happened it caught everyone totally off guard. I was luck enough to see the second bird get swatted by the ceiling fan into a large projector screen that was set up for powerpoints. One bird landed on the lap of a PCV sitting 2 seats away from me. I think a total of 4 birds were eliminated from the gene pool this past week. I think it was a perfect example of Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory.
We also had a change in Country Director during the conference. Everyone really liked the old CD, but we got to hang out with the new CD quite a bit and he seems like a real good guy. The election was pretty peaceful for the most part. The presidential election in Ghana is conducted by simply counting the popular vote like a real democracy. There were a few minor skirmishes, but nothing serious. In the Ghana Constitution it states that for a candidate to win the presidential election he must have 50% plus 1 vote of the popular vote. I don’t know why they don’t just say more than 50%, but that’s beside the point. None of the candidates received over 50% so there will be a runoff election between the 2 highest vote getters. I was under the impression that of the 5 or 6 major parties in Ghana that they were all potential candidates for the presidency. In reality, Ghana has a 2 party system just like the US with a number of minor parties that make up an insignificant percent of the vote. The ruling party, NPP, got about 49% of the vote and the opposition, NDC, got about 47% of the vote.
The conference was great because it gave me the opportunity to meet a bunch of PCVs that live far from me and are in different sectors. One particular PCV that I met was a guy that played soccer for Whitman. He is a year older than I am and we definitely looked familiar to each other. We talked a lot about soccer and the NWC, but the sad thing is that he lives in the Upper Volta Region and is a different sector than I am so it is doubtful we’ll ever meet up again. This will probably be my last blog before I come home for Christmas. All I have left to do for school is give the form 1s a class test over the small amount of material I have covered in the last month. Hopefully I’ll see all of you very soon.

---