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Published: January 26th 2009
1/25/09
Hey everybody. It has been over a month since my last blog entry and I’m really sorry I’ve been slacking lately. The last month was pretty hectic, but I’m back in the swing of things at site so I’ll be getting back to my routine of trying to write something every week. As most of you know, I came back to America for Christmas. My trip didn’t start off too well thanks to flight delays, missed connections, and snow in Seattle. I was extremely lucky to get a flight out of New York and even luckier when my flight was diverted to Salt Lake City where my wonderful girlfriend picked me up so I could get some sleep, food and take a shower. All in all I think I arrived in Seattle only 14 hours behind schedule, which isn’t bad considering some people spent days in airports trying to get home for Christmas. I was home for 2 weeks and like most vacations, it felt way too short. It was great to see all my family and friends and enjoy the luxuries of America. I have lost some weight while in Ghana but I’m pretty sure I gained it all back in the short period I was in the States. I spent New Years in Whistler, which was a blast. Going back to Ghana was just as emotionally difficult as it was the first time. While I was home I got some nice toys for Christmas that will make my time in Ghana go just a little bit quicker. I’ll be back at home at the end of August for Sarah’s wedding so I’ll see all of you in 7 months.
My first week back in Ghana was extremely long and difficult. The students were still on break so the school was deserted. I had horrible jet lag for at least 5 days and it was confusing to sleep all day and wake up at night. I’m going to be honest with you; my first week back in Akrokerri I was lonely and really home sick. I tried to keep busy and I kept telling myself that things would get better when school started back up. Sure enough, the last 2 weeks have been jam packed and I’m loving life in Ghana.
The following week I had In-Service Training (IST) at the Peace Corps hub in Kukurantumi. At IST all the new teaching PCVs bring their counterparts for a workshop that covers a wide array of topics. I brought Haruna, the ICT (information and communication technology) teacher, as my counterpart. IST was a pretty typical Peace Corps event with sessions scheduled all day that drill home the virtue of patience. One topic that frequently came up was discipline techniques. Canning is a legal and common practice in Ghana. It is definitely a bigger issue in some schools than others though. My school for example doesn’t cane students very often, but that is not the case at some PCVs’ schools. Ghana Educational Service (GES) has a discipline policy that outlines cannable offenses and the maximum number of lashes along with procedure to document the punishment, but the policy often isn’t followed. We also had sessions on ICT, HIV/AIDS, the WASSCE (similar to the SAT), and how to fund secondary projects.
This last week was the second week of term 2, but it was my first week of teaching because I was at IST the previous week. I am excited to have the form 1s for the entire term because there is a lot of material we need to cover still since their first term was so short. My classes are still enormous and difficult to teach. The good news is that the assembly finally came through and construction has resumed on the new classroom block. The builders seem to be working pretty fast, but who knows when we will actually get to use the new building. I have heard stories that building or latrines in Ghana will be finished but sit for months unused because the people that funded the construction need to sanction the building to start being used. My hope is that by the end of this term the classrooms block will be in use. A side note: the new bore hole has been drilled and has the foundation poured, but there still isn’t a pump and that was started over 3 months ago.
Aside from school, the last week has been crazy because I’ve been running around trying to set up the BlackBerry Mandy B dashed me so I can get my e-mail and access the internet. On the first day it took forever for MTN to set up my service in their system, but at the end of the day I was connected and chatting with family. The first 24 hours I had no problems, but for the past 5 days it hasn’t worked. Occasionally it will connect and I’ll get an e-mail but that is rare and doesn’t last long. First I started troubleshooting by calling MTN customer service but that didn’t fix it. Then I went back to the MTN office in Obuasi but they couldn’t get it to work either. The next day I went to the MTN office in Kumasi, but they didn’t even know what to do. The MTN staff didn’t know about any of the setting on the BlackBerry. They tried reactivating my service through there system to no avail. The only troubleshooting they had me do was turn my phone off and then back on, but of course that wasn’t going to fix the problem because I’d already done that a dozen times. I am currently trying to fix the problem with Verizon through e-mail. Hopefully I’ll figure it out, but if I don’t I think I’ll still live. I hear Obama had to give up his BlackBerry when he became President so I don’t think it’s a necessity for a PCV in Ghana, but it would be nice. The worst part is that I know that it can work because it worked fine for the first 24 hours.
It is time for some random observations. It is the middle of the dry season in Ghana and it is obvious. The weather is totally different now than my first 5 months in Ghana. Surprisingly enough, the dry season is also the coldest time of the year here. At night the temperature drops into the 60s and maybe even the 50s. I kept waking up in the middle of the night because I was cold so now I have to sleep with a blanket. It wasn’t long ago when I had to sleep on top of the covers with the fan on high just to get to sleep. It is also very windy because the winds are blowing from the Sahara. One major problem of the dry season is the amount of bush fires. People often burn piles of leaves and it doesn’t take much for the fire to take out an entire field. It is mind boggling how many bush fires there are. The fire service is practically non existent and they never put the fires out. The fires just burn until they eventually go out. It is a good thing that all the buildings are made with blocks because there wouldn’t be many left standing if they were made with wood. I have some great aftermath pictures, but I’m hoping to get some pictures of the fires in progress so I’ll have my camera on me at all times. As a result of all the bush fires the air is filled with smoke. It is real hazy and the visibility is horrible. If I didn’t know better I’d think the smog from LA just rolled across the Atlantic and settled over Ghana.
That’s all for now, but stay tuned because it won’t take me a month to get the next blog entry up. Sorry it’s been so long. Talk to you all soon.
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mandy
non-member comment
it's about time!
great update andrew! i hope you get your phone working, sorry you're running into so many issues. in other news - i'm getting a nephew! :) joey and kelly are really excited, they just found out this morning. i'm glad school is picking up and you are keeping busy. the next 7 months will fly by - take care and talk to you soon! mandy