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Published: March 31st 2009
3/30/09
End of term exams continued this week. This is the third week of exams and there is still another week to go. Personally, I don’t think the exam schedule is very time efficient at all. Last week both the form 3 classes and the form 2 classes took an exam each day. This week on the other hand, the form 1 classes and the form 2 classes alternated who took an exam each day. Part of the problem is that there are so many students in form 1 that they take up most of the classrooms to take an exam because the desks need to be spread out somewhat and there can only be one student per desk unlike during class.
My core mathematics exam was on Wednesday. There were 5 other teachers helping me invigilate my exam. Unlike most of the teachers, I typed the questions to my exam myself and gave the documents to the squire to print them off. I went through my test a few times to make sure that there weren’t any errors or typos. The problem was that the copies were so poor that many of the figures were difficult or impossible read. As a result, I was constantly moving from class to class clarifying what the figures on the exam were. This was my first real end of term exam and I learned a lot from the experience. Next time, I will print off a legible copy of the exam to give to each invigilator so that they can answer most of the questions.
My exam followed a similar format to the WASSCE to give the students as much practice as possible. The first section was Theory and there were 5 questions and the students were required to answer 4 of them. The questions weren’t very long, but I gave them an hour and a half just so they wouldn’t feel rushed. The next section was Objectives and there were 40 multiple choice questions. I got most of the questions from a book of past WASSCE questions pertaining to the material we have covered. The students also had an hour and a half to finish this section.
I haven’t counted all the tests yet, but attendance sheets were passed around during the exam and there were 235 students that took my exam. It is possible that there is some overlap, but it is also possible that some students didn’t write their names so I assume that is a fairly accurate value. I started marking the objective section because it is the easiest to do. By the time I got through all the exams for the objective section I had the entire 40 answer sequence memorized and I didn’t even need to look at my key to know the correct answers. My hand was so tired from checking wrong answers that it literally hurt to hold my nalgene bottle for 2 days. I could go through a paper pretty quickly, but it still took forever to get through all 235. I haven’t started marking the theory section yet and I am not looking forward to it! It might take me the entire break to get through all of them.
The biggest news of the week is that I went to the Black Stars’ game this weekend. Incase you didn’t know, most if not all African National soccer teams have a mascot or alternate name that they go by. Ghana’s National soccer team is called the Black Stars, because the Ghana flag has a black star in the middle of it. The game was the first game of the last round of Qualifying for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The qualifying also doubles to select countries for the 2010 African Cup of Nations that will occur a few months prior to the World Cup. Ghana is in Group D, which includes Benin, Mali, and Sudan. Each team will play each of the other teams both home and away for a total of 6 games in round robin format. The top team will automatically qualify for the World Cup, and the second team may still have a chance to qualify. Also, the top 3 teams from each group will qualify for the African Cup of Nations.
The Black Stars of Ghana played the Squirrels of Benin yesterday at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi. The last time I tried to go to a game at the stadium in Kumasi it was sold out and the gates were locked by the time I got there, so I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I stayed the night in Kumasi on Saturday, and I got up early and was at the stadium at 7am to wait in line for tickets. The game didn’t start until 5pm and the gates supposedly didn’t open until 10am, but I just wanted to make sure I got tickets. When I first arrived there were probably about 20 people so I wasn’t worried. It started raining and I got a little wet, but it wasn’t the typical Ghanaian downpour. I was told by a guard at the stadium on Saturday that they would probably start selling tickets around 9am on Sunday. Around 10 am people started popping up with tickets in their hands because people inside the stadium were selling tickets through the fence, but the ticket counters still weren’t open. There was no way I was going to give my money to a random person through a fence to get me a ticket so I waited patiently. Around 10:30 am the ticket counters finally opened and I bought my ticket as well as a few for other PCVs. I bought tickets for the middle section and they were 7 Ghana Cedis each. It was 5 Ghana Cedis for the sections behind the goals so I thought the extra 2 cedis was worth it. It was 20 Ghana Cedis for the VIP seats which were directly across from our seats and they are covered, but since it was a night game and it didn’t rain I really don’t think they were worth that much. Then I went back to KSO to hang out for a few hours before heading to the game.
There was a group of 7 of us PCVs that all went to the game together. We went to the stadium at 2 pm to “pre-game” at a few spots. Since I gave up alcohol for Lent, I was the DD even though we weren’t driving. At this point, the story gets really good. It was about 3:30pm so we thought we should get to our seats. On our way to the gate, I was walking next to one of the guy PCVs in our group when I saw a Ghanaian deliberately brush into my friend and I knew something way up. The next thing I heard was my friend yell that someone was trying to steal his wallet. Two guys had bumped into him intentionally to distract him while one of them tried to grab his wallet but it didn’t work. I saw the wallet fall to the ground and one of the guy stepped on it to try and cover it up. I pushed the guy away and grabbed the wallet to give back to my friend. In the meantime, my friend had thrown a few punches at the guy that had actually picked his pocket and one of them landed pretty on the guy’s cheek. Luckily there was a cop near by to stop the pick-pocketers from doing anything and we just walked away. Then my friend showed me his hand and it did not look good. His pinky had landed on the cheekbone and it looked like his finger was either dislocated at the first knuckle, or that his hand was broken, but I couldn’t tell. That didn’t stop us from enjoying the game though. I actually just got a call from my friend and he told me that he did break his hand and he might need to fly to South Africa for surgery.
Technically our tickets had assigned seats, but no one was following them or enforcing it so it was basically open seating in our section. We got seats high enough that we could see over the glass wall and we were even with the 18 yard line. Our seats were perfect to see the first and only goal of the game in the first minute. Sulley Muntari of Inter Milan, crossed the ball right in front of us and it was volleyed home from 6 yards out. The rest of the game was actually pretty boring. There was no passion or hunger to score from Ghana the remaining 89 minutes. It was still sweet to see Essien and Muntari playing though.
During the game people behind me would yell every time I stood up because Ghana was close to scoring. I even had sachet water thrown at me to make me sit down but you all know I’m stubborn and confrontational so that didn’t help their cause, but don’t worry, it didn’t go any farther than that. In front of us a bit, some Ghanaians got mad at some other Ghanaians for standing up and words were exchanged and then so were water bottles. The bottles were empty, but they were pretty big and one guy got hit in the face and started bleeding. I have come to the conclusion that Ghanaians are usually extremely nice and hospitable and will go out of their way to help you, but they are the complete opposite at soccer games. I’m just glad that wasn’t my first experience in Ghana because it would have made me pretty jaded. Apart from a broken hand, the group of us stuck together and we were safe and smart. I am really glad the Conti’s got me L.L. Bean pants with zipper pockets to prevent pick-pocketing.
Here is a short update on stuff. The borehole broke again. Apparently the cylinder is corroded and it breaks the seal easily. When I got back to Akrokerri today the borehole was fixed again. I think the headmaster replaced the corroded cylinder so maybe it won’t break for a while. We are looking into possibly mechanizing the borehole and getting a polytank with help from Peace Corps funding, but it might be too expensive. They started nailing on the tin sheets onto the roof of the new classroom block today. I know some of you have already sent birthday packages, but for those of you that haven’t but want to, I just got some big cravings for m&ms, both plain and peanut, and the fruit & nut medley from Costco. That is all for now. Later.
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mandy
non-member comment
something tells me you're going to have a much more peaceful experience at the sounders game. :) i hope your friend's hand is ok and that the borehole situation gets resolved!