Girls Soccer, New Trainees Arrive, & Rainy Day Cancellation

---

6/5/09
It was just another busy week at school. On Tuesday the girls’ soccer team had an inter-school tournament in Obuasi. The day before the competition, the sports master asked me if I was going to go to the games. I told him that I had to teach, but that if class was cancelled so the students could attend, then I would go. Class wasn’t cancelled on Tuesday, but the sports master informed me that he gave my name to the headmaster that I would be going with the team. I wanted to go to the games anyway, and I didn’t want to ruffle any feathers, so I skipped class and went to the competition. The headmaster and the sports master don’t exactly get along and they got into a heated argument about money right before we left. It looked like it might come to blows, but other master intervened, but I think it would have been funnier to see them go at it. All I said to the sports master was that the headmaster is retiring in just over a month.
The games were held in at O’ Sec Tech (Obuasi Secondary Technical High School), which is an enormous school compared to ABSEC. Our girls didn’t play until the third game. There were a total of eight schools playing in the single elimination tournament, with the winner advancing to play at Regionals in Kumasi. In the first game of the day, a girl broke her leg. I wasn’t in a good position to see the tackle, but I can’t say I’m completely surprised that one of the players was seriously injured. I didn’t see one single girl that had shin guards. Most of the girls didn’t even have soccer shoes. I even saw one girl with ballet slippers on. Unfortunately, the emergency response system in Ghana isn’t exactly the same as in America. Instead of calling the fire department and getting an ambulance to come to the field to transport the girl to the hospital, some sports masters made a makeshift splint by breaking a piece of wood in half and wrapping them around her leg with an ace wrap. They then carried the girl to a car and I presume they took her to the hospital.
The games were only 40 minutes long, so there usually wasn’t much scoring. In our first game, we were lucky to make it to halftime tied 0-0. I gave a couple pointers to the girls and they started the second half much better. We had a couple opportunities to score that we didn’t take advantage of. Then the other team scored off a set piece against the run of play. There was still plenty of time for our girls to equalize, but we lost all the momentum when we conceded the goal. The game ended 1-0 and we were knocked out of the tournament in the first round.
Due to the inter-schools soccer competition on Tuesday, we had to move the day of the HIV/AIDS Awareness Club meeting to Wednesday. Come to find out, Wednesday is the day that all the girls wash their uniforms so attendance was pretty low. Only 6 students showed up, but we had the meeting anyway. Hopefully, there won’t be any conflicts next week and more students will come. I’ve had a few students come up to me and say that they want to join the club so we will just need to do a better job of announcing the meetings. I think the fact that the meetings are after school instead of during school is the biggest reason more students haven’t come. But, having the meetings after school is what makes it an extracurricular activity. By the end of the term I think the club will grow significantly.
Probably the most important event of the week was that the new group of Peace Corps Trainees arrived in Accra on June 4th. I am officially no longer in the “new teacher group.” Unlike last year, the group of trainees includes volunteers in all the sectors: education, environment, health/water sanitation, and small enterprise development. The group has 68 trainees I believe and 28 of them will be teachers. I was the only teacher in my group posted to the Ashanti region, but there will be 8 news PCV teachers posted to the Ashanti region so I’ll have a lot of new neighbors in just a couple months.
That is all for this week.

6/13/09
Has it already been another week already? During the past week I reached a significant milestone in my Peace Corps service. June 10, 2009 was the one year anniversary of my arrival in Ghana. Wow. Personally, I feel like making it an entire year in the Peace Corps is a big achievement. One year down, and just over one to go. There were times during the past year when I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it for the entire 2 year commitment. Now that I’ve made it to the year mark I feel rejuvenated and I have no doubts that I’ll make it to my close of service in August 2010. It is all down hill from here.
This last Monday, I went to Kumasi to meet with another PCV and make some payments to KNUST for the STARS Conference. The two payments we had to make were for the rooms in the dormitory and half of the cost of the dining. With almost 100 people participating in the week long conference, the payments were fairly sizable. Luckily there is a bank branch at KNUST where we withdrew the money so we didn’t have to go through Kumasi with thousand of cedis. Compared to my previous trip to KNUST, this trip went surprisingly smooth. All the necessary people were there to receive the payments and we got all the receipts we needed. We also went into Kumasi to drop off the STARS program off at a print shop to have copies made. The trip was entirely successful and we didn’t run into any obstacles at any point, which rarely happens in Ghana so I’m very thankful.
The rest of the week was a blur of classes. This week the new trainees are on their vision quests. If you don’t remember, shortly after I arrived in Ghana last year, I visited a current PCV’s site for 5 days to get a taste of what it is like to be a PCV in Ghana. Since my house is so small, I did not request for any vision questers. If I got a vision quester, then we would have to share the same bed, and although there is enough room for 2 on my bed and I have no problem sharing a bed, the other person might not be comfortable with it and I wouldn’t want to subject someone to that who has just arrived in a foreign country.
Melissa, my closest PCV neighbor got 2 vision questers unlike me. Both of her vision questers will be science teachers at senior high schools. Melissa taught form 3 students at her school and since they have finished the WASSCE she doesn’t have any classes this term. As part of vision quest, the trainees are supposed to observe classes to get a feel for what it is like to teach at a Ghanaian school. Melissa brought the vision questers to sit in on one of my classes. It happened to be that both the vision questers are white so having 3 white visitors at the school was pretty distracting for the students. The trainees observed my smallest class which has 35 students, but several students from other classes tried to join the class just to see my visitors. Since I’ve been here almost an entire year, the students and everyone else in the community is used to seeing me, but whenever another white person comes to visit all the students act like they’ve never seen a white person before. At this point, I have developed a lot as teacher and I control my classroom pretty well so I was able to minimize the distraction of the visitors and keep the students attention on the material.
I’ll write again soon. Until then, have a good one.

6/19/09
Hey everyone. I know it’s been a long time since I posted on the blog, but it isn’t entirely my fault. As you can see I have been writing weekly entries, and last weekend I tried to post on the blog, but the internet was down all weekend in Obuasi. I’ll try to keep this week’s entry short and sweet. There are just a few noteworthy things I need to tell you about.
On Tuesday, I experienced something that was pretty hilarious and ridiculous. I think it will make all of you from the Northwest laugh out loud. On Tuesday morning I woke up to steady rain that reminded me of a typical rainy day in Western Washington. For Ghana, the rain was atypical because it wasn’t a torrential downpour and it lasted more than half an hour. The rain fell consistently for at least 5 hours. I didn’t have a class until the second period of the day, and when I arrived there were all of 8 students at class, and that was more than any of the other classes had. Like I said, it was raining, but when I went to my first class it wasn’t even raining hard enough for me to need to wear a jacket. Word got around that I was teaching and some of the boarders wandered into class throughout the period. The rain had stopped by the end of the first break, but around half of the students and some of the teachers didn’t come to school at all. I asked everyone why people weren’t at school and their answer was because it was raining. If no one came to school every time it rained in Washington then no one would ever go to school.
On Thursday right before break, one of the teachers went around and made an announcement that there was free HIV testing at the administration building. In case you forgot, I started an HIV/AIDS Awareness Club this term, but no one bothered to tell me about the testing. There wasn’t a noticed placed anywhere or anything. Just another poorly planned activity at ABSEC. What really upset me though, was the fact that there was not pre-test or post-test counseling involved. In Ghana there is a program called VCT, which stands for voluntary counseling and testing. I told the teacher that went around making the announcement about my concerns and a few other teachers shared my opinion, but it didn’t stop the testing. What if one of the students’ tests came back HIV positive? The student would have no idea what to do, where to go, who to tell, how to tell someone, or how to deal with it emotionally. Don’t get me wrong, I am in full support of HIV testing and knowing your status, but counseling is extremely important, especially for high school students. As it was, a group of students were all huddled around a woman sitting at a small table giving finger pricks and administering the test. Then they all stood around holding what looked like home pregnancy tests waiting for their test results. There was absolutely no confidentiality involved and overall the testing was horribly run in my opinion.
I think that’s all the important stuff so I’ll end here. The STARS Conference is next week, so wish me luck and I’ll let you know how it goes in my next post. Peace out.

---

Comments

[Melissa]

Way to go!!!
One year...wow I can't believe how fast it has gone! You have experienced some amazing and crazy things over the last year. It has been alot of fun following your blog...thanks for sharing and keeping us all informed while you have been gone. Dylan and Connor are really excited for you to come home in August. The want to show you their new pet! Connor was wondering if Spike's poop is the same as the poop that your little lizards are leaving around your room? Boys...I swear you all are facinated poop, farts, and burps ;o) Love ya ~ Melissa

[mandy]

it's about time you posted. :) all is well here - you likely know that from facebook. i imagine the way people in ghana deal with a bit of rain is the way we deal with a bit of snow - everything shuts down. take care andrew - see you in a few months. btw- congrats on your 1-year anniversary!!