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Published: July 22nd 2006
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Well then... an awful lot has happened since my last real post, so bear with me as my scatterbrained brain tries to cover it all.
Firstly... I tried Batik. A friend I have made that does all the batik (making of cloth with wax and die) for most of the schools around offinso offered to teach cassie and I how to do it, so Cassie and I spent the entire day with him, doing the whole thing ourselves and he even took us to the dissability home where he teaches them twice a week so that they can make money from their work. I got made fun of by one of the apprentises as I proceeded to draw spaceships on my cloth (the only thing I know how to draw with any sort of ability) because aparently cloth is supposed to have a deeper meaning and so mine says I'm shallow.
Secondly... the school is gearing up for exams (yes, three year olds write them too... very excited to see how that works) so I'm not teaching much (I'm letting the other teacher prepare them for their exams since he writes them and I only teach 2 subjects) so
My ghanaian dress
Yes, I now know how to tie a child to my back with cloth and I'm never going back I have been working at the building site a lot this week... we even made all of the workers a canadian lunch one day which they loved (consisted of 70 eggs worth of egg salad and 10 loaves of bread). I've been doing mortar work between the blocks for the walls as well as fetching water for the cement mixer and I spent one whole day wheelbarrowing back and forth with cement for the last trenches of the substructure (and was sore for like 3 days after). The workers here are insane though... they work 12 hours a day five days a week doing the toughest physical labour I have ever seen and wearing flipflops and no forms of protection... (work gloves don't seem to exist in ghana). So I'll be back at the site most of this week... the foreman is hoping to have the whole substructure complete before cassie leaves this weekend.
Thirdly... Yesterday was the PTA meeting for the school (a hillarious experience where there wasn't enough room for all of the parents in the room so some watched through windows or climbed outside walls to look in the space between the walls and the ceiling).
One of the big problems with the school is that parents are supposed to buy exercise books for their children but only some of them do... so teaching when only half of them have paper proves to be challenging to say the least. With some of the money that I brought in cash for the school, I bought several thousand exercise books (about enough to last the school a term) and the parents approved a fee of equivalent to $2 for the younger grades and $3 for the older ones, so that the school could begin providing them... the only thing is that since many of the parents don't pay their school fees now, the chance of collecting this from everyone is non-existant, but hopefully they'll get enough to cover their costs.
And finally... my adventure. Anyone who knows me knows that I love walking down random roads to see where they go, so cassie and I did that yesterday afternoon... and this particular road led out of town, past a school, and then turned into a dirt path with tall crops (maize) on either side so that you couldn't really see where you were going... but we figured
it had to open up somewhere. And it did. We arrived at probably the poorest village I've seen in our district... no concrete anywhere, all of the houses were mud and thatch, and there were only about 20 houses... but there were definitely about 100 people. The people were dressed up and sitting under sun structures and lined up and there was a man at a desk and a house that seemed to be the focal point with some kind of commotion going on there. Now, the night before I had been asking be about traditional religions and local priests, and for some reason my gut told me this must be a shrine. Someone led us to the man at the desk who told us these people were here to worship their god and asked us what we wanted. We appologized for being lost, and quickly left (this was officially the first time I have felt unwelcome in ghana... bea tells me it's likely because they thought I was there to convert them to christianity). On the way back we had it explained to us that both christians and non christians go to this priest to ask for whatever they
are lacking... the typical example being of a barren woman asking for children.
On another note... funny story... I may be a fugitive in ghana. Cassie wanted a copy of her medical records from the offinso hospital to show her doctor, but when we went to the hospital they gave them to her (as is procedure) but told us she would have to wait to see a doctor to get permission to photocopy it (there were about 100 people in front of her and 2 doctors on staff), so instead we stole the forms. It was interresting, trying to sneak out of a hospital unnoticed when the colour of your skin is always enough of a cause for alarm.
Time is dwindling... I'll be home in 18 days apparently which means I've been here 79... does not feel like it's been that long!
Yaa Lindsey
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Dan
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LOL
Those are some awesome photos - Monkeys!!!!! You've got so many great stories...I can't wait to see you and hear them! Keep in touch, Dan