Blogs from Ashanti, Ghana, Africa - page 9

We've been traveling to inner Ghana...a city called Kumasi. Let me just say that Kumasi is wayyyyy nicer than Accra, though it is still chaotic and interspersed with nice homes amongst the shanty-towns. W'e're staying in a hostel, called, "Royal Gate Hostel" which brings me to a side-note...almost everyone has a shop here, usually out front of their dwelling...and they are the funniest names I've ever seen! There's the religious names, like "Gate of Heaven Liquors," or "God's Love fast food," or "Lion of Judah internet" and then there's the crazies...like "Passionate Love Drinking Shop," and "Effie's Rasta Hair Do" haha they crack us up so when we see a crazy one, we've gotten into the habit of pointing them out and laughing at the ridiculousness! This tour business the university has us on is sooo ... read more

7/6/09 Last week was fairly uneventful for the most part. We were on midterm break until Thursday so the school campus was empty. With no classes it gave me plenty of time to mark my midterm exams. Even though there were only 4 questions on the exam, it still took me hours and hours to do all the marking and record the students’ grades. Technically, the midterm break ended on Tuesday, but Wednesday was July 1, which is Republic Day in Ghana so there was no school. Classes were supposed to start again on Thursday, but as I predicted, that didn’t happen. Only a handful of day students came to school on Thursday, and most of the time they were here they did general cleaning around the school. Since there were only 8 students in the ... read more

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 ... read more

5/17/09 It has been a while since the last time I wrote and there have been a few events I need to tell you about. First off, we finally had our staff meeting to open the term. The meeting wasn’t very successful for a couple reasons though. For one thing, there were only 10 teachers in attendance out of the 25 or so that we have. The other reason is that the meeting had to be cut short because of an emergency at a house that some of the teachers live. A boy that used to be a student at ABSEC and who is the son of one of the teachers lit his father’s house on fire. There is a long background story that goes along with the boy and I’ll get to that in a ... read more