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6/23/08
I realized that I am probably going to be too busy during training to access the blog frequently, so I am going to make a series of entries on my computer and post larger and less frequent posts. A lot of stuff has already happened since the last time that I made a post. It is a good thing I am keeping a journal to remember all of the details. For never having kept a journal before, I am pretty proud of how often I am writing in it. Mostly it just has all the facts that I would otherwise forget, but at this rate I could probably have a publishable set of memoires by the end of two years.
I digress from the stuff you people actually want to read about… After my vision quest in Daboya, a group of fellow trainees and me travelled from the Tamale Sub Office to the training site in Kukurantumi. On our return trip to the south the Peace Corps was kind enough to send one of the drivers to pick us up in a van from Tamale. I was able to have an entire row of seats to myself, which was quite enjoyable after the previous travel accommodations I endured. If I hadn’t have known better, I would have thought I was back at home in the Northwest due to the weather. It was overcast, rainy, and cool the entire 10 hour drive down to Kukurantumi. I’m sure I already mentioned this, but it is the rainy season in Ghana right now, and when it rains it POURS. The rain typically doesn’t last for long, but absolutely dumps buckets when it does. It was refreshing to see all the other trainees and hear about the experiences they had on their vision quests. The five of us that went north had the longest travel times by far.
Training officially started in Kukurantumi, which was mainly comprised of learning Twi. After spending a couple of hours practicing, my brain felt like jelly from trying to remember all these new sayings. We had our site placement interviews and the only real preference I had was to be near a Catholic Church. From my vision quest I didn’t have enough information to decide whether I wanted to be in the north or the south or if I wanted to be in a junior high school or a senior high school. I had no idea what to expect. I also learned to play Rummy. I think I am going to end up playing a lot of card games in Ghana to pass the time.
The next day consisted of more Twi training, and it went much better than the previous day. It is just going to take a while to get used to the new language. Spanish was much easier to learn than Twi is so far. We had a cultural fair at the training site where we got to experience Ghanaian food, clothing, artifacts, distings (miscellaneous items), music, and games. I danced to some Ghanaian music called high life and hip life. Ghanaians love to dance, it felt good to do something somewhat exercise related. (And we just danced in groups and it was mostly Ghanaian men, alright Jenny…) It seems like all we do is sit around and wait to eat. They feed us way too much food.
Saturday the 21st was the moment of truth. We were informed of our site placement, and we began our home stay. Here is the info that will shape the next two years of my life… I will be a Math teacher at Asare Bediako Senior High School in Akrokerri in the Ashanti Region. Akrokerri is just south of Kumasi where there is a Peace Corps Sub Office. The local language that is spoken in Akrokerri is Twi, so I will not have to learn a different language. I will have a flush toilet, electricity, and my water source is a mechanized borehole (a well with a hand pump) that is the closest of all the PCVs in Ghana. Another important fact is that I will be replacing a current PCV so hopefully I will get dashed (given for free) a bunch of household equipment.
The next highlight of the day was meeting my home stay family. The couple that is hosting me is extremely nice. They live in a town called Old Tafo and they bake bread as a living. I have a number of “brothers” and “sisters” and I have no idea who is actually related or how. My room is very nice, and I enjoy a pit latrine and bucket bath shower. It is nice to finally have a place to call home for the next ten weeks.
I attended Church service at the local Zion Church with my host brother and it lasted 3 hours. The worst part out of the whole thing was than none of it was in English. It would have been one thing to sit for 3 hours at a church service I could understand, but wow was that painful in Twi. Over half of the service consisted of singing and dancing. I think I am going to try and find a Catholic church next weekend. I watched the majority of a men’s league soccer game between New Tafo and Kukurantumi. My host family has a t.v. so I have been able to watch EURO 2008 games at night. We also watched the World Cup qualifier between Ghana and Gabon.
I had the opportunity to buy a cell phone today because we had free time in Koforidua, but I am waiting on one of the Peace Corps Trainers to exchange some money for me so I couldn’t afford one. It is taking longer than I would have hoped to get a cell phone, but it really shouldn’t be long now. Training is hard and I am nervous that I won’t be a very good Math teacher. For my sake it is good that training is 10 weeks. That’s all for now. I love and miss everyone. Later.
6/29/08
It is Sunday today, which means that this is my one day off for the week. The current PCVs that are helping with training tell us that the days last forever here but the months fly by. I haven’t been here for a month yet but I am starting to know what they mean. Each day we have language lessons, teaching session, meetings, or random parties. Then boom, the next thing you know, it’s the weekend. I’m finding that it is almost impossible to sleep past 5:30 am at my home stay. I thought I was a deep sleeper, but there is nothing like crowing roosters and crying baby goats to wake you up starting around 4 am. On Tuesday we found out that we had to peer teach a 20 minute lesson on Wednesday followed by micro teaching a 40 minute lesson to real students on Thursday. Many other trainees and I were frustrated and totally unprepared. We were told to teach on any subject we wanted, and I didn’t have any text books to use. I decided to teach on Pythagorean Theorem, which is an extremely easy topic to cover. I pretty much winged the peer teaching and it went a lot better than I thought it would. On Wednesday we also had a “cocktail party” with the Honorable Regional Minister of the Eastern Region, which is comparable to a governor in the U.S. The whole thing was videotaped so there is a good chance I was on Ghanaian television. The next day at micro teaching I added a few more examples and elaborated a bit to stretch the lesson to 40 minutes. It went alright but it seemed a little dry to me. The trainers said that I did well and needed to work on my Ghanaian English the most.
We also found out that one of the trainees in our group went home. He apparently didn’t like his site placement or his home stay so he called it quits. I was really surprised that someone would pull the plug this early. The Peace Corps isn’t for everyone and on average, a third of the people that enter the Peace Corps end up going home early. Don’t plan on me coming home anytime soon though. The next day we found out that a trainee had been sent to Accra for medical reasons and was going to have to be sent home. Just a few hours after that we found out that another trainee, Darren, had been sent to Accra for medical reasons too. It seemed like the flood gates had opened and the big question was, “whose next?” Luckily, Darren was fine and he was back with the group on Friday.
The biggest highlight of the week is that I finally got a cell phone. I don’t think it’s the smartest thing to post my number on the internet, so if you really want to call me then my mom has the number. Don’t forget that Ghana is 7 hours ahead of the west coast and I go to bed around 9 pm due to my early morning wake up calls. Today I went to a Catholic Church for Mass so I had my hopes up that it would be in English and not last as long as last week’s service. Sadly, the Mass was not in English and it did last almost 3 hours. I could follow along for a while, but it came to a point when I had no idea what was going on. There were two readings, the gospel, and a homily, although none of the readings were the correct ones for this or any other week as far as I could find. The biggest problem was the fact that there was no Eucharist. So I just read the correct readings in my bible and prayed the rosary while the priest preached (after the 45 minutes homily was done) about what sounded like the history of their church starting in 1932 and ending in the present.
I’m starting to integrate into my host family and the culture more and more everyday. I think I actually know who is related and how in my host family now. I have hours of homework everyday. I thought that I just graduated from school, but it turns out I jumped right back in for training. The next two weeks we have practicum, where we teach 10 periods per week in our respective fields. That means that I have to write my lesson plan for tomorrow so I don’t look like an idiot in front of 30 senior high school students. And thanks for all the comments and messages on the blog. I am getting them, but I don’t have enough time and the internet is too slow to reply to all of them, so to be fair I reply to none of them. Keep sending them though. Bye for now.
7/5/08
Well it’s almost been a week since the last time I wrote, and as usual, a ton of stuff happened this week. I tried to make it to the internet café all week, but it was closed because a surge fried something and they had to wait to get some parts. Tomorrow I’m going to try going to yet another different church. I was told from other trainees that the Catholic Church in Kukurantumi has Mass that lasts an hour and a half, and that includes Eucharist. Before I get ahead of myself, I should recap the previous week.
This last week was our first week of practicum. I was somewhat confused on why we were jumping right into practicum in week 3 before we really have any training or practice in teaching to Ghanaian students. Since school gets out in a few weeks, now is the only opportunity that we will have to get some real experience teaching in a school. My topic to each for the week was relations and functions. I was given a textbook that covered the topic and it was my only resource. When I find out what I will actually be teaching I am going to need some decent textbooks from the states. The biggest problem with the Ghanaian math book is that it doesn’t show you how to solve the majority of the examples. It just gives you the answer. I spent all day at GHANASS (Ghana Secondary School) in Koforidua and taught two 40 minutes periods. After school I had to go back to Old Tafo and have 2 hours of language class, which ended up lasting for 2.5 hours. I realized that the biggest lesson I am learning right now is patience. When I am done volunteering in Ghana for two years, if nothing else I will be a much more patient person. I often feel that my time could be more effectively used during our endless string of meetings and sessions. I’m having a lot of fun most the time, it is just that the days are really long, and it feels like high school sometimes with all the busy work we have to do. Like I said, I’m learning patience. There is just a lot of stuff to do and long meetings give us less time to do it. I really have no room to complain though. My health is great, my host family is totally accommodating, the Ghanaians are amazing, the fellow volunteers are awesome, and everyday is another adventure in Africa. I’m learning a lot from my teaching experiences as well as from observing other volunteers teach. It is surprising how little information you can teach in 80 minutes of class. Since classes are taught in English, you must speak very slowly for them to understand everything you say. It seems comical to compare the presentations I did in college and the amount of information I reported in a short period of time to the amount of information I teach in 80 minutes to high school students. I sat in on a computer class where the computers looked extremely primitive. There is so much knowledge about computers that I take for granted. The basic understanding of how to use programs or even type on a keyboard is completely foreign to most Ghanaian students. The fact that half of the computers don’t work doesn’t help either. I think the biggest tangible difference between schools in America and Ghana is simply resources. The conditions of schools in Ghana make for a very difficult learning environment for students. I think training will coast after practicum is done next week. I will be able to focus mainly on language and not have conflicting schedules with school and Peace Corps sessions.
My host family spoiled me this week. For three days in a row my host mother poured hot water she heated in a pot over fire into my water bucket before I took my bucket bath. I never thought I would be taking a hot shower in Ghana. On the 4th of July we went to the Peace Corps training site to get another shot and have session on sex and STI’s. The best part of the whole session was when I got to demonstrate to all of the other trainees how to correctly put a condom on a dildo. I know a condom isn’t rocket science and it seems fairly fool proof, but I am willing to bet that there were a number of people that benefited from the exercise. We subsequently had a condom application race, on dildos of course. It’s funny how sex class has the ability to make even adults giggle and laugh.
We wanted to celebrate the 4th by having an American style cookout at the training site but the Peace Corps wouldn’t let us. We ended up just going to a local chop bar and playing cards for a couple hours. It was somewhat uneventful. It was nice to get a call from home to hear fireworks going off in the background though. Happy Birthday again Dad. I sent a letter about two weeks ago so hopefully it gets there soon if it isn’t already there. I’m sure this is more than you wanted to read so I’ll wrap it up. Ghana is awesome, and all of you are missing out!!! Bye.
7/8/08
Yesterday I went to an internet café to try and access my blog. I waited 20 minutes for the blog website to load before I called it quits. I am back today and have successfully found a computer that has both Word and internet that works. It will probably take a while to post the entry into the blog so I better hurry up. The latest news is that we found out this weekend that we will be performing a dancing and drumming routine during our swearing-in. With my natural dancing abilities I obviously signed up to be one of the dancers. I think they might videotape the event so hopefully there is footage of my Ghanaian moves. If you want to put a smile on my face send me something in the mail. I feel like a little kid at Christmas every Friday wondering if I’m going to get anything this week. My mom has the address if you need it. Thanks for all the support, reading all of your messages keeps me motivated. I’m loving life in Africa!!!
p.s. if someone really wants to see the pictures I'm taking, you should buy SDHC memory card that is atleast 1GB and then we can swap my memory card and someone can upload the pictures from the states, because I don't have enough time to upload them all...
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Melissa
non-member comment
Wow!
It is great that you have a phone and to hear your voice:) You have been crazy busy!!! I can't wait to see some pictures-SD card is on its way with your shoes. I just got done reading your blog to Dylan and he says it is funny that you have to dance there. He can't quite understand the reasoning behind it, but thinks it is silly. He wants to know why you chose dancing instead of drumming? I told him you were a good dancer and he just laughed and walked out of the room. Anyways it was good to talk to you on the 4th, and let us know if there is anything else you need. Love you and stay safe!!