Madame Emily

This week I started practicum, this means a teacher is letting a white chick who has never taught before take over all his 70 min lectures. Luckily my school is only 2 short line taxis and a 20 min walk away, some PCVT’s are leaving before 5am to go further. I am teaching science this week and math next week. It is scary but I guess there is no better way to learn to teach. My school in Kukuratumi has nothing and I was told it is a “nice” school. Talking to the other PCV’s that are teaching us I learned peace corps volunteers go to the schools that lack teachers because no Ghanaian want to teach there, so most likely resources are non existent. My “nice” school provides teachers with chalk and nothing else, it took me half a day to find a marker, and I really miss staplers right now. I was able to build a pinhole camera for my light energy class but there are many experiments in the Ghanaian syllabus that are impossible to perform. I cannot even find the simplest supplies for the simplest experiments. The sanitation situation is also very poor.

 I am not sure what my thesis will be over but even after living with one of the richest families in the village and seeing all the “nice” schools It is obvious that the sanitation is very poor as well as the lack of education on the topic. The world is the bathroom here as well as the trashcan. I still am not used to littering but there is no other option here. The children at school do a lot of manual labor. Often I see school children with machetes cutting the lawn or weeding. They come back to class tired. Mt first day at practicum only one teacher was there and he did not know where the other teachers were or if they would come to teach their classes or not. I have not seen caning yet but I heard some of the trainees saw corporal punishment their first day of practicum… in comparison I had a great first day. 

I am not sure if I will work on my thesis at the school or in my village. Water seems to be abundant in Ghana for the most part. If I work with water I have a feeling it will be greywater/wastewater management not ground water extraction or desalination. I still really want to do biointensive gardening, I am not sure if I will do it on my own or as a project involving the community or school. My host mother has a farm if I ever get a break from training she said she would take and show me what she does. I actually have a bit of free time this week but some festival I cannot pronounce is going on. Apparently it is the best festival ever for PCV’s because it is the festival of silence no pounding fu fu or loud music or TV. My mother says we cannot go to the farm this week because of it L though. I wish the festival applied to the roosters and I would get to sleep past 4 am without being woken. I also heard the festival lasts four weeks, we are supposed to bring fire wood to the Chief, and you are not allowed to work during it..... some of us were stopped and told we should not go to work today.... does this really last four weeks?