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? 

Too much to type about

I have a video but I can't upload it right now! I will try after school some day this week!

I have not had internet for a bit so a lot has happened since my last blog post. I am currently in Ghana Training and will post this as soon as I have internet.

I apologize for the terrible grammer/spelling I haven't had much time to edit.

June 4^th I went to Washington DC and the next night I was on a flight to Ghana. So far I have learned a bit of Twi, Completed the Accra adventure challenge, sat through many training lectures, laughed a lot, eaten some interesting foods, and am almost done with atlas shrugged (thank God I am so sick of Ayn Rand right now). While in Accra we also had a nice party over at the Ambassador’s crib which was a cool experience. We found a bar on our first day off to watch to Espana  Vs Italia game which was a nice change from the intensive and looong lectures. I do have a phone now so I can text and call the US for pretty cheap actually, I will be hopping around from Kuku to shadowing PCV’s in villages and living with a local family during the rest of training.

I have a lot of first impressions of Ghana, but in a nutshell I love it here so far and I can’t wait for things to get more intense. (Right now it’s more like “Posh Corps”) That will continue to change more though. Washing everything with one bucket is interesting, but extremely refreshing. Nothing feels better on a hot day than pouring a bucket of rainwater over yourself.

I live with a Ghanain Family in Asynasin right now and it is going well so far. Living with a family that you can barely communicate with is interesting. The majority of the conversation when the daughter is not around is “Eat AALLLLL!!” “Go Bath” “Go School”. They are very nice though and the mother lets me cook and clean with her.

So Far I have managed to stay “paleo” I have not had to eat bread or rice, but I cannot get away with not eating cassava, plantain, and other starchy veggies. But we sweat constantly and walk everywhere so I doubt I will put on the weight most PC girls put on especially since I don’t eat the rice. I did eat a mango the size of a small child for lunch today….I can’t wait to try a pear, that is what they call the prehistoric avocados from heaven here. My family doesn’t approve of my diet. According to them all white people like rice and I eat fu fu totally wrong L  I do like the fu fu because it is grain free and served with spicy stew. My family likes the canned mackerel so all the aswesome spicy stew my mom makes is ruined by the whole canned fish staring at you. The Okra stew here has the consistency of snot and is served with Banku… it also smells fermented…but its not bad, I am sure I will get used to it but for now I’d rather eat coconuts and street meat.

My family named me qwayaseebeeyah (how I thought it sounded at first) I later found out they spell it Kwasibea. I am named after their Mother who is also the wife of the Chief of Anyinasin so basically I am royalty. We met the chief the other day in a strange ceremony involving a lot of greetings juju prayer/rituals involving schnapps and lots of yoooooo’s (Yo means Okay in Twi…. People yo it out a lot).

I learned this week that my watch was not water proof while taking a bucket bath.

I also learned that boys have it way easier. I am not even going to go into bathrooms or lack thereof here.

The roosters start at 4am everyone is up by 5am, eat, bath, clean, leave around 7am for the day to begin. You cannot sleep in in Ghana.

My room has a light and a fan. The light is a nice neon blue blacklight bulb and is located under the fan. When I want to have the fan on and the light on I feel like I am at a rave or an epileptics worst nightmare. When I use my headlamp to read and do work to avoid the flashing blue light my mom turns the light on and says “Kwasibea You Use Light Keep On”.

Right now I am experiencing “Posh Corps” water is easy to get, I have a fan, there is an abundance of cheap fresh food everywhere, taxis and tros cost 20 to 50 cents and can get you around very easily, I have a cell phone, and well… I like it here.

Training is long, I have no teaching experience and spending 8+ hours in sweaty classrooms after eating Banku can be tough. The kids and baby animals roaming the village are adorable though. I really can’t complain, anything negative I have written is funny and interesting to me more than upsetting.

I should find out soon what language I need to focus on so I will have an idea what region my permanent placement will be J until then I am teaching at a JHS Math and Science form 2 for the next two weeks and working on my nonexistent teaching skills. I built a tippy tap the other day and am excited tot do science and hands on teaching activities though. Teaching is much more structured than Wat/San so I am thankful I will have structured teaching as one of my projects to balance out the lack of structure in completing my thesis.

Well I love hearing from people and will try to get back to everyone despite my lack of connectivity. If training ever dies down I will find my way back to the internet café in New Tafo more often, but for now I will probably only be going for short periods rarely.