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.

Peace Corps had to evacuate Mali a few weeks ago... my thoughts go out to all the volunteers who had to leave in the middle of service.

What about my future you may ask? Read my new title and you may find a clue.... I am Ghana go to a new Country..... Did you guess it?!  

Akwaaba (welcome)  to my latest blog design! The past few weeks have continued to be interesting with a fast paced scramble to relocate MI students. A few other Michigan tech engineers and I jumped on the Ghana bus for a departure on June 4th... Sadly I will not meet many "team Mali" members, we were all split up. Luckily I quickly found the Gha Gha for Ghana facebook group and started connecting with my new training group of TEACHERS.

Yes yours truly is now going to be teaching Math and Science to Junior High students. Although I will still be a "wat/san engineer" I am going to be located at a rural school and teaching. Yes, this was a bit short notice, but I was planning on teaching while in PC anyways, just not as formally as a math teacher.

So I did the whole invite/visa/resume/paperwork/blue folder/country desk for the second time, which I guess is neat because usually you only get the one long awaited invite and I got two! Now I am mentally preparing myself for Ghana. So much for the long hours I spent practicing French for Mali, but on the bright side Ghana has given me a lot to look forward to.

So here is how it goes down:

June 4th- head to Philly or DC, meet my fellow volunteers, talk about how scared we are (I am not scared now but I am sure the day before I fly into the next 27 months of my life my stomach might turn a bit), get poked with more needles (thank you  PC for helping me overcome my fear by sticking me with so many this year), paperwork, staging things, and we are off!

In the Capitol we will have a welcome ceremony, meet all the staff, and get ready to go to training among many other things.

Then it is off to training where I will stay with a host family and meet the rest of the group daily to do safety, language, cultural, education, and pretty much everything to survive in Ghana training (including dancing and testing myself for malaria! more needles!). I believe as an educator I will find out three weeks after we start training where my village is so I can focus on the local language (we all learn Twi and other less common languages depending were we are placed)! But it will not be until August that I move there.... I really have no idea how it will work being a hybrid teacher/engineer, luckily there are some other guys in my group doing their thesis too so we are all in the same boat.

Then hopefully I will become an official PCV! A fun ceremony and we are sent off to our new homes. I will then update everyone with a new address and begin teaching and tons of other activities.

THINGS I WANT TO DO:

we have lots of free time

my thesis of course-- that depends on what my community or school needs most 

Sustainable mini farming

rainwater harvesting

drilling to ground water and extracting it, water storage, water education...I just love water

HIV/AIDS education

find bikes get them to people who need them and teach proper maintenance

teach late night classes for women who have to work all day

find out what my school needs and write grants/raise funding to get proper supplies to students

My  friend Danielle teaches math in Tulsa to Junior highers so I am grateful that I have her to answer questions I am sure I will have, as well as give me creative ideas and tips on teaching. I am hoping we can connect our students through pictures, letters, and videos for cross-cultural education as well. 

There are just so many opportunities and projects, I cannot wait to see what I will be able to do for my community. I know in PC results can be slow and sometimes I will feel like I am not doing any good but I know after my two years is up I will have no regrets.

Other facts you may find interesting:

I am not supposed to leave my site the first and last 3 months so visitors are VERY VERY welcome between November 2012 and  June 2014! 

Ghana is Tropical in the South and less in the North, the rainy season is April through September. I could be placed anywhere so the climate and diet can very a lot depending where my village is. I am hoping to stay Paleo. It will be hard during training but once I start living on my own it will be very easy to cook for myself with fresh produce from the market (sometimes 5+ miles away). I also have been reading about sustainable small scale farming and am hoping to experiment with Biointensive gardening methods. 

That is all I can think of right now! 39 days!!!

 Em

Coup d'État Poo d'État

Mali has had a very eventful week and no one is sure what will happen in the next few days. The Taureg army in the North is close to taking control of the territory "Azawad", ECOWAS will not stand for the coup and will start taking action Monday if the coup does not return the power to the people and reinstate the constitution. I have been reading the news and volunteer blogs almost obsessively since the rebel soldiers took over Bamako on the 21st. I have been absorbing all the information I can to somehow piece together what the future holds for Mali. This has not been very successful due to the constantly increasing variables.

Peace Corps volunteers sit with fingers crossed.

My head is racing with thoughts, emotions, and hypothesis. In a nut shell Je voudrais savoir si je sui aller a Mali...That is probably gramatically wrong and misspelled french but I am still very proud of how quickly I am teaching myself ( Michel Thomas french lessons during the drive to Tulsa really helped!). I am enjoying learning french but now I am scared to study Bambara more because what if I don't go to Mali? What if Peace Corps evacuates? I have mentally prepared myself for this trip after thinking I was going to South America for the longest time. I have gotten extremely excited about Mali, the people, culture, Africa, training, my mud house, my project, my new village, a possible diet of all non paleo foods (I am sure my first plate of rice and millet will make me cry a little on the inside as I recall all of Mark's daily apple research), and the list goes on and on. I see myself living in Mali for 27 months, I feel like I have fallen in love with the the hardships and rewards as a Mali Peace Corps volunteer and I have not even left yet.

I hope for peace in Mali, I hope the leaders will do what is best for the people, I hope that the current volunteers get to return to their projects and their Malian families, and I hope that I will Join them in June.

I already turned in all my government passport and visa info and have not heard anything back on that, I also have not received any travel info yet that is supposed to come a month before departure.

Right now I am working in Omaha and I got hired to do a bunch of large paintings that has helped pass the time. I am going to visit Tulsa again in a few weeks for some concerts and camping with friends. Hopefully I will have some answers soon about my Peace Corps service.

Cheers

They do not Speak Spanish in Africa

I finally got medically cleared a week ago after a loooong few months and unexpected/not so nice surprises. After over analyzing for a week and wondering if PC was going to call me now or in 3 months....I got an unexpected call from DC.

I found out that I am invited to serve in PC starting this May as Environmental and Water Resource Engineer in...... Africa! When I get my Invite package I will know the Country so I will let everyone know when I find out.

I thought because of my Spanish skills they would never send me outside Las Americas; so this was a very pleasant/shocking surprise.

So this is my blog by the way, welcome! I am not the best writer but if you care to stay updated and in touch please subscribe. So now that I know what my future holds I can start preparing for staging and do some more in depth research and reading on my Country. So what do you pack when when going to Africa for 2 years?


Peace