Connecting Students

After close to ten arduous months of meetings, phone calls, and grant proposal writing, the PCPP for my community’s Computer Lab and Library has finally been approved by Washington- the capital, not the deceased president. A day after hearing from Peace Corps that my project had been given the green light, a web page with a description of my project had been added to the Volunteer Projects website. The address for my project is

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=641-278

The project is entirely funded by friends and family, so please please please spread the word and get people to donate. 100% of the donations (which are tax-deductable) go towards 20 Pentium 3 computers complete with monitors, keyboard and mouse, as well as a 1-year subscription to the internet and a projector to use for computer, math, science, and social studies classes. I’m hoping to get all the funds by mid-January, since that is when Term 2 starts.

That being said, October and November were pretty quiet months- just teaching and gearing up for the STARS conference in June. The months are flying like my chewed fingernails from all the STARS worries that come with the job. It feels like I just started climbing a mountain shrouded in fog concealing steep inclines and mountain goats I can easily trip over.

In October, I attended a funeral for the mother of two of my students. I’ve been to funerals before, but this was the first where someone I knew was directly affected. I have never seen any of my students so grief-stricken. The headmaster and some of the teachers at my school attended the funeral, held a stone throw’s distance from our school. In the early morning, women dressed in bright red cloths were playing soccer, which was later explained to me was a way to celebrate the fun side of the woman who passed away. I dressed in my traditional funeral cloth, which I always dread for a number of reasons: My diaphanous feet glow white against the black cloth, funeral shoes, and blood that drips down from the open sores on my feet. Yes, the sandals I wear for the occasion are made of hard leather that, because of friction from walking all over town, tears my feet open like they were made of tissue paper; Ghanaians fare well because it’s like their feet are made of indestructible Nike shoes. If you could imagine, two hours into the funeral I’m shuffling around with a pained look on my face, and the body hair did not help my appearance, which was simian to the max.

Several of the students, usually not permitted to attend any funerals, were allowed to support their two classmates. During the dancing part of the funeral, the teachers and students goaded me into dancing. I think I did alright, and it was one of the most memorable times I’ve had in my town- everyone joined in for the dance with happy-sounding music in the background. As cheerful as the music sounded, I had trouble translating in my head what the hell the song was about. I never would have guessed that each song was meant for a funeral since none of it was funereal. One song had the message of moving on with your life after a loved one has passed away, another about making the most of your life while you still have it. A little after the song ended, a storm that had been slowly rolling towards us from the horizon finally arrived to the funeral grounds, raining over our flimsy tents and flooding the ground. So many things happened at once- for an hour lightning struck over and over again so close to where we were sitting I thought we would surely get hit. The ground was no longer dry and rocky but saturated with small rust-red rivers that went under our chairs and headed towards the forest at our backs. The rain was coming down something fierce, but this didn’t deter a dozen or so of the people from continuing to dance in the rain. The rain stopped as abruptly as it started and continued crawling towards the setting sun. Glad to be alive, I bade farewell to everyone and took me and my bloody feet back to the house. The two students are still coming to school, performing much better than I’ve ever seen them. Their mom would be proud.

A few days after the funeral, I was relaxing under one of the shade trees (people tie rocks to the branches to weigh them down, until they collectively make the tree look like a giant umbrella), when a friend came out and pulled me away from the tree. It turns out I had sat under a huge nest of killer bees, you know- the bellicose African kind. While keeping a fixed glance at the black hive now a safe distance away, I asked my friend if he was going to knock them down or something and he said that very night, when they are asleep, they were going to set it ablaze. I made it clear that I wanted to watch and he told me to come around 8:30 at night. A storm similar to the one that came during the funeral blew through though, and I had to stay in that night. The next morning the guy said the storm blew away the hive, which I guess was fortunate for all parties.

One day in late October, my students were taking a quiz when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there came a low, Jumanji-style rumbling from several yards away from the school. Drawing nearer we hear drumming, cheering, and bells clinging, parade-like. Then we saw, coming up the hill, all the primary school children from the school across town marching up, saying “ebi, ebi, ebi, ebi” (I thought I heard A-B,A-B). This elicited snickering and cheering from the students; meanwhile I had no idea what was going on. In the teachers’ lounge, I learned that the students at that school, for reasons entirely unknown to me, were shitting in their classrooms, which pissed off the teachers and eventually led to this march of shame throughout the town saying, shit! shit! shit! shit shit! The Presby school on the other side of town is very old (well over a hundred years old) and has no locks for its six classes, and supposedly students were sneaking in, leaving a clandestine dump on the floor for everyone to see and smell the next day (according to the teachers, this is not at all normal and unheard of in Ghana). Quoting my headmaster, “They were leaving shit-bombs….and got their just deserts.”

Recently, I’ve been enjoying fresh palm wine in town, something I had never had up until the funeral. My headmaster and a fellow teacher took me to one of the houses to enjoy the tasty beverage, and were shocked when I said I hadn’t tried it yet. This drink is a staple beverage in my small town, considering we are surrounded by palms and it is so easy to make. To get palm wine, you cut a hole in a recently felled tree, tapping the sap for about two weeks. Fresh palm wine has a very low alcohol content (about 2%), but tastes not unlike a fruity soda with a hint of bitters. When it is fresh, it is sweet. The longer it sits, the more fermented it gets, and the alcohol content increases. I prefer it fresh. When I came back to town the week following the funeral for more palm wine, I brought my own bottle to be filled (it’s about 50 cents for 750mL). My students saw me and freaked out that I was buying alcohol. I told them that they should wait until they are older, and when they are, to drink in moderation. Sounding Al Gorish, my students realized I wasn’t a swinging drunkard and left me alone. Riding home on my bike, the bottle’s top (not fully screwed on) popped off violently, and I learned that the vapors are slightly volatile. Someone once told me these very vapors attract invisible dwarves, which is a story I’ll have to get into another time. Let’s just say during training, a host-brother of one of my friends warned us not to “F^%$ with the dwarves!” I won’t.

Another newly discovered favorite of mine is this bubble gum ice cream in Accra- 6 cedis (roughly $4) gets me 8 scoops of this cold treat. Lisa and others complained that I have the pallet of a four-year-old since I prefer this flavor over, say, normal vanilla or blasé mocha chip. It doesn’t help that I’ve also started mixing into my oats a brand of this nutritious and delicious powdered baby food. Although the package clearly states it’s for infants, with a baby cartoon bear over this message to help clarify things, I don’t see what the problem is. I have banana flavored, fruit flavored, and maize flavored powders that are keeping me alive and happy. Does that make me less of a man? No. Now, can someone please come over and help shovel this into my mouth making plane noises?

What else happened over the past few weeks? Oh yes, a friend of mine up north was bitten on the arse by a hippo that wandered into town. He's alright, and he has such a great story to tell his grand kids. Course if I were him I would add that it had been a great battle, and the hippo, still out there with the taste for human flesh, now has one eye missing and my own bite mark on its hide.

Coming soon this month are Thanksgiving and the arrival of the students’ pen pal letters. The U.S. Ambassador is having Thanksgiving at his place again, and mostly all I can remember from last year is feeling like Jaba the Hut and somehow making it to the pool for a swim. After the ambassador’s, I went to the Kumasi Thanksgiving too, and after two Thanksgiving dinners, I thought I would be med sepped for gluttony. This year I think I’ll play it safe and go to only one Thanksgiving event.

Around the end of November, I’m hoping we get our pen pal letters from the students at Rickards High in Tallahassee. We’ve been doing a correspondence program with the students there, and this time it the letters focus on what science can and cannot study. My students keep asking me when the letters are going to come, and for 6 weeks or so I’ll be saying “It takes about six to seven weeks from when we sent them out.” So we have that to look forward to.
As for me, I’ll be checking the progress of my grant twice a day like a maniac, since this is the biggest project I’ve been working on for over a year. Love ya’ll and have a happy Thanksgiving!

Wine:
Cardwell Hill Pinot Noir Willamette Valley, 2006

Music:

Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?- She & Him
You, Me & The Bourgeoisie- The Submarines
Shadows- Rufus Wainwright
The Thanksgiving Song- Adam Sandler
Ship Out On The Sea- The Be Good Tanyas
Yes!- Coldplay
Love- J Dilla
Shine A Light- Wolf Parade
Strange Apparition- Beck
Homelife- John Mayer
Straight Street- The Fiery Furnaces
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing- Jack Johnson
Empire State of Mind- Jay-Z
Each Day Gets Better- John Legend

The Computer Lab and Library- another month and it will be completed!!!!

Enjoying palm wine during the funeral



At the funeral with a teacher (left) and my headmaster (right)

Two other teachers who attended the funeral (to my left)

Some houses around my town

The Form 1 Classroom

My Form 3s

My Form 2s

The cats, acting weird

They just chopped down this tree outside my home :(

Baby food....or breakfast of champions?

[Half] Marathon Runner/Walker/Hobbler

Mehuwakyei /mi-hu-wa-chi/. This is Twi for it’s been a while (or 久しぶりだな for my Japanese mates). My bad. A goat bit my fingers off and Peace Corps had to fit me out with $4 million bionic fingers. I still refuse to eat with my hands though. Nah, I was lazy. No goat bit my fingers off, but I don’t trust the one with the single horn always hanging out on my front porch leaving a pellet poop surprise for me every morning.

Things are good. Actually, much better than last year in terms of work. We have all new teachers at our school and they show up, like every day. And they are good teachers. It’s like being in a dream. And my teaching has improved a lot this year. It feels like I’ve been here for much longer than a year. My students treat me with a lot more respect, and we are getting loads of things done this term. We have had almost no cancelled classes, unlike last year, and the headmaster is coming to school every day. Let me remind you that just three months ago I would be the only adult at the school most of the time, the students were fed up and no one seemed to care about school. Things have really turned around. Am I jinxing the situation in Otumi with my glee? I hope not.

The only bad news is that I lost my Form 3 Math class to another teacher. Originally this term I was in charge of Math and Computers for Forms 1-3. My headmaster and the assistant headmaster both felt that the students should not be learning new material, but spending their class time practicing past questions from the BECE so they could get a better score and go to a good high school. My headmaster wants me to focus on teaching computers since that will also be on the BECE for the first time in Ghana, and the Form 3’s are missing an entire school year of the subject. So be it.

Other Peace Corps volunteers have voiced similar complaints that their headmasters will not let them teach Form 3 so that they can focus giving students practice questions only. I’m still trying to decide if this is a good decision or not. I want my students to do well, and it seems that our school outperformed a lot of schools around us (which, admittedly, does not say much).

Another hurdle is the fact that my headmaster is disallowing extra classes (classes before and after school for the Form 3’s) because parents do not want to pay extra money. So this means I cannot teach night classes with the computer anymore, because the parents won’t pay. The students saved their own money to purchase a computer last year, and now they are coming to me on how it is not fair that they cannot use it (the school is rigged to the street lights, so the only time we get power is at night). I have been hounding some people in my town for months now to bring power to the school, and still we’ve had nothing but telephone poles sent to the school, which I can’t help but stare at since it’s right outside the staff office window. Someone is being a lazy asshole.

We had a PTA meeting about three weeks ago, and the fact that I’m not staying a third year came up. A few people were upset that I said I’d stay if the ICT building was finished (I said this last year, during my third month at site!) The ICT building might be done in a few months, and now I am reneging since I lost hope in the building last year and set my sights for teaching in New York City. I promised I would do everything I could to be replaced by another Peace Corps volunteer, and hopefully that will be the case.

The fact that I’m leaving soon hit a lot of people who want their children to go to the U.S. I have almost no idea how to help them, but next time I’m in Accra I told them I would go to the American Embassy to find out what they need to do. I filled out all this info about their age, the type of visa they want, all this stuff. So for all you singles out there, if you want to marry a Ghanaian to help them get a visa, please send me a message. I tried to reason with some of the parents that it’s likely that if the students do well in school and work hard, they would have an easier time going abroad. But I really don’t know if some of these families have the money to send their kid over to the States. One couple said they have saved a ton of money for their son, and I know them well enough to know that they probably have saved enough. Too bad their son might arrive in the U.S. only to see the crappiest economy our nation has faced in a LONG time.

More volunteers are finishing their service this November. In August, the last of my old education group friends had left Ghana at their close of service. After this next group leaves, my group will be the oldest group serving in Ghana. Every day now I’ve been going up the same road to school I’ve been using for over a year, and I can’t help but think ‘I’m going home soon’. It’s like I am missing a place I’m still living in. In short, I am sad about this. I love my town. I love the people here, and in a matter of months I will be leaving all this. And I get sad when mango and tangerine season are over. God I’m going to be sad when I leave. Le sigh. I’ll be back, my cats need to cheer me up.

I’m back. Those cats. Yes I still have them, and coddling three fast growing cats has not been easy, especially since I get paid about $120 a month. I wish they could do my dishes or help out with the laundry. They are pretty good mouse catchers though, and boy have they caught a lot of mice, since the house is practically situated in a tropical forest area. They still are running in front of my legs though, which is no good when the power goes out and I can’t see anything and I end up tripping on one of them into a wall. And forget about scaring them with my African masks, they seem unfazed by any of my antics, ever.

During the school break, I took a trip to Jack’s site for a day before heading to a week-long volunteer conference on AIDS/HIV education. We had fun, and like usual ate exorbitant amounts of food. Since we were leaving for a week-long conference, we had to empty the fridge the only way we knew how- by eating every last morsel of food. We mostly laid around, me, Jack, and the dog Herzl, breathing heavy from the food and the milk. Yes, Jack has milk at his site. And a milk man. The only milk all of the volunteers have access to is powdered and in a tin. At Jack’s site, we could amble up to a stable, greet the milk man (a Fulani with an awesome hat), and walk away with a week’s worth of milk (which incidentally could be made into cheese, yogurt, and butter). In fact, before leaving Jack’s, it came down to drinking some milk that congealed into butter, so that really we were drinking butter bubble colloid things suspended in what tasted like butter milk. Bleckkkk. We also climbed a water tower under construction, with some of the village children wearily following us to the top.

On the way to Kumasi for the conference, we stopped by one of the new volunteer’s house and Jack’s closest neighbor. When we got there, we noticed a dog with three-and-a-half legs hopping towards us. The volunteer had replaced another volunteer, and along with the job this guy also got a hand-me-down dog. Right when he got to sight, this poor dog landed its paw in a trap, and lost most of its leg. Apparently now the dog is getting on fine, but I’m worried about my kittens since there are loads of hunters in my area. Another curious thing about this guy’s site was the total lack of phone reception, save for one particular spot about six feet in the air in his kitchen. Because this is the only place where he could get phone calls or messages, he made a harness attached to the ceiling, where the phone would be cradled waiting for incoming signals. Good thing this guy is tall. I had to stand on my tip toes to get my phone on that damned cradle.

The HIV/AIDS education conference itself could fill three pages, so to summarize, there were two conferences: one for volunteers in southern Ghana, and another for those in the north. I attended the south meeting, and met up with loads of friends I haven’t seen in a while. Each volunteer brought their counterpart as well for the week, and we were all shacked up in a really nice hotel on the outskirts of Kumasi. Lisa came with her counterpart, who it turns out is the chief of her town, and one of my favorite people in Ghana. I, on the other hand, had no one. All the teachers left my school, and my headmaster was away. I was counterpart-less. The conference was very informative, though, and it had a pool which was peculiarly cold even though the days were hot hot hot. Many of us laughed when previous to the conference we got an SMS from Peace Corps reminding us to bring a “swimming costume” for the pool at our hotel. I was going to be a water barrel, Jack a goat I think, and Lisa a popular Ghanaian bouillon cube.

After the conference, several of us went to the Kumasi Peace Corps sub office to unwind and goof off before going back to our jobs. Lis and I went to this amazing butterfly sanctuary not too far from the office. Early on, there was overcast and not much butterfly action. We took a walk in the forest for a bit, got eaten alive by all sorts of insects, and when we came back out to the main building of the park, the sun was out and so were the butterflies. Lisa knew some butterfly-ese, so she was able to coax a few of them to pose while we took pictures.

After our relaxing trip to the butterfly sanctuary, I took Lisa to a nice Indian restaurant in the thick of Kumasi. Unfortunately, I am not too familiar with the area, so before getting to the restaurant we first had to wander the streets, at night, hoping not to get mugged or strangled. The restaurant was quite excellent though, so check out Vic Baboo’s for fine Indian food and good smoothies.

The next day, I went for a jog around KNUST, a top university of Ghana and the venue for our STARS conferences, to train for the marathon coming up in three weeks. Idiotically, I got so lost on KNUST’s huge campus that I ended up jogging for three hours (which I’d imagine is like running almost three quarters of the marathon). I ended up injuring my knee, and could barely walk on it when I got back to the office. For three weeks I took care of it, but a week before the marathon I couldn’t even run for 5 minutes without feeling silly stabbing pains in my knee. So months of training for the marathon went right down the drain.

Now, you would think that is the end of the story, that any sane person would next write something like I watched from the side to cheer on my friends in the marathon. No. Not this guy. I had intentions of doing this, but when I went to registration with everyone the day before the race, I ended up deciding to try and run the half marathon. What can I say? I got caught up in the excitement, and only weeks before I was running half marathons as part of my training.

The race was a complete mess. I started off at a good pace, and maintained this for about 20 minutes before my knee voiced protests and I slowed to a jog. 10 minutes later my jog turned into a walk. 5 minutes later my walk turned into a 2 hour hobble to the finish line, with the walkers of the half and the runners of the full passing me with quizzical looks on their faces as they passed me. “Why,” they would ask themselves, “does this person have a runner’s number pinned to his shirt? He is obviously not sweating nor running.” I put shame beneath me and watched as the real runners dodged cars, annoying people, and a goat while running on the ridiculous course that seemed to have very little foresight for an international marathon. Much of the path was along the coast though, so it was quite pretty, and lasted much longer for me considering my snail’s pace.

It was nice seeing the country director, who parked his car towards the end of the course to cheer all us PCV’s on as we got closer to the finish line. It was embarrassing though when we both saw each other in the distance, and what should have taken 5 minutes to get to the country director ended up taking 15. At the finish line was Lisa (holding a sign instructing me to “Run Faster”) as well as several other volunteers who showed up to cheer us on. A few of our peeps did well in the race, others got injured from the nonsensical course. All in all we were smiling in the end, with a complementary coconut in one hand and a chicken leg in the other. There were free messages for runners, but my table broke on me and I fell to the ground, thus ending my session and my relaxed state.

During our time in Accra for the marathon, Lisa, Serena, Emily (a Peace Corps Mali volunteer), Corey and I (plus a few others....) were invited to stay at this incredibly generous expat's house. Between relaxing on comfortable couches and watching cable television, we were treated to groceries he picked up for us that some of us haven't eaten in months- sliced turkey, real cheese, wine from a bottle and not a box. Our expat host definitely goes down as one of my favorite people.

That’s about everything. Today we had entertainment day at school, where the Form 1’s entertained the Form 2 and 3 students with dancing and singing. I was around to see last year’s event, so I kind of knew what was in store for the day. I liked one group who did drumming and dancing to the theme of sanitation and cleaning up garbage around a river so people don’t get sick. My supervisor also came as part of her tour de volunteer’s sites, and it was great seeing her. It was also nice when my supervisor handed me an amazing package from my friend Kim, allowing me to introduce Jujyfruits, Yogurt Raisins, and Junior Mints to some of my mates in town. Note: packages induce tears of joy.

Lastly, if you are not a Peace Corps volunteer, than you will enjoy the book "Heat" by Bill Buford. If you are a volunteer, this is the worst book to read while serving in-country because it's all about fine Italian cooking, something totally lacking at our sites.

Wine:

Merry Edwards Sauvignon Blanc
Russian River Valley 2006

Music:

Can U Dig It?- Certain Stars
On A Day Like This- Elbow
Outside Villanova- Eric Hutchinson
8-Ball- Underworld
Straight, No Chaser- Thelonious Monk
Happy Ending- Mika
Time to Pretend- MGMT
Champions- Mr. Flash
Feelin' Way Too Damn Good- Nickelback
Stars- The Weepies
The Vagabond- Air
We Tigers- Animal Collective
Hell Yes- Beck
10 A.M. Automatic- The Black Keys
Sunshine- Buckcherry
We’re All In Love- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Freedom- Rage Against the Machine
Hurry Up Let’s Go- Shout Out Louds
Summer Wind- Michael Bublé
Miles Ahead- Miles Davis
Run On- Moby
Rewind- Nas
Mighty O- Outkast
Speed of Life- David Bowie
Oo-De-Lally- Disney’s Robin Hood
A Day at the Races- Jurassic 5

The last of the old education group

Carrying luggage, the Ghana way


Bye Chris and Eric!!! Damn shame it had to end that way

Pure evil




Boogidyboogidybooo!

Free lol cat picture

The milk man

That's not milk!!!!!!

Jack and a hyperventilating Herzl on the water tower

Interesting Western Region flora

The cradle of life for phone reception

You put this thing on your gas range, instant oven!

Suitor #2

?

At the butterfly sanctuary with Lis

The Accra International Marathon

Hey this map doesn't mention haranguing pedestrians or belligerent motorists!

Some Japanese runners- boy was my Japanese lacking that morning

One of the few occasions that call for tape over the nips- marathons

I think the back of this said "Don't die, jerk!"

SHS student Gabriel after running the marathon.

Entertainment day at our school

Student playing "sick farmer"

Group photo!