1 Year in Ghana?!

A representation of where I have been since April.

Once all of the craziness of April died down, I thought I would be ready to head back to school, relax and teach my classes, maybe start the Vocational Club, and run the rest of the term out.  That wouldn’t necessarily be what I found…

Since by this time, the dictionaries were well under way, I spent the majority of my time working on editing photos, laying out the design of the book, and piecing together what would become my favorite project in Ghana so far!  Many hundreds of hours have gone into this project and more hours are still ahead of me.  But to see the progress so far, go to the Sign Language Dictionaries tab for more information. 

What you can't see are the thousands of
termites that were flying around at the light.

I started a small initiative at my school to start teaching about HIV and other health and relationship information.  This began with the painting of a mural that outlines the risks of different activities that can lead to HIV.  With the help of our newly acquired projector (!), the students and I began to draw the mural on the boy’s dormitory and over the next few days, completed the painting.  They all did so well and now there is a new popular spot to hang out in front of the mural!

This led to the students (boys mostly) asking me to teach them how to properly use condoms.  I gathered all 150 or so of the older boys in the dining hall one afternoon and had an amazing session about proper use and disposal of condoms (complete with wooden penis models and condoms).  You can imagine how interesting giving a demonstration in sign language is.  But interestingly, I was able to clearly explain everything and even answered some great questions that will hopefully keep my students safe in the future.  The last bit was to have some of the students demonstrate condom use to their peers.  This part is always very funny and it was a good way to close out the almost 2-hour session!

I attended a Media IST that was a lot of fun.  Basically, we worked on editing videos and other projects for an entire week.  The stuff we worked on will be used for the years to come in training the new groups of Volunteers.  I also had my 24^th birthday during that week and was glad to share it with a lot of great Volunteers and the World Cup.  At the end of the IST, I was named the Vice President of the committee so now I can add one more responsibility to my ever-growing list.

Around the same time, I was summoned once again to Koforidua School for the Deaf to present training on HIV education that we are adapting for the deaf schools. That lasted 2 days and we worked with a small group to teach about HIV, other illnesses, relationships, goals, pregnancy, risk, and other related information.  The training had a lot of information but we worked with a lot of great students and teachers and I left motivated to bring the program to my school.

 

The premiere of our new game!

The next week, I returned home and gave the girls condom demonstrations.  But this time, I also brought female condoms along (but not after figuring out how to use them myself), and I even tacked on a self-defense session that was inspired by Miss Congeniality and the S-I-N-G model.  They were roaring with my performance as one of the girls pretended to beat me up to save her.  Both sessions went very well and I look forward to teaching them more in the future.

I was invited to present on behalf of the GhAP committee at the new education group’s counterpart workshop.  This entailed leading sessions for an afternoon about HIV information and our committee.  I had a lot of fun with this and also got to meet (and break in) the new batch of Ed Volunteers.  This also means that I have been here 1 year already!  That went fast!

I returned back to my school with only a few weeks left before finals so I used that time to continue work on the dictionary and continue developing the library.  There were a lot of exciting things that happened there so go to The Library tab for more information as well! 

With the close of school, my J3 students returned home and I had to say goodbye to some of my closest friends at site.  That was really hard for me but I know I will continue to grow close to the other students. 

We also said goodbye to 3 of our 7 Volunteers in the Upper East.  It was hard to lose them but their time was up and they served their communities well!

Currently, I am relaxing on vacation from school.  I went to our regional office where I am working on painting more kente designs on the walls along with some of the other Volunteers and am eating lots of ice cream.  I have plans to go climbing at my site, weave baskets, and possibly sit on a crocodile next week so hopefully my next post will be filled with those fun things!