Bad Decisions and Worse Consequences

I know it’s been a while since my last post.  Let me take you back to the reason it has been so long.

Against all reasoning, I went for a nice little swim in the dam near my house late September.  At some point during my excursion, I cut my foot open.  Then, since I am really stupid, I went for a swim again the next day.  You can imagine my sunburn after that. 

Within a few days, I knew I had problems.  I was continually running (and not the exercise version), I had developed a UTI, pink eye, sinus infection, blurry vision, sprained ankle, and spots all over my skin.  It was time to call the doctor. 

They were worried I had some serious stuff so I went to the hospital for tests and started an antibiotic.  Eventually everything cleared up and I was fine.  Until, the kids at school all started passing around a seasonal cold, which I am still fighting off. 

To top all of that off, my power was out for 5 days during my illness(es).  It’s usually not that big of a deal but I was having to wash dishes by candlelight.  Not very easy when I also don’t have a sink.  

Daily Life

As per request, I have decided to compile a list of things that no longer phase me about everyday life. 

Getting into Town

I live a few kilometers from the village of Tongo where I do most of my shopping.  As long as I have my bike, getting there is fine.  If the tire is blown, it’s still possible, but the very slight and gradual incline makes it very annoying.  Walking there takes about 30 minutes. 

Getting into Bolga

First, I have to get into Tongo to catch a tro tro.  Now, there is a market day every 3 days in Bolga so I plan all of my tasks around this schedule.  Waiting at the taxi stand in the village can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. If you are fortunate when you arrive, there will be one spot left in the tro, you take it and leave immediately.  If you are unlucky enough to be the first person in the tro, you know there is a wait ahead of you.  Plus, it is very common to have a full tro but still have to wait for 20 or more goats/sheep/dogs/small children to be strapped to the roof before leaving.  Today is the first time I have been to Bolga on a non-market day.  Getting here took 1 hour.  Who knows how I will get home.  

Market Day

These days are a mixed bag.  I always go to the huge market in Bolga to buy veggies and wagashi cheese, which is similar to fried feta.  Some days, the city is packed and it becomes difficult to cross the road, other days everything is closed.  

The Bank

The 3-day schedule makes some things difficult to achieve.  Say it is Saturday Market Day, and you have 2 cedis in your wallet.  It costs 1.50 to get to Bolga so you know that will be fine.  Once there, you head right for the bank, only to find it is closed even though the sign on the door says it is open on Saturdays.  True story:  The bank manager herself told me the bank is closed on Saturdays despite what that sign says. 

So now I only go to the bank during the week.  Mondays are off too, because everybody needs their money and you are likely to find hundreds of people waiting in “line” and it would take hours to get your money.  Fridays are a similar story.  So now that leaves mid-week days the only days I will attempt to go to the bank. 

Now all of this sounds silly, why wouldn't I just use an ATM to get my money.  Luckily, they do have them in Ghana, but the card I applied for 6 weeks ago is still floating around somewhere. 

School

I guess it is surprising that I teach 50+ kids in each class.  That is something you get used to very quickly and before long, I stopped realizing how challenging it used to be.  Add the fact that the students cannot hear me if I try to add a detail while they work, and I had to reform the way I teach everything.  Oh, and the fact that my Sign Language is effective enough to get by, but I can only do a basic amount of explaining anything. 

I also teach IST which is mostly about computers.  The kids love it and I don’t.  Simply put.  It’s not their fault that they don’t know much about how to use a computer.  It has been difficult to teach them basic things like clicking and dragging things around.  I teach about 25 kids at a time with 7-8 computers.  I have 30 minutes to teach them all so I have to plan about a 4-5 minute activity to allow enough time for everybody to try it out.  It takes about another 5 minutes for the student to correctly turn the computers off.  The language barrier and my complete lack of technological sign language knowledge makes these classes stressful.  But the students are making progress and it is becoming easier. 

Bathing, Washing hands

I am still bathing with a bucket.  It sounds like it would be annoying but after a while this too becomes normal.  I boil a little of my water first so I have a nice warm bath.  Or if I take a second shower, I sit the bucket in the sun for a bit to heat it up. 

Washing my hands is done by pouring water from a cup over a large bowl.  I probably miss a nice sink the most. 

Cooking and Washing Dishes

I use a 2-burner gas stove to cook everything.  I make pancakes just about every day for breakfast.  Varieties include but are not limited to:  original, cinnamon, coffee, chocolate, peanut butter, peanut butter and chocolate, strawberry, and rum.  I think I may open a pancake stand when I get back home.  Lunch is usually something easy like IndoMei, which is very similar to Ramen.  I always have some soup for supper, either groundnut soup, chicken noodle, or tomato soup. 

I have developed an interesting method for washing dishes.  I pour about 1 cup of water into a bowl and use that amount of water to wash everything.  Then I rinse the same way by pouring it from thing to thing.  It’s shocking how little water you can use when you have to ration what you have. 

   

The Real Start of School

It’s finally time to formally start school, 2 weeks after the students started coming, but that still doesn’t mean I am teaching classes. 

My classroom is conveniently blocked in by Kindergarten on each side and those kids just love to peer at me through the crack in my door and the windows like I’m some animal on display at a zoo.  It is harmless at first and then it becomes very annoying as I chase them away time after time until it becomes a game for them.  Needless to say, what discipline I learned in America doesn’t apply here and I am picking up some really bad habits that I won’t speak of. 

When it finally comes time to begin teaching, I quickly learn that I am not going to be provided with a schedule so I had to chase the other teachers around and basically come up with my own.  That took about another day off my teaching schedule. 

 I assign a first project and have the kids illustrate their names and sign names as a way to gauge their levels and help learn their names.  When the projects were completed, many exceeded far above my expectations and I was really happy about their work.  However, it seems many of the kids don’t know their real names, only their assigned sign names, and the roster is impossible to line up with the list I created from the cards.  Grading is going to be fun…

Next, I taught a mobile lesson where the kids got to work in groups.  They collected whatever they

could find outside and some groups came up with really nice finds.  After 3 classes completed the mobiles, my class now looks like a jungle and everybody loves looking at their new art!

My pool with the hills in the back

The kids are currently working on snake coil pots.  Clay is clearly a medium they enjoy and their creativity blows me away.  They use stones and sticks to add embellishments to their pieces without me even thinking about it.

Somewhere between my last post and this one, I explored around my site some more and found a huge dam that is now my personal swimming pool.  I risk contracting Schisto and other nasty bugs by just having my feet in the water but I consider a nice refreshing swim to be well worth the risk.  Except for that part where I have felt like crap since I first went out over a week ago…

End of day 1

I got bored and decided to start a small project on campus, working on building a football net from water sachets, which are small plastic bags that all the water comes in here.  They are discarded everywhere since there is really no public trashcan, and the kids go out and collect them so we can continue to work. The first net is almost complete and the football team couldn’t be happier!

I also went on a short trip to Navrongo and saw the world’s largest basilica made entirely from mud bricks.  The interior decoration is very traditional and was inspired by the Nankani-Kassena motifs that are used to decorate their houses.  It also includes reliefs of local animals and religious stories.

The wet season is coming to an end and with it, some amazing storms have been blowing through.  We get a lightning storm just about every night and I was able to get some pretty exciting shots.

Developments with Biggie:  He is a really horrible cat and we have come to a point in our relationship where I thought he would benefit be more as a meal.  But after being far to aggressive toward him, I decided to start feeding him outside and he no longer wakes me up at night!  So now, he is welcome back on probation, as long as he can behave himself.

   

The “Start” of School

 It’s finally school season, which means I can finally start doing what I came here to do.  But just because school has started doesn’t mean I am teaching as of yet…  It takes several weeks for all of the students to trickle in and the ones that are here from the beginning spend a couple of weeks weeding and fixing up the place. 

In the meantime, I have been making a few trips out to the Tengzug Hills to do come climbing and sight seeing.  There are random piles of huge boulders stacked everywhere with shrines nestled in some places.  The views from the top of the formations are breathtaking! 

I have also been chipping away at setting up my classroom.  I don’t really have anything to do until school really starts so I guess I will just be cleaning and sorting more and maybe (re)painting [over] some of the murals.  I am also glad to finally have students to talk with and practice my sign language.  It’s gotten a little rusty over the past few weeks. 

My storage room and future studio

The classroom

I have introduced the students to my kite.  They make excellent targets!  Does that make me a bad Volunteer?  But really, they really enjoy it when I chase them around with it.  Their laughter and excitement for things like that are awesome to experience. 

So now it’s just a waiting game until I get to teach.  I still have no idea what classes I will have, which is a little unnerving, but that is just the way it is here.  Nevertheless, I am extremely excited to have my own classroom and get to teach whatever (as long as I can say it in sign language).   

Finally at Site!

The journey north to my site was interesting, to say the least.  Thankfully, I was with 2 other Volunteers and didn’t have to go the whole way alone. 

Getting to Kumasi was our first task and that went fine.  But when we arrived and tried to find the cheapest place to stay (as indicated by my travel guide), we discovered that it had been removed recently.  We tried another hotel, booked it and paid, and then were told that 3 people couldn’t room together.  Welcome to Ghana, where important facts like that are often overlooked.  Discouraged, we went to another hotel, booked it and were then told the exact same thing.  After a few minutes of looking pathetic and lost, the worker decided to let us stay in the room. 

The following morning, we got into an argument with staff over a crappy breakfast that was supposed to be for 2 (they didn’t know we all shared it), and then they tried to charge us for the second plate even though it was included in the room price.  We tried to leave the hotel and were literally chased outside for a few cedis.  It was stupid that it was a big deal but after all of the trouble we had with accommodations, we just wanted to go. 

Then we tried to find a bus to take us north.  We chartered a taxi and I bartered the fare.  When we got to the station, we discovered it was only for southern cities.  Then we asked the driver to take us to the proper station and I had to bargain again.  We didn’t exactly come to an agreement because I had no idea how far it was and I didn’t want to get overcharged.  When we got to the station, I tried to pay him with “the only money I had left,” which clearly wasn’t enough.  We ran into a sticky situation where there were people surrounding us, and they were all arguing about the fare situation.  Finally, it was ended when a taxi driver pulled us away and told us he was going to the same place and gave us a fair price. 

We decided to risk our safety and go along with the driver for several reasons:  Much more room, we would get there faster, the seats don’t feel like a plank of wood, it’s a lot quieter, etc…

Thankfully, there were no safety issues with the driver.  He was very nice and did as he said he would.  But, when I was about 1 hour away from my site, his car broke down and we had to get out and find another vehicle.  Luckily, we were stopped at a police security check and the cops stopped another car and pretty much told the driver he had to take us to out destinations.  It was shady, I’ll admit, but it was getting dark and I just wanted to get home.     

When I arrived in Bolga, my nearest city, it was dark and raining.  I called a friend to come pick me up and he was able to get me home safely.  In all, the travel from Kumasi to my site took about 10 hours.  I probably won’t be doing that again!

But now, I am basically just relaxing at my house with Biggie, my cat, and waiting for school to start.  I feel like my sign language is starting to go downhill since I haven’t really used it in about a week or so.  I also don’t know a lick of the local language yet.  I should probably go get on that. 

Swearing In

I got a pretty sweet haircut the night before the swearing in ceremony.  I call it something between the monk do and the bull cut.  In other words, I would have never asked for this cut in 100 years, but when in Ghana, expect to be surprised by the variable understanding of phrases such as “not too short.”

Our homestay families provided us all with a final outfit for our ceremony.  Usually, the trainee matches their family members but since I was moving to the north, my father presented me with a traditional smock from my region!  This was not a cheap gift and I am very thankful of it (even if it is pink). 

At the ceremony, I sang the National Anthem with a fellow Volunteer, performed The Lion King’s “Circle of Life” in Sign Language as our language presentation, and took the oath to formally become a Volunteer.  All of the Volunteers also got to perform 2 traditional dances for the homestay families. 

After the ceremony, we all went back to our homes to pack to leave the following morning and ultimately move to our respective sites. 

So we are all finally official Peace Corps volunteers now.  It has been a very long 10 weeks and I won’t lie about being glad it’s over.  But now the real work sets in, as I get ready to spend the next 24 months here. 

End of Training

Unfortunately I don’t have a lot to say about the past few weeks.  Basically we have only been in language training, preparing for our LPI (Language Proficiency Interview), which must be passed in order to be sworn in as a Volunteer. 

We finally had the interview and it was set up to allow us to talk about our family, what work we will do in the Peace Corps and whatever else came up in discussion.  Thankfully, I passed!  So now, after 10 weeks, I don’t have to worry about this test and can relax until Swearing-In next week.  After then, we will all officially be Volunteers. 

As my time winds down in the village I am becoming more aware of the things I will miss:

The children.

Being close to anything I could possibly need for daily life.

My sister’s cooking.  She’s amazing at it.

The other Volunteers

Some things I may not miss so much:

The Church across the street, including the late night and early morning service, and all day service on Sunday

            The bleating baby goats everywhere

            Children following me in hoards shouting “Obruni!  Obruni!”

            My one little brother that is a crybaby

            The insects

            The training schedule.  Freedom is nice.

I have also been compiling a list of my “firsts” during my service so far so here they are:           

Solo flight           

International flight

Red-eye flight

Guinness beer

Airline food

Passport

Going through customs

Meeting a US Ambassador

Eating West-African food

Dry heaving

Heat exhaustion

Living in a village

Teaching a deaf classroom

Defecating in a cup

Chasing goats and chickens out of my house

Speaking an African language

Being called Obruni (White man)

Finding a chicken foot in my food

Having tailored clothes made

Seeing a Rhino Beetle

Eating dog

And its liver

And brain

Eating Guinea Fowl

Blacking out in a foreign country

Lying about going out to my family

Blaming intoxication on bad street meat/Malaria small small