Current entries:
Sept. 21, 1998
Sept. 22, 1998
Oct. 4, 1998
Oct. 16, 1998
Oct. 23, 1998
Oct. 29, 1998
Nov. 11, 1998
Nov. 17, 1998
Hello everybody!
It looks like I'll be heading to my placement sooner than expected. I thought that I would be training in Accra for a month and then helping out at the new school until the next term starts in January, but in fact, school has already started and there's no physics or math teacher there yet. Apparently that's o.k. because it takes a couple of weeks for all the students to trickle back from summer holidays anyway. I arrived in Ghana sunday night. There was a warm refreshing breeze blowing and it's much cooler than I expected. They bused us out to a little village called Abokobi, about 40 minutes North of Accra for 5 days of training. Today we came to Accra for another 5 days and then we head north. There are about 22 VSO's in all and 20 of us are placed in the far north.
The first day of training was on cultural awareness. Apparently giving the "thumbs up" is very rude, I can't imagine how many sorry looking hitch-hikers stood for hours watching cars pass by until they dried up like little raisins and their dusty remains blew across the rolling savanah fields. Where I'm going it's common for the young people to squat when they greet their elders and all white men are assumed to be gay. Makes me wonder why VSO arranged for Rob and I to share a house on the school campus! We cook for ourselves too, and I think we'll be the only men buying tomatoes at the market since no man who is worth anything would cook for himself.
Ghana has about 57 languages to contend with. If this were canada they would have to have microfilm to lable all their food products in the different languages but here they just don't lable at all. I have no idea what I've eaten. We had Twi (tshwee) lessons yeasterday and covered greetings and bargaining. My favourite thing is "I'll see you later", me ko aha aba which means I go there and come back, or ko bra which is "go and come". And they add O to anything they want to emphasize as in "good morning-O or Ghana women make smart business-O.
We were learning Twi because it is widely spoken and is common in markets but this morning we began learing our local village languages. Mamprulli for four of us. They got a student from Accra university to come teach us how to say "good afternoon" - Ni i wuntang and "good night" - Naa wun nintiti beo which translated literally means "the chief will give us new morning". Every village in the north has a chief or a king and we happen to live in the village with the head chief of the entire province.
Oh, before I forget, if anyone finds a ziplock back with a hackey sack and two packages of malaria tablets... they're probably mine. I think I left 'em at someone's house during my multiple and frantic packing and unpackings. I haven't seen more than a few mosquis though and based on all the side-effects I'm seeing I'm probably better off with the malaria.
A few more cultural tidbits before I go: Although the north is still completely male dominated, girls are allowed to go to school because it adds value to them. You can increase your value by a goat or even a cow just by sitting in a classroom for 3 years! I guess Ghanaian men would have to "buy the farm" to marry any of my female friends. One more: Each tribe in the north as a playmate tribe which it will tease mercilessly. One trainer told of how she walked into a business meeting and a playmate tribesman who was a total stranger stood up and said "I can't do business with someone from this tribe of donkeys" and walked out of the room. But it was all in good fun. That's all for my first Ghana briefing. For all of you who were going to send me care packages I've been told that things are far less likely to get nicked by the postal workers if you mark the packages "Religious Materials". Another tip is that I'll soon be craving powder sauses and drink crystals to liven up the dinner table. Letters can be sent directly to the address below, but packages should go through the VSO office (you need to indicate the contents too):
VSO Program Office
P.O. Box 6256, Accra North
Ghana, West Africa
So, I'll see you all down here soon,
Naa wun nintiti beo
kesten
Hey, thanks for all the "happy birthday" wishes guys... all none of them! :)
Ah well, you can make it up in juice crystals.
got to go shopping.
ciao,
kesten
22/09/74
Hello everybody!!
Pull up a chair, open a beer for me (chilled please, they're hard to come by here), pop in your "Power of One" CD start beating your drum if you've got one, and welcome to Africa...
I'm in Nalerigu, my home for the next two years. I arrived Sunday the 27th of September at about 2:00 and started teaching the next day! Talk about winging it, we were told there would be a week to settle in but when we got here Shaun, the Peace Corp volunteer, informed us that exams started in November and the third year students weren't being taught because there were no teachers. Did I mention that I'm teaching chemistry, not math and physics? Yeah, that was a suprise, but Shaun was already teaching physics and doing a good job it seemed so I got chemistry since no-one else could teach it. The facilities here are absolutely incredible. There's no running water and we only have electricity from 6 to 10 at night from a generato but... I'm in a room with four CD Rom computers, two colour printers and 20 oscilloscopes! Nalerigu S.S. is one of about 100 Science Resource Centers which the Ghana Education Service has equiped with state of the art (four years ago, it's windows 3.1) equipment which has basically been just depreciating and collecting dust since it was bought for lack of anyone who knows how to use them. I'm with the computer club right now, an initiative started by Shaunjust before I arrived. The students are so keen to finally get to use some of this equipment. Just typing something and then highlighting it or putting it in italics can set them off laughing and clapping. My chem lab is fully equipped including a large stock of chemicals, beakers, burettes, a centrifuge, digital pH meters, a 3000 watt water distiller, digital
aquisition equipment and more. The physics lab is even more crazy with everything from electronics kits to hydraulics parts. Our headmaster is really great and we have been given pretty much free reign over the entire resource center. I had the grade 10 students come in and clean the dust off everything my second day at work, it had been overtaken by spiders and geckos. It was a picture perfect moment seeing these 20 or so students cleaning. The graduating class had done one lab in the last two years and with their lab practical national exam on November 5th I decided to get it running a.s.a.p. After much head scratching we've managed to do two titrations and I have them coming to do 2 labs per week. I have some really keen students too. I started the first titration lab on wednesday but had to stop short because the class needed to review the purpose of a titration. After class I was talking to some students and noticed one of the boys practicing at the back. I walked over and asked him what he
was doing. He had three beakers of water and he said, "this is the acid and this is the base and I'm letting the titration run". And then there's Bukari who just fixed the cassette player which I had brought over broken and gave up on fixing. All of a sudden about 2 minutes ago I hear far of trumpets and Mexican singers coming from the room next door. Now I can start my salsa/merengue lessons! I brought a bunch of broken electronics
gizmos with me to experiment on and try to fix and this Bukari has been going through them one-by-one and fixing them for me.
Rob and I are settling in to our house which was quite a nice surprise with a large foyer, bathtub and sink which although not working, give the semblance of home. There's even an extra bedroom and ceiling fans (but I'm never in the house when the electricity is on). We have a cat... and two kittens left from
the last volunteers which are endless entertainment. On friday we will go to the market and buy some chickens so we can have fresh eggs every day. Our predecessors had chickens too, but they ate them before they left. Rob and I have plans to make an outdoor shower and we're getting a student to help us plant papaya trees outside the front porch. The first day on the job was quite something. School starts with assembly which is mandatory on mondays only. The headmaster gave a speech and
there was also a gospel/drum choir. In the afternoon I went to the school book store with the choirmaster and all-around bright student, John Faile, to look for a chemistry textbook. My it's a scary place. I started to hunt around at the back but got scared off by rats. Clearly it's their territory. In the afternoon the school cook, Rebecka, brought us some wicked yam-in-tomato-sauce. My classes went pretty smoothely, save a 2 minute interuption of my nuclear chemistry lecture when I was out-bleated by a passing family of goats. My day has a nice routine to it now. I wake up at about 5:30 am to the sound of a muslim prayer chant which floats in the window from over the corn fields. Rob has usually started breakfast already and I join him and then do the dishes. I try and think up a lesson (or figure out what went wrong the day before) for my first class. I have a bucket bath and then spend the first two periods in the lab. At 9:00 there is a break and I walk over to the dougnut lady and buy a bunch of timbits (local version). There is also porrige and cocoa in the staff room. I teach until 2:45 and then clean or go to market or start
dinner. Every night around 5:30 I go and sit on the porch. I either squeeze some orange-guava juice or write in my journal or do some laundry. It's such a nice view from my porch. Last thursday Rob and I met Philip, a grad student in biology working on his thesis. We played tennis (that's right, tennis!) at the Baptist Hospital and then went to his place for indian food and unbelieveably cold beer for the local bar.
It's friday evening. Tomorrow at about 3:00 in the morning Rob and I will catch a bus to Tamale for a VSO regional meeting. I have no idea who makes the bus schedules here.
Today was a bit of a write-off because of school elections, so I spent the day training the kittens to be watch-dogs for my chemistry lab - vermin control. I love our kittens. I'm feeding them tea every morning to try and stunt their growth and keep them small and cute forever. Rob made fudge tonight, wow is it nice to have desert again! We also have a fridge now - just got connected to the energy grid last week - so I had my first
glass of cold water today too. It was an exciting day last week when the Volta Dam power truck pulled onto campus. We saw them pulling in as a delegation from our school, myself included, were leaving to go pay our respects to a recently departed chief in a nearby village that starts with the letter "Z". That was quite an experience... I nearly walked over the grave which was planted in
the courtyard of the group house compound. I just walked through the entrance and hung a right and there it was - the inner courtyard is our equivalent of a living room. When we got back we had power and all the kids came to the Science Resource Center to try the air conditioning. I''ve come up with a new philosophy of life for Africa: When in doubt, take a shower. It feels so good pouring the cool water on my head and feeling the steam
leave my body. It's so humid some days that I take two or three showers in a day. So if I can't decide weather to mark my physics exams or prepare some solutions for chemistry... I take a shower. If it's too early to start dinner and I've already sat on the porch for a while playing guitar... I take a shower. Every night I go to sleep with the sound of drums coming from the village.
Philip told us that on nights of the full moon the children come out and play in the light. Every monday at 7:30 there is morning assembly. This week a choir came to the front and belted out one of the wickedest gospel tunes I've ever heard. I'll have to see if I can get them to the Vancouver folk festival some
time. Yeasterday was a fun day as far as teaching goes. I gave back their test results (the first in half a year) and assigned row leaders to each row according to the top mark. I told each row leader that their mark would depend on their row's marks. If there was no improvement then their mark would go down. If their row does much better on the next exam, the row leader gets
some bonus marks. As insentive I took the row leaders and introduced them to the computers. Only a handful of students have been allowed to use them so it's a huge motivating tool. Then I told them that if anyone didn't want to be a row leader that it was up to them. They all stayed on board. On the way out of class I passed by a bunch of 1st years running around
outside their classroom. I hauled them all inside and then asked what class they were supposed to be having. "Maths". Where is your teacher? "we don't have a maths teacher". This seems to be a pretty common thing at N.A.S.S. I told them that I would take them for one class a week for a completely random lesson and that they should spend their time studying instead of playing because Shaun, myself and Charles (one of the teachers who teaches) were going to start a quiz-bowl team and travel to other schools to compete. They clapped as I left the room. It's so funny here.
We bought chickens last week. You can call me "Chicken George" from now on. We were hoping to have fresh eggs every day, but apparently we bought immature hens so we'll have to wait. Our rooster, however, is a real star. I think we'll go far, me and Clubber. After training our kittens into vicious rambo-killers I went back to my house and took a shower. When I got to class I was told that classes would be disrupted (cancelled) because of the voting... I went back and took another shower. Aahhhhh Africa! There's a lesson in that. I've started catching rain
in buckets (it rains every day right now) to keep up with my personal washing demands.
That's all for now. I have to go finish Rob's fudge. Mmmmmm, fudge.
My new wish list includes:
sani flush toilet fresheners
sweets
The Star Wars Trilogy (I'm serious Chris, send it. All we have is the Sound of Music. But remember to disguise it well and mark it religious materials)
seeds for flowers and vegetables
slide film
mail (hello, hellooo all you pen-pal-promisors)
chocolate (oh chooooclate) they only have it in tamale and further south
Leonard Cohen CD
I'm going to try to send journals 2,3,4 today from the Baptist Medical Center. If you get this, please forward it to everyone who you think might like to see it. In particular, try and get it to Chris. I'm told that he'll be staying at Lynn's Saturday night (Lynn and Paul Williams in white rock, I don't know the
number anymore). I'm going to try to call him between 11:00 pm and 1 a:m but the phones here are tough to work so I may not be successful. Also, if someone could call my brother John at 274-0132 (vancouver) and tell him I'd like my two radios shipped to me for christmas + the UBC amateur radio study guides I'd appreciate it. Hilly, if you or any other CBC lover could contact CBC in Vancouver and see if they'd be interested in reading my journal reports over the radio that would be great. We could even send tapes with sound clips later. Bridge, I got your letter! Thanks a bunch, I've sent a reply. If Chris could bring a $40 pen laser from the ubc bookstore or elsewhere, I'd love to have one for demos here. Denton, I'm sorry I haven't replied about a medical posting, but I'll inquire today. I'm sure it would be very easy, the VSO in Bindi (very near) said he was sure they could use someone there. My holidays start December 7th and last for 5 weeks (+ extra since students don't
show up right away according to the Peace Corp). So Chris, get your hinney down here. I'll have a beer chilling in the brand new fridge that the VSO just gave us.
ciao for now,
kesten
My Trip to Bongo
VSO has us go on a project visit to a volunteer doing similar work after our first month here. I'm really in my element as far as directions for gettin places here in Ghana. They just told me "go visit Linda in Bongo on Thurs. the 29th". It actually works fine if you arrive in a city of < 20,000 and ask for the white person. So I set off along the bumpety clumpety Nalerigu-WaleWale road in one of Ghana's marvelous one-bolt-wonders. It rattles, groans, shakes and bounces but it doesn't fall apart. You can see gaps along the panels, between the door and chasis and parts of the dashboard. It seems like there must be one very special bolt somewhere holding it all together. The road from Nalerigu to Wale-wale must be one of the worst I've ever seen, but the scenery is great. As I was bouncing along in the van I thought how great it would be to buy a trampoline and put it in the back of a truck. Then you could drive by these little villages with your passengers bouncing up and down in the back like popcorn. I got to the big town of Bolgatanga (you can buy cheese (local version) and apples there) after dark only to find that there was no transportation for the last half hour north to Bongo, day or night, except market days. So I caught a taxi to a nearby school and asked for the white VSO teacher. Fortunately there was one, and I spent the night at Anne's house with Rachel and Navdip who came over with me from London and were also on a project visit; it was good to see them again. The next morning I started to walk to Bongo hoping that I'd catch a lift right away. I must have missed rush hour (whenever a car comes by) cause I walked for over an hour before getting picked up by a military police land-rover heading to Bongo to quel a small shooting incident over a "district chief executive" position. I had a great time in Bongo, and yes, the drumming was phenomenal.
The Milo Games:
School was cancelled for nearly two weeks (one week of soccer/volleyball, one week of cleaning the campus in preparation) so that Nalerigu could host the Milo games. Cleverly timed to land right in the middle of the science practicals final exams. Far from practical, these lab-skill-tests require teachers to scamper about the countryside looking for all manner of springs chemicals and crawly things only to have them pop a question that's not even on the syllabus so all students fail miserably. All the first and second year students were sent home for the games, and most of those going
far away (more than two hours) still haven't returned. Apparently it can be a real problem for some of the students to get the money to travel back (about $2 can). These kids must be bright to be at the level they are considering all the school they have missed due to cleaning and teacher absenteism which probably amounts to about 30% of the time. I arrived 1 month late in the term and since then about 12 days have been cancelled for one reason or another. The only good thing that came of the games was the dance on the last night. There was a brass band and they really are awesome dancers here. Us whities created a huge stirr by joining in. But the best part was when the schools took turns dancing around the gym and singing their school songs acapella. They also fed us teachers three times a day during the milo games. Ghanaian food is pretty good though somewhat lacking in variety. The main staples are fufu (pounded yam), banku (pounded corn), kenke (pounded and fermented corn) and tee zed ( unknown pounded substance). With all the time I spend in the air conditioned office training kids on the CD Rom computers you sometimes get these jolts back into the more deprived scenes of Ghanaian life. Like three nights ago at the closing dinner. I'd noticed a small gaggle of boys making frequent trips onto campus. I saw them at night on my way into the staff room where we were having our meals. On the way out I saw unfinished plates of banku with groundnut sause (mmmm groundnut sauce) being passed to these kids all about 6 - 9 years old. Six of them would gather around the plate and, scooping with their hands, the leftovers
would vanish in a few seconds. It looked like the first and last meal that they would eat that day.
I went to the Bolga FM radio studio in Bolgatanga on Saturday with the school's gospel choir. It was awesome, kids singing and dancing and playing drums in the isle the whole way. I had my guitar with me and sang a few songs. The kids love Frank Mills, especially the part where it says "I'll be in the park... with my GIRLFRIEND..." -they go wild. I was playing outside the radio grounds by the bus when a D.J. named Sweat came by to say that he would like to record me sometime and do an interview. The choir rocks and I'm going to send a tape to Div (if he gives me his address) to make copies, so hopefully the shcool can raise some money with it.