First Quarter. Finished :)

I have officially finished my first quarter of teaching!
December 11th will be my 6 month mark from arriving in Ghana. Time is an odd thing. I seem to have been here forever and just arrived at the same time. While I don't feel as if I have accomplished a significant amount yet, I am happy with the roots I am putting down by getting to know the other teachers and students well and discovering how I can best help the school help themselves. Some projects that I have underway in addition to teaching are:
> an ArtShow that will happen in May 2008 in which the PCV's teaching art across Ghana will bring 2 students each to Tamale for a week long exhibition/traditional craft workshop
> a Drum/Dance Troupe fundraiser to buy the drums necesesary for beginning a Team at the Deaf School, which in the future should be able to perform at local and national events and hopefully provide a method for the school to have some petty cash- as of now the depend entirely on NGO's for supplies and so have no actual cash available for small purchases
> a roadside art stand where students can sell functional artwork and not only earn some small money but also learn about running a small business
>bringing in books to fill the new library space that are not from the 50s

So we will see how things fall into place over the next couple of quarters. Everything progresses so slowly here that there is only so much action one can take before being forced to sit back and watch things unfold.

Here is some of the random artwork I have been producing...they are all small, I might or might not make some of the on a large scale, what do you think? Any particular ones?

Ghana Artwork

Day in the life of Kari

5:00 am. Usually I wake up for the first time about now because I have to pee. Sometimes I try to roll over and hold out, cuz I dont feel like walking outside to bare my ass in the mosquito infested outhouse. But if thats not possible, which usually its not, I get up, grab my windup flashlight, wrap a 2-yard around me like a towel-its usually too hot to sleep clothed, slip into my charlies (flip flops) which i keep by the door, and truck outside. You have to be careful not to step on the toads- they are everywhere, usually i end up kicking one or two accidently. After taking care of my business I greet whoever else is up on my way back (everyone wakes up at about this time) and go fall back into bed.

7:00 am. Rebecca, my small girl who lives next door and is the daughter of another teacher, bangs loudly on my door and yells my name. Most of the time I'm still asleep and if not am definitely still in bed- my favorite thing is to just lay in bed and think about things for awhile before getting up in the morning, nothing in particular, just whatever comes into my head. Rebecca is wanting the bottles of water she had stashed in my freezer of my small square fridge the night before so she can take them to school for her and her sister. After this I stay up and putter around, I either read or take a bucket bath or cook breakfast or add to whatever painting i'm working on or do some small laundry (this consists of a bucket and bar of soap and my knuckles.)

8:00 am. I walk across the soccer field which also doubles as pasture for the school's herds of goats and sheep. I cut over to the main part of campus where they are having morning assembly- its interesting because the teachers usually don't do anything, they just observe, and the prefects take care of all the pledges and announcements and lost and found. All the students stand in a semi circle around the flag pole in lines according to their class and height- JSS on the left, shortest in the front. I always wave to Zaratu, she is my other small girl, she is in JSS and always at the front because she is short. Then, I go to the headmistress's office to sign in and greet all the other teachers who are coming in. I don't think a day goes by when I don't greet every single one of them. I kind of like all the greeting, because it makes you feel like people care, and that way there isn't anyone whom you don't talk to at all.

8:45 I head over to the art building to make sure everything is in order for classes. I brief Shahad on what we're doing that day. Shahad is the teacher who is assigned to be my partner. Except it is more like I plan everything and run most of the lesson and he kind of helps out, which is fine because i'm not very good at group planning.

8:55 Class starts- this is my schedule:
Mon P1 8:55-10:10 and P2 11:30-12:45 Jss 7:30-8
Tues P5 8:55-10:10 and P6 12:10-12:45 Jss 7:30-8
Wed P6 8:55-10:10 and P5 12:10-12:45 Jss 7:30-8
Thrus P4 8:55-10:10 and P3 11:30-12:45 Jss 7:30-8
Fri- free
i'm pretty happy with it :) "P" just means primary and is equivelant to elementary of the same numbers... although the ages are all over the place, i have a 21 year old in my P6 class. crazy. they were all excited when i took all their pictures (5 & 6) and am going to print them at the suboffice so that they can make picasso style portraits of themselves. i also had them write "stories" about themselves to put on the back, which just means they answered some questions like age, # siblings (some where like 18), fathers job (most were farmers), fav subj in school, their fav. game, and what they want to be when they grow up....it was interesting some of their choices for what they want to be. one boy just wants to sell water bags in the market...another boy said he would be a doctor and when another boy told him he coudn't i made sure and told him many times that he could! lol, and another boy said he wanted to be someone on tv. it took me awhile to get them to even understand the question. i don't know if anyone has ever asked them that before, but they got really excited once they understood :)
I havent gotten to do much with my younger kids yet, because most of the class is taken up by going over rules and me getting their names and sign names written down...my rules are:
DO- share art materials, be creative, have fun/smile (this one makes them laugh because the sign for funny is scratching your nose with 2 fingers and the sign for smile is smiling real big and using your fingers to extend out from corners of mouth)
DO NOT- beat each other, come to class late, go in store room....lol, i figure that covers most things
i wrote DO and DO NOT on opposite sides of the board and then they had to choose where each rule went.
The kids are so cute and excited to be in art class. School is really hard for most of them and art class is when they dont have to think as much and they just get to DO. :) My sign language is getting a lot better. I'm usually able to say about anything I want to say. The problem comes when I put things in the order they go in English and not in Sign Language order. Example: English- Use the green pencil to trace your hand. Sign- Hand trace pencil green use. And its always hard for me to understand what they are saying to me. I get lost when i forget a sign and by the time I remember what it is, I have missed the 3 or 4 signs that followed it. They go so fast!

10:10 am. break. If I don't have a meeting to plan something or other I go over and sit in the shade with the other teachers and hang out. Usually its nice because they are speaking English (about half speak Twi and half Dagbani) sometimes they are all talking in Dagbani though, its weird because I can understand random words, but never really know what they are talking about. Sometimes I go back to the house to get water during break. I have developed this thing where if I start getting dehydrated even the tiniest bit, my ears clog and my voice echos in my head. It took me awhile to realize it was correlated with drinking water, i just thought I had some weird wax thing going on that would come and go.

11:30 am. next class

12:25 pm. class is over- usually I go chat with the other teachers for a few and then head back to my house for lunch and a nap. Here is a list of the food items I have that I can make things from: tomatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, apples, bananas, groundnut paste(peanut butter), yams, eggs, honey, mustard, oats, pasta, flour, sugar, margarine, tomato paste. Period....I've gotten good at getting creative :)

4:00 pm.ish I usually head back over to campus and stroll around or work on some project in the art room and let whoever wants come in and read kids books at a table. They LOVE this. I wish I had more children's books for them to choose from. I don't think they ever really have the opportunity to read any books at all. Let alone a book that isn't for school. The boys love the dinosaur books and are always amazed when I explain how they are real and lived a long long time ago. When I'm ready to go back and tell them to clean up there is always double handed and repeated thank yous. They are such good little students :)

6:00 pm.ish I head back to read or chat with the teacher neighbors who live in the compound next to me. Maybe eat something small for dinner. Do whatever chores need doing with Rebecca or Zara while listening to music turned up loud. Rebecca's favorite is Regina Spektor. Zara just laughs at us dancing to something she can't hear. I hate doing dishes. The way it works is I have two basins, one for soapy, one for rinsing. Then when finished I dump the dirty, soapy water outside and save the rinse water to be the soapy water for tomorrow. Water is scarce though, so I've gotten good at not using any. I probably drink about the same amount as I use for bathing, laundry, and dishes combined.

7:30 pm. JSS art club. I've only had one meeting so far, the others keep having to be put off for different reasons- either there is a thunderstorm or lights out or I have to leave because they are toxic smoking my roof to make the bats and bees who live there leave (thats why i'm at the sub-office this weekend, I had to stay out for a couple days while the fumes subsided) But about 50 kids showed up to the first meeting. I let them look at lots of different pictures of famous artwork I had. The couldn't stop looking! It was great to see them so interested in the different artists, they especially liked frida kahlo and salvador dali and they all thought the mona lisa was mary(mother of jesus). It was hard to explain how noone knows who the Mona Lisa is but that it is one of the most famous pieces of artwork in the world and the reason it is so famous is simply because Leo said it was the best thing he did and carried it everywhere with him. Don't forget all this is in sign language.... I tried though. After everyone finally showed up I told how I was going to be teaching batiking in the after school program and how they needed to bring some sketches for the next meeting or else they had to leave. This is my way of weeding out the ones who aren't serious. 50 people is too many! So Monday is the next scheduled meeting and we will see how many actually do the drawings. It could be of anything they want, however they want. Just the effort of them remembering to actually do something and bring it will show me they mean business about learning art.

9:00 pm. I head back across the field home. If I'm tired I go strait to bed. Sometimes I read for awhile and fight all the stupid gnats that come through the screens when I have the light on at night. I take a quick rinse bath-I'm usually too sweaty-sticky from the day to not. I send some texts to peace corps friends to see how they are getting along....then it starts over :)

Shoo-doop :)

School in limbo

SITE:
I arrived from "traveling" on September 4. School was supposed to start on the 11th. Today is the 28th and, drumroll please, I just taught my first class yesterday! It went well, it was 4th grade and we spent an hour and a half playing a rule game where I had Do and Do Not sections and they had to decide which side the rule went under. Most of the time was spent getting them to understand what each rule means, which was interesting because not only are they still learning sign language, but so am I. But all worked out well and when I showed them the project we'll be doing first, they got all excited (tracing hands with crayons so they overlap, then filling each hand with a different pattern, then looking for new shapes where the different hands overlapped and filling every "shape" with different colors of watercolor. fun fun).

Here is a crazy story: I didn't really sleep last night, one of my students went missing. She is only like 4 and is new and in the Kindergarden class. I guess she had been trying to run away all day and they had tied her to her bed (which is ridiculous and a seperate issue). When they untied her to let her go to the bathroom, she ran away. The thing that made it really bad is that there wasn't electricity last night- no lights and she is deaf so they can't call for her. And there was a major thunderstorm. They are like walls of water here. Scary. They didn't find her until this morning at 8! I felt so bad for her. I think they are going to send her home.

What have i been doing with the rest of my time do you ask? Well let me tell you. If you check out the list of books on the side of this blog page, you'll see a pretty good list for only 3 months (it took me a whole month to get through the first one Wicked, cuz i thought it was boring but wanted to finish), but now I have almost 15.

I'm going to get some fruit and veggies at the market before I go back to site (I'm in tamale now, in savelugu you can only buy bread, tomatoes, onions, rice, yams and beans. Period.) I miss fresh things! And dairy...................mmmmmmmmmmm that is the first thing I will eat when I get back to the USA. I hope I don't go lactose intolerant while I'm here, that would be a very sad day. Peace!

End of Training

Yikes! It's real now. The past month has been packed full!
First I would like everyone to give me a little pat on the back for passing my language test!! Thats right, according to my interviwer I am "intermediate med." level in Dagbani (which also means I barely passed). If you guys will recall my language skills in English are pretty lacking...so I was a little worried about being able to have a 20 min. conversation in Dagbani with a stranger. But luckily I have down how to say "can you repeat please" (labi yeli) and speak slowly please (dim suglo, yelmi bela bela). So i somehow made it through...
Aside from trying to cram language in my head, the last couple weeks of training weren't so bad. The art people got to go and learn traditional crafts, so we practiced Kente Weaving, Batik, Kalabash art, and making glue from kasava. It is interesting going to the shops because there is not only the craftsperson, there are a ton of apprentices who are all in little uniforms to help out. The all got a kick out of watching white people trying to do it and thought it was funny how we kept making things our own way because they have it drilled in to them to do everything a specific copied way.
I don't know what it was that was so draining about training, but I'm glad it's done. Last week I said goodbye to my homestay family and gave them all a crate of minerals for a gift (that means pop- the choices are coke/sprite/orange faunta) and then headed off to the good ol Dery Hotel were we all stayed a couple of nights before swearing in. Swearing In was entertaining...i dont know about fun persay, but definitely interesting. We all were decked out in clothes our families had made for us, some people matched both parents hehe:) And then everyone had to do some sort of presentation in the language they had been learning the past 3 months. Mine was a poem and it went like this: Shikiru, Shikiru, Shikiru - Shikiriu changi viella - A yi chang shikiriu - A ni nya bangsim ni kpem - Dinzugulo, Sokam cham shikiru! > School, School, School - Its good to go to school - If you go to school you will be wise and powerful- So, everyone should go to school!
Quality, I know :)
Swearing in night was a good time. We just danced all night and made merriment :) After that everyone went to their sites! I decided to help my friend Tim move into his site down at Cape Coast and visited a few other people on the way back up...now its time for the real deal. Today I go to site. Get Excited :)

OK so the deal on visiting me:

Everyone is welcome!

I have a spare bedroom, so if you start getting on my nerves i can just close you in there for awhile. :) Plan on coming for 2 weeks minimum. Africa is on a much slower pace than America and you're gonna need a lot of time to get into the flow of things. I can't have visitors for the first 3 months of service or the last 3 (Sept. 07-Nov. 07 and June 09-Aug. 09) But I would love to have you and show you around Ghana! Or just be a place to stay while you are on your own journey (you are all capable of this, and I could help "start you off")

here is a good website for some info:
http://goafrica.about.com/od/adventuretravel/a/africaflights.htm

North American Airlines seems to be the way to go, the winter months especially are fairly cheap. Delta also has some cheap flights...dont forget to get a visa from the ghanaian embassy a few months ahead of time :)

Site Visit

Three weeks left of training. I’m not gonna lie, I kinda just wanted to stay at site when I went to visit. The prospect of coming back to learn a new language all day long when I suck at speaking in general was not the most thrilling. But now I’m close to the end! Although I am going to miss being close to all the other PCVs. They are good ones.
So my site. It was amazing. I’m pretty much the luckiest person ever.
My headmistress and counterpart came to Techiman (where we are training) 2 weeks ago. We all had a couple of days of workshops where we talked through different common issues that we might have to deal with at site. My headmistress is a really great lady. It was kinda awkward sometimes because neither of us are small talk people, but she is really dedicated to the school. I’ve kinda gathered that this isn’t necessarily the norm. So it is a big relief to be working with someone who will be supportive. On Friday we left early for the north. I didn’t go with them because there wasn’t room, but they did take all my stuff. I decided to take my life up to site and leave it so that I wont have to deal with carrying it around later. (So now I’m just living out of my backpack). Jesse, Brenda, and I rode up separately on a Tro – they are the two who are closest to me from our training group. They are both teaching at sites near Bolga in the Upper East. Jesse is deaf art and Brenda is high school science.
My site- the school campus isn’t right in town, its about 2 km out by itself. My house is right on campus, although kinda away from the main building which is nice, but right next to the staff housing compound so there are always people around. My house is so nice! I feel like its not peace corps or something. It is basically a big rectangle. There is a T down the middle- the top of the T being the living room, and the stem being a hallway, then there are 2 rooms to the right and a kitchen and bath to the left. The kitchen is almost even a proper American kitchen, (without a sink or fridge of course) but there is a gas stove and cupboards which is way more than most ghanaian kitchens. My “bathroom” is literally a place where I can bathe with a bucket. A tile room with a drain in the corner. I was very excited to have one of these all to myself! AND because of that I can make the rule that noone is allowed to pee in there. Everywhere else the bathrooms reek like pee because that’s where people pee. Mine will not be that way. Then I share an out house that is a ways from my house with everyone which is cool. The biggest living related challenge I’m going to have at my site is water. There isn’t any. Right now they collect rainwater which works fine, there is a silo looking thing that we all use. But during the dry season we all have to buy water from a big truck that comes and fills a tank.
The school is great. There are about 150 students from 1st to 8th grade. I will mostly be teaching P1-P6 and then having an art club with the JSS in the evenings. AND! Get ready for this…. I have my own art room!!! Crazy huh?! Not only do I have my own room, but there are some supplies also and big tables! The supplies are mostly left over from what people sent to Sabrina (the girl who I am replacing) but it will be really nice to have something to start with. The only thing I will need to figure out is scissors… they are sort of lacking here in Ghana. The rest of the school is set up sort of campus style. Each building is separate and is an open air structure with a blackboard some wood desks/benches, and a cabinet to store the students notebooks. There aren’t textbooks for the most part, teachers write paragraphs on the board and the students copy it into their notebooks.
So I spent 4 days at my site. The first night I arrived Sabrina was still there, so it was wonderful to be able to ask her my millions of questions. Then she had to go down to Accra for the rest of the time so I had the house to myself. Well kinda. I don’t think I was ever really alone. The girl who lives next door (who’s dad teaches at the school) helped me out with all kinds of things and is my new shadow. She is 12 and goes to the school in town. She wouldn’t let me do any work! She even randomly cooked dinner for me when I was taking a nap one afternoon. Crazy. Its kind of weird letting someone else do things for me. But I have kind of gathered that they really do want to and even are insulted if they are there and you don’t let them do the work. I didn’t cook much in the house though, I mostly went to the headmistress’s house for dinner. It was good to spend time getting to know her, although we are both pretty quiet people, but that was fine, comfortable silence was had  The weekend I spent exploring the school and talking to other teachers and basically getting a feel for things. It was fun, one night there was a football match (soccer) and it was the teachers and students against the alumni who had come in for the 50th reunion of deaf schools in Ghana. It was really interesting, everyone was deaf. So instead of cheering there was lots of running in circles on the sidelines. It was great.
Before coming back to Techiman; Jesse, Brenda and I met up and spent 2 nights and a day at the Peace Corps suboffice in Tamale. We got to know some other PCVs in the area and made some American food and wondered around Tamale for a bit. It was good.
So now its Dagbani, Dagbani Dagbani….. hopefully my next update will be about how I have passed my language test and have moved on to site!

The past week has consisted of lots of contemplation time. I'm beginning to understand that is a MAJOR component of what Peace Corps is. Down time. Free time. Community Integration time. Skill Development time. Insanity Development time.
We returned on Monday to the deaf school where we practice our teaching skills. This time our trainers let us decide how the week's schedule would be arranged, so we decided to pair off and each pair would stay with the same class for a full 3 days (9-12) and then have an art show at the end. Jess and I had the JSS1 (approx. 8th grade). We decided our project would be an accordian book with a comic book-like story inside. The objective being to show time through a series of four pictures. The first day was the hardest. It wasn't until right before the end of the period that the students began to understand the concept of breaking down a "happening" into four steps. This is a classic example of probably the biggest difference between Ghanaian and American schooling. Here, it is rare that students have to come up with original ideas, if ever. Memorization is central. To me, it is actually kind of amazing the extent to which they can memorize (for those of you that dont know, i lack considerably in that area ;) ) Students are used to memorizing portions of text and if, on the test, they have even one word off, it is wrong. So, if that is all you have ever learned. You can imagine how difficult it would be to not simply duplicate a set of pictorial events given by a teacher, but to come up with your own parallel ones. Our examples were things like: seed, green shoot, big plant, dying plant....or egg, chick, hen, dinner...or (this was the full example i made to show the project)Kari goes to Ghana- saying goodbye to family, flying over the ocean, landing in Ghana, teaching art to Ghanaians. The kids got really excited when they figured out that the little cartoon character was me :) The second two days were much smoother, they colored in their drawings and then made covers.
It was really cool to be with the same students for a period of time and able to get to know them and their individual skill levels. It was really exciting when one girl was able to come up with a completely different idea for her story (she did fetching water) and then when one boy was an amazing artist out of nowhere...and i got really attached to one girl who has a lot of developmental problems. She is way behind the other students. For example she never was able to grasp the storyline concept. But I just finally let her draw her ideas and color the way she wanted, then helped a lot with her cover. She was sooooo proud when she was done! It was so cool to see that.
Since we didn't have to spend tons of time on lesson plans, the 6 of us had lots of time to do whatever (we were done at 12 every day). I think it was good practice for what site will be like. A little structure with lots of down time. I have started realizing that you can't really go through Peace Corps without developing little insanities/obsessions or quirks if you will to fill the time:) The PCVs have been telling us stories about some of the more extreme versions...like one guy had some pet snakes and kept goign to the health office with snake bites, they finally told him he had to get rid of the snakes, so he cooked them and ate them. Another girl hadn't been heard from in awhile and so another PCV went to check on her. When the volunteer arrived the girl asked if the volunteer wanted a donut. And the visiting volunteer looked around and the girl's kitchen was filled with donuts in all varying states of decay. Like she had started making donuts for weeks on end and never stopped. Another interesting one is a guy I met. He was a really cool guy too. He had started hunting all his own meat in the jungle (i think with a machete) and was determined to make sure he tried every sort of meat possible.
So what do you think mine is goign to be?? I'm already kind of weird. Hopefully it will just become something random, like my friend Jenny has been writing down every single text she sends and recieves for the last year in a book. And thats like 20+ a day. SO get excited for me. It'll be fine :)
Another thing that might make everyone laugh is that one of the guys in the group informed me last night that when me met me he knew I was in Peace Corps, apparently everyone else is random and you would never expect that they were a PCV....but I on the other hand scream Peace Corps. hehe. oh wellll....

a small taste

I love working at the deaf school. I have taught 6 different classes now and they are so fun. It is a whole different ball game. It is a real challenge to come up with something that is the correct ability level that can be taught with the few signs we know and mostly gesture and with hardly any supplies at all. But I love it. The kids are unbelievably excited about art and soo proud of the littlest things. They crave attention and eat it up when you give it to them. One thing I hadn't thought about before that is that most of the deaf students also have other disablities in some form... whatever caused the deafness also affected other functions. Also here, instead of a child staying at his/her ability level, the teachers keep passing them so that they can reach tech. school and learn a skill. I can understand that, but at the same time it is odd to have mostly students with an ability level and another way behind. You just sort of encourage and give extra help. I'm really excited though about it all. :)

Home-stay is also going really well, even though I am hardly ever there. I think I'm getting a really different experience than most, because there really isn't a set family that I live with. I live with the queen mother of the village, her parents, and then a whole host of random people who are distantly related somehow. There is one boy who can speak english really well, so he is my interpreter. The house is arranged in a square with about 9 rooms all facing an inner courtyard. Everything happens in the courtyard. washing, cooking, hanging out... I do have my own room which is really nice and have tried my best to make it homey.

2 weeks in

Traveling. Wondering around. Riding. Roaming. Traveling. Following. Looking. Traveling. Traveling. Traveling. That about sums up the past 2 weeks. It’s mind boggling that is has only been 2 weeks since I left home. Feels more like 2 months. It’s nice to think that part is behind me. For a little while anyway.

Leaving was hard. I knew I would cry. But I’m not gonna lie, I sobbed. Haha. When I went to give the security guard my ticket/id I couldn’t talk. I guess that’s why they didn’t confiscate the giant pocket knife I forgot I had in my purse. Oops. I realized it was in there later in Philly when we had to do a security check at a federal building and they made me leave the premises to “dispose” of it. (I put it in a bush and picked it up later.J ) I was only in Philidelphia for 2 days. I think the whole purpose was to test our ability to stay awake. They gave us lots of info we need to know about all the general Peace Corps policies, but yikes! 8 hours straight of that pushes my limits. It was fun getting to know our group though. My group consists of 36 education volunteers who are all in Ghana. There are 6 visual arts educators (me!), about 6 information technology educators and the other two halves are math and science educators. It’s a good group, everyone is mostly 20-30 and has really interesting personalities and backgrounds. A few people had never been out of the country. I can’t imagine my first out of country experience being Africa! They are brave J.

After two eight hour plane rides we arrived! Accra hit me in the face the second I stepped off the plane. I thought the humidity in Ohio could get bad. I knew nothing. Most days here you are just covered in sweat. All the time. All day long. All night long. At home I usually just shower like once every couple days. Here I take a cold shower every morning and every night. And its wonderful. I actually haven’t even bucket bathed yet. Everywhere I’ve been has had a shower.

When we walked out of the airport tons of PCVs (peace corps volunteers) where there screaming and throwing little ketchup packet-sized bags of liquor at us. Haha. It took us a minute to realize that’s what they were! We spent the next couple of days getting introduced to everything. Accra. Peace Corps Headquarters. Tros. Vaccinations. Everyone yelling Abruni Abruni anywhere we went. Ghanaian trainers. Humidity. The American Embassy. The Ministry of Education. More Vaccinations. Fufu. Bantu. Buying food out of the windows of Tros. Cedis. Marriage proposals at the end of every conversation with a man. Humidity. Humidity. Humidity.

After giving us a little taste of everything we were on our own for awhile. Vision Quest. Each trainee was assigned to a PCV somewhere in Ghana and we had to travel on our own to visit them and stay for a few days at their site. I was assigned to visit Sarah. She is a visual arts teacher in the Volta Region. I didn’t get to practice traveling alone though, they assigned Dace, another trainee, to the same site. We never did figure out why they did that. Oh well. So we set off for the Volta Region. The first thing you learn when you are trying to travel in Ghana is that you can’t do it without help from the Ghanaians. There’s not really any maps or road signs, or anything that would help independent travel. The way you go about it is to first ask multiple people how to get to your destination (if someone isn’t sure they will make up something so you have to double check the directions) and sometimes people will just take you. Ghanaians are the friendliest group of people I have ever met in my life and they love Americans. You can’t go anywhere without making friends. If you can’t walk then you flag down a tro by various hand signals and talk to the “mate” to make sure they are going the way you want and hop on. The Tro is unexplainable. It is an experience. Picture really old vans, like from the 70s, with about 20 people squeezed into seats meant for about 15.There is a mate hanging out the side window yelling “AccraAccraAccraAccraAccra” (or wherever the to is headed) and it is flying in and out of traffic. The lines on the road here are only a suggestion. If there is any lines. Or pavement. When there is pavement, it is generally a maze of potholes and dicey edges. There really is no explaining the Tro. It is an experience that everyone should have.

So using these highly evolved methods, Dace and I set off for the top of the Volta Region. Our only hangup was in Kpong when we had to wait 2 hours for the Tro to fill. (if you get a tro at the tro station, they don’t leave until it’s full) Sarah’s village was great. It was pretty small, so everyone knew her and would call out “Ama Sarah” (Ama is her day name, mine is Effia) everywhere we went. It was fun seeing her set-up. She had a little house in which she had her own room and a closed porch area that functioned as kitchen/sitting room and she shared with one of her students who also had a room next to hers. There was an outside shower and outhouse right next door that she shared with her immediate neighbors. We met all Sarah’s Ghanaian friends and another PCV up the road who was there as an environmental volunteer. He had started a nursery in the next town. The chief of Sarah’s village was gone, but we got to meet the chief of Doug’s village and it was this whole ceremony. It was really interesting. The chief and sub-chiefs all sit in a row on their porch and are dressed in traditional wraps. You have to say “ago” and announce yourself before step onto the porch. Then the chief’s linguist will speak (I guess the chief isn’t allowed to speak directly to you, at first anyway) they ask if you are coming in war or peace and joke that if it is war, give them a minute to go back to their houses to get some weapons, some prayers are said, they spill some gin for the ancestors, and then you seal it with a shot. It was all very formal.

After following Sarah around through her daily routines and learning to handwash laundry Dace and I set off for Techiman. 20 hours on the Tro. I don't wish it on any of you :) We found out later that there was a faster way, but we didn't know, so we just did what Sarah said. Oh well. It was really fun arriving in Techiman. It had only been 3/4 days, but it was sooo nice to be among familar faces again and be able to speak english without attempting to put on an African accent (yes i have to do that now, so they can understand me, its funny listening to each other's "ghanaian accents") We spent the 3 days in Techiman doing interviews with the assistant directors and brushing up on our Twi (Tchwi is how you pronounce it) I've gotten the basics down pat: Welcome (Akwaaba), I accept your welcome (Yaa So), How are you (Wo ho te sai), I am fine, and you? (Me ho yay, no on suai?), I am also fine (Menso me ho yaya paaa)...:) and a few other things.

Saturday was the best day of all. We got our site assignments!! It was really fun the way they told us. They drew a giant map of Ghana in the courtyard in chalk and put little X's on the places where our sites were. Then we all stood around the map and they called out who was going where one by one. We danced over to our X and gave a big hug to the trainer who would be in that area. It was great. So my site is...dun dun dun... Safelugu! This is a town that is about 20 min. north of Tamale. Lol, I was one of 2 people in the entire northern region. By the end everyone was grouped together, but I had room to break dance if I wanted. I was a little apprehensive about being all by myself at first, but Tamale is a PC Headquarters, so volunteers will be traveling through my area often. The closest volunteers to me are in small towns in the Upper East Reigon near Bolgatanga. I'm very excited about my site also. I will be replacing a current visual arts deaf educator at the boarding school and will be teaching primary (ages 5-10) and have my own bungalo house with my own bathroom. I'm rollin high-style :)

Now, we have moved on to the "real" part of training. I am living in a small village outside of Techiman with a host family! I am staying with the Queen Mother of the village, her name is Nana Yaa Focia and my new name is Kari Afia Focia. It makes everyone laugh when I introduce myself that way.. Me din de Kari Afia Focia. The peace corps recruited all new villages this year for the homestay, so we are the first white people ever to be living in each of the villages. (or so the villagers say) So what that means is I'm a local celebrity. Everyone wants to talk with me. It takes forever to get anywhere because you have to greet everyone. I kind of enjoy it actually. Although I never know if I am getting my Twi right or not because they laugh at me either way. My current problem is now trying to learn Dagbani (the lauguage I will speak in Tamale) when I use Twi all day in the village. My homestay family is amazing. But that is for the next entry :) Mayko

2 weeks Pre-Departure

Its soon. June ninth I'm off. Destination: Accra, Ghana.

There is so much to do before then.
Las Cruces goodbyes. Moving out. Driving across the country. Packing. Eaton goodbyes. Otterbein goodbyes. All these goodbyes. People act as if I'm not coming back. Like I am going off to fight a war. People keep asking if I'm scared or nervous or sad. But, really I'm just excited. To me it feels more like an adventure I'm to embark upon. Everything about it just feels right.

At the moment, there is all this suspense. So many things to wander about:

What will the family I live with during training be like? Will the treat me as an equal?
Are the other volunteers close to my age?
Do I really have to wear close-toed shoes all the time? I love sandals.
Is my hair going to go into dreds from always washing it in a bucket? Will there really only be a bucket for bathing?
Will I need to learn to use a washboard?
Will I be able to use English very often, or will I have to get good at Twi?
Will they teach me sign language at training? I hope so.
Should I take lots of art supplies, or should I just use what is available?
Will there be any chocolate in Ghana?
Will I ever have any alone time?
Is everyone going to ask about the idiocy of the Bush Administration?
What will I miss the most?
What will be the most changed when I come back?
Will I ever come back during the 27 months?
What part of Ghana will I be in? Will there have been a PCV there before me?
Will I be able to get the new Harry Potter book to read this summer?
Will my box of books I'm going to ship before I leave arrive?
Will I want to stay there when my 2 years are up?
Will I be able to handle coming back to the abundance of America?


I feel no hesitation whatsoever about doing this. I have no worries. Life will take care of me. What is supposed to happen, will. I think I have found my life's path. I'm just going to let it carry me.