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!

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 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.