We had our swearing in ceremony on August 13, so we are now no longer lowly Peace Corps Trainees but are now lowly Peace Corps Volunteers. I got to site last week and my counterpart, headmaster and most of the teachers are out of town. Also, spiders, roughly the size of my face, live in my latrine. This is troublesome news. My house needs a lot of work. All I have is a rather rickety bed and I still don’t have any chairs or a desk, which were supposed to have been provided, but oh well. Right now, things are pretty slow. I’ve been hanging out with some of my students who are attempting to teach me a mixture of Twi and Fanti, both of which are spoken in my village and only the former of which I actually know a bit. A couple of kids asked me to tutor them in math and physics so I’ve started doing that almost every day, provided I don’t have to go to Cape Coast to pick up stuff for the old homestead, or they’re not out farming. I’ve also been spending at least a few hours a day outside the house interacting with the people, buying things at the market, and busting out my Twi, much to the amusement of everyone around. A good portion of people go out to farm during the day so the village gets pretty quiet, except at night, when there are boisterous church services into the wee small hours of the morning. On an unrelated note, I’m going to start a garden so if anyone wants to send me stuff in the mail, basil, cilantro, spinach, jalapeño, and zucchini seeds would be greatly appreciated, as would any dried fruits, nuts, candy, or just about anything that can be made by just adding water. I’m also trying to get mobile internet at my site, which I think should be fast enough to use Skype on occasionally. Anyway, you all should keep me updated on the goings-on out there and I’ll keep posting on here with at least some degree of regularity.
The following is a mass email that I sent out to friends and family about my first two months in Ghana, and since I’m lazy, it will also serve as my first real blog post.
Greetings to all, I trust things are all good with all of you. I’ve been here about two months now and things have been interesting. Training, which is effectively over at this point, has been at times frustrating but with sporadic and fleeting awesomeness, but my site – I visited it last week—is quite fantastic. So I‘ve got that going for me. I’ve gotten used to people yelling out “obroni,” which means white man, to me and kids following me around. Oh yeah, apparently in Ghana, I’m white. Who knew right? I haven’t been sick all that much, except for the infected foot and fever the first week and the bout of giardia (look it up. It’s not pretty) about a month into training. I’m counting on lingering antibodies from 18 years spent in India to get me through the next two years. During the first week of training, I travelled up the length of the country to visit a current volunteer in the Upper East Region, a journey colorfully dubbed “Vision Quest” by the Peace Corps. I sat in on a few of my host Toby’s classes; visited Shauna, a nearby volunteer; saw some pottery; and climbed a hill. It was fun After coming back from Vision Quest, we went to the PC training facility in Kukurantumi and moved in with our home-stay families. Most of the members of my family speak fluent English. My host father Daniel Adontwun and I have long and animated conversations about everything from Abraham Lincoln to soccer. My host mom Florence makes me delicious Ghanaian food. Banku with groundnut soup and chunks of filet mignon is my favorite. Their two eldest, Dominic and Rita, live in Cincinnati and Edmonton. The middle son Dennis works in Accra and one of the twins, Charles, goes to the University of Ghana, Legon. The younger twin also named Charles, lives at home. He likes Ludacris and Prison Break. They have had two Peace Corps Volunteers stay with them before so they’re about as Americanized a Ghanaian family as you can find. Every night, we watch The Cosby Show and Friends before going to sleep. The most useful part of training was the two weeks of actual teaching we did in a Ghanaian Junior High School. Schools here are more or less run on the British model. There are houses and forms and teachers are called Master and Madam. Needless to say, the kids get the crap beaten out of them even though the rules only allow for limited caning. While I’m not sure if I approve of this, it does mean that my students were shockingly well behaved for teenagers or for that matter anyone. Everything is taught in English but it’s obviously not the students’ first language, so I really had to get used to going a lot slower here while teaching. Communicating with my students at site is going to be a bit of an issue for sure. The more frustrating parts of training involve dealing with ‘Ghanaian time.’ What is ‘Ghanaian time’ you ask? Well, no one really seems to know. Things just kind of start when they start, even when there is a set schedule. During site visit, we had a staff meeting that was supposed to start at 8 am. It started at 2:30 pm. A sizable chunk of training has involved sitting and waiting. On the plus side though, I really like my site. I’m going to be in a village called Assin Kruwa, in the Central region of Ghana. I’m going to teach math and integrated science to the students of Assin Kruwa Junior High School. Kruwa consists of about 2500 people, 1 dirt road and lots and lots of sheep. My first few days there involved going around and greeting the chief – he offered me a farm—and various sub-chiefs. Greetings are a huge part of the culture here and it’s considered very rude to not to greet someone if you see them. My school has about 150 students, five other teachers and four classrooms. Two of them even have roofs. My house, unlike the school, has electricity but no running water. The only no so fantastic parts about it are that, since I’m the first volunteer ever in Kruwa, I need to get just about everything for my house, and I get absolutely terrible cell reception at site, hence all the phone number changes. My site is about an hour and a half from Cape Coast, a fairly touristy town, and right next to Kakum National Park, which I can see from my front porch. So there’s a lot of stuff to do here. So you should visit. And bring me candy. Things are certainly heading in a good direction. Thanks to the wicked sweet camera that some of you got me, I’ve been taking loads of pictures, some of which I’ll put up in the next post. I’m excited about going to site after swearing in and making a home for myself and I’m quite certain I’m happy here
Yo, check out my blagz!!! Yes, I'm one of those people now(sigh), but oh well, I guess I had to crack sometime. Anyway, for the next two years, I will be living in Ghana as Peace Corps Volunteer, teaching math(s) and science to the students of Assin Kruwa Junior Secondary School in the Central Region. I'll try to update this and post pictures as often as I can.
Also, I would be a bad PCV if i didn't point out that the thoughts and opinions expressed herein are my own and do not reflect those of the United States Government or the Peace Corps.
My half roofed School
Going to Boti Falls