ba bam!

liz and julie posing with huge gourd-fruit-plant things called calabash (they make bowls out of them here). we were obviously in shock that the tree was able to handle such massive bowling-ball weight. i know dad will enjoy this interesting species!


a close high school friend of ours goes by the nickname BOFF! and here you are! as an african backpack brand!!! (shown here by 9th grader regina, btw pronounced RAGINA)


the state of taxis in this country are so shady it's hilarious. the speedometer, gas gauge, and other important life-or-death parts of the dashboard are normally covered with dust and not functioning. door handles and window roller-uppers are always missing. but the car pictured above has to be the best ride yet...mainly because of the random switch hanging from nowhere! what is it connected to? what does it turn on? an ejector seat? a strobe light? who knows!


the gender determination chart is here! (maximize photo if letters are too tiny)
read instructions (don't try to read the confusing paragraph above the chart unless you want to laugh REAL loud):
1. find the age of the mother at the time of the baby's birth on the top row
2. find the month that the baby was conceived on the left row (NOT the baby's birth month)
3. match up in the middle and BA BAM you will see the gender of the baby!

although we purchased this admittedly dubious looking information on the street in the life guide pamphlet for 50 cents, we have experienced a 100% success rate when checking our own and sibling's stats. let me know if it works for you! if it fails, let me know too....hmm...maybe...i don't know if i can face the bitter disappointment!

deep thoughts

i uploaded some photos a while back but never posted. click on 9/11/06 "leftover pics" to enjoy(specially if you're a liz relative/fan)!

jack handy moment
how much am i helping versus hindering the situation in africa? i'm assuming every volunteer contemplates this. i'm not a trained teacher, yet i am in charge of 80 odd students' entire middle school English education. it's not like i run a supplementary class in conjunction with something else. this is it! in asia, the students had a solid base and i helped with extra tutoring or conversational practice. africa is a completely different story. i totally lack the background in their culture, their methods of discipline (i'll get to that issue), British English grammatical standards (did you know they use "somehow" instead of "somewhat"? i forget to spell favorite with the u. and i call the dot at the end of a sentence a period instead of a full stop. these seem like petty details but are really noticeable when teaching a language!) and a plethora of other significant knowledge that would make me ten times more effective in the classroom. these kids are expected to pass rigorous tests in several subjects to enter secondary school and university. it's scary how much i have an impact on their future.

we met an expat working with the government in accra the last two years. she explained that ghana cuts a large portion of their education budget to train teachers because of their heavy reliance on foreign volunteers. basically, if they can get some obrunis to do it for free, why spend money on it? why help the next generation help themselves? what exactly would happen if all the volunteers just up and left the continent? i'm not discounting the importance of peace corps and other organizations, but what about a little self-sufficiency? i guess, at the very least i can be positive that i am learning a ton from my students. being here has opened my eyes and broken down many preconceptions. and any cultural exchange has to be good thing. last week i started reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing to my class and although some references went over their head, they totally got into the story when i explained words like "cooties" and "boo-boo." i am spreading my love for judy blume around the world!

the cane
we were warned that corporal punishment was a part of life in africa before we got here. it was shocking last semester, but then gradually teachers wielding canes stopped being a big deal. now with the new school year, the cane is coming back in full force. i totally flinch and don't like to look when i see them getting whipped on the hand or butt. the majority of teachers and parents we talk to see it as completely necessary. they grew up with it and know no other form of discipline. while in some ways, these students are more mature, understand more about love hardship and sacrifice than i did at their age. they really are crazy more physical and out of control. especially the little tykes. they run around, hit, kick, knock each other down, stand on the desks, bite, pick up things and hit each other, scream etc. i would balk if i saw this kind of behavior in a classroom in the states. i guess i would also balk if i saw these learning conditions in the states. no running water or electricity, rickety wooden benches too small for their tushes, nails and splintery boards sticking out of steps and doorways, 100 degree sweltering hot rooms.

think about punishments we get in the states... "no tv! no phone! go to your room!" well, they aren't really an option here. they don't have anything to take away. getting sent to your room instead of fetching water would probably be a dream. so if hitting is common at home, it is extremely problematic to keep the student's attention and seem serious in the classroom if you don't also follow the same form of harsh punishment. but on the other hand, how can hurting someone, physically and emotionally, impel them to learn? when they are flipping out and bawling about a bruise, it might stop them from acting out in class for five seconds, but for the long-term i highly doubt that they will be encourged to want to learn on their own or value learning.

when i try to enforce alternative punishments in the classroom they don't seem to work. what was the worst thing in elementary school? you take away recess. these kids have one break/snacktime at 10am before their lunch a 1pm. it's very possible this is the first time they eat all day. i don't really want to mess with that. food is sort of imperative. in liz's case when she tried to threaten her student's to stay during break with her, they rose their hand and said, "madam, i want to spend break with you". sort of confuses the punishment with the reward.

jules and YAM FEST

julie is here! my best friend from summer camp. i havn't seen her in two years, and what better way to catch up than living and volunteering with her for two months straight in a developing country. she arrived three weeks ago and is teaching with us at akuffo tom and rooming down the hall in our house. it's awesome. we have been rehashing camp memories up the wazoo, as well as anybody under the sun that we both know from NPHS. she's fit right into our daily routine.... such as memorizing the world capitals (i have become unhealthily obsessed with studying our student atlas! i have mnemonic devices for all the hard to remember middle eastern and asian countries! my best one might be for achgabat, turkmenistan. i'll let you know sometime. i am a capitals queen! if only i was back in elementary school i could win some sort of geography bee).

we also have found a strong love for cards and contemplating our futures. we have been playing Big Two (chinese cards) and rummy every night the past week, as well as different versions of MASH (remember the middle school girlie pastime where you predict everything from your future hubby, color of wedding dress, honeymoon locale and number of children?). so now we're attempting to combine our favourites into one super fortune-telling card game. i'm sure one day we'll make millions from it.

the first week jule got here we had black outs almost every night (damn akosumbo dam is not doing it's job!), so she's gotten handy with lighting the lanterns. we've also hooked her on the phenom of Timeless, the phillipino soap opera i live for. i havn't felt this way about a tv show since dawson's creek in ninth grade. probably because both then and now i have a total lack of social/love life. hmm. anyway, it was really hard during the black outs when we were in timeless withdrawal (ok so it was only like one night). but the storyline is getting really intense! the father who was in jail for 15 years died in a train accident, Ara is now living on a plantation and pretending to be getting married to a hot artist named Leo, while her mother is still catatonic (sp?) and hidden away, and then her true love Christian is becoming a raging alcholic and falling for an annoying singer named Maryann. sound confusing and ridonkulous? cause it i, and i havn't even explained half the other crazy side plots.

there are even pamphlets being sold on the street about Timeless. it has the lyrics to the theme song, play by play of each episode, the actors real names, etc. we were dying when we found out the guy who plays Leo is named Diether in real life. how the heck do you pronounce that? we've already bought ourselves some hilarious ghanaian reading material. these pamphlet/paperbacks are hugely popular among students and adults, obviously because they are so cheap, around 3000 cedis a pop (30 cents) and they can be about any topic under the sun. they aren't copyrighted and have embarrassing grammatical errors but extremely entertaining. i bought one called the Life Guide from a man before getting on a tro. it had helpful information such as the Gender Determination Chart. apparently if you use this chart created by a Chinese scientist you can foretell your baby's gender. it all depends on the mother's age and the month of conception. creepily enough... it has been ON TARGET for everyone we can think of. i might attempt to upload the chart next time so i can get a larger survey of its validity! another pamphlet that we have perused and need to purchase was the How to Find Your Life Partner the Right Way Part Two.

the Odwira festival was two weeks ago! my students as well as all the townspeople have been raving about this event forever and it arrived! it is a celebration of the new harvest, the new yam, and a cleansing of the town in general. day one they cleaned the path for ancestor's spirits to make their way back to the town. day two they introduced the new yam of the harvest by having a mock battle between men in the street grabbing over a humungo yam. i forget day three... but day four was posessed women walking through the street with their faces covered in white powder. day five they carried the local chiefs around in palanquins (those big wooden seats that five men carry one large royal man on). the night of day six there was a Miss Odwira (beauty pageant! obrunis were welcome but we never made it! oh well, missed my chance).

there were SO many people, foreigners, cityfolk, anybody and everybody from ghana walking the streets of our town. it was like walking down Broadway in NYC! all the bars and restaurants were packed and had huge sound systems pumping RandB and hip hop! 2pac, 50 cent, akon, rkelly are big hits here, thought not as big as Celine! we even went "clubbing" one night. more like, after enjoying some club beer (another ghanaian brand but not as good as STAR) with some teacher friends we squished into this bar/one-room shack space down the street where all these adolescents were grinding with each other. i saw my 8th grader Ruth getting down! and then my previous 9th grader andy kwame sporting a do-rag outside! he's the class assistant prefect! whoa! i'll try real hard to post photographic evidence of these shenanigans next time:)

random others:
1. we started teaching art to primary classes. it was AMAZING! instead of whining and hitting biting, they were sitting quietly with their one sheet of white paper and sharing the crayons like angels! and they were so creative! we are attempting to try a new art/craft every week. we've already collected like 200 plastic bags that we buy the water in. there's got to be something cool we can get them to create with them.
2. i got sick two weeks ago and had all the major symptoms of malaria: nausea, fever, aches, the runs... but then it went away after one and a half days! and then liz picked up the bug the next day (probably because she was a wonderful motherlike friend and lent me her pillow) so... it was just a tease! my pop-up mosquito bed net has aided me in dodging malaria so far!
3. we still have 7 bottles of sunblock left, 2 full bottles of saline solution, and like 4 ziplocs full of tampons. whoops
4. i know this is about a month late but HAPPY BDAY CARO! it's our year, the year of the dog!