jules, me, vera, and biz at dickson's daughter's wedding (dickson is our housemate. his daughter got married in cape coast, a raucas affair at a methodist church with the words KWAME weds MILLI spray painted up near the altar. and their university friends splashed water instead of rice at them after the ceremony. it was a sweltering hot day. at one point in the afternoon liz commented on my huge shades and said, "oo jane you look like a movie star" and i replied.. "i feel like a sweaty little girl.")
parade during the odwira festival. my favourite part were these MASSIVE velvet fringe umbrellas! they would wave them up and down and they looked like killer jellyfish.
local queen being paraded in a palaquin (these ostentatiously adorned gold seat contraptions that take 6 able bodied men to carry)
a family down the street set up this backdrop on the road... so we took a picture with them
olympic day: sally was ten times better running with a cup of water on her head than in her hand
edward going at the kenkey (corn mush wrapped in leaves) for the eating competition
HELLO KITTY: we gave out lots of prizes for olympic day winners, and besides pencils, pens, puzzles, notepads, and other goodies that the deckers generously brought over, i had about 50 or so Hello Kitty pins from taiwan (mostly thanks to my mom and tiff&girls at TPR- they were giving them out at 7-11 all last year). anyway, so now girls and BOYS of middle school age are sporting hello kitty pins on their uniforms. it's just a funny site. while in some ways african men really hold onto old school gender stereotypes, sometimes they act so un-homophobic. middle school boys and grown men alike hug each other and hold hands while walking. it's refreshing.
DWARVES: i might have mentioned before that whistling after dark is big faux-pas here. i used to just assume the reason was that it attracted vague evil spirits. but it's been cleared up that acutally the whistling attracts dwarves. yes. little people. they are serious about this superstition. i've been chastized. i hum and whistle a LOT here. i think it's the lack of radio/tv. so whenever i accidentally catch myself, i can't help but picture a dwarf walking through the front door waving HEY GUYS.
BOOK: totally forgot to rave about The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. lauren brought it over in august, and we ate it up, and then gave it to julie and she loved it. and i read it twice. this memoir is just the most uplifiting hilarious quirky read. it makes me feel like a glutton seeing as how she and her three siblings grew up poor skinny runts in arizona and w. virginia. they ate a can of beans for weeks. and butter sprinkled with sugar was a tasty treat. snot locker! you'll have to read it to know what i'm talking about.
HOLIDAYS: i've been trying to enlighten my students on american holidays/customs. halloween was interesting to explain (they probably think we are freaky pagans dressing up as ghosts and witches and forcing candy on kids). thanksgiving is not too hard a concept, though it makes me wonder why are buckles the major accessory of pilgrims that i can think of? christmas is hilarious though. a few of them have heard of santa but i had to give the breakdown of north pole and the flying reindeer. thank goodness that the Only song i know the lyrics too is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. so we sang it in class. they loved it! they know a lot of other songs.. feliz navida... joy to the world.. one girl knew all the words to the 12 days of christmas! i can barely get past "5 golden rings."
EUGENE: one of my favorite all time students is Eugene. he is so smart and has the brightest smile! he is also really skinny and sometimes has cute effeminite mannerisms and pretends to be shy. during a letter assignment he opened with "I hope you are swimming in the pool of health." he's just so original! one of my journal assignments was asking students what their number one superpower would be. many of them did the usual, flying, being super strong. two of them wanted to turn oil into water (confusing... water is really scarce here.. but i would say oil is even more?) but no one had a more original answer than Eugene:
"The superpower I have is that I can cry like a hen. This power was possessed to me by God. I have this power because at first I tried to cry like a donkey but I couldn't. I used this power to wake children up. I would wake children up because I would like them to go to school early."
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: another assignment i did was describing people. i had students in JSS1 (7th grade) describe each other but they had to leave out the name and we guessed the identity. these are two funny examples, mainly because of the not so subtley underlined part.
Collins wrote: "I have chosen a classmate to describe. She is a girl. She is 13 years old. She is six feet tall and dark in complexion. She has plain hair. She has teeth. She attends Akuffo Tom School."
Dorothy wrote: "I have chosen a classmate to describe. His favourite hobbies are eating and playing. The food he likes best is Banku and Okro stew and turkey. He likes beating and insulting people. He is a special person to me because he likes playing."
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