jingle bells

i'm listening to xmas music on my powerbk sitting in the decker's kitchen, enjoying the cleanliness and central heating. WOW to think that just a few days ago i was rinsing dishes out of a bucket while wearing shower sandals on the soot covered floor and trying not to lean on the cockroach/ant infested counters. some things i don't mind leaving, but it's sad to think that our six months is up. before we left, we tried to spend quality time with the students and vera. they were the best part and it's awkward to think that i won't see them everyday from now on. kind of hard to sum up things. pics do a better job...


AHH RECESS


glass molds of ghana


me and linda squared. two of the sweetest students. the one on the left can get DOWN. she has more rhythm than will ever dream of having. the one on the right is tall and quiet, a total mother figure to the rest of JSS3 (9th grade)


KG (kindergarten) girls


sarafina


baby girl we made friends with on tro


another cute little bugger


ernestina. she is a 20 year old in 8th grade. her parents kind of abandoned her when she was little. her grandmother took care of her but then passed away when she was in 3rd grade. then her aunties took her in but they couldn't or wouldn't pay school fees so she didn't go to school for several years. finally akuffo tom's owner mr. boafo decided to give her a scholarship. she is such a vibrant strong girl and wants to become a policewoman one day.


EUGENE! at the end of a letter he wrote to me before we left, he signed "your son, Eugene" i miss you buddy!


vera sporting my cap... it was "cold" that day.


this is her with liz's straw hat. oh vera!


baby goat checking out flops


bionic lizard! i captured him in mid-leap! this is my all time best action shot

i'm baaack

just landed in philly tonight. what's this? it's cold! i miss africa!
free wireless internet is sort of making up for it... and hot showers. wowsers.
okay i'm going to write a recap tomorrow when i'm not so pooped.

titles are hard

wow the internet has not worked this well in so long! i must make up for lost time and upload old photos and blabber random things in my brain. unfortunately my digital cam has been wack recently. i don't know what's wrong! boo! so i stole these from julie's snapfish.

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."

LIVE! with liz decker

Hello all you loyal JaneInAfrica blog readers! Jane has so graciously allowed me a guest spot on her blog, so I’m going to tell you some things we’ve been up to recently.

We’re really sad that Julie left us on Monday – she had been living in the house and volunteering at Akuffo Tom with us for two months. She totally kept us occupied with her stories of life in LA, her perpetual bug bite problems, and her overall hilariousness. (miss you Julie!)… While she was here, we had a good two months of the school life. Each of us have been teaching different grade levels (Julie with the youngest kids, I have the middle ages, and Jane has the middle schoolers), so between all of us, we’ve really gotten to know all the kids at school. They are so cool in so many ways. I think Jane and I have both found that teaching this second term as their primary English teacher is so much better than jumping into a semester, taking over for another teacher and not knowing any of the kids. I found that my students were quite confused about some of the basics, so being in charge, I’ve been doing fundamental parts of speech and writing review. It’s so amazing when you see the change in how much they know – I swear my students are better writers already!

It was also quite helpful that the three of us knew all the kids so well… because we planned OLYMPIC DAY on October 27th. It was fun to think back on all those years of Olympic Days in elementary school and figure out how to replicate our favorite games (such as obstacle course…a bit difficult without cones and hoola hoops!) But everything went really well (though us white girls got really burned from being outside all day!) – we had sack races, egg on spoon races, running races, dizzy bat (hilarious). The highlight of the day was definitely the eating contest… we made the older students eat this food called Kenkey (which is like a huge ball of doughy, dry maize mashed up… ), which they usually eat with sauce. We made them eat it alone and it was hilarious... some of them stuffed their faces and it took them forever to chew it all. Then they had to peel and eat an orange… they got creative and just stepped on the orange to “peel” it. We were cracking up the whole time. I think the most interesting event was the water bucket relay, where you have to carry water in a small cup from one bucket to another bucket to fill it up. Well, part of the way through the day, a couple kids started carrying the water cup on their heads instead of in their hands… so brilliant and so Africa!! Kids in the U.S. would drop it in a second, but our kids were AMAZING at it! I loved that…

So the end of Julie’s stint here actually coincided with a visit from my Dad and sister! It worked out perfectly so that we could travel a bit together. But before we left, we all spent a few days here in Akropong. My Dad and sister came to school to meet everyone (the students were so psyched to see my dad… “Madam, is that your father?” they’d ask totally appalled) AND to bring my classes (class 4, 5 and 6) penpal letters from the U.S.!!!! My mom’s 4th grade class and the other two 4th grade classes at her school wrote letters to my kids (and sent pictures, which were clearly ten times better than any letter). My students LOVED this, they were so excited to have “friends” in the U.S. and to learn about their lives there. I think the most interesting thing about letter writing here is how they generally begin letters: “I am very happy to write you this letter. I hope you are fine by the Grace of God...” Kinda formal, but really nice. I bet the kids in the U.S. will be surprised by that… All in all, penpals are a great invention! It’s so exciting!

Molly and Dad were also here for… HALLOWEEN! We didn’t have many resources for Halloween, so using Jane’s brilliant idea, we bought a watermelon that could stand on its own. So on the night before Halloween (we were traveling on Halloween, and really no one here knew the difference in dates), we cut the top off the watermelon, scooped out all the juicy insides and my Dad carved a super cute face into the melon. It worked SOOO well, I could hardly believe it! I think it may have even looked better than carving a pumpkin! We forced some passing children to come look at the pumpkin and to take some candy corn (that my mom sent over with my dad… they definitely don’t have candy corn here!) I found out a few days later that one of my students, Benedicta, saw us and the melon-o’-lantern from afar, but was so scared that she didn’t come near us! (I think they thought we were practicing some sort of witchcraft or something… I guess if you think about it, it is a bit strange!! But still amazing!)

So that week, we traveled again to the coast of Ghana, heading, of course, to our favorite place in this country: the Green Turtle Lodge. My dad and sister enjoyed the place as much as we did the first two times we were there. We sat on the beach, played beach games, ate good food, and visited our friend Emmanuel (who works there and essentially runs the place… he grew up in a neighboring village). It was blissful. We later stopped by a very nice beach resort (actually a bit of a non sequitor after driving through some poorer coastal towns) on our way back and had some nice pool/beautiful sunset time. We also were invited to our housemate’s (a 60 year old man who is the bank manager in our town) daughter’s wedding in Cape Coast. We were a little late, but it was a very lively wedding (they had a huge fluorescent sign in the front of the little church that said “Kwame weds Millie” and their friends danced for about 20 minutes in the front during the ceremony).

Having visitors is so great here – just to see familiar faces, but also so that they can see how we’ve been living and so we can see how they acclimate to being in Ghana. All of our visitors did a great job and really added a lot to our time here (when you get to teach others all you’ve learned, it feels like such an accomplishment. And it will be great when trying to explain how different things are here to have some who understand!).

Now Jane and I are busy explaining where all our obruni friends and family went … And we’re just enjoying our last month here. It will be a very sad thing to leave Akropong and all our friends and the students. But I am certainly looking forward to seeing everyone at home. And for a hot shower! However, we are trying not to think too hard about the shocking cold weather in December… We seriously can’t remember what cold feels like!

Well, that’s life here in Ghana! Hope all is well with everyone!

1. crazy obrunis lighting fruit on fire 2. a contumbre leaf, yes we eat them! 3. jules and i hiding out in our hole, a favorite beach pastime 4. enjoying the view

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!