The Eagle Will Be Landed, Soon

Belated Post

Today was the site announcement for all 70+ volunteers in our group. Without further ado, you should know that I will be stationed in the Volta region of Ghana, and that I will be teaching ICT and possibly English at the St. Francis College of Education in the city of Hohoe. That will put me in the eastern side of the country close to the border of Togo. Here is what I read about the school:

The college was established in 1968. It has a current population of about 623 students. The college offers specialist courses in Mathematics and Science but the Arts too are taught to a limited extent. You will be teaching ICT with two other teachers.

Not too bad. The accomodations will be on campus so my morning commute probably won't be based on tro-tro travel. Hooray for that.

So I am pretty happy. I am just writing this 30 minutes after finding out, so I should probably talk to my fellow Volta region volunteers and be sociable. I am especially excited about this. The only bad thing is that it means the 70 of us will be broken up into many regions throughout the country and we won't be able to meet the others as often as we like. Life changes though, so here is to more change.

Later update: This was a really fun day. I had a chance to talk to my mom and tell her the good news and give her the update on being sickly so she doesn't have to read it here first (we never, ever scare Mom through blog posts. That is the first rule here at MTN). And of course, I got better and better physically as the day went along. After our cadre found out about the posts we headed over to the bar close by to the Peace Corps Office (PCO) in Kukurantumi. I was merely a few minutes late to the fun and the moment I walked onto the premises was precisely the moment after the group photo was taken. My humorous pal Mayor Mike was there to save the day though, he yelled out, "SUCK IT BOYER!" and everyone broke out laughing. I did manage to get in one of those group shots though, I hope to get copies some day of them.

One Sprite later and I was dancing my happy-dance to the horrified faces of fellow volunteers. Actually, I was just gesticulating and everyone was laughing with (at) me. As near as I can figure almost everyone was happy and ready for the next step to begin and that definitely includes yours truly.

I was told before I got here by another volunteer that there might be days where the ups and downs pile on. I think I just went through my first one. Forty-eight hours does not a volunteer make, but that seems to be a good taste of how some of my weeks and months might go in the future.

As the evening wound down here at the host family's house, I was treated to more Twi practice even though they don't speak that in Hohoe. It was great to have my brothers and sisters help me parse out words and phrases. When I was at the PCO I met the woman who had interviewed and at the time I didn't know where I was going, but I said hello to her and mentioned something about Twi and she slyly pointed out that I would not be worrying about getting the greeting right for long. I could only smile at that, but I did have the feeling that I wanted Twi to be spoken at my site. I really want to tell my host mother how much she has made me feel welcome, and how I can let her know that she had a big part in making me a Ghanaian.

There is still plenty of time for that to happen, and a lot of wiggle-room for my Twi.