Back At Wli Waterfalls

My friends and I went to see the waterfalls that are located close by to Hohoe yesterday. We have had a pretty significant amount of rain in the area over the past three weeks and that was on incredible display when we finally arrived at the falls. I would say that the cataract was at least twice as powerful, maybe even three times as powerful as any other time that I have seen it. The stream that is the runoff from the falls was already running quite rapidly so it was pretty obvious that the falls would be larger than normal, but I wasn't quite ready for what we saw.

By the time you reach a clearing in the path to the falls you will be able to hear the rush of water, and it was at that point that I told my friends that they better get ready for a spectacular sight. It was only a few seconds into the clearing that I began to feel the spray on my face where I never had felt water before that I began to understand what we were in for. In the past I have been able to stand at the edge of the pool of water where the falls collect and only be sprayed a little by the crashing water; now we were all being pelted by the rushing spray and we were not even close to the water's edge. There was in effect a light rain from all the tree leaves overhead that were continually bathed in the wash of the waterfall. It was amazing.

Both Aaron and Steve decided to entertain themselves with a little swim and I tried to stay back to get a few photos safely planted behind a tree but after two clicks the lens was soaked and it was a battle to keep anything dry for more than five seconds. I know that the experience for them was spectacular as they got into the water and tried getting closer to the actual waterfall, but the immensity of the show meant that you could not really observe the scene without taking a shower for the effort. I did not know that the falls could be so powerful. Maybe for the next season I will stick to the dry season for my fun.

We had a good time staying there but since everything was wet at the falls we couldn't sit down and enjoy the scene so we made our way back to the visitor's center. On a Thursday it was not very crowded which allowed us a rather peaceful walk down the path through the jungle. I have to say that I was very lucky to land in Hohoe - plenty to do and a lot of good people here.

I Lost 400+ Students And Gained Two Visitors

This past Saturday was the closing ceremony at the college. All the students gathered in the church on campus and we heard from various staff on what the students had accomplished and what they might wish to try harder on next year. I really enjoy the Senior House Master when he delivers the list of, "those, ... who must be punished." There is a lot of work given as punishment for rules infractions and I think the students actually enjoy hearing him announce it. During the assembly he had quite the list of student names who refused to do work when they were summoned too earlier in the week. My suspicion is they quickly got their jobs done so they could leave the campus and head home.

By Saturday night the campus was empty and it was very quiet across the grounds. There were some students who were left but I would say upwards of 95% were gone by 2 or 3 in the afternoon. You do not need to ask them twice to head home. This was the first time that I felt a little gloomy for the break. Before, during the school year, I would actually anticipate the students departure so I could have some quiet time and get a few things done in the computer lab or elsewhere. Now I feel like some of the people that I liked to talk to and chat with are gone for a good long while. It is a different feeling for certain.

As with all things though, they must come to an end some time. With their departure came the arrival of two friends from the states who wanted to pay a visit. Steve and Aaron arrived on Monday of this week to spend a fortnight (some times an entire blog post is spent just so I can use the term fortnight) here in Hohoe. It has been great fun so far.

I forgot that when I got here I was gently eased into the culture with Peace Corps help and guidance. When they both arrived at the airport I was there to greet them, welcome them, and then get them right into the middle of culture shock an hour after they arrived. In hindsight, putting them into the thicket of humanity at the station to board the tro-tro was not the best idea. People everywhere, me trudging forward and avoiding the barkers who keep asking, "Where are you going!?", getting to the right tro and trying to reduce the luggage feel to something much more reasonable may have been overwhelming.

We had a good time, and I think they survived the ordeal nicely. Long plane rides followed by long tro rides are difficult at best to handle, so given that they were still smiling on the following morning seemed to me to be a good sign. I suspect we will be visiting of few of the touristy places around the area so maybe I can get around to updating my picture album soon to show off some of the sites. It is great to have good friends come here and reminds me how much life has changed for me in the past year.

More updates to follow we hope.

From Training Last Month: Out To Asafo

In one of the previous posts I made a passing mention that I would offer up a story or two from what went on during training but then failed to post anything more on the subject. This one is here to fix that oversight, but it only has to do with my homestay family from when I was in training the year before.

Our current trainees took up housing in several communities, but the one that I had stayed in last year was not among them. Peace Corps will start a rotation with the hopeful benefit of not wearing out one community over many years of training in that area of the Eastern region. Asafo was having the year "off" in other words. It meant that if I made a visit out there to meet the family that allowed me to stay with them then I would be doing it on my own with no one else coming along for the ride.

With less than a week left to stay in Kukurantumi I was heading out to observe a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) at one of the junior high schools when I got stuck in New Tafo looking for a taxi or a tro. At that time I had not contacted my homestay family and I was still unsure of when or if I would make the ride out to visit them. As I was on the lookout for a tro to stop by I happened to notice an individual walking towards me. It was my one brother from the house coming to greet me. "Hello David!" he said. "Hey... (pause thinking of names as fast as possible) Mensa! How are you?" I was lucky to have his name on the cell phone so that I could remember it without missing too many beats. He asked what I was doing and I mentioned the training and that I was only around for a few more days but that I would like to stop by and see everyone. He agreed that that would be ideal and we figured that that coming Saturday would be best.

By Saturday I was ready to go and make the trip to Asafo after our training duties were over which meant that I left our hub site by about 2. It took well beyond an hour to get to the village as there were just not many taxis willing to head out to the place. As an example, when I got to New Tafo station which is where the taxis should be when you need a lift to Asafo, there were none parked nor any metal signs resting on top of a car roof indicating an imminent trip. That was not a good sign. I hopped in a car that went to Maase, but that only put me in more of a bind as three or four giant funerals were being held in each of the small towns and traffic into Maase was only turning around to head back out the way they came. I was stranded in Maase for 20 minutes or more waiting for an empty taxi to continue the journey.

I did manage to make it out though and after 3:30 I was walking up to the house. Little Theresa knew I was coming and was sprinting towards me screaming. That is a good feeling to have, seeing someone greeting you with that much enthusiasm. She landed quite solidly into my legs and missed seeing me double over in pain by a few scant inches; it was quite the greeting. She hugged me so I couldn't move and only when she released her grip did I manage to go to the house and see everyone.

My mother came out and I gave her a big hug, and my father who was seated under the awning roof on their front porch shook my hand warmly. Everyone was smiling and it really, really felt good to be back to what I called "home" for almost three months. I wish I could have stayed for longer but there were only a few hours for me there. Since they knew I was coming they had a big bowl of fufu ready for me and I forgot one thing about eating there: they gave me so much meat in my soup that I could not finish half of it. I still faced the wall while I was eating but this time they gave me a plastic chair to eat on which was comfortable. The fufu didn't get finished but I really enjoyed their version of the dish as it was soft and tasty.

When I was done we spent some more time chatting the late afternoon away. I learned that the youngest girl went back to live with her biological family which saddened me somewhat since she was the most precocious giggler I have ever met and always got me to smile and laugh, and one other sister was not there as she was visiting family closer to Accra. Beyond that, the family was still there and my father had managed to afford some galvanized steel sheets to roof the one cinder block structure on his property so that it almost resembled a house. His farming is doing well now and the rains were much more helpful this year than they were last year.

I paid my farewells and thank yous to the family and moved along to the station. My mother walked me to the center of town and there were a lot of comments from her friends of having the visitor though I could not understand a word of it. She still doesn't speak much English but then again, we just smile and laugh mostly and communicate that way. She packed me into the taxi and sent me on my way back to Mid Tafo with a full belly and a lot of smiles.

I am going to try and squeeze in a visit to their house when I swing down to Accra for the swearing-in ceremony. When I go I have to remember to pack myself full of gifts for them. They have shown me tons of generosity and kindness and they need to know that I really appreciated all of it. Ghanaians are terrific.

Being The Day-time Watchman

Our semester is coming to a close here on campus and with that ending comes the Cape Coast exams that test whether the students understand the concepts and minutia of teaching in Ghana. While first-years and second-years are busy writing away, the school provides for invigilators, those whose job it is to watch and make sure that there is no talking or helping during the examination time. I did a little bit of that twice already, and next week I will stare at two more groups of students as they disgorge all that they have studied in the preceding four months.

There is a very good reason for the invigilation. Everyone helps out in Ghana. If your family doesn't have enough food, the families right next door are there to lend you a hand. If you didn't have a place to stay then someone will learn of your plight and give you a roof and a bed and you will be happy. It is a very good ethos to have in a country, except when examining what you do and don't know. Then it becomes a bit of a challenge.

Most of the students that I have viewed are trying their best and doing their own work without a moment's hesitation which is terrific. It is maybe 10% of the group that will find ways to "help" out their neighbors on certain questions. Many times when I have been with other volunteers who are teachers we have relayed stories of what kinds of cheating go on in the classroom, but for the most part in the junior high and senior high school levels there is not a lot of good cheating going on. Many people will cheat off of another student who had absolutely no idea what the answer was either. The best example I can come up with for this was a bonus question that a volunteer told me was on an exam. What day is October 31st in America? He had told them briefly that it was Halloween, but felt that only the most attentive student might remember such a very strange name. The answer on most, but not all, tests was: "Children Happy Fun Day".

Back to my group this past Friday. The students are arranged by their class identification number and the test is two hours long. Our classroom sat through a music exam and it was a bit tough to keep the talking to a minimum as the exam began with music blaring through a loudspeaker so that they could be quizzed on what type of music so-and-so was, or the number of phrases that were just played twenty seconds ago. When the music came on I could see heads turn and possible mouths move to ask what the answer to number three was. It was hard to keep the class in order for the first 30 minutes, more so when one of the questions on their paper did not match the queue announced on the audio tape (question 5a and 5b were actually 7a and 7b on their papers).

After the first part of the test was over, things settled down. I am not sure if my new rule helped matters at all, but I informed the whole group that I was going to use a yellow card and a red card to enforce the no-talking rule. Everyone is familiar with yellow and red cards here from soccer, and they understood that if I wrote down their student ID number then they were in a bit of trouble, especially if they got a red card. Fortunately I was able to keep the red card in my pocket (I actually didn't have a red card, just a yellow sticky note) and only gave yellow cards to four students.

My guess is that they don't like me invigilating but that is too bad. Rules are rules and I'd rather every student try their honest best and get what they deserve than have 10 or 15 students do all the work and the rest copy their answers.

As the test came to a close I felt a bit of relief as my legs and back were tired from standing around doing nothing. There will be two more exams that I oversee in the coming week and then the students are home free and I am left with a quiet campus again. Just don't let me catch you talking during test time.

Out And Back Again

Not quite three weeks in Kukurantumi came to a close this past Sunday as I headed back to Hohoe and my house on the campus at St. Francis. It was good to get back to home sweet home as the saying goes, but I will miss having fun with all of the other trainers and of course the new trainees. Maybe the word "new" isn't appropriate, as they are settling in to the life in Ghana quite nicely and made for some fine teachers in the classes that I sat in on. Trainees is more than correct, they have met the new culture and have adapted just splendidly.

Being in the education group meant that our focus was primarily on getting the new volunteers-to-be up to speed on the Ghanaian education system and becoming acclimated to the environments that they will likely inhabit once they get to site. It meant that the Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) in my sector were always at colleges of education since that is where they are headed. I watched over them during the second week of my stay, but during the third week I got to observe those who were teaching at the Junior High School (JHS) level. That was quite the shock to me.

I had never been nor really watched how school is conducted in Ghana at that level. My training and my job have put me at the tertiary level of education with young adults who are looking to really excel at education so they may either follow the teaching career path or advance themselves to the full university level of education later on. They are nice and I have befriended many who habitually come to the lab and see me. But at the JHS level you will see students aged 10 to 15 (or older), and classrooms that have upwards of 40+ students assembled. The class size mirrors what I have, but the large age variation makes the class look somewhat comical with very small looking young students mixed in with high school-age students.

In addition to that, the school that I observed had no windows. A tin roof covering a room that consisted of three-foot-high walls along the left and right with a gap at the front of the room for an entrance, and two floor-to-ceiling walls at the front and the back. The chalkboard was concrete, a raised surface that spanned the width of the classroom which has to be constantly repainted black with a mixture that includes dry-cell battery acid. As the paint wears away from use, the chalk gets harder and harder to discern on the board, thus more battery acid is mixed up for a refresh. This is the bare minimum one needs to run a school, and that is how most will function.

Before going to far of course, there should be a point here about noise. The school is all at ground level, and the school rooms are just long blocks of rooms that encircle a grass field. That grass field is where recess takes place for the primary school located just across the way. The noise that the teachers had to contend with was monumental at times and I am not sure how the PCTs kept their voices for two straight weeks. One of the trainees even had to punish a young student who launched a soccer ball into his classroom, hitting a student in the head.

The struggles are different here. But in the end the teachers put forward lesson plans that the students could comprehend and memorize; and that is what the system is all about.

I feel like it would be good to give each volunteer a chance to see what the others are facing during training if possible, but knowing how tight the schedule is and how difficult it was to travel to some of these places where we trained at it seems very unlikely to do this. I enjoyed the perspective though.

Other than that, the trainers wrapped up the session with a movie and a review of the experience and that was the end of our part in the training. There are 36 PCTs who are more than ready to handle a classroom at their schools. Now they must go through the waiting period of language training in order to be ready for their oral test. That is probably the most difficult part of training, but one that must come in order to ease your way into the community.

After I got home I decided the best thing to do on my first day back was to stay at home, take a long shower, sweep up the house, and just take a day off. There are a few more stories to share on the trip which I will type up in the days ahead, but I think that the training went smoothly and that most had a good time during the weeks we were there. Only time will tell how well the group (all of us, trainees and trainers included) did, but I am ready to celebrate come the 30th of August when they all swear-in. It should be a great time.

Tasting Something New

Often when I was in the states I would start my morning, spend my day, and close my commute with National Public Radio. A thousand stories must have passed by my ears and obviously I cannot name them all, but one stuck out in my mind. A report about a berry one could eat that would make anything you put in your mouth taste sugary sweet. It sounded neat and my recollection is that parties in NYC would charge people something like five or ten dollars just to taste the berry and then a whole host of foods that ought to taste sour or bitter.

I filed that one away as a neat thing, but today I got to try it out.

We came back to the hub-site to welcome some of the other volunteers who were traveling around the country visiting various sites and at one point in the afternoon I was pretty much all alone. Our security man, Daniel, came up to me with an orange that he had deftly stripped of its rind with a knife. He was giving it to me which was nice, but I told him that I like my oranges sweet and the kind that grow around here are quite sour, almost lemon-like. He told me that they were sweet, or rather he could make them sweet.

He walked 15 paces and there it was, the Miraculous Berry from that NPR story. It is growing right next to the tents that we take our meals under. I had never noticed it before and here is a source of constant sweetness! My taste buds were in for a treat.

You pop the seed of the plant, which is reddish and waxy, into your mouth. The skin is pretty thin and under it there is a soft meat of sorts that you just roll over your tongue for a minute, then spit that seed out and find your choice of fruit to eat.

That orange which I rejected outright was the sweetest version of orange juice that I could get in the U.S. I am so thankful to our security guard for pointing this tree out to me, as apparently it only fruits during this month so the timing was perfect. I wonder if I could sneak this plant back to my mother's house in North Carolina. I just can't believe I didn't see this during all of my training last year.

Just another tasty Sunday here in Ghana.

Training Away The Days

My blog posts are becoming less and less frequent and must learn to correct that behavior. Here is my first chance to do some correcting.

I traveled to Kukurantumi on the 14th with my fellow Hohoe-ian Scott to get to the training hub-site. We made very good time after leaving somewhere after 1PM on Tuesday. After we walked into the gates of the hub site we saw the new arrivals for the first time. Thirty-six individuals enjoying some rest and dinner just before 6 o'clock. Within minutes of our arrival at the hub-site, the other three trainers arrived on the scene.

We got our orders to find places to stay within the community which has already been set up, and then we took to find some dinner. A nice evening walk and we were in a town close by finding a restaurant to eat at. Pretty simple and we were all in bed getting ready for an early morning.

Our first day of training was general information about what the Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) would be doing for the rest of the week, who we were as the Peace Corps Trainers (PCTs), and what the Ghanaian Trainers were responsible for. These 36 are all going to be teachers so we started off with the appropriate topics that teachers need: what are the courses that to be taught, what will the environment be like at the schools, how to manage a chalkboard, and so on. There were lots of topics and it reminded me how quick it all passed by when I was trying to fill my head with it all last year. I must have missed quite a few points as the acronyms got tossed around, but sure enough we got to the good part - actually teaching.

Thursday was meant to learn the do's and don'ts of teaching for Ghanaian classes. I think the PCTs had a good time teaching lessons on how to perform a major triad chord, playing Tic-Tac-Toe Cubed, and other subjects. Even in the light-hearted forays into teaching there were still things to praise and critique, so that certain points can be polished and other points improved. With peer teaching in the books, we broached the subject that occurred today: micro-teaching.

The Trainees had to travel to real schools and demonstrate a short lesson on subject material more closely related to their disciplines in front of real students. Our group of ICT teachers traveled to two schools: Kibi and SDA. SDA is the Seventh Day Adventist College that our group trained at last year while Kibi (I don't know the full name of that school yet) is a new school about an hour away from where we are staying. Both campuses are nice and it seemed that all involved had a good time teaching a few students. I was even able to get up and do a demonstration lesson on digital images, so we all got in on the act. The PCTs looked as nervous as I felt when I was in their shoes.

We headed home from the colleges in the afternoon. As the tro-tro pulled into a gas station I heard the sound of a sheep ba-a-ahing from below. I thought we had hit one on the way in, but no, the sound was not emanating from outside the tro but from right behind my seat. Someone was ferrying their sheep in the back so we had an extra passenger. I think the Trainees appreciated that. Just one more thing that makes you smile in Ghana.

One Year On

Time flies and all that. I have not been in America for 365 days officially. My first post from here came on June 5th, but we landed in Accra on the 4th at about 8AM. Some days have been whirlwinds, and others have been smooth and slow. But mostly my stay has been changing me day-by-day in good ways.

Service so far has taught me to adjust to a lot of things. Food that can be grown in a tropical climate does not match much of what I liked back in America. Yams, plantains, and cassava were not my principle food groups, nor palm nut oil or heaping mounds of okra. But somehow my stomach eventually gave in and accepted the changes. It was a struggle early on of course.

Teaching has had its moments of fun and frustration, but doesn't every job have those? I have been fortunate to have a few more, decidedly more, fun moments during the days here. Our school year is almost over and I will miss out on teaching the last few classes due to the training schedule for the next batch of volunteers, yet even if I were still here the time seems way too short to cover the programs and material that I wanted to show everyone.

To be clear, I have not been a volunteer for a year yet. I swore in the 12th of August so that is the official start date and it will also be the official leave date for most of us come 2012. Thinking ahead though, there will be a great deal I will have to un-learn by that time. Let me list some of the things that come to my mind:

• Ending a sentence with the long "O", especially the word 'bye-bye'. Everyone adds the "O" sound to things, and you will too if you hear it enough times. Sorry-O. 
• Opening the refrigerator (which I am lucky to have) at night and forgetting to bring a flashlight to see inside.
• Shaking someone's hand and going for the finger-snap to conclude the shake. This one will be a really hard habit to break.
• Crossing the paths of roaming sheep, taxi drivers, and bicyclists all on the same street.
• Waking at 5 every morning.
• Talking to anyone and everyone I pass.
• Taking public transportation and immediately slating time for a shower.
• Not hearing a plane fly over head or any motorized lawn care equipment running during the weekends.
• Using my fingers to eat rice.

I am certain that there are more that I will add to the list, but that is just a taste of what Ghana has done to me so far. There are so many new friends I have here that I feel really lucky to have been given this chance to volunteer. We all miss the good old U.S. of A., but once you mold yourself into your surroundings, you realize that where you find yourself isn't so bad after all. Never would you think someone was having it hard here judging by their laughter and smiles. Ghanaians are really friendly and roughly ten times more hospitable than Americans, it will be hard to leave. But I am getting ahead of myself.

So far so good. One full year is in the books. I can't wait to see what the next year brings!

Uninvited Guest

It was a full day yesterday and as I trudged home from the lab at around 10:30 I was thinking of getting home and calling it a night. An early start in the morning and then just being out and about on campus put me in the sleepy mood, and a thought occurred to me as a got within about 100 yards of the house: I didn't make my bed.

I almost always make my bed. No, let me put it this way, I don't recall the last time that I didn't make my bed before slipping under the mosquito net and going to sleep. Sometimes I do it after I get ready in the morning, other times it is in the late afternoon, but it gets done. Yesterday was the exception to that standard however. I forgot to do it and didn't use my time wisely to make sure the chore was complete. It was just something that didn't happen.

So my thought as I approached the house was of this nature: "Why should I do it? I can just crawl into bed and not make it, and who will know?" Rationalizing like that is probably the sign of something not right, but it did seem like a good argument at the time. By making the bed I have to move the mosquito net out of the way, take the one bed sheet and smooth it out properly, and then put the pillows on just so to make it look nice. Simple, but it is a minute of effort. I could just toss that ritual aside and go to sleep.

I don't know when I changed my mind, but by the time I got my gym shorts on and was ready for bed, I couldn't do it. I had to make the bed. I took the mosquito net and pulled both ends tight and swung them over the lines that tie the net to ceiling. I took the pillows off and rested them on the night stand (an old student's desk from years and years past) then I straightened out the bed sheet, all in the darkness of the bedroom.

It should be noted that I adopted a rule for nighttime activity in the house; use lights so you can see things clearly. Earlier yesterday I turned on the light to the pantry and took great exception to the cockroach crawling around my forks and spoons. Without the light on, dark places can hold a few surprises.

Last evening was an exception.

I straightened the bed sheet out nicely and was about to put the pillows back when one wrinkle just barely caught my eye on the bed. I tugged at the edges of the bed sheet and it wasn't going away. Did I leave a pair of gym shorts under the sheet? It seemed like the edge of a drawstring for a pair that I brought over, so I reached under the sheet, in the dark, and grabbed the end of the drawstring to remove it... but drawstrings usually don't have scales and feel incredibly limp.

In science class, we were taught that the decisions made by the brain are centered in certain areas. But those actions which aren't so much decisions but flat-out urgent reactions are controlled by a more ancient part of our nervous system in the brain stem. That was most likely the region in action last night as I, in a fit of spastic haste, let go of whatever it was that I had grabbed. I heard the faintest of thuds on the bed as it landed, and then I moved quickly to find my headlamp to see what was in my grasp.

Sadly, a skink had made its final resting place in my bed (it looked like this one). Under the covers during the day an exhausted lizard felt the need to stop this mortal journey and find ever-lasting peace about ten inches from my pillow, just under the cover of my bed sheet. I got it out of the bed and took her (or him) to an even better resting place just outside my back door on the grass. It did not smell nice to put it mildly.

So there is a moral to the story. If you don't want to make your bed, you better think twice. You might unknowingly be sleeping with a dead, or worse, live lizard in your bed.

Training Trainers Or Trainers Training

Over the past week several people took part in the Training of Trainers (ToT) at Kukurantumi. After I attended the previous workshop where staff and volunteers alike hammered out what the Pre-Service Training (PST) would be like in terms of events and timing, I got the notion that being a trainer might be rewarding. Who knows why that didn't occur to me before, but once it did I sent in my letter of intent and was informed at All-Vol that I would participate.

We arrived on Monday, May 23rd, and learned about the plan of events from our Director of Program and Training, Rob Moler. It seemed like there was a lot of work ahead of us, and a fairly high expectation of what we might accomplish by Friday. A total of eleven PCVs are to become the PCVTs (Peace Corps Volunteer Trainers) so that they may help the new arrivals, the PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) adapt to their new environment and get a head start on their positions. Again, everything is an acronym and if you don't know what the acronym is, you ask and do your best to commit it to memory since it will appear repeatedly.

The beginning of the week was focused on what the whole PST would be like. Where events happened, the timing of various bits, and where conflicts might arise. After a thorough review of the big picture for training, we were often breaking into our sectors to concentrate on what we would need to bring to training at a more detailed level. What books and handouts should a PCT have? When should they get them? How many and where can we obtain them, or are they already available but at a different location. Many many different things to go over, and every day of training there is about eight hours of time to account for; the complexity grows by every hour that you work on it.

In the end, we had a fairly good idea what would be needed per session on the calendar, really good resources to draw upon from prior years, and then a direct path to get ready for this year. Friday was fun as there were nine or ten of us at computer screens typing up, copying over, and editing with reckless abandon all types of material. We also had time to write up comical biographies for one another which will find their way into the welcome book that trainees will get upon their arrival. I didn't read my own bio but I am hopeful that someone remembers that I invented the Nalgene bottle - which was the persistent rumor that went around during our training session.

These workshops are a bit of fun but they do take a bit out of you. Breakfast is at 7, so you need to be ready by about 6:30 to make it to the hub site on time. My wake up call would have been around 6 but for the fact that I could never sleep in that long. Most mornings I would pop my eyes open at closer to 4 and then try to nap my way to 6; failing by 5:30, I would just resolve to get up and shower. We also would join up after the day was over and head to a local pub (which is a very inaccurate description of a watering hole here - think of a cargo container with a few plastic chairs scattered around and that paints a better picture). I'd have one soda, feel the effects of the early morning wake up call and be ready for bed by about 9. Oh the sacrifices, yes?

Joking aside, there was a lot done at the training workshop and plenty more work to be done in the coming week or two. The new group is set to touch down in Accra on the 8th of June which is not far away at all and the real fun begins.

After all of this I am now remembering how it all felt to get here. It has really been one year? Time flies when you are having fun.

Not that I couldn't go for a cheeseburger and fries right about now, but that can wait. More fun is calling.

Combining Traditional Clothing With American Culture

I have mentioned in past posts that if you have an eye for a particular fabric for sale on top of someone's head or in a shop, you haggle for a price and then get it for a few cedis, then take it to a tailor and get something nice made to fit you. It really is a much better way to go about dressing oneself then heading to a giant store to find pre-made clothes that may not be the best fit in colors and patterns that don't quite match your style. That is all well and good and something that I find lifts my spirits up a bit (I am currently waiting for a shirt to be made that is using a print that the school sells to the students here, a print that has a photo of the statue of St. Francis and has written around said photo the words St. Francis College of Education), but how about making your own cloth and then getting something traditional made?

Enter my fellow volunteer friend in Hohoe, Scott. He works at the Volta School for the Deaf and he is their art instructor. Scott and I have had many conversations at the Grand Hotel just chatting about life and often our work. He was telling me that this year he had made a concerted effort to get some of the students who have an interest in doing art to use that inclination for the school's benefit. They make stuff and Scott is finding ways to market it for the benefit of the school. It is a great idea, and one that seems to be helping out everyone involved. The students have also taken to weaving kente, a type of cloth that our area in the Volta region is well-known for. So through his school I had a ready source of weavers for some fine material that actually is quite expensive on the open market. The first step is taken care of.

What type of shirt to make though, that was the question. I have regular shirts already, ones that might not be too out of place were I to wear them in the U.S., but I didn't have something that was a bit more Ghanaian. Here is where the smock comes in. The best way to describe it would be to say that it is a sleeveless shirt which has about one extra shirt too much cloth in it. Smocks are usually big, baggy, and heavy. Typical to the north, but still worn throughout the country, I have been tempted to find one that I could get as 1) a formal Ghanaian shirt to wear to class, and 2) a souvenir for when I return to the States. But when I see these shirts for sale they come at a hefty price and often I am not interested in the color or the style of the pattern. Then back in April I met a Ghanaian who was wearing a smock, and it appealed to me for one specific reason. It was a smock meant for the Miami Dolphins.

Well, not exactly, but it was certainly the correct color scheme. Vertical strips of white, bright orange, and turquoise blue. White was the dominant color, and the orange and blue were thin lines running top to bottom. I commented to the man wearing it that I liked it because of what it reminded me of, and he smiled and thanked me. Here is where the two ideas merge then.

I need a Philadelphia Flyers smock.

Scott was very supportive of the idea since he had already made a go of letting his students weave a kente pattern with Ohio State colors included, and he said this would be something the students could easily handle. He bought three colors (orange, white, and black for the uninitiated in hockey team colors) and yesterday I set out to arrange a pattern. We batted around about six ideas and settled on one that will have a lot of orange in it. The cost of the thread, the students time and the effort to sew the smock will most likely come out to 70 cedis which is expensive, but the smocks last a long, long time, and I hope to be showing it off to people when I return so I think it is a good purchase.

Oh sure, the Flyers lost to the Bruins in a four-game sweep not too long ago, but they won't fold the club up and move to Wichita any time soon, so there is always next year. When the smock is finished I can wear it on game days and tell students that the Flyers are playing, hence I must sport their colors but with Ghanaian sensibilities. I will post some photos of the project as it moves along. Go Flyers!

Beads, Beads, And More Beads

Sunday has been a day of recovery of sorts due to the fact that I made a day-long trip to Somanya to see a bead-making operation. I don't get earlier starts than 3:48 AM.

I was supposed to be up earlier than that too; my alarm had a feature where it would ignore weekends so as not to wake you up on your relaxed weekends. My 3:30 wake-up alert never came and instead I was awoken by the phone ringing next to my ear. It was the art teacher on campus and she asked if I was indeed going to come along with her and the rest of the students. I said, “Yep,” and shambled off to the bathroom to try my best to wake up in under two minutes and get out of the door. I made it to our statue circle where the vehicles were parked by 4:01.

Not my typical Saturday here.

We got on the road by about 4:20 and I think I was the only one that was not used to being awake at that hour as my head bobbed to and fro trying to fall off of my neck. It didn't and I was treated to seeing a sunrise on the road. It was a very beautiful day to start, and after a few hours trekking over some bumpy roads, we made it to our destination.

The man who operates the business is nicknamed Cedi and that is the name of the compound we entered, Cedi Industries. He is a very friendly man who took time to explain to the 35 of us what is involved to make glass beads, the different types of beads one can create, and how to make them using clay molds and lots of fire. After our lesson was over, we all clamored about for a few clay molds and got to working on our objects d'art. It was fun and I took a lot of time making my one masterpiece, the glass bead that would clearly show my artistic talents to all present.

At this point the skies became pitch black and the rains let loose on the land in torrents. Our glass beads were not affected and the fires raged on in the kilns, but it was hard to get around the place as most of the facilities were not connected by hallways, just open-air paths from one hut to the next. It has been a while since I have seen rain like that so maybe rainy season is just around the corner.

During the time where our beads were being fired (they have to melt in some very hot ovens before you can see the final product) our friend and guide Cedi showed us another technique to make much fancier glass beads. His demonstration was impressive while he used a propane and oxygen mixture to form a single glass bead from several colors of glass filaments. I was impressed and would have loved to try it, but apparently the techniques a few years to master, and we had about thirty minutes to spare.

After taking our lunch, the second year students and I piled around the now cool clay molds to see what our glass beads looked like. I was hoping for near diamond-like perfection but what I got were dark balls of greenish glass that had holes pressed through the middle. My expectations were not quite on target. Later still we got to see the special bead that we created using powdered glass in one clay mold. Out came mine and it looked, well, it looked awful. No design could be seen in the mix of colors that I had used, and the oblong shape made me think somehow I had fallen asleep during the instruction phase of our lecture. Though it was mine, and I took a photo of it to commemorate it prior to giving it to another student who had lost her bead.

We were taken to the shop where we were allowed to take one bracelet and one necklace professionally created at the site. Mine looked nice, and I ended up buying two more bracelets while I was there. One maybe as a gift to myself and one to hand out to someone later.

By the time I got home my head was quite heavy. The students were great and it was nice to have a chance to talk to some of them in a relaxed situation. If I get the chance to do this type of trip again I will definitely jump at the opportunity.

Does anyone need some ugly glass beads? I know how to make them now.

Trying To Game The System

First there is nothing wrong with what I am doing so far as I can tell, at least not from a legal standpoint. Yet after a few false starts, Vodafone's offer finally started to pay off for me until I hit a little snag yesterday. Please bear with me.

Vodafone offers mobile phone service in Ghana, and they also offer internet service through USB Modems that attach to your computer. After I got to Hohoe I chose Vodafone since another provider at the time dropped all service for multiple days running and that just would not do at 'tall' (as the Ghanaians say it). In Ghana you do not pay a monthly fee, you purchase credits that you redeem through the provider and when you speak for a certain amount of time you run your credits dry and must buy more. Equivalent to pre-paid phones in America. The great thing about Vodafone was that if you buy credits in higher amounts they add bonus time to your account. If I bought 5 cedis of calling time, then they would give me a 50% bonus, making my purchase in effect, seven cedis and fifty pesawas (7.50).

Only later did I find out that if you put down major money, you could get a 75% bonus. Now that is some serious texting and talking there. If you bought 10 cedis of credit, you had on your phone 17.50 of time. To call the U.S. from Ghana would run about 1 cedi for 7 minutes of chatter. Not too bad, and calling local phones here was a little cheaper still.

There was one small catch. Your 10 cedis had an expiration date, maybe two or three months from the time you entered it on your phone. The bonus had a separate expiration date, usually earlier than the full value you added to the phone. So 10 cedis would expire in three months, the 7.50 would expire in less than half that time. Not a problem, since when you called or texted it came off the bonus credit first.

Now, enter the Internet modem. I can get a full month's service on my computer for 45 cedis. The small catch was I needed a new chip to make the modem work, I couldn't just use my phone SIM. I pay the full amount (45), add it to the SIM chip for the internet modem (am I losing you at this stage?) and get my internet connection, but then I don't get a bonus for spending 45 cedis – the internet modem doesn't have that same offer.

Transferring credits to the rescue. You can transfer credit from one phone to another and that is how a lot of people here buy their time on the phone, they just pay someone else a small fee and that someone else will transfer their credit to the other phone. I have two SIM chips, and I have two phones to place said chips into. My goal was to pay 45 cedis, two twenty cedi cards and one five cedi card, add them to my phone SIM chip, then receive the bonus minutes on my phone card. After that, I would be able to transfer the 45 cedis over to the internet SIM chip which was temporarily put in my extra phone. It sounds convoluted, but this worked.

I would get my internet modem charged up with the 45 cedis, and my phone had a bonus amounting to 32 cedis. Two birds, one giant stone.

Up until yesterday.

The internet modem credit expires after 30 short days. The phone credit expires after what appears to be 37 days (give or take). I have to wait these seven days before I can repeat the process, as when I add credits to the phone chip now, the bonus expiration date does not extend beyond the 17th of May. I found that out the hard way when I plugged in a five cedi credit to the phone. My perfect plan to game the system has a slight kink in it, but I am very thankful I have a computer lab and free internet still on campus.

I have found myself doing strange mental calisthenics to pass the time. Congratulations for reading this far.

Peace Corps Ghana Descends On Ho

We started on Sunday night, but really we started much earlier in Hohoe before the All-Volunteer Conference got underway in Ho. I had a trickle of volunteers come and go last week prior to all of us traveling to the regional capital Ho on Sunday morning. Many volunteers were making their way to and from a few places so the house stayed busy over the course of five or so days with maybe twelve visitors in all. Upon returning Thursday I realized how much cleaning I have to do.

The All-Volunteer Conference (All-Vol for short, but for some reason we do not use AVC even though it is a Peace Corps-sanctioned event) is a time for every volunteer currently serving in the country to meet up at one place and learn about programs, PCV-led initiatives, committees, and gobs of information regarding HIV. It was great to get there a bit early, enjoy the pool, and see some very familiar faces stroll into the hotel compound where we were staying. Of course everyone was there from the group that I traveled and trained with, but this also includes the volunteers who have been here more than one, two, and three years. Lots of PCVs and plenty of catching up to do from all areas of the country.

The major funder of the event is PEPFAR (see, acronyms) which stands for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which meant that each day we devoted a majority of our conference time to learning about HIV and AIDS by way of reviewing ongoing projects that are being down by other volunteers in the field, and what type of funding can be obtained through PEPFAR grants. Towards the end of the day on Wednesday, all of us could no longer hear the word PEPFAR as an acronym but rather, it became a sentient being unto itself with eyes and ears and a dry sense of humor. PEPFAR could be very subtle at times.

Humor aside, most of the conference presented all the PCVs with a pretty thorough understanding of what is being done and what could be done in the communities in which we serve. To put it mildly, the bulk of the subject matter would not make for good web logging material as it pertains to very particular details that only matter to us here. It did help to have a good night's sleep though before the day started to make it all the way through as some topics might are far from whimsical and light.

Beyond the HIV component, we were given many opportunities to learn about PCV projects in a variety of disciplines running the gamut from girl leadership camps to how to set up a computer lab. If there was time to fill, many participants were eager to speak about what they had found to be successful in their areas. We had very little time where we just sat and stared at each other with nothing to do.

Another chance to meet with the Volta volunteers happened at our regional VAC (Volunteer Advisory Council) meeting. We got together and went over the minutes from our last meeting and voted in a new representative for the area. I don't know how close the vote was but somehow I got the nod for the duties which are just a few, and then was briefed a bit on what it might entail. It seems to be just a bit of travel and making sure that all the suggestions from the volunteers make it to the regional meeting which also needs to be scheduled by me. Sounds familiar to a few things that I have done before, so it should be fun. A Robert's Rules of Order refresher is on the horizon.

Actually, after that meeting all of the new representatives from the eight regions of Ghana got together for the national VAC meeting. We went through the concerns and addressed them in a way that seemed to suit all assembled. The last order of business was to set the new Chair and Secretary for the national group where I got a nomination as did another PCV, Jonathan Schatz. When the votes were tallied for Chair we had an even split and after some discussion, it seemed easy enough to just rotate each meeting between Chair and Secretary between the two of us. I got the Secretary spot for the first joint meeting between VAC and our Country Director and the Director of Program Training. It seemed like a decent meeting and something that I am happy to take part in.

Lastly, after serving in the group that helped plan this year's Pre-Service Training back in April, I put in my application to become a Peace Corps Trainer (yes, PCT for short) and when the conference was closing on Thursday morning I found out that I had become a trainer. There were many named so I now forget who I will see at various times, but I am sure more will be revealed as the weeks pass by.

All told, things worked out fairly well and no one was injured during the conference which was a prime objective of those organizing these events. Everyone had a lot of fun and we got to say our good-byes to those who will soon be closing out their service in just a few months. “Alls-Vol” was a resounding success in my book.

Happy Easter

Of course my updates have not been what they used to be here and it is not for a lack of time on my hands, it has just been that I have not stopped by the computer lab often lately. The students have departed for another of their vacations and in their place there are adult students who are busily studying various subjects to obtain a degree or certificate which they can take and use to advance their careers. I don't believe that they have an exam this time around, but they will be taking copious notes in classes upwards of 80 or more individuals.

That is one long paragraph to introduce an apology for a lack of updates, but that is the way things have gone lately. There is not so much going on around campus so I have made this time useful by cleaning up the house daily, having a few more shirts made and conducting errands to town and back to keep myself occupied during the day. I went so far as to even buy natural gas to cook with which had its own story.

After hailing a taxi with my empty tank in my manly grip (not quite so, but it sounds nice) I headed to town and a turn off that I had never traveled before lead us to the filling station. Tropical Gas was the name, and there didn't look to be a serious line whatsoever. Just one man, one cylinder, and one attendant doing the filling. I take it that the method is as follows: hoist the empty cylinder onto a large industrial-sized spring scale and take a measurement of the weight, then attach the nozzle to the tank and run the pump to fill the tank up to a heavier weight. Looked straight forward, and after waiting for about three months to do this simple chore I was feeling a bit satisfied to complete the task.

Then the power went out as I stood next in line. The man filling the tank jumped to a wall and flipped a switch off as if it really mattered a lot to do that, and he turned and said, "Lights off," which means that the power was off in town. I looked at the taxi driver to find out if this had a negative consequence on our mission. Yes, it did. We would not be getting gas then and there, but I could leave the tank behind and come back later when the power came back on. Small things like that could be an irritant of course, but given how long I waited to do this in the first place it seemed entirely justified that I wait a bit longer. I went home, paid the fare, and then waited until the power flowed freely again before heading back to the station to pick up my tank. All told, just twenty cedis for the entire affair including the bonus taxi ride to and fro.

But back to Easter. You can have yourself a very good time for Easter if you wanted to travel to places here and there. Most people that I knew felt that the best place to be was in a town in the Eastern region where a great big hill serves as a launch pad for paragliders. I even saw a news clip from the event and sure enough, lots of white people were waiting in line to try the trip. If you were inclined to drop 80 cedis, you could fly, but I opted to stay closer to home.

Here in Hohoe you could choose from any of the dozens of church services held at 7, 9 and who knows when else. Easter as a holiday has a lot more festive feel than it did in America where it was celebratory but not party-esque in nature. There is still music playing this Monday evening as the holiday goes for most of the weekend and then moves on into the first day of the week. As a national holiday most families take a trip somewhere and picnic or visit friends. I spent my Easter not paragliding, not going to church, and not picnicking. Rather, I talked with the family back home via Skype.

It was definitely better than all of the above as I got to see my aunt and uncle, as well as my grandmother who may or may not have understood what Skype was or did, but certainly recognized her aging grandson on the computer monitor. It was great talking about the time spent here, how things were going on back home, and generating ideas for more blog posts in the future. Further, I got a chance to wish a happy Easter to my lady-friend before I closed shop for the evening and tucked myself into bed. To cap off the day I got a text message from my brother that the Philadelphia Flyers prolonged their season by another game with an overtime victory. Sweet!

Not a bad holiday at all.

My First Visitor

All is quiet at the house again as I have returned by my lonesome from the airport in Accra today. My girlfriend Damla paid me a visit in Hohoe and spent ten days in the country with me to see first-hand what it is that I am doing and what it is like to live here in Ghana. I wanted to see the country through her eyes as someone who has not been here before. I gather the first impression was the heat and humidity of Accra and Ghana in general. For some reason the week was quite warm with very few interruptions in the heat index. Not that this was a bad impression for someone just getting away from one of the colder more snowy winters in the northeast of America, but it can really hit you like a ton of bricks.

I spent most of my time in the tro-tro ride home pointing out things that I thought might be of interest – the typical tourist stuff of which I have minimal knowledge. I know only what someone else has told me, and for most of the ride to Hohoe there is little to remark on besides the lake and the farms. As we were going over a few speed bumps I could see from my seat that the oncoming tro-tro had a goat standing on top of the roof. This happens but it is not something that I get to see everyday, so I told her to look out the passenger window to catch a glimpse, expecting her to be surprised by the very sight of a goat riding on the roof as it passed to our left (you would really not want a goat riding in the passenger area as you might guess). Unfortunately, this was the least-sure-footed goat in Ghana, and those speed bumps that we were were rolling over gave it a run for its money. She looked out the window the moment it fell off the roof. Good thing though, or bad thing depending on how you look at it, the goat was leashed by its neck to the metal railing that was welded on to the top of the tro. I told her to look at the passing vehicle the moment a goat was strung up by its neck, wailing and crying for its very life while one good Samaritan inside the car was grabbing a leg trying to help the tormented animal.

We kept driving right along. Nothing to see there.

Things like that are great stories to have on a trip, aren't they? It did not throw her off in the least, and we continued to have fun while running about. There was market day where she and I trailed off into the labyrinth of stalls that occupies about a football field of space near the taxi station in town. She found some jewelry and I found a neighbor to chat with and introduce, and off we went to explore further. People who know me would come up and I would do my best to greet and they in turn would look at her and say the pleasantries all in Ewe, which I failed to instruct her on before and after she got here. “Yo” is never a bad guess when someone says something that sounds nice but unfamiliar. I use it all the time and it will either be correct, or get me a good laugh.

We did manage to find the Wli waterfalls which is a must for anyone that comes to this region. A simple walk of about forty minutes gets you to a lush mountain side with a steep and beautiful waterfall as your reward. It did not disappoint us as the water was bounding over the edge and making a nice splash at the bottom. Many people were out for the afternoon to take in the sight, and we got some nice photos and videos of the scene to take back home.

I don't think I am going to let anyone leave Ghana without getting something handmade for them to wear. Part of the fun of being “Ghanaian” is dressing the part and when you see the prints and the colors and the fashions that most people here will wear, you don' want to stick out too much with T-shirts and shorts. Hence, you go buy two or three yards of fabric (the more colorful the better) and have a tailor take your measurements and do their thing. Voila! You have yourself a Ghanaian outfit. Damla had a few choices to make and did very well for herself. There isn't a lot to compare it to back in the states: you see that there is a pucker or a loose spot here or there, and you just tell the tailor that that needs to be fixed and they have at it. I can't imagine what it would cost to have your wardrobe tailored directly to your body back home, but here it runs from about six to nine cedis, or $4-6 American. Not bad, yes? She looked beautiful in all her attire here, that is for sure.

To state that I was a beneficiary in this deal is the world's largest understatement. She brought along so many snacks and goodies that I will be fat before I know it. Jelly beans, licorice, breakfast snacks, I could go on and on. My sweet tooth better get a check-up and soon because there is plenty for my molars to gorge themselves on here. She also packed and left a hard drive full of movies (dozens and dozens of my favorite odd-ball show, Mystery Science Theater 3000) and digital goodies. I might even speed up my learning of Turkish since she left behind audio lessons for me to digest in addition to the sugars.

Speaking of foods, I believe we both figured out what was edible and inedible as each day passed. While not getting her sick was the main focus, one might want to just dabble a little bit in the “danger zone” of foods to see what is good and delicious here in Ghana. Banku and Face-The-Wall were successes, but maybe not groundnut soup. So each day we added a bit more to the rice diet to see what was going to work. By the end I was so proud of her when she told a seller standing by our tro-tro “What is that?”, pointing to the top of her head, and being told what it was kindly said no to her. Braver than I was by a mile and a half even after my first two months here. Cow tripe on kebabs worked, so did the ice cream and frozen yoghurt that comes in plastic bags. Plantain chips were a “go”, but raw lettuce was never an option. By the end, she could say “Medi fo” and mean it (but maybe not understand it – I am satisfied).

Sadly though, trips like these have beginnings and the requisite endings, so we had to part ways as her job beckoned back on the other side of the lake. We made the last leg of the journey together on one more bumpy tro-tro with suitcases and glum feelings about the ten days that were now behind us. Emotional goodbye? You bet. But this goodbye was as much about knowing how happy we were together and how much fun we could have no matter where we were that it was a bit of gladness wrapped in with the sadness. Sneaking in to the customs line I was able to wave one last bye-bye through a wall of plate glass and wish her the safest of journeys (she made it back in one piece but a suitcase didn't) and then find my way around Accra all by my lonesome. It was a great visit and while I learned a few things about how to play host, I also found out one very important lesson: I am darn lucky to have her!

Thank you Damla for everything!

Kukurantumi Again, Planning Aplenty

When the call came last week, there was something about a planning session that might be happening. It came from the woman in charge of my ICT group whom I refer to here as my APCD (Assistant Peace Corps Director), and she asked if I had time during this week to participate in a planning session for the next class of Peace Corps Trainees. It seemed like a nice thing to be a part of, and I told her that I would ask and see if the school was all right with it.

They said, "Yes." I said, "Yes," and that put me on a tro-tro to the Eastern region on Sunday of last week. It is different now coming to the hub site here in Kukurantumi. There were so many sessions and so much work done here, but each time I got to see people who made me smile, and friends who made the whole experience enjoyable. Coming back brought many of those good times come back, but when a fellow volunteer and I arrived, the hub site was empty. Off to the For You bar for some sodas and time to pet two very fuzzy puppies who were romping around the grounds.

People did show up, and we reconnected with some volunteers who we haven't seen since maybe Thanksgiving. There were just eight volunteers here, seven from my group so we got to hang out and relax quite a bit in a low-key environment. Scott from my town was also here, but he is a year ahead of me and re-upping for another year. Added to us were the two volunteers who operate the sub-offices in Kumasi and Tamale (TAH-mah-lay). Then all the staff that we knew from our training days here showed up and it was much like old times. Even the food tasted the same.

So the idea for this session is to plan the next events for Pre-Service Training (PST) for our future volunteers. They come as Trainees, they leave as Volunteers. During that process, there are about 80 days where many things get planned and the PCTs are asked to be here, then there, and back to here again. Finding the schedule is important as it will give the trainers different windows to begin planning some of the excursions and book some of the places that we will need to train the new group.

Four days of understanding the process and then planning the weeks and days was a bit of a struggle. As the number of volunteers goes up then we also need to factor in new hires to train the volunteers, so we also were given a crash course on personnel decisions from the Administrative Office which, oddly enough, was rather enjoyable due solely to Bob Gingrich being energetic and clear with his presentation. He didn't even use Powerpoint to make himself understood. Impressive.

By Friday we were ready to go. One last trip to the hub site for breakfast and the few remaining staff and volunteers headed their separate ways. I rode home with Scott and we were fortunate to find a tro-tro that filled quickly straight back to Hohoe. All told, I think the venture was a success. I have a better idea of what goes into training us, and I feel a bit more energized about my service and position here in ICT at St. Francis. I am going to submit a statement to Peace Corps declaring that I would like to be a trainer for the next group if it works out for my schedule. If not, then there is certainly other PCVs that are up to the task, no doubt. First, I think it would be fun and exciting to see the 50th class of volunteers land in Ghana, and second, I think it would give me a much better perspective on my own service. I will be sure to post an update on that front.

Sure I'll Have A Mango

My confession for this week is that I never knew mangoes were extremely sweet and tasty. I had an inkling that they were good, (why would all those fruit drinks which have eight different flavors add in mango as a prime ingredient if it didn't taste good, yes?) but intensely sweet and juicy, no. Now I know different.

There may be a difference between the mangoes that are sold in the states and the ones that are here in Ghana, but again my knowledge is not quite sufficient to say what the ones we get in the stores in the U.S. are like in comparison to here. Maybe if I describe them well here, someone back home can comment on how close they sound.

On the tree, and the campus here has maybe a dozen fully-grown mango trees to choose from, the fruit has a light-green colored skin. They will hang in clusters and most of the ones you would be able to reach and pluck by hand are too small and not yet ripe. Those that fall on the ground roll in awkward patterns due to their oblong shape are also rarely ripe. Green is not good. We need the skin to turn a bit yellow first in one place before we can obtain the sweetness. The trouble is how to get then out of the tree when they are ripe.

Enter the children who either live on the campus or very near to the school grounds. They are all free to employ, and they have pretty decent arms for not having the sport of baseball at their disposal. There is really nothing you can use the hard green mangoes that fall to the ground except chuck them up at the ripe fruits stubbornly fixed to their stems high up in the tree. The tree closest to my bungalow is probably fifty feet tall so the good ones don't come off the limbs without this subtle coaxing. I typically take just one of the mangoes that the boys offer me since my guess is that they are going to sell them to others in town.

A brief aside: the senior house-master at this morning's assembly implored the students in his typical rascally way that they are not to be taking rocks, mangoes, or sticks and catapulting them skyward in order to get the fruit. He made one exception to this rule for the mango tree outside of his house. He figured he could partake in the mangoes liberated from his tree by the students. Everyone laughed quite a bit to his exception.

Eating the fruit is quite simple. You just cut into the skin and peel the tough layer off and gnash your teeth into the pulpy yellow-orange fruit. The pit is flat and big and clearly inedible. Depending on how ripe the mango is, you may be able to put your mouth on the meat of the fruit and almost drink the meat in all its sugary goodness. But if it is not overly ripe, then you have to use the teeth a bit to take bites out of it. My only problem is that the strands of the mango wedge themselves efficiently in between my teeth and gums. The mango is an excellent tool to encourage flossing.

So that is my first-hand account of the delicious mango. Does it sound familiar? I will put you down for 30 when you come and visit.

Back On The Teaching Train

It has been a few days now, and I think I know my schedule well enough to comment on the new semester. I again have seven classes a week to teach which is by far a fairly tame schedule for teachers in Ghana. I know some who are teaching at the high school level who have close to thirty periods a week which boggles my mind. As it stands now, I don't have much in the way of classes, but I tend to spend my time in the lab for the bulk of my days and teaching students new things just flows throughout the day. Still, not much of my time is devoted to classes.

With that out of the way, our first class was held on Monday. That class was not present unfortunately. All the students had to go searching for their desks and chairs as all the furniture was moved out of their classrooms and into an empty laboratory due to the SHS students who lived on campus for their sports week. Classrooms were turned into boarding rooms, and to prevent widespread loss of school property, all of the students possessions were moved into that one giant room. At 8:00AM the students were permitted to retrieve said furniture, but that was also the time for my class. I had five students show up so it was not quite an official beginning.

Tuesday was not much better. I went to the administration building to check for my schedule which we did not have distributed on Monday morning. For my next class I learned that I would be having two classes at once. That is not quite possible to do. Two classes to meet at one time (2:15PM) won't work as there are 70 students and only 40 chairs in the lab. I spoke to the teacher who set up the schedule and he said that he would try to fix that problem, but I am aware that it might not be possible which would mean some further complications for teaching both classes. Maybe one time each week I would need to have one or the other class come to learn during their prep hours which run from 7 to 10 in the evening. Not the best option, but still, better than having 70 people in one room at a time.

Some more fun yesterday was the fact that the power was out from about 10 in the morning all through the rest of the day. Not only could I not teach both classes (due to the size just mentioned), I couldn't even teach one class without power flowing. The power did not return until early in the morning today, Wednesday. Small things of course, but nothing is completely straightforward here. Something can go wrong, and Murphy's Law will always apply here it seems.

My hope is that by next week we can have almost 90% of the machines running and useful for the students. Currently we still have a few machines that A) won't start at all, B) start but are not functioning well, and C) work but won't get online in their current state. So if I could get 9 out of 10 machines working and networked I would consider it a victory.

On to make-up classes and a brief introduction to the internet. This week the students must create an email account and send me a message to complete their assignment.

Our Computer Cup Runneth Over

With just a few days left before classes resume the computer lab looks like, well, a computer lab. Not only are there many machines displayed on the desks for all to see, but now they actually work. There was supreme satisfaction on Wednesday when the folks who had the equipment showed up at the front gate of the campus asking if they could come in and replace all the broken parts. Finally, a way for the students to learn on their own computer during our lectures.

Of the twenty brand-new machines that we received at the outset of the semester, only four worked at semester's end. Each one would have a fault with the power supply inside the computer case and our friends at the manufacturers would not replace the unit - the inconsistent power in Ghana meant that they would not cover its replacement. They even had the gumption to tell us to check the current in the building to see if that was the culprit. The nerve.

Except that when the people came to repair the lab the electricians came and checked the power to the it. It was actually under by about 70 volts which is low for the machines and that might actually make a difference to the power supplies here. Instead of being at 220 to 240, our lab was running at 170 volts. I didn't know, and I was not about to lick my fingers and touch bare wires to figure out if we had just the right current or not. That was fixed up, and then the new power supply units arrived this past week and we were back in business. To date, none of the computers have exploded or failed to come on.

Aside from a few extra computers being crammed onto the desks, the lab looks pretty much the way I wanted it to look. Before there were two columns of desks that sat too close together. I could walk between them when there were just empty chairs pushed in, but when students arrived the space behind the chairs was too narrow for me to easily get by, thereby preventing me from walking the length of the desk to see a student's screen and answer their question. I made sure that each desk was an equal distance from its neighbor and aligned them correctly before putting out any computers. I cleaned the dickens out of everything with all my free time. A toothbrush and a paintbrush became my friends as dust disappeared from all of the equipment (I even dusted in those hard-to-reach places on the ends of cables and plugs), and arranged the units in a staggered pattern; new machine, old machine, new machine, old machine, ad infinitum. Best of all, each of the old machines (there are twenty of these as well) has a new wireless card installed so that we do not have to run ethernet cables everywhere on the floor.

It was all so rejuvenating. A phoenix out of the fire if you will (forgive the hyperbole please).

Which means that the students can now sit at forty different machines and access the world wide web simultaneously, over a connection that at maximum offers a download speed of 60 kilobytes per second. For the record, that isn't very fast and that is on a very good day does one see that speed. I shudder to think of all the students simultaneously opening up Yahoo Mail and seeing nothing but spinning icons and blank screens. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Right now things are looking pretty. Best of all, the sports week has come to a close so I will be able to sleep soundly at night again. What a week here.