Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Home Sweet Home



Hello world!  Or hello to those of you that are following this blog.  Forgive me friends; it has been over two months since my last blog ingression.  Last time we met here I was merely a Peace Corps Trainee.  I am very excited to have crossed the threshold and emerged a volunteer.  I have been in Ghana nearly five months and cannot believe how fast the time is going by.  I am not even sure where to begin on what has happened.  The first three months of training are busy, energetic, full days, little free time, but somehow I managed to write nearly every week or two during that time.  The pace was at first much slower when I got to site, and now I am finally becoming busy which is a very very good thing.
                So, I am now permanently at my site which is in a small village near the sprawling market town of Kumasi.  I love my village, school and community, but no situation is perfect.  I have the nicest house in my part of the village.  (I know, terrible, right?)  I have really great digs compared to many other volunteers.  I have a big living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, private latrine (many volunteers share with others), and private bathing room.  I have a whole house to myself, and also a vacant room.   It’s actually really great…BUT….Most families here have three, four, five, six, or even more living in a house the size of mine or even much smaller.  Part of my responsibilities as a Peace Corps volunteer is cross-cultural awareness, which involves promoting better understanding of Americans to the people we serve.  It is standard for a Ghanaian to think that all Americans are rich and live a life of luxury.  How can I change that perception when I am the only white person in town and I move into the nicest house on my street all by myself?  They don’t know that my school pays for my housing, and the people that always ask me for money don’t understand that I am working on a very limited stipend.  I do my best to explain but seeing is believing.  My students come by my place often to help me clean or fetch water.  They tell me ‘Madam, your place is sooo nice.  I wish to come and live here with you.’  They don’t understand how I can live here alone.  But, I am extremely grateful that my school found such a great place for me to live.  It is more than comfortable and much more than I expected.
                Being the only white person in town also means that people I have never even spoken to know where I live, where I work, and they know my Ghanaian name, which in my village is ‘Abena Abofiri Koto’.  Even though I live alone, I don’t have much privacy.  I leave my house and almost everyone I pass and greet, whether I know them or not says
 ‘Abena! Where are you going?’
‘I am going to Market.’
‘What will you buy?’
‘Just some food’
‘What will you prepare?’
‘Not sure yet’
And on and on and on…and it always ends with them telling me to buy them something.   If I am walking toward my house everyone I pass says ‘Abena! Where have you gone?’  If I go into Kumasi for market or errands and the traffic is bad, I return home and some will say ‘Abena! You have kept long-oooh! Why!?’  (Ghanaians add –oooh to then end of many sentences, it’s catchy, and I have been adding it to my sentences as welloooh). It would be rude to not respond, so it means that mamny people in my village not only know where I live, but they also know where I am and what I am doing at any point in the day.   I will be honest that it was endearing at first, then became extremely frustrating and invasive.  I would smile and say ‘Oh! I am just going into town to buy some things.  I will go and come.’  Then they say ‘You go to Kumasi or you go buy things here?’ I then smile and respond casually with the appropriate answer, even though in my head I am imagining the vein in my forehead pulsing as I scream ‘WHY MUST I ALWAYS TO TELL YOU EVRYTHING I DO AND WHERE I AM GOING??!!!1!!’  But, as more time passed, I adjusted and now reminded myself that it is a different culture.  These small villages are like one big family.  Everyone knows everyone and I am a part of it now.  They only ask me these things because it is part of their culture to do so. They are curious about me.   I am starting to welcome it more and more as it also means  that I am becoming part of the extended family in which my village operates.  I have no choice but to embrace and roll with it, and so I am rolling.  J
                So regarding the education sector  in the Peace Corps; it is much different than other sectors like natural resource management (NRM) or heath and water sanitation (WATSAN).  I know that this is obvious simply by stating it, but what I mean is that volunteers in other sectors have a lot more freedom and flexibility in their projects (or so I’ve heard).  They get out into their communities and assess the needs and make a plan to address what needs they are most capable of assisting in.  I am not saying that education volunteers do not do that, but our primary project is very structured and clear: we teach.  We definitely have the option of taking on secondary projects in other sectors but we are discouraged from doing so until we have been at site for three months and have settled in.  The only reason I am even laying this out is because it makes the first few months at site pretty boring for an education volunteer, or at least for this education volunteer.  I have been meeting with people in my community and brainstorming ideas as to what I can do for secondary projects within my community, but I also have to be careful that I am not sending a concrete message that I will be able to do this that and the other, because I don’t know how much time I will have to focus on other things when I need to focus on teaching first and foremost.  So I am hesitant to do much else other than teach until I am completely comfortable and confident in doing so, because the last thing I want to do is be over ambitious in efforts outside of being a teacher, resulting in failed projects and disappointment.  Plus, my school is in such a deprived state that I am sure I will make the biggest difference in Ghana by improving the resources and facilities of my school, so any secondary project I do take on in the future will be focused directly at my school.  It does not have a library, no computers, no science equipment; our education resources are seriously limited to chalk and a chalkboard.  A lot of students do not even have textbooks.  I guess the whole point of this rant is that my initial ideas about ‘community development projects’ I would be doing were involving people from all over the community, but at this point it seems that I will make the biggest and most sustainable difference by focusing on one community group: the students at my school.  But even if I improve the lives of even a few people, or a few students during my time here I will see it as a success.  I have been trying to not make any assumptions about the possibilities here.  I want to do as much as I can but I also want to keep realistic and attainable expectations.
                More on teaching, I am actually really enjoying it.  But teaching in Ghana is hard.  Not devaluing the work of stateside teachers in anyway,  it’s just that in Ghana, the majority of students are extremely passive in their learning and even apathetic at times.  Especially for a new teacher, progress is painstakingly slow.  I have also noticed that thinking independently is not something that Ghanaian students are used to so I have found that the hardest part about teaching is to get the students to just think about the material and try to figure out the answers on their own.  They are used to rote memorization and regurgitation of words, not comprehension.  So I feel I am not just teaching science material, but I am teaching these students how to learn.
                As far as the material goes, I am completely baffled at what the education system expects these students to learn.  I teach integrated science, which is basically general science, and everyone has to take it.  There is a section on organic chemistry!!!  Why a 17 year old business track student needs to learn how to name organic molecules I don’t know.  It kind of drives me crazy.  And the fact that the textbook writers think that they can ‘summarize’ organic chemistry in a 10 page chapter of a high school general science book is astonishing.  But nonetheless, I have been giving organic chemistry lectures to 17 year old Ghanaians with the sad knowledge that they won’t remember any of it.
                This week I also started teaching math, and I am also working on my first secondary project of bringing a library to school.  So these things are keeping me ridiculously busy.  My reasons for staying off the blog stream so long were at first no computer due to the theft incident, and then when I got a replacement I was too busy to write consistently.  Anyway, I will have more on the library soon and I really need some stateside support so please keep in touch with me because very soon I will be having some great opportunities for people to get involved with the work I am doing here.
                Welp, sorry no pics this time.  Uploading photos takes forever for my mobile USB modem so I can only do it at the speedy internet cafes.
                Oh, I almost forgot!  I got a dog!  Things can get pretty quiet and boring on the weekends so he is a great pal to have around.  I got him from my neighbor when he was probably a little too young to leave his mamma, but he’s doing great and is living a very posh life compared to other Ghanaian dogs.  When I got him his little face and body was crawling with dust mites and fleas.  Now he is clean and happy and getting fat!  His full name is Daakyehene (Dah-chay-he-neh) which means ‘Future King’ in the local language.  It is a common nickname for brilliant people or people that are expected to do great things in their life.  I call him Daakye (Dah-chay) for short, which just means ‘future’.  Everyone absolutely loves that I gave him a Ghanaian name and he is now quite famous around town.  People even call me Daakyehema, which means future queen, since my ‘son’ is the future king.  If I am spotted in town without him everyone is asking “Eh, Abena!  Where is Future King?!”  I love that people love him! J And he is smart and loyal.  He comes to school with me and never wanders away from the school grounds, and if I leave him at home if I need to travel I will return to him just hanging out on the porch or running around in the yard, he never strays.  You will see pictures soon but eventually you will meet him as I plan on making the trek back to America with him.  J
                This is all I got for now.  I will try to be more consistent to limit the thesis length updates.  Much more has happened but of course I can’t remember it all at the moment.  Till next time!