Homecoming

After a fairly long haul, I am back on US soil, currently spending a few days on the West Coast before finally going home to Boise.

The trip itself was fairly smooth. I left Dakar at around midnight Friday night, this flight was delayed by about 90 minutes but I had a long enough lay-over in Paris. Charles de Gaulle airport, as always was charming. Both customs agents stamped over other stamps in my passport. Apparently France is more important than both Zambia and Panama. Thanks CDG.

Thankfully we left on-time and after a quick 8 hour flight over the Atlantic, I was back on US soil! The border agent in Washington D.C. was so friendly and told me "welcome back." But the other passengers waiting in line were griping about the wait, even though our flight arrived 40 minutes early!! Thus the different conception of time was immediately apparent upon arrival.

My flight to Portland went smoothly and again, I arrived about 15 minutes early. Although I am a little disappointed in United Airlines which did not feed us a single peanut/pretzel on a 6 hour flight. No I am not buying an 8 dollar snack pack, thanks. I anticipate being angry about the price of everything for the next few weeks, so bear with me.

Liz and Megan picked me up at the airport and here I am, chilling in Portland, Oregon until I fly back to Boise on Wednesday.

It is sure cold here after the beautiful 85 degree days in Dakar. I am also entirely unaccustomed to being surrounded by white people. I anticipate a healthy period of adjustment but for now a little well-needed nostalgia.

Things I Have Learned in Africa:

1. Sometimes the best place to be is on the floor

2. You can get a filling meal for under a dollar if you know where to go

3. Children have as much to teach me as I do them

4. How to drive on the left side of the road!

5. Love thy neighbor

6. How to get by surprisingly well without a washing machine, oven, electricity, hot water or even running water

7. Time is relative

8. Flexibility and patience pay

9. When life gets rough, seek the company of babies

10. Family will, ironically enough, keep you sane and drive you crazy

11. Always bring a buddy

12. Anything is possible

I believe this will be my last blog, unless I decide to post some pics from the last few weeks. It's been quite the journey. And as for those of you who think I should write a book, well, I'll consider it.

I hope that I will get a chance to see you all soon and catch up.
Happy holidays.
~Jess~

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello there!

I am down to my last few days in Ghana and I wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I leave this Saturday and it'll take me a few days to get to Dakar. Once there, I will spend a week seeing my host family and friends before I finally fly home.

I first want to send a shout-out to my lovely mother, Pam, who is celebrating her 30th birthday (again) on Sunday! I will be in transit so I can't promise she'll hear from me on her actual birthday. But I will be thinking of her on Sunday from a hot, sweaty bus somewhere in West Africa.

I also want to spend a moment in the spirit of the holiday for there are many things that I am thankful for this year.

I am so thankful for safe travels ( so far) and so many wonderful experiences during my time in Africa. I have learned so much and met a multitude of awesome people.

I am thankful for Lucy and my Ghanaian family.

I am very thankful for my family and friends back home who have supported me. It has been immeasurably helpful to have people that believe in me during this adventure.

Thanks go out to Ethel, Nelly, Zachary, Shark Tooth, Nancy, Giggles, Ivy, PP, Abigail and all my creche babies who somehow make the stress of a long day melt away with their tiny wonderfulness.

And for some conclusion to my stay in Ghana...

Things I love about Ghana:

Sunny days

Ethel
Red-red

Lightning

Plantains

My star students: Lily, Grace, Emmanuel, Sarah, Dau-Mensah

Lucy
Awesome sunsets

Lizards and geckos
Being so close to the ocean
Dinner, showers, reading, etc. by candle light.
The children

Frogs

Things I don't love about Ghana:

Cockroaches
The (over-friendly) men
Kenkey
Rain
The humidity
Power outages
Mosquitoes

Being called "Obruni"

My trouble-makers: David, Prince, Lieon, 4th grade

The children

Anyway, it has been a hell of a stay here but it is time for me to move on. I have learned a lot and this experience has certainly deepened my respect for teachers. I will miss all the great people I have met and become close to here but I am ready to head home after nearly a year away.

I'll be back on US soil in no time and I can't wait to see all of you!

Cheers.

Gotta love a spud

Hey everyone!

Well, my time in Accra is slowly coming to an end. It has been an amazing experience but I am ready to go home.

After 10 months in Africa, I got an American surprise this week. Thursday night we picked up a new volunteer and in one of the biggest coincidences in my time in Africa...he's from Idaho! It has been really cool to get to know him and it's nice to have another American around.

Saturday I got to experience a very key part of Ghanaian culture. I went to the funeral for the father of my school's headmaster. Funerals in Ghana are very big affairs. This one was held in Akatsi, about 3 hours east of Accra, towards Togo. The deceased man had 16 children, so there were a ton of people in attendance. Everyone wears black, brown and red. The funeral was held at his house, outside with tons of event canopies and plastic chairs.

One very different feature was the displaying of the body. His body was laid out on a bed and we all filed around it before the service. Then they had music and dancing which contrasted sharply with the somber mood of seeing the corpse. There were representatives from the family, his church and his work who read tributes. The service was conducted in Ewe and simultaneously translated into Twi (both local languages). At least the tributes were read in English but everything else was a mystery. The service lasted about 4 hours before the casket was taken to the cemetery. Also, he was a pastor of his church so his casket was shaped like a giant bible.

Sunday I hung out at the house and took Daniel (the spud) to Coco beach, near the volunteer house in Teshie-Nungua. It's been nice to show someone new around because I get to see things with fresh eyes myself. I've been in Africa for so long now that I sometimes forget that things work very differently here.

This week things have been normal. Classes are still interesting and challenging. I have finished poetry with my 7th graders and we are moving onto drama tomorrow. I am still doing a poetry unit with my 8th graders. In all the other classes, I generally treat grammatical subjects.

Tuesday was a holiday for Eid so I spent the day in Accra. I got my bus ticket out of Ghana for Saturday, November 27th. I am taking a bus to Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and then from there, I will find a bus to Dakar. It will be my last, crazy African bus ride. I showed Daniel around Accra and he got to experience his first loud, harried African market.

Hope everyone is well. I will be back in Boise in a month and I can't wait to see you all.
Cheers! Daniel and I at the funeral
Gabriel, adorable kindergartener at school
Me and my boys

Togo

So I finally got a vacation and spent a great 4 days in Lome, the capital of Togo.

But let me back up a bit. School was quite exciting last week. Monday was the only semi-normal day. Classes proceeded as usual but I just finished up my prose section with the 8th grade class, so we spent half of class just chatting. People here are always curious about the United States and my life and I love to answer questions.

Tuesday, the fun began. The first day of the 'inter-house competition' was all about sports. The students played football (soccer), volleyball, ping pong, ampe (a clapping and jumping game for girls), ludo (a board game sort of structured like Sorry) and another board game that was like Mancala. The little kids also had two competitions: one was running with a lime balanced on a spoon, the other was filling a water bottle from a basin (using a cupped hand to transfer water). House 4, Team Yaa Asantewaa performed well all day. We won girl's ping-pong, ludo, and 1 round of water-bottle filling. We did respectably in football, volleyball and ampe. At the end of the day, we were barely leading by 2 points.

Wednesday, however, we fell behind. It was all academic competitions for this day. Each house nominated 3 students to represent the team. Then questions were posed to each panel. When a question wasn't answered correctly, or time ran out, the next house in line had a chance for bonus points. First, the students did the Spelling Bee and then moved on to subject-related questions. They had to answer questions on French, Social Studies, Math, Science and Ga. It was a spirited competition but house 4 got third place behind house 3 and house 2. There was a brief awards ceremony.

My kids tried hard but they need to study hard for the next competition. I congratulated them and then headed home to pack. This long weekend was a much-needed break from the daily grind at school. It was great to get away and spend some time exploring a new place.

Thursday morning started at 4 am and it took me about 7 hours to get to Togo. The border is only about 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Accra. So, first, I grabbed a tro-tro into Accra and then found a bus to Aflao (town at the border post). From there, I walked to the border post, situated practically in town, and bought my 15,000 CFA (about 30 dollars) Togolese visa. I had no problem getting out of or back into Ghana. Borders have generally been pretty low-stress affairs in Africa. Lome is only another 2 kilometers east, so I decided to politely decline all the various offers of transit and walk into town.

Togo is very big into motorcycle taxis. They are everywhere, swarming the streets (and sometimes the sidewalks) like a pack of bees. I very quickly got sick of saying "Je veux marcher" (I want to walk) and just started ignoring all motorcyles. Lome has about 700,000 inhabitants so it is a sizeable town, but it was totally walkable. I wandered down the beautiful beach-side boulevard the rings the south side of town and found a nice hostel close to the beach. After settling in, it was still early, so I took one of those detestable motorcycles (sorry Mom) out to the east side of town. I had heard about an impressive juju market and wanted to check it out. Unfortuntately, the 'owners' of the market wanted to charge me just to enter and look around. After a heated argument with them (my French came back quickly) I decided it wasn't worth it. So instead, I explored Lome. The town is ringed by one big C-shaped boulevard (Boulevard 13 Janvier) and in 4 days, I walked prety much the whole thing, and most of the town (contained inside the "D" made by that boulevard and the one along the beach).

It was surprisingly sunny in Lome the whole time I was there. I had become accustomed to Accra's perpetual grey-ness so I actually needed to buy a cheap pair of sunglasses in town. I was quite sweaty from my wanderings so I decided to cool off in the ocean with a late afternoon swim. The beach is long and beautiful but it slopes down sharply at the waterside and the waves were a bit large. I found some people to swim with and had a good time.

Friday I decided to check out Lake Togo. I had heard that there were watersports available but I found the lake to be pretty dead except for some fishermen and some lazy pirogues (wooden canoes). So I spent the day reading and relaxing, had a swim, got some sun and ate some cheap street food. I certainly missed being able to find a filling meal for under a dollar. I also found out that Togo's southern coast is only about 52 kilometers (32 miles) wide. So when I went to the lake, I was basically at the border with Benin.

Saturday I wandered around town some more. I checked out the governmental district, the Place d'Independence and found a really cool artesinal market. I always like supporting artists directly, so I got some souvenirs there. I spent the afternoon at the beach and did some more reading. After all, that's what a vacation is all about, right? I even had to go to a bookstore in town to get more reading material. I scoured their used books section and found possibly the only 2 English novels in the whole place.

Sunday, just as I had become accustomed to speaking French again, it was time to leave. I walked back to the border. I was staying on the east side of town, so it was about a 4 kilometer walk. I got a baguette before I left Togo, because I miss that style of bread. Another smooth trip across a border and I realized that my passport is pretty much full. I have a couple of spots left for my stamps into Senegal and back to the States, but I will soon need to apply for extra pages. Considering how empty it was upon arriving in Africa, I'd say I have a very impressive collection of visas and stamps. The trip back to Accra was uneventful. I found a tro-tro to Accra and then another to Teshie-Nungua.

It's been a great long weekend! Back to the grind tomorrow. I'm about 2/3 of the way through my stay in Ghana. Another month and it's off to Senegal and then back home.

Happy Halloween everyone! As far as I can tell, it's not celebrated here, so no costume for me this year.

Cheers.

Me at the beach by my hostel.

The shoreline of Lake Togo.

Chilling beside the Lake.

Spare the rod...

So, discipline in the school system here works differently. I would say they follow the old addage "spare the rod, spoil the child..." And when I say "rod," I mean it.

It has been a big adjustment to see teachers caning children to discourage bad behavior. Every day I have to come up with new methods of non-physical punishment. It takes a lot of energy and some methods are more effective than others but I push onward.

Teaching has been full of new challenges, joys and frustrations. The children are wonderful and some days I feel like I am really getting through to them. Some days they are just loud, rowdy and not picking up what I am putting down. Naturally, every class has its stars and its troubelmakers and it has been nice to get to know the students better every day.

My newest source of excitement has been the inter-house competition. All the students are divided up into 4 houses, each named after a famous person. There is Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana's first president), Kofi Annan (A UN secretary general from Ghana), Barack Obama (the US president) and Yaa Asantewaa (the greatest female warrior Ghana has ever seen). So, I am in Yaa Asantewaa's house and I love a good competition. I certainly love to fire the kids up and spur them to suceed. So far at the last week's point tally, we are in first place! Next week there is a big competition with sports, games and a spelling bee.

Also, I spent the weekend in Tema which is about 30 km east of here with another teacher from Vivibon. Her name is Lucy and she invited me to spend the weekend with her and her big, lovely family. She has five kids: Harry, Selassie, Confidence, Firm and Desire. They range in age from 20 to 15 months and they're a lot of fun but a handful at times. Lucy taught me how to cook red-red this weekend, one of my favorite dishes. We also pounded fufu together and I spend time helping the kids with homework.

Sunday morning it was off to the Apostolic Church of Ghana. The service featured loud, upbeat music with a full praise band and a strong sound system. It also had a firey preacher with an assistant who translated the sermon into Twi line by line. Some of the songs were in English, some in Twi and all were projected onto the front wall. This was great for me to be able to sing along however Twi has at least two letters that English doesn't and I wasn't quite sure what to do with them. They look like an upside-down and backward "c" and a backward "3."

Spending time around a family was great. It was nice to get out of Accra for a few days and have some new surroundings. It was also fun to hang out with new people as I met Lucy's older sister, younger brother and parents during the weekend. I will include some pictures of my house here and my weekend in Tema. Hope everybody has a great week!

Take care!

Me and the family: Lucy and her five kids.

Me learning how to cook Red-red.

This is me and Etil, my nursery baby.

Big ripe plantains in my front yard.

Teshie-Nungua and Hohoe

Hello there everyone!

I am sorry I haven’t been updating as much but life here is a little less interesting than being on the road all the time. I am still in Teshie-Nungua, still teaching at Vivibon School and finally feeling settled in and grounded here in Ghana.

I would like to take a moment to talk about my teaching experience thus far and show y’all some pictures of my school!

So, Vivibon School starts all the way down at the age they call “crèche” which is like kids age 1-4. Then they have several nursery classes, which is like kindergarten and then grades 1-6 for primary school and junior high grades 7-9 (which they call form 1, form 2, and form 3). I teach French to all three junior high school classes and English to kids from grades 1 to 8. There is only one class in each grade with 15-20 students in each class so it’s not too big. I have also started hanging out in the crèche and just chilling with the really little kids when I have a break from teaching.

School here sure is different. I teach at a private school so everyone has to wear uniforms. They ring a bell to signal the end of a class but it’s done by hand and so it’s an actual bell! The students at every level have to learn English, math, science, Ga (local language), French, computer, religious/moral education, home economics, PE, creative arts, citizenship and social studies. They stand and greet me when I walk into the room; they also stand to answer a question. Many teachers use a cane as discipline which I am personally against. Each grade has class officers and prefects as well as someone assigned to hand out notebooks, clean the board, fetch me chalk, etc.

The infrastructure is different, too. There are very few decorations on the walls and no glass in the windows. It is basically a big concrete structure with openings in the walls for windows. We use a blackboard and chalk has sure been an adjustment for me. Things are structured differently in terms of notes, too. They have a notebook for homework, a different one for class-work and a different one for class notes. Handwriting and neat headings are very important. Often times teachers will dictate notes or write them on the board. Repetition and recitation are common teaching methods.

It is a lot to adjust to but I am learning. I make my expectations clear to my students and we get along just fine. Mostly I just teach whatever subject they’ve been working on, create homework for them and grade it. As long as I’m given a textbook or some idea of their current topic of study, I can make it up as I go along. As for my junior high students, I need to prepare lesson plans ahead of time. It’s a little harder to wing it with teenagers.

I am pretty comfortable here in Teshie-Nungua. I am close enough to Accra and I know the public transport system well enough to get around. Nevertheless, I still love to travel so I got out of the city this weekend and headed up north. I went to the Volta region in eastern Ghana, right on the border with Togo. Lake Volta is the largest man-made lake in the world and it is gorgeous. The whole area is lush and green and humid. I went to a town called Hohoe (ho-ho-ay) this weekend to visit what is supposedly the highest waterfall in Western Africa.

The Wli Waterfall is in the Agumasta Nature Sanctuary. It was an easy, 30 minute hike to the pool at the base of the lower falls. The whole area is very pretty, dense forest with lots of birds, butterflies and rivers. My guide pointed out papaya trees, orange trees, pineapple plants and cocoa trees. At the waterfall, I was brave enough to wade into the pool and walk all the way up to the falls. The water coming down about 150 feet was pretty intense and felt a little like a sandblaster at times, but it was worth it to stand in the waterfall. There were tons of bats chilling on the cliffs and the cool dip felt very nice.

I am back in Accra now, still teaching. I am starting to enjoy it although the kids can be quite the challenge sometimes. I will try to put up some pictures of my school so you can get a visual to go with my description.



Here you'll find:

The "teacher's lounge."

First graders, ground floor (remember there is no glass in the windows).

8th graders on the third floor.


The beautiful Wli Waterfall.

Photos VI

Hey everybody! I had a great week at school and things are really starting to come together now. I am putting together a schedule that allows me to work with all grades from 1-9 at least once a week. I will be teaching English for the most part but I also want to help out with the junior high school French classes (to keep my language skills sharp.) I really enjoy working with different age groups and I am looking forward to teaching more classes in the future. I have been doing a lot of observing to learn about the teaching style here but I have also already taught a few classes on my own. School is a constant challenge and it keeps me busy.

Here is the last installment of pictures, for now.

The huge mosque in Touba, Senegal. This is the quite possibly the holiest city in Senegal

Me inside the mosque

Me and the famous mud mosque in Djenne, Mali

Our bus to Ghana, complete with goats in one of the storage holds beneath the bus.