Elections in Ghana

There were presidential and parliamentary elections here last Sunday 7 December 2008. Some people lined up to vote at 3am (polls scheduled to open at 7am). We had been hearing for weeks pleas from the government, religious groups, the political parties, civic organizations, schools, etc. to have a peaceful election. Except for one story of a man who showed up at a polling place wearing a t-shirt of one of the parties who was beat up (you are not allowed to wear anything denoting support of a party at a polling place) it all seemed peaceful.

Here is how it works: You show your voters id card. If you have lost it, and do not realize it early enough to get a replacement, you are not able to vote. There are apparently numerous problems with the voters register (list of registered voters) - people who are dead are not removed, people who are too young to vote are registered (This is an issue since it is estimated that only 30% of births in Ghana are officially recorded, so many people do not have proof of their age. Therefore, young adults can show up with a "relative" who attests to them being 18 and they get registered.), or people who have more than one voter id card (meaning they could vote more than once).

After you show your ID card, your pinky is dipped in indelible ink (to prove you have voted and prevent you from doing so again). Then another finger, either the thumb or index - there was confusion over this apparently - is inked so that you can affix your fingerprint to the ballot next to the party of your choosing. There are separate ballots for president and parliament. The ballots contain only pictures (in color) of the party symbols and photos of the candidates - no words (remember it is estimated that 50% of the population here is illiterate).

Here you can see a woman who has just finished casting her vote for president - the cardboard box to her right is the "voting booth" and she is placing her completed ballot into a sealed, clear rubbermaid-esque container.

Since there were separate ballots for president and parliament, there were two cardboard voting booths and two boxes into which people deposited ballots.

These photos are from Tema, a port town a half hour east of Accra. Leslie, a fellow Fulbrighter, teaches there, and we observed some of the voting on her campus. We also watched them count ballots. The voting was open from 7am until 5pm. At 5pm, the officials from the Electoral Commission (in the baby blue vests and hats) opened the box containing the presidential ballots. They were dumped out onto a table immediately next to the open air polling place. Apparently they were being sorted into piles for each of the 8 presidential candidates as they were being unfolded. Then they were counted. Below you can see the woman on the right of the photo in the blue vest holding up a ballot. She would hold one up, count it (1), put it down into a pile on her right, pick up the next ballot, count it (2), etc. The people standing around the table who are not wearing the blue vests are representatives from each of the 8 political parties that had presidential candidates. They are there to observe and sign off on the results as well as the manner in which the ballots were counted. The other people in the foreground are just like Leslie and I - they wanted to witness the ballot counting in the constituency in which they voted (although, of course, neither Leslie nor I voted).

For the next 3 days the news was an endless cycle of results being called in from various constituencies around the country. Constitutionally, the Electoral Commission has 72 hours to count votes (after they are counted locally, they are taken to a central location to be verified). Around 2pm on Wednesday, the results were announced - it is not over! There will be a run-off election between the two top candidates, both of who received over 47% of the votes cast, but neither received the 50% + 1 that is necessary to win the presidency. Unlike in the US, a plurality is not sufficient (sorry Bill Clinton), you need a true majority. The run off is scheduled for 28 December. Hopefully, there will be a smaller number of rejected ballots during the run off; there were more than 300,000 last week - people used the wrong finger, if they folded their ballot while the fingerprint was still wet (this creates a double image and leads to the ballot being rejected), etc. Certainly the people who voted for the other candidates are in a position of power now in determining who runs Ghana for the next four years. I will update on the final results later.

It's a Small World

I was riding in a trotro last week when I saw this young man hawking gum. I did not get the best photo of his shirt, but you can tell what it says: JEB Stuart Raiders Physical Education! I believe the other people in the trotro were amused by my exclamation of "that's my school!"

There were elections here last week, will post on that soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

On Thanksgiving, we had some extra time in one of my Government classes, so we made hand turkeys. Remember these from kindergarten? You trace your hand on a piece of paper, the thumb becomes the head of the turkey, and the fingers the feathers. You add other features like a beak and feet. The students were unimpressed with my arts and crafts idea at first, but they soon got into the spirit of it. The first photo is the display of all the completed turkeys on the wall in their classroom.

Students admiring the work of their classmates:

Some of the class in a group photo in front of their artwork.

School Events

A couple of weeks ago, we had Sports Days at our school. The students competed as their houses (dorms) against the other houses in track and field events. As you can see below, the students dressed in their house colors, and came prepared with drums (or yellow cooking oil containers used to carry water to use as drums), some with banners. There was chanting, and flag waving, and in general a lot of noise and fun. The winning houses (one male and one female house) each earned a trophy. The best male and female athlete get their name on a list at the front of the school. Just the other day, the boys track and field team from Achimota competed in a district competition and finished first.

Two weekends ago, we had Speech and Prize Giving Day. It was kind of like Convocation at Stuart.
Similarity: Lots of students received prizes - best science student, best government student, etc. They received certificates and/or small wrapped gifts.
Difference: Many of the prizes were awarded to students who had graduated last spring or the spring before. I understand that since the WASSCE (West African Secondary School Comprehensive Examination) scores for last spring were only just recently available, that it was not possible to give awards for best score to the graduated students until now. However, why did we wait until now to give awards to students who graduated in 2007? Oh well. One teacher and one staff member also received awards from the PTA.
Similarity: All students and faculty attend.
Difference: Faculty wear graduation robes. Some wore mortar boards as well. Faculty also sat on the stage (see photo below of my view of the proceedings). I am guessing this is to assist with the issue of insufficient room within the Assembly Hall for all students, guests, and faculty at the same time. In fact, some students sat outside the Assembly Hall under a canopy because they did not have room inside for them all. This is also true of the Chapel on campus where they hold a morning meeting each day.
Similarity: There were guests from outside the school.
Difference: They were not just there to bestow prizes, but to give speeches. Two akora (alumni in Achimota vernacular) spoke on the theme of the day. One talked about the need to make Achimota the jewel in the crown of the Ghanaian public education system. And if that means that education there will become more expensive, so be it.

The students all have outfits in the school cloth, the colors that vary based on what year they are. They wear these outfits to events like Speech Day. Here are four girls wearing kaba and slit (top and skirt) in the Form 2 colors and one girls wearing it in the Form 1 colors.

These gentlemen are wearing the cloth in the traditional manner (the same way cloth is worn for funerals). They sport the Form 3 colors. This is the fabric that my school cloth outfit is made from. The fabric features the school seal and the pictures of the founding members of the school.

Last but not least, Entertainment. Most weeks, since most of the students live on campus, some form of entertainment is organized on Saturday evenings. Last week was the annual night when the Form 1 students, again by house, entertain the other assembled students. This happens in the Assembly Hall as well. The students carried benches in from the dining hall. Here you can see many of the girls on benches, wearing their house dresses (not the uniforms they wear to class, which are also green and white).

I had just come to be part of the audience, but was recruited as a judge. Thirteen of the fourteen houses performed. The performances involved a lot of cross-dressing (necessary if your skit needs characters of the opposite gender and you are presenting as a single-sex house) - so male students borrowed uniforms from female friends, and vice versa. Ghanaian teenagers seem to find cross-dressing for entertainment purposes just as funny as American teenagers do. Some skits were probably much more amusing to someone who is Ghanaian or knows the school better - there were obviously caricatures of teachers whom I could not identify. Additionally, just like at home, the dancing involved lots of bumping and grinding (see photo below which includes both the cross-dressing and the bumping and grinding).

All three events, although very different, seemed to be greatly enjoyed by the students. The Speech Day prize winners were resoundingly cheered by the other students, including the alum from last year. The students were very involved in the Athletics and the Entertainment as well.

I guess, in closing, that things are different, but not so different here in lots of ways.

Food

In terms of local food, there is a lot I have yet to try because I am vegetarian and veg versions of local dishes are hard to come by.

What I do eat on a regular basis is food that comes in bags. I have already mentioned the water in sachets or small plastic bags, containing roughly 500 ml of water (see bottom of picture below - it only looks brown because it is sitting on my coffee table). The pink thing is FanYogo, frozen strawberry yogurt, but not frozen yogurt - more like what you would get if you stuck a container of regular yogurt into the freezer. They are sold in stores or you can get them from the Fan Man. The Fan Man has a cart that he pushes or is attached to a bicycle. He has a horn with a distinctive sound, no other hawker has a horn that sounds this way - you immediately know it is the Fan Man. He sells FanYogo, FanChoco (not a fan, no pun intended), and Fan Milk. I LOVE Fan Milk. It is like soft serve vanilla ice cream in a pouch. It costs 30 pesewas (a little under 30 cents). It is also a little creepy - they really don't completely freeze, which makes me wonder exactly what chemicals it contains to make such a thing happen. This pondering does not hamper my affection however.

Vendors on the streets also sell rice and beans in plastic wrap, sugar cane wrapped in plastic, plantain chips in plastic baggies (these are very good also), peanuts in plastic wrap, the list goes on and on.

I eat a lot of locally made peanut butter, which here is called ground nut paste, and not surprisingly the peanuts I buy and eat are called ground nuts. The pb here is similar to the organic or "all natural" pb at home - it separates and settles. However, it is very good. I had brought 2 jars of pb with me to get through the first couple of weeks, and I had a spoonful the other day and, in comparison to the local pb I have been eating, it has a chemical taste to it. That is one thing that is true of my diet here, it is more macrobiotic (not including the ramen I sometimes buy from the expensive grocery store, and the chemicals in the Fan Milk) than at home.

Of the native dishes that are common in Ghana, I have tried two in restaurants: red red with plantains and fufu. Red red with plantains is made from black eyed peas, powdered cassava, palm oil (from whence the red color comes), and is served with cooked plantains. It is very good. I finally had fufu last week at a vegetarian restaurant in Accra. Fufu is served with soup. The fufu itself is a paste made from boiled and pounded starchy vegetables, such as cassava, yam, and/or plantain. I had fufu with ground nut soup, which had mushrooms, seitan, and garden eggs in it. (Garden eggs resemble white or yellow miniature eggplants.) It is meant to be eaten with the right hand, scooping up some of the fufu and the scooping up some of the accompanying soup. I enjoyed it a lot.

At home I have made garden egg stew, which is boiled garden eggs, finely diced tomatoes, some hot peppers, and oil. It is served with rice, and is also very good.

Below is a photo of me pretending to pound fufu with a mortar and pestle. This is inside the kitchen of a fufu restaurant owned by the mother of a colleague. Samuel, who is seated, is turning the fufu in between strikes of the pestle. When the professionals do this, it is very fast (such that I wonder that people's fingers aren't crushed on a regular basis) and there is a rhythmic thumping sound of the pestle striking the fufu in the mortar. It is very impressive.

There is a lot of wonderful fruit here as well, but different than at home. The local bananas are smaller than the imported ones we are accustomed to, the oranges are green on the outside, the pineapples and mangoes are amazingly delicious, and the papaya plentiful.

My home

This is my home. It is a duplex, another family lives on the other side in an almost identical place (they do not have their porches fenced in). This is also before the painters came and spruced up the outside of the house with new paint and before the carpenter came and hung new nets (screens) on the windows and on both porches. They give the windows a yellow tint.

This is my bathroom on the day after the water was running. I filled up all four buckets with water as well as my reserve containers (see them in the kitchen and on the porch - next photo). There is a hot water heater that I do not know how to use, and no shower heads. I take bucket baths - that is I fill two buckets halfway: one is for washing my hair and one for bathing.

The porch between my bathroom and WC and the kitchen. See the yellow screens? This is one of my reserve water containers that I fill when the water is running and use when it is not.

This is the porch between the kitchen and the living room. The yellow door at the end has a spring on it, so I have to be careful to not spill or drop food while carrying it from the kitchen to the dining area. I dropped a sachet of water one day getting through that doorway, it broke like a water balloon!

The kitchen features a gas cooker (a gas stove that does not have a pilot light, so has to be lit with matches - you cannot see the propane tank, it is out of frame on the left), my other water reserve container, a sink, a yellow cabinet, and a refrigerator that is currently on the fritz (the freezer part works, but the fridge part is warm).

My bedroom featuring my mosquito netted bed and the yellow wardrobe. The window in the background has a window air conditioner that I used once. I prefer the ceiling fan and an open window.

The dining area, I rarely use this at the moment.

My living room. I have a sofa and three mini papasan chairs, a desk with chair by the far window and a relatively newly acquired bookshelf. I spend most of my time in this room. It has a ceiling fan and cross ventilation. I read sitting on the sofa, grade and play computer games at the desk, sit in one of the chairs to watch a dvd on my laptop, and eat meals here in all three of those locations.

An appropriate Halloween?

I went away with friends over Halloween. We left Thursday and returned on Saturday. We went to a place called Big Milly’s Backyard (check it out online: www.bigmilly.com). Let me start by saying that I had a good time. Despite all that will follow, it was relaxing, I enjoyed the people I was with, we ate some good food, I read two books, did some shopping (some for gifts, some for me).

We arrived on Thursday, had a drink at the bar while our room was finishing being cleaned. I wanted a beverage with fruit juices in it since the bar bills itself as the “first juice bar in Ghana”. They only had orange juice, so I had something else. We took a walk on the beach before dinner, took photos of more fishing boats (similar to the ones I have already posted). I am routinely amazed by them – usually no sails, no engines, no oars, etc. They use ropes and simple manpower to pull them in and out of the sea.

Anyway, back to the Halloween story. Thursday and Friday we witnessed several almost-fistfights. Friday we ran out of water in our bungalow in the middle of the afternoon (I think I am the cause of the water problem, somehow. We have not had water on campus for a week). Friday morning Leslie was offered marijuana when she walked out onto the beach (big Rasta community at Kokrobite). Friday afternoon a dead body washed up on the beach. It took the police nine (that’s right: 9) hours to come to collect it. Friday evening, our dinner table was visited by a black cat, and the promised entertainment was a no show.

So I got to see my first non-funeral dead body. Part of me wonders why I went to look. Did I doubt that what people were saying was true? Was it some form of morbid curiosity, like the way people rubber neck near accidents on the highway? I don’t know. I did not get close at all, but the smell was pungent. Thankfully, our table near the bar at Big Milly’s had a great breeze, sufficient shade to appease my general skin-cancer phobia, and was close to beverages should the need have arrived. Big Milly’s also features a small book swap or borrowing library, which is where the two fluffy romance novels I read came from.

I definitely plan to return to Big Milly’s during my year here. I have family visiting in December, if they are not scared off by my experience, maybe they will join me.


The outside of where we stayed, the Sahara Suite.

Leslie and Linda at "our table" at Big Milly's

Last word on water for a while (I promise). I dreamt last night of a bath. I wondered if the Embassy has showers in the weight room I have heard about. I thought about using sachets of water for a bath since I did not have sufficient reserves for anything other than washing a couple of plates and flushing the toilet. [Sachets of water are square plastic bags of purified water that everyone here drinks – no one drinks the tap water. They are sold on the street for 5 pesewas each, approximately 5 cents. They are sold in large bags of 30 sachets each for home consumption.] I have a stash of several bags-of-bagged-water and was planning on using that except the water came on for half an hour this morning before I went to class! Well, it might have been on longer, but I had to go teach, and it was not running again when I returned. I must say, I have not been that excited in quite a while. I was able to fill one and a third of my two reserve cans so I will have water for a couple of days now.

This is also Africa

This is also Africa. This is the view out the door of one of my classrooms. Isn't it beautiful? One day I will catch a person framed inside the doorway carrying something on their head. Everyone - men, women, and children - does that here. The day I discovered this view, I watched a woman carrying a load of tree branches on her head past the doorway. Lots of people carry water around campus; I always imagine the sloshing around makes it really hard to do. One of my first days here, I was taking a walk and had been following a young woman with a bucket of water on her head. Fifteen minutes into her journey from the well, she stumbled in a gutter and dropped the bucket. I felt terrible for her. That is the only time though I have seen anyone drop anything. I also really admire the woman who carries the several dozen raw eggs on her head.

Our water has been off for three days and things are getting dire. I have two large plastic trash containers in my house with reserves of water that are just about empty. Coincidentally, I was teaching last week about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At the base of Maslow's pyramid are Physiological Needs, including food, water, and shelter. Maslow theorized that once needs are met, they are forgotten, and until they are met they are all that occupy your time and thoughts. I have to agree with his first supposition. At home, I know that when I turn on a tap, water will come out - and it will be hot when I want hot water. Here, I am worried about when the water will go out next, restocking my reserves when the water is running, what I will do when I run out of reserves (never mind laundry and bathing - how will I flush the toilet?). It is something I took for granted in the States, as Maslow theorized, because the need was met, I never thought about it. Here I do manage to think of other things, but every time I open the reserve container and scrape bottom getting some water to wash my hands, I worry.

Stealing from movies...

I got up the other morning, and was immediately aware of a smell to which I am becoming more accustomed. I thought to myself, "I love the smell of burning garbage in the morning." Yes, the method of disposing of most unwanted material here is to burn it. Paper, plastic, paint containers, brush, etc. There seem to be predetermined burning locations, and no one watches the fires. Maybe it is because they are so good at setting them that they know that they will not rage out of control. Did I mention that these fires often take place in areas where there is a lot of brush, both cut down and still growing? I sometimes imagine that I will find my home surrounded by a blaze a la a California wildfire.

Additionally, I watched "Blood Diamond" the other night. Leonardo DiCaprio's character, who identifies himself as Rhodesian, has a phrase he uses in the movie several times: TIA which stands for This Is Africa. In other words, stuff happens that cannot be changed, or explained, or potentially understood. I have repeated this in my head several times since I saw the movie. But then I got to wondering - does acceptance of a problem lead to its continuation? If no one complains, is there no incentive for problems to be fixed? For example, my power was off most of the day this past Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. And my water has been off almost continuously since Saturday (today is Friday, and the water was running when I left home). If I were in the States, I would have called my landlord on Saturday to report this dual outage. And continued to call the appropriate parties if it had continued - the power company, the water/sewer company, etc. Here, I do nothing. I do nothing except hope the power comes on before it gets dark out, hope that the water comes back on before my two reserve barrels are empty, postpone laundry until the water comes back on...I call no one, I complain to no one in authority. Neither do the people here. One housemistress (in charge of a dorm on campus) had a bore hole (well) dug on the grounds of the house she oversees to ensure that they have water even when it is not running. People take available plastic containers and head to a polytank (large black plastic holding tank that collects rainwater) or a bore hole to fetch water for cooking, bathing, laundry, etc.

I asked one of my students about this the other day. She said one area of Ghana had no running water for a year, even though they had the pipes for it, and it had run previously. There were riots, which were broken up by police and nothing changed. If you complain, the government might send someone to beat you up, she said. So people don't complain, they just deal. TIA.

Things I did not know I liked and Prep

I did not know that I liked the following things until recently:
- the sound of sheets snapping in the wind while they dry on the clothesline (I should say 'whilst' since I am in a former British colony)
- the sound of the breeze wafting through the tall grasses on campus (even with students given weeding as punishment, they cannot keep up with all the acres of fast-growing weeds)
- ironing (this is bizarre to me, I can only assume it appeals to my anal-retentive tendencies. Those who know me know that I have never owned an iron in my life, and never ironed anything before coming to Ghana. I would not be ironing now except for fear of certain bugs that lay eggs in wet clothing, the eggs then hatch when the clothes are worn, and the bugs burrow themselves under your skin - everyone together: eewwwww! I was recently told that I do not need to worry about this in Accra, but I figure, for now anyway, better safe than sorry. This same source said she knew someone that this happened to - she had laid her clothes to dry on a rock all day in the northern part of the country; when she went to the doctor to have it addressed, he made a cut into her skin near each lump, and the bugs flew out - again: ewwwwww! So for now, I continue to iron while watching videos on my laptop or listening to BBC World on the radio.)

I keep meaning to post pictures of my home, but it is currently cluttered. I am hoping to acquire a bookshelf for all the supplies I mailed to myself. Until I manage to do this, they are piled on my desk, and end up on my coffee table and sofa as well. So, until I tidy up enough to take photos to post, you will all have to wait for this information.

Prep is like study hall. The students have Prep from 7 to 9 pm Monday through Friday evenings, Saturday from 9 to 11 am, and sometimes Saturday evening as well. The Saturday evening Preps are held in their houses (dorms), but the other Preps are in their classrooms, with several exceptions. All of the classrooms do not have working lights, so those students have to disperse to other rooms where they can study. Additionally, students who live on the west campus have Prep on that side, so they do not have to walk a long way in the dark. Students are supposed to study or work together quietly. My main job (I had Prep duty last week) was chastising students who arrived late, and punishing those who arrived late on Saturday morning (my first application of physical labor as punishment) and waking up those students who were sleeping. Lots of students fell into each category. The system is very different here than at home. The day is very structured: breakfast, followed by Chapel (7 to 7:30 ish), five forty minute periods before Snack Break (10:50 to 11:20), and have no passing time between then. The students have a classroom that they are in all day, with the exception of labs and when they report to larger locations like the lecture theatre or chapel. It is generally the teachers who rotate (so we do not have passing time if we have back-to-back classes). The periods are clumped together in varying numbers depending on how often the teacher sees that group of students each week. For example, I see my Government students for five periods a week, so I see one group for three consecutive periods on Monday and two consecutive periods on Wednesday, the other group I see for two back-to-back periods also on Monday (immediately after the first class), and three back-to-back-to-back periods on Thursday. My Social Studies classes, which will likely begin next week, will each meet three times a week for two periods at a time. After Snack Break, there are three more 40 minute periods, followed by two 30 minute periods, with classes ending at 2:20 pm. The students have lunch from 2:30 to 3 pm, siesta/quiet time in their houses from 3 to 4 pm, free or chore time from 4 pm until dinner, which is at 5:30 or 6 pm, Prep from 7 to 9 pm, then back to their houses, and in bed by 9:30 or 10 depending upon the day of the week. I am not surprised by the number of students I see just walking around campus at any given time when they are supposed to be in class - they spend so much time in their classrooms, I too would want to escape for a little while! However, since I have recently learned that more than 43 percent of Ghanaians have never had any formal education, it makes me a little sad that the students who have the opportunity to attend Senior High School (which is rare) do not appreciate it enough. Then I remind myself that they are teenagers, and most teenagers do not appreciate the things they have, especially education. The same can also be said for lots of adults!

Weekend at the Beach!

Four of us (Fulbrighters all) went to Busua (pronounced Boo-sia) this past weekend. We took a STC bus (like Greyhound) from Accra at 5:30 in the morning to Takoradi, where we caught a trotro to Agona, where we got a cab to the African Rainbow Hotel. All very smooth. The hotel was wonderful - the first photo below is a view from our balcony (every room has one that overlooks the beach). I will be taking requests to visit on a first come-first served basis :)

We spent the first afternoon at the beach - and were almost the only people on the entire beach.

Saturday evening we had dinner on the roof of the hotel - really good pizza. I tried a ginger pineapple juice that was just too ginger-y to actually consume; you could smell the ginger across the table. The evening was beautiful - trying to find constellations proved a challenge, though - they are in different places than at home and the additional visible stars threw off our ability to find ones we were familiar with.

Sunday morning, back to the beach. Three of us hired a boat (paddled by local fisherman) out to the island in the bay. Below is a photo of one of several vultures who spent time with us on the beach on Sunday. There are also several on my campus, but I have not been able to get a photo of one yet (the morning one was sitting in my driveway, I was too stunned to think of getting my camera). A little boy ran at the small flock of vultures several times, causing them to fly away temporarily. I was reminded of my sister who liked to do the same to seagulls, particularly near the New England Aquarium in Boston. Seagulls, vultures, same difference...


Since I am me, of course I got a sunburn. Amusingly, it was also odd. The sunscreen we used was aerosol, but apparently combined with the waves, sweat, etc. dripped down my back making this interesting pattern.

The hotel was also a wonderful place to sleep - sounds of the waves, open windows for sea breeze, and the weaver birds chirping in the backyard of the hotel. I don't think sound comes along with the video clips I can load on here, so I just posted a photo of the weaver birds below. When I first saw the trees, I thought they had yellow flowers. Turns out, they are birds. Birds who build spherical nests.

Things I took for granted (23 September 2008)

I had known that living and teaching in Ghana would involve a lot of adjustments on my part, lots of physical differences to which I would have to grow accustomed. The individual mental adjustments though remain largely unknown to me. Some of the ones to-date are included below.

Schedule of classes:
I am used to how it works at Stuart - sometime during the summer vacation I can come to school, ask in the Guidance Office, and see the schedule for the fall. I have known which classes I will be teaching since before I left for summer vacation. Here it is the fifth day of classes and we do not yet have a final timetable (schedule) for this school year. We were supposed to use last year's timetable yesterday, except that most people did not have it any longer, or are teaching different subjects so did not know when those classes were taught last term. Instead we have been using the provisional timetable which was created before a decision was made to change the electives offered to about one-third of the Form 2 students (sophomores); this decision was made on Friday, day 3 of the school year. Despite my tendency to want to know exactly what is going on at all times (which I am working on unlearning, or at least mitigating), I admire how things seem to just work out. I sat in on the meeting about the elective additions on Friday, as well as the meeting where the affected students were notified. Students were not asked what new elective they desired, I was told that they will just show up to the elective of their choice and that is how we will know which they have selected. So another thing I used to take for granted out the window: class lists before the first day of class.

Class size caps:
I met one of my Government classes today, luckily in the Lecture Theatre. I say luckily because 75 students showed up. Even with a class (or classes) of this size, I am hoping to be able to stick to my goal of not resorting to pure lecture this year. Wish me luck!

Custodians:
At Stuart, we all take our great custodial staff for granted. At Achimota, and most other schools in Ghana, the students are responsible for cleaning their classrooms and their houses (dorms). There does not seem to be a custodial staff at the school. For punishment, the students can be made to do weeding on the campus, which leads to another marked difference: the students here are given things called cutlasses, which to me look like machetes. The cutlasses are used to do weeding around the campus, particularly on the grounds of their houses. When I first learned this, I could not help thinking that at Stuart we punish students who bring weapons to school, here they give students weapons (although they are really tools rather than weapons).

A supportive PTSA:
One highlight of going back to school at Stuart each fall is the PTSA breakfast on the first workday. The second day of in-service meetings here two members of the PTA were invited to remind teachers of their responsibilities toward the children. The teachers here do not have the good relationship that the faculty and PTSA do at home, which I took for granted since I believe both groups strive for a common purpose: the education of the students, and I believe they need to cooperate in order to achieve that goal.

Copy machines for staff use:
One unit in Government deals with rights, particularly ones outlined in the Ghanaian Constitution (1992). I toyed with the idea of purchasing copies for all of my Government students, but at four Ghana cedis (about $4) per copy, that idea was prohibitive. So I need to copy the relevant pages of the Constitution for the students to work with as we discuss their rights. It should total three pieces of paper per student. I asked several teachers where I could make photocopies, and after several false starts (everyone tried to send me to the Staff Co-op Shop, where I would have to pay for copies) I was informed that the school copy machine is in the Headmistress's office. When I went there to ask about getting a master made, I was told that the copy machine is broken and they have to bring in someone to service it. I had already resigned myself to having to pay for the copies for all of my students, but was hoping to be able to at least have the original made by the school.

Reliable (and fast) internet:
The internet at school has been down for the past five days, hence why I have not posted in such a long time. I am assured that it will be up tomorrow. I was hoping to utilize the school computer lab for my emailing, blogging, etc. as a way to interact with my colleagues, but if the intermittent outages continue I will invest in wireless internet at home. I had not realized how much I relied on the internet for communication purposes as well as just to keep up with what is happening in the world. I have not read a U.S. newspaper since I have been here, although I do listen to BBC World on the radio.

Day Tripping (19 September 2008)

This past weekend I travelled with friends. On Saturday we went to Boti Falls, a double waterfall in the Eastern Region of Ghana, and then to the Aburi Botanical Gardens in the same region. The falls were lovely, and we saw a spiderweb that was different from any I had ever seen, and reportedly inspired some of the Kente designs.

At the Botanical Gardens, we got to stand inside a killer ficus tree. It is known as the "strangling ficus tree" because it grows up attached to another tree, and over the course of many years, this particular ficus completely enveloped the host tree and killed it. The other tree eventually decomposed leaving behind a hollow trunk.

Other trees continue to enthrall me - the height and the way the root systems have adapted in order to be able to support the great height are fascinating.

We were also shown a tiny fern that "cringes" when it is touched, it takes about five minutes for it to recover (see video at the bottom of this entry). When we were shown this, which I thought was really neat, I began to feel guilty about having walked on so many of them prior to this knowledge (I know, I know - ridiculous as I did not actually harm the fern).

Additionally on Saturday, Samuel, our host and guide who is also a teacher at Achimota, had to pay respects to an aunt who had lost a son. We stopped by his mother's house first and she outfitted us in traditional Ghanaian funeral garb. Just as in the U.S., black is a traditional color to wear to funerals, however, red and white are also employed. When the person who has passed away is 70 years or older, black and white are combined because you are celebrating a long life as well as mourning their passing. If the person who died is young, red is worn with the black.

On Sunday, we ventured out to Prampram and Ningo which are traditional fishing villages. We were able to see some of the boats being pulled in as we were there early enough in the day (fishing is done overnight, which is common in many parts of the world). At several beach locations, we waded in the African Atlantic Ocean (a first for me), and were bombarded with attention from local children one place we stopped. They gave us seashells, did back flips, and wanted their photo taken, again and again.

We also got to meet a chief of one region of the country. We were received, offered refreshments, and allowed to ask questions - he has three wives and sixteen children and spends much of his time helping the people in his region, including mediating problems that arise.

Who am I? (18 September 2008)

I have to get used to being seen. By this I mean that it is very hard for me to go unnoticed here in Ghana. Because I am white. I am accustomed to being able to blend in, to hang out in the background if I so desire, but such is not possible here. I am frequently greeted with "obruni" which roughly means "white person". Children holler it as I pass by; adults sometimes introduce me that way (what, as if people cannot see that I am not Ghanaian?). Additionally, people just want to interact with you (anyone "white") - I am frequently asked for my phone number, one gentleman stated that he would like to have a "white female friend". From talking to the male Fulbright teacher who is also on exchange in Ghana, he too feels as if he is always on stage, but does not get asked for a phone number nearly as frequently. On Saturday we were both asked if we could take someone to the U.S. with us - there is apparently a belief that Americans can just invite someone to come to the States, and it will happen; in fact I have no control over the granting of visas by the American Embassy.

I am also "Becky" here, despite the fact that I never introduce myself that way. Part of me understands that it is common here for names to be shortened, but I am not Becky, I have never been Becky, and never desired to be. I am, and always will be, Rebecca. (Okay, the one exception is Mrs. Duran in the JEB Stuart front office - she can call me Becky.) I am also Aunty Becky to some people, Aunty and Uncle being common here, seemingly substitutes for Sir and Ma'am. Honestly, sometimes it takes me a while to realize someone is talking to me. I was out for a walk today and was hailed by a boy who was trying to get my attention by calling "Aunty". I had no idea at first that he was talking to me.

Classes have officially started as of Wednesday 17 September, but I do not even feel like a teacher yet either. Wednesday was the day for teachers to meet with their students from last year and go over final exams. I will not see my Government class until Monday (unless the Timetable/Schedule changes before then), and they are the only students I will see for more than a month. As previously mentioned, the incoming Form 1, or freshman, students will not be arriving until mid-October since they have not yet received notice of the school they will be attending, and once they arrive will undergo orientation, so I will not be teaching my three Social Studies classes until the end of October.

Oh that modern technology!

I am sitting at the American Embassy (I got a badge!), all ready to update my blog with several postings as well as add photos to my last entry. The reason for the delay: the internet has been down at school since last Friday, so I have a lot to say and no one to broadcast it to. For this purpose, I wrote the blog entries and saved them onto a flash drive. However, my laptop has Windows 2007, which the computers at the Embassy do not have, so they cannot read my documents...Hopefully, the internet at school will be back up tomorrow so I can update the blog fully soon. Thank you for staying posted! Tune in again next time....

In country (now with photos)

I arrived safely last Sunday, and was taken to my school (Achimota, also called Motown) where I was met by a fellow teacher and former Fulbrighter. She arranged for the keys to my new home, for it to be tidied since it had not been used during the last school year, and took me shopping for some initial groceries and household items. So many people have already proven themselves invaluable to me, and I am sure they will continue to be so throughout the coming year. As I already mentioned this former Fulbrighter helped me get settled, later showed me around campus, took me to meet the headmistress (like a principal), also introduced me to someone from the American Embassy, and later the Head of Department for Social Studies. One invited and drove me to a service at the church where he is a pastor. Two other teachers initiated and sponsored a trip to Cape Coast (a town west of Accra) where we visited Kakum National Park and took a canopy walk through the forest, 40 meters off the ground. It was beautiful, so green and lush.





There are times I forget that I am in Africa, and this was not one of them! The landscape on the drive to the park was intriguing – several kinds of palm trees, but not the really tall ones (my knowledge of local flora and fauna is a fledgling thing!), and dense undergrowth, with an occasional lone very tall tree in the middle. It creates a wonderful vista. I have taken to walking around the campus – it is sprawling, I was told that the large oval road that encompasses most of this campus is 2.9 kilometers long, so it is much more like a college than a high school setting from my American perspective. One reason it is so large is that a number of students board (live at the school) as Ghana has a national educational system, so students can attend schools in other parts of the country. The educational system here is very competitive. From what I have read, approximately 260,000 junior secondary school students (think 8th or 9th graders) take a test each spring and 60,000 of them do sufficiently well to be admitted to the senior secondary schools (like Achimota). The better your scores, the better your chance of attending the school of your choice. This also means that the 1st year students will not arrive until the middle of October as the scores were only recently released and the students have to be notified and then make arrangements to get to the school they have been placed in. Anyway, back to my walks around campus: I am lucky that I have yet to fall into a gutter (pictures of those to come as well) and broken an ankle, as I spend much of my walk looking up into the trees trying to see the birds that are making these wonderful noises. There is one bird that, when it flies, the sound generated by its wings resembles an owl – at least I think so... Another that has a sound I cannot describe, but it is entirely black except for a bright red beak. One I have seen is an iridescent blue. The plants here are amazing as well – one tree near my home has leaves that are easily more than a foot in diameter, there are bushes with beautiful and fragrant yellow flowers, and there are aloe plants in pots outside my front door (no call for them yet, as I have not yet gotten a sunburn…)

After Kakum and the canopy walk we went to Elmina slave castle in Cape Coast. It changed hands several times during its history, it was first a Portuguese fort, than a Dutch, and finally a British until they were kicked out at independence. The guide estimated that between 12 and 14 million enslaved Africans passed through the “gate of no return” (see photo below) on their way to the new world for work on plantations. The conditions were, of course, horrible and many died before leaving and many on the voyage to the Americas. Ironically, one group of people living in the castle during its tenure as a slave holding and departure venue were missionaries. Another woman and I agreed that anyone witnessing the situation at the castle and not saying anything about it does not deserve the title of “missionary”.

You can still see the remnants of the wharf where the slaves were loaded onto small boats to be rowed out to the large ships.

Fortunately, the power problems that I had heard about are mostly a thing of the past – a year and a half ago, due to insufficient rainfall and a hydro-electric power system, electricity was off for large chunks of time each week. Such has not been the case since I have been here. The traffic, however, is equal to what it had been advertised as (bad). I thought, I come from Washington D.C., home of the second worst traffic in the country most years, how bad can it be? Let me try to explain. Everything seems to be more than it is in the U.S., in that drivers in the U.S. do these things, but they are more common here. At certain times of the day, there are just more cars than the roads can handle. People do not use turn signals enough, people speed, there are fewer street lights (or sometimes none at all), there are potholes that make the driving more exciting, drivers use their horns A LOT, the tro-tros (vans that have been put into use for public transportation) stop at designated and undesignated places to pick up and drop off passengers. I took my first tro-tro today. Here is how it works: you stand by the side of the road (or sit if there is a bus stop), and wait for a tro-tro to come by going where you want to go. How do you know where it is going? A young man, called a “mate” hangs out the window and shouts the destination. You flag down the tro-tro and climb on. Many of the tro-tros end at huge hubs where you can transfer to another tro-tro. However, again there are few signs (saw my first sign on a tro-tro indicating destination today), so you have to know where in the large parking lot you have to go to get a tro-tro to your destination, again signaled by someone shouting that end point. Once you find a tro-tro going to where you want to go, you board and wait for it to be full, which is when it will leave. Fortunately, one of my new friends accompanied me on my tro-tro journeys today to help and provide much needed information about how it all works.

School starts next week, so I have much studying to do – as I suspected, the classes are very different than what I am accustomed to teaching, so I have a lot of prep work to do. As previously indicated, I will update this entry in a couple of days with more specifics and some photos. There is so much more to tell, but I have a whole year for all of that – like the Makola Market, the main market in Accra, which I visited last week.

Orientation and Blog Title

Several weeks ago Fulbright held an orientation for all incoming international teachers and all outgoing American teachers. It was a wonderful experience. I met, for the first time, my exchange partner Eric Dzakuma as well as the two other teachers going to Ghana: one from Springfield, Illinois and one from Rockville, Maryland, and their exchange partners, and a woman who just returned from her Fulbright year teaching in Ghana who was able to provide great insights into our futures. In addition we had a terrific crossing cultures orientation and had a seminar led by Harry Wong (of The First Days of School fame – there were a lot of teacher groupies getting autographs and photos with Harry). Much of what I have learned about Ghanaian schools was imparted to me during this orientation week. I was also grateful to meet my fellow American exchange participants and to find out that we will be living and teaching within relative proximity to each other; it is nice to know that there will be people who will understand the transitions and emotions I am likely to be going through.

The name for this blog comes from a fortune cookie I got at lunch one day during orientation: “Beauty will surround you – open your eyes to see it.” My goal is to approach my year on exchange with this attitude: that there is beauty everywhere, in every experience, and I just have to be open to it.

I have much packing to do before I leave, and more shopping (I have never shopped so much in my entire life as I have this past month), and will lose my internet connection as well, so will likely not post until I arrive in Ghana. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you all!

Back Story

Last fall I applied for a Fulbright teaching exchange; the process included a lengthy application complete with essay and recommendations, and later an interview. Then I waited, and waited, and waited. In May I was told that I would probably not be matched with anyone for the upcoming school year. However, approximately two weeks later I was notified that they had found a match for me in Ghana (my first choice location). I have spent the summer preparing physically and emotionally for the year to come. The physical part, although arduous, is by far the easier part (although I have no idea how to pack for a year abroad). The emotional part is still a work in progress: sometimes I am able to think that “whatever will be will be” and other times I lose sleep because I wonder if I will do well teaching in a new environment subjects somewhat different than those I teach in the United States. I will be teaching one section of Government, mostly government theory rather than a study of Ghanaian government, and two sections of Social Studies, which seems to be a little bit of everything. I will have approximately 50 students in each class. The method of teaching, I have been told, is direct instruction (lecture) rather than the student-centered instruction we aim for at my home school. I am told there will be many other differences as well – education in America is very focused on the use of technology, my classroom here has a television, DVD player and VCR, an overhead projector, and I have a laptop. Other teachers in my school have LCD projectors and Smartboards. In Ghana I will have a blackboard (really a section of wall painted black); there is also a computer lab where the students take computer classes. I asked about using an overhead projector, and was told that I could borrow one, or an LCD projector, from the American Embassy in Ghana; however, the rooms are likely too bright (no blinds on the windows) to use them effectively. This year will challenge me to be creative in how I share information with my students and how we make sure they learn it!

I leave this coming Saturday (August 30) and arrive in Ghana the following morning to begin my year-long adventure. The school year is three terms long. First term is September through December with a two or three week break for Christmas, Second term is from January through the beginning of April followed by a three week break for Easter, Third term is from the end of April through the beginning of August followed by a five week summer break.