Students admiring the work of their classmates:
Some of the class in a group photo in front of their artwork.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
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.
Students admiring the work of their classmates:
Some of the class in a group photo in front of their artwork.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
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.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
