Last week, I got to see how the school runs, sort of. The first week of school is used as the cleaning/preparation week, to ease everyone back into classes. Some of the kids don't show up for part (or all) of the first week, sometimes because they don't know school is in session -- the schools all start at different times, so more and more students filter in as word spreads throughout the week.
At the beginning of the day, as students arrive, they pay for their lunches, which cost 2,000 Cedis (~20 cents). The lunches are made by two of the teachers every day. If you can imagine a pot of rice and another of fish stew big enough to feed three hundred kids, you'll have an idea of the amount of work these teachers put in -- in addition to teaching! Meanwhile, there are always a few girls sweeping the yard every morning, to collect all of the trash. Keep in mind that the yard is dirt, so the first time I saw them SWEEPING it, I was a little dumbfounded. But it's an efficient way to collect all of the trash, AND it makes the yard look like Japanese Zen rock garden when they're done!
Before class starts, all of the students line up in the yard and say prayers, followed by a recitation, like our pledge of allegiance. This is led by two teachers and the school "prefects" - the best two students. Classes run from about 8am (9am for the younger kids) until 2pm, with short breaks for snack and lunch. Auntie Connie, Ben's older sister, sells bread to the students for breakfast/snack, with a choice of margarine or groundnut paste (peanut butter).
On Friday, also known at the school as kids-run-around-out-of-control-and-this-is-the-plan day, I met Auntie Eunice (Ben's younger sister) in town to pick up some ingredients. You see, about mid-week I had decided that enough was enough, and resolved to fight the terrible injustice plaguing the people of Ghana. I am of course referring to Ghanaian cocoa. Specifically, that Ghana is one of the world's leading exporters of cocoa, and yet, there are no chocolate cakes, cookies, truffles ANYTHING to be found. Trust me, it's a tragedy. So one day, I proposed that I might make some brownies, which no one had ever heard of before but they agreed to humor the silly white person. Now, you may think that the fact that we don't have an oven would deter me...but come on, I once made a cake while camping with just some cardboard and foil (right, Sara?), so a silly little thing like no oven wasn't going to stop me. The tough part was guesstimating all of the measurements -- they laughed that i had MEASUREMENTS -- but I finally made the batter, and then, reminding myself that I'm in a third world country, spent every last drop of self control NOT licking the spoon. Now is your moment to be proud, parents.
We didn't have a pan to bake them in, but managed to secure 5 different mini-cake pan type things, all in different shapes, like your own fancy star-shaped personal pan brownie. And then there was the "oven." We put lit charcoal in this receptacle, slightly elevated off the ground (for air), and then put a giant witch's cauldron-looking steel pot on top of that, with more hot charcoal on top of the lid. Inside the pot, they covered the bottom with a couple inches of sand, and then criss-crossed sticks on top of it like a tic-tac-toe board. We balanced all the mini-brownie pans on top of the sticks, put the lid on, and, voila! Believe it or not, my brownies came out perfectly! They were a big hit, especially with little Angela, the youngest girl, who 2 hours later was STILL bouncing off the walls from all the sugar, belting out a medley of Christmas Carols because she had exhausted the rest of her repertoire (which ranged from such gems as "head shoulders knees and toes" to Beyonce).
In other exciting news, the electricity has been officially restored to the region as of last week, so that's lucky, especially when it comes to night classes. That's it for now, stay tuned for the next installment! Miss you all!
Monday, September 17, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Some Pictures!
Hi Everyone!
Just wanted to post some pictures for you all. School officially started on Monday, but apparently in reality it starts NEXT monday...this week most of the students do not come to school. The people who have been staying at the school during vacation -- Headmaster Ben's family, and the boys who were hostelling there -- have gotten pretty used to me now, which is nice. It's most apparent during mealtimes: during my first week or two, upon receiving my food, everyone would embark on a frantic search for a utensil (spoon, fork, something). At first, I tried to deter them by saying "No, really, I can eat with my hands too!" but that didn't work so eventually I just started chowing down before they could find a spoon, which was much more effective. Now, no one even bothers anymore, which is just as well because the one spoon they own is usually buried somewhere completely unexpected, like across the schoolyard where the kids were using it to dig in the mud.
The boys eat separately from the girls, and when I first arrived, they would not go near the kitchen if I was in there. Sometimes one of the boys would be calling for one of the girls, and upon arriving at the kitchen window and spotting me, he would utter a quiet "Oh, Sorry Madam Shawna" and quickly shrink away to one side or the other. I always tried to get them to come in, but nothing changed for awhile. Well, my novelty has worn off now, no one cares anymore. The boys come in, fight with the girls, tease them, and have full-on mock court cases over who took a piece of bread ("Madam Shawna, objection overruled or sustained?!"). Yesterday at lunch, I and the three boys had finished eating but one of the girls, Amelia, had not, so we ended up spending the rest of the meal in an intense game of keep-away...Me with my arms out, blocking for Amelia who was shoveling food into her mouth as fast as she could behind me while the boys tried to dodge around me to grab food off her plate. We were all laughing so hard! And thankfully, girls won and Amelia got to eat her food (though not in peace). By the way, it's amazing how everyone is so good at eating soups and stews with their hands, very fast, and they all stay so clean. I end up looking like a three year old with birthday cake. Not pretty.
It's nice to not be in the spotlight as much anymore, atleast where the family is concerned - arguments and daily life go on with or without me now, instead of the "Welcome, Madam Shawna, everything is splendid!" act I used to draw. Unfortunately, just as these boys finally got used to me, they're all heading off to school and a new batch arrives!! Here we go again...
Enjoy the pictures (I think you can click on them to make them bigger)!
Otoo, one of the graduates, voluntarily teaching an after school math class for some students during vacation.
Elmina Town -- See why everyone eats so much fish?
Me and Ben, making Fufu
Just wanted to post some pictures for you all. School officially started on Monday, but apparently in reality it starts NEXT monday...this week most of the students do not come to school. The people who have been staying at the school during vacation -- Headmaster Ben's family, and the boys who were hostelling there -- have gotten pretty used to me now, which is nice. It's most apparent during mealtimes: during my first week or two, upon receiving my food, everyone would embark on a frantic search for a utensil (spoon, fork, something). At first, I tried to deter them by saying "No, really, I can eat with my hands too!" but that didn't work so eventually I just started chowing down before they could find a spoon, which was much more effective. Now, no one even bothers anymore, which is just as well because the one spoon they own is usually buried somewhere completely unexpected, like across the schoolyard where the kids were using it to dig in the mud.
The boys eat separately from the girls, and when I first arrived, they would not go near the kitchen if I was in there. Sometimes one of the boys would be calling for one of the girls, and upon arriving at the kitchen window and spotting me, he would utter a quiet "Oh, Sorry Madam Shawna" and quickly shrink away to one side or the other. I always tried to get them to come in, but nothing changed for awhile. Well, my novelty has worn off now, no one cares anymore. The boys come in, fight with the girls, tease them, and have full-on mock court cases over who took a piece of bread ("Madam Shawna, objection overruled or sustained?!"). Yesterday at lunch, I and the three boys had finished eating but one of the girls, Amelia, had not, so we ended up spending the rest of the meal in an intense game of keep-away...Me with my arms out, blocking for Amelia who was shoveling food into her mouth as fast as she could behind me while the boys tried to dodge around me to grab food off her plate. We were all laughing so hard! And thankfully, girls won and Amelia got to eat her food (though not in peace). By the way, it's amazing how everyone is so good at eating soups and stews with their hands, very fast, and they all stay so clean. I end up looking like a three year old with birthday cake. Not pretty.
It's nice to not be in the spotlight as much anymore, atleast where the family is concerned - arguments and daily life go on with or without me now, instead of the "Welcome, Madam Shawna, everything is splendid!" act I used to draw. Unfortunately, just as these boys finally got used to me, they're all heading off to school and a new batch arrives!! Here we go again...
Enjoy the pictures (I think you can click on them to make them bigger)!
Otoo, one of the graduates, voluntarily teaching an after school math class for some students during vacation.
Elmina Town -- See why everyone eats so much fish?
Me and Ben, making Fufu
Monday, September 3, 2007
A Note on Driving and Cold Drinks
On Saturday, I woke up to find that it was raining cats and dogs here in Elmina. Or goats and chickens, or whatever. Anyways, it was pouring. So since nothing gets done when it rains anyways, or on the weekends for that matter, I decided to take the opportunity to go to a little place up the road called KO-SA. I had heard that this was a nice little getaway, only 15K away, off the main road. So, I hired a taxi to drive me there, and off we went.
Now, driving in other countries is always exciting, especially when they drive on the left side of the road, like in Ghana. Let me clarify: the "rules" of the road state that you should drive on the right, like we do in America...but this doesn't seem to be common knowledge. Now the drive to KOSA only took about a half hour, during which I felt like a year of my life slowly ticked away. These kind of drives always seem long to me, when I am the only passenger in the car, because everyone wants my contact info, wants to marry me, "like you very much, you like me too?", etc. So if it's not a share taxi jammed with other people, it can seem like you're trapped on a terrible blind date. This ride was particularly awesome, and please let me explain why. Since it was early in the morning, I was not in the best of spirits to begin with. Plus, it was raining, which also makes me a tad cranky. Then, my driver started in with his "I want to be your friend, I will visit you at the school tomorrow, what is your phone number, are you married?" talk. This put me in an even more foul mood - I had just woken up. Then, he proceeded to get out his phone, which was buried somewhere deep within the cushions of his seat, and type in my phone number and name, looking up every ten to thirty seconds to dodge oncoming traffic, people, goats, chickens, and potholes, potholes especially taking priority over oncoming traffic. Occasionally, we actually veered off into the bushes lining the sides of the road (not neccessarily OUR side) but he would remedy this with one swift jerk of the wheel, sending us careening towards the bushes at the other side. Meanwhile, its raining outside so the ceiling is busy making me look like I had an embarrassing accident, and sometimes, when the roof would relieve itself of a particularly gushing stream of water, the driver would take notice and fish around on the floor for an old holey shirt, and use both hands and both eyes and otherwise all attention to make sure that the puddle pouring onto my lap was filtered through a dirty rag.
When I thought (or rather, hoped) that we were just about there, the driver pulled over to ask if I knew the way to KO-SA. Uh, that's why I hired you. So he drove the rest of the way with his head out the window, yelling "KOSA???" at kids and navigating by arm signal.
Fortunately, I made it in one piece, and settled in to look at the menu for some lunch. I saw that there were banana shakes, which made me very, very, excited, almost beyond belief. I really like banana shakes. I had been craving something cold and delicious, since all we eat at the school are soups and stews and hot tea. I was practically drooling on the table when I heard the sound of the blender, and oh boy here he comes walking over with my delicious refreshment....but then I learned a valuable lesson. Ice is hard to come by in Ghana. Note to self: do not order a banana shake. Ever. Water is hard enough to find, and so ice is basically unheard of in these parts, probably because there's no electricity to keep it cold. So what I ended up with, was warm banana babyfood injected with some air bubbles...sort of a banana mousse that quickly turned brown in the heat. YUMMMMMMMMMMMM. pause. NOT. But hey, I paid for it, so you better believe I ate every last bit, and then ordered a nice, room-temperature beer, which managed to get me thouroughly drunk. Ah, the joys of never drinking and getting really, really skinny in Africa!
Miss you all!
Now, driving in other countries is always exciting, especially when they drive on the left side of the road, like in Ghana. Let me clarify: the "rules" of the road state that you should drive on the right, like we do in America...but this doesn't seem to be common knowledge. Now the drive to KOSA only took about a half hour, during which I felt like a year of my life slowly ticked away. These kind of drives always seem long to me, when I am the only passenger in the car, because everyone wants my contact info, wants to marry me, "like you very much, you like me too?", etc. So if it's not a share taxi jammed with other people, it can seem like you're trapped on a terrible blind date. This ride was particularly awesome, and please let me explain why. Since it was early in the morning, I was not in the best of spirits to begin with. Plus, it was raining, which also makes me a tad cranky. Then, my driver started in with his "I want to be your friend, I will visit you at the school tomorrow, what is your phone number, are you married?" talk. This put me in an even more foul mood - I had just woken up. Then, he proceeded to get out his phone, which was buried somewhere deep within the cushions of his seat, and type in my phone number and name, looking up every ten to thirty seconds to dodge oncoming traffic, people, goats, chickens, and potholes, potholes especially taking priority over oncoming traffic. Occasionally, we actually veered off into the bushes lining the sides of the road (not neccessarily OUR side) but he would remedy this with one swift jerk of the wheel, sending us careening towards the bushes at the other side. Meanwhile, its raining outside so the ceiling is busy making me look like I had an embarrassing accident, and sometimes, when the roof would relieve itself of a particularly gushing stream of water, the driver would take notice and fish around on the floor for an old holey shirt, and use both hands and both eyes and otherwise all attention to make sure that the puddle pouring onto my lap was filtered through a dirty rag.
When I thought (or rather, hoped) that we were just about there, the driver pulled over to ask if I knew the way to KO-SA. Uh, that's why I hired you. So he drove the rest of the way with his head out the window, yelling "KOSA???" at kids and navigating by arm signal.
Fortunately, I made it in one piece, and settled in to look at the menu for some lunch. I saw that there were banana shakes, which made me very, very, excited, almost beyond belief. I really like banana shakes. I had been craving something cold and delicious, since all we eat at the school are soups and stews and hot tea. I was practically drooling on the table when I heard the sound of the blender, and oh boy here he comes walking over with my delicious refreshment....but then I learned a valuable lesson. Ice is hard to come by in Ghana. Note to self: do not order a banana shake. Ever. Water is hard enough to find, and so ice is basically unheard of in these parts, probably because there's no electricity to keep it cold. So what I ended up with, was warm banana babyfood injected with some air bubbles...sort of a banana mousse that quickly turned brown in the heat. YUMMMMMMMMMMMM. pause. NOT. But hey, I paid for it, so you better believe I ate every last bit, and then ordered a nice, room-temperature beer, which managed to get me thouroughly drunk. Ah, the joys of never drinking and getting really, really skinny in Africa!
Miss you all!
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