The first week of school

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!