New Pictures Available

As a reminder, Cori and I are trying to upload pictures from our time here as frequently as possible. Until we get internet access in our bungalow we will continue to use our limited email time for adding pictures, not writing on the blog. So, we invite you to bookmark our picture site and check it for updates.

Christmas Greetings

Hello and Merry Christmas from Ghana!

Cori and I send our best wishes to all our readers both near and far. May you realize peace in all matters during the holiday season and share that gift with the world during the year to come.

Our Christmas celebration will consist of a trip to the beachside community of Ada Foah where we will board in small huts just a few meters from the sea! Plenty of stories to share I am sure.

In the meantime, I invite you to take a look at the latest pictures of our time here.

Only in Africa II

From the minutes of the beginning-of-the-year staff meeting:

"Teachers residing on campus were informed they can rear the various animals they are rearing only if they can keep them from straying.

The headmistress warned that any goat found in the dormitories expecially [sic] would be handed over to the matron to to be used as meals for the students."

Only in Africa

(Update Below)
1. The Assistant Headmaster announced to the students days prior to last weekend's Speech Day ceremony, "you must take (drink) plenty of water early in the morning Saturday so you have enough time to pass urine. I do not want students getting up to go to the toilet during Speech Day."

2. A gave a small US Flag to a colleague. He showed it to his 6-year-old son and asked, "Do you know this flag?" His son stared at it for a few moments before proudly announcing, "Obama!"

3. During this week's closing assembly (Students leave for the holiday break today), the Headmistress said, "I am seeing much bushy hair and beards! You think you can wear bushy hair and get away with it. Well, I tell you, enjoy it during holiday but when you return, cut every hair! And scrub your hair, you are very filthy!" She also reminded the girls, "do not hem your uniforms. The boys and the male teachers do not have the time to look at your thighs and guts. They have many responsibilities."

4. My computer is infested with teeny tiny spiders. When I opened it this morning they were scurrying in and out of the keys. I tried to blow some out but they hang on pretty well. Occasionally when they streak across the screen I can kill them. Maybe they like the CPU heat? Does anyone know what raid does to computers?

5. Two boys have been stopping by the house each day asking if I "need any help." After turning them away the first couple of time (because I didn't know what they could help me with and I felt a bit weird by the offer) I finally agreed with their suggestions to let them sweep and mop the porch. After pitching in for a couple of days they sheepishly asked me if I could do something for them. I expected a request for money, American stuff, or something similar. Instead they asked if I wouldn't mind taking them to the Internet Cafe and showing them some educational websites.

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Update

First, I discovered the "spiders" are actually tiny ants. Second, I stumbled upon a solution to my computer infestation problem. Place a crumb of food on the table next to the computer and within a few minutes the ants are swarming the food, and none are left inside the computer! Now I just have to clean out my computer keyboard of American food crumbs and they *shouldn't* return!

Tro-tros and Clean Clothes

Another update from Ghana, via an email Cori wrote last week to her family:

I keep trying to email news on a regular basis, but without internet service at our house, it's tough to make it happen. We do have access to internet at the school, but it's very slow. Last night, one of the teachers was "Skyping" with a friend and that took all the bandwidth, so the rest of us sat there staring at the loading symbol rotating on the screen and eventually gave up. Their internet service is a satellite feed from another country and stops promptly at 7 pm, so when I was still trying to load Yahoo mail at 6:56 pm, I knew it was hopeless.

This week started out very hot - our hottest day was Tuesday and we topped out at 95 with a heat index of 111. It was ridiculous! Even the Ghanains were saying it was oppressive. And then we got a huge break on Wednesday. All day it was overcast, which was a wonderful feeling - no burning sun. And then it got windy in the afternoon and early evening, it started to smell like rain. Lightning and thunder was constant just before it poured. Mike and I were so excited, we opened up all the windows and stood by the door and watched it rain. It actually felt cool in the house, got down to 76, and we decided to go to bed early, just to be able to lay there in relative coolness. We even had to use our sheet!.

Thursday morning the sun came back but it was a little cooler, back in the 80's. Thursday was also the day we went to the American Embassy for the first time for an orientation with the Cultural Affairs Specialist, Sarpei. If orientation means a learning experience, then we were definitely "oriented". First, we walked all over trying the find the main entrance. Once we located it we were stopped and required to relinquish all our electronics, including cell phones, laptop, all plugs and wires, my Ipod, camera, etc. We received visitor tags to wear around our necks, and walked through an airport-style scanner to enter the compound. Sarpei walked us into the building and up to his office. Here are my first impressions: lots of white people, lots of suits, lots of people with their hair done, conversational English, cubicles, Christmas decorations, air conditioning, the smell of good food, clean floors. During our visit, we chatted a bit with Sarpei, Mike got his official US Embassy badge so that he can enter the Embassy unescorted (but I have to be escorted, either by Mike or another official or security), we were able to withdraw Ghanaian money by writing a check to an approved Embassy bank - this is our only source of funds, and we were on our last few Cedis, literally, so it was a huge relief to refresh our cash supply.

We decided to eat at the cafeteria on the main floor, so we went through a short line, and there was a cooler of sodas, fruit drinks and Snickers bars and M&M's! Mike and I both grabbed the chocolate - I'm telling you, Snickers really does satisfy :) They were also serving jollof rice (a spicy, seasoned rice), chicken and salad (lettuce, tomato and onion). Mike got everything and I got everything minus the chicken. Then we sat with Sarpei to eat, and who should join us just after we sat down? The Deputy Director of Mission, the second in command at the embassy!! Julie was very friendly and we had a good time talking with her - she'd only been in Ghana for about 3 months and shared all sorts of stories about her service in other countries (from the Philippines to Haiti to Russia). She and her husband have raised 2 kids during all these travels, and they're both in the US attending college now. We met another lady in the cultural affairs office who had a similarly impressive travel history, and though I admired both of them, I do have to say that it must be different to travel around the world when you stay in an air-conditioned house, have a car and driver at your disposal and access to American food and the Embassy environment on a daily basis. God bless America, right?!

Once we left the Embassy, Mike and I headed to the Western-oriented Koala grocery store to pick up some things we couldn't find at the Evergreen store in Tema, and we decided to try the tro-tros (I highly recommend checking out the tro-tros link!) for the first time. These are the little 60's minivans carrying at least a dozen tightly packed people that careen around the city, and cost only a few pesewas per ride. During the first ride, I sat between three students who continued to read and do their homework while we sweated our hot, dusty way to the next tro-tro station. And then, because I was in the back, when I needed to get off, anyone seated in the side aisle way also has to get off temporarily, so I made myself as small as possible and slide along the side of the van to the door. And just like we we warned, I ripped a small tear in the leg of my capris on the jagged edge of some part of the van. At Koala, we had our pick of several European/American items, but at a price. Honey Nut Cheerios cost 15 cedis, or about $10.50. We skipped it. On the other hand, we bought butter bread, which is like our enriched white bread for about 3 cedis, or $2.10. And then we purchased some chocolate cookies for almost 9 cedis (about $6.70) because sometimes you just need chocolate cookies.

Our next tro-tro was a disaster! We sat in traffic for what seemed like hours, Michael and me squished in the front passenger's seat (which is still the size of a regular passenger's seat) heading for Lister Hospital. Lister is the Embassy's recommendation of a hospital for any medical treatment, including delivery. After a long, long climb up a hill, where the driver turned the engine off every time we stopped because we would be stopped for so long, we finally reached our stop: Flowerpot. So named because there are many, many handcrafted flowerpots for sale along the side of the road there. At that point we searched for the hospital and after a bit we found a sign pointing down a dusty road. So, we started walking. And walking. And walking. We soon discovered that the road to Lister was a lot longer than we expected. We probably walked about 1.5 to 2 miles before reaching the hospital's front security gate. And we were still carrying our groceries from Koala and Mike was toting the heavy computer backback the whole time.

Lister was very nice - clean and modern. We were able to sit down with one of the financial advisers and ask about the services and prices. A standard delivery including a 3-day stay in the maternity ward would cost us a little over $1000!!!!. Now we would have to pay the entire amount up front - no one here takes American insurance, but that amount just blew us away. When was the last time a complete delivery experience cost $1000 at the best private medical facility in the country?! Even with a C-section and a 6-day stay, we would be looking at about $3200. After visiting Lister, we coughed up the 20 cedis to take a taxi home, completely exhausted. Accra is dusty, dirty, loud, polluted and combined with the heat and our hunger by that point, we just wanted to collapse on the couch in our little house.

Today, all the laundry finally got done :) We have three students, Abigail, Sarah and Petra, who come each day to clean our house. It's part of their school duties. If they didn't clean our house, they'd be sweeping classrooms or scrubbing bathrooms or other campus maintenance tasks. So I handed them a big pile of stinky clothes and asked them to show me the best way to wash things by hand. Petra said, "You really want to learn? We will do it. It's our duty." But I insisted, and so she showed me how to do it, but the girls still did all the work. It's weird to have students working in your house for free, and I still feel like I owe them for their work, but I was so grateful for the help with the laundry. They just got right to work in the shower, dumping clothes in buckets, scrubbing everything with our Irish Spring bar soap, rinsing it out and hanging it on the clothes lines we installed in the house. As I worked elsewhere in the house, I could hear them singing hymns and Christmas songs, laughing, and talking. I checked on them a few times, told them to help themselves to the water sachets in the fridge, and helped them with the clothesline, which fell at one point under the weight of all the wet clothes. The rest of the time, I worked on hanging the curtains and sweeping, to make myself feel like I wasn't being too lazy while they did my laundry.

Reflections on our first week in Ghana

The following is excerpted from an email Cori wrote to her family:

I'm emailing from busyinternet, the best internet place in Ghana, and it's right down the road from the school. Mike and I take a taxi because it's so hot, but in normal weather, we could walk here. Our taxi ride cost 2 cedis (see-dees) each way, and cedis are worth about 70 cents, so our total ride costs $1.40. We usually tip 1 cedi each way also, as is customary.

Busyinternet is a huge room with lines and lines of computers, and great internet speed, usually. It costs 2 cedis an hour to use their computers, and 2.50 (2 cedis, 50 pesewas) for an hour on the laptop - they have wireless available. During the week, they also have a cafe that's supposed to serve coffee, smoothies, etc. As it's Sunday and the entire area is very religious, the cafe part is not open today.

I've been keeping a journal of things to mention in my emails, and since it's building up into pages and pages of notes, I'm just going to list some things so that I pass some of them along in a timely fashion.

12/1/09

Arrived in Accra. Met by school teachers. Driven back to TEMASCO in a double cab pickup with our luggage in the back.

Shown our house and asked to sit down to be greeted. Everyone looked at us and kept saying "you are welcome". We didn't know how to respond to that, so we said "thank you" but eventually we understand that they were saying "you are welcome (to our school/country)". We all sat around our living room and looked at each other while they said their official welcomes. Of course they all introduced themselves, and we were lucky if they had European first names, like Jennifer or Christopher. Otherwise we just smiled and tried to repeat their names as best we could - they were patient with us and repeated it back to us if we butchered it too badly. They had prepared breakfast for us - poached eggs with slices of green pepper and tomato, vanilla scones, hot dog-looking things, wheat rolls, tea and coffee. I ate a poached egg and part of a wheat roll but everything smelled funny and I had to work to get it down.

I couldn't wait to take my first shower that night, having traveled for a day and spent the next day in the heat, and promptly discovered the water was off. Apparently, the water pressure sometimes fails and so the water is "off". That's why we have a huge bucket of water in our hallway, for times when the water is off. I hadn't counted on that - I thought only the electricity was supposed to be iffy.

Our fridge wasn't working (It was repaired the following week), but the small freezer section functions like a fridge (it doesn't actually freeze anything but does keep it cold), so the staff had put bottles of water, Coke and Fanta (real glass ones) in there for us to drink.

12/2/09

We took our first shopping trip, to a local grocery store, Evergreen. Alfred, a music teacher drove us there. Just riding in the car with the windows down felt like the coolest experience in the world - I could have stuck my head out like a happy puppy! The grocery store was not very busy but it had many standard American items; we found canned beans, pasta, some toiletries, some laundry soap for hand-washing, etc. I was so hot and hungry that I bought three ice cream bars for Mike, Alfred, and me. As soon as I took them out of the cooler though, they started melting. By the time Mike and I starting eating them in the car, they were big globs of ice cream and chocolate and poor Mike's spilled all over him and the car floor. Alfred wisely kept his for later when he could refreeze it in his freezer at home.

Later, we took a tour of the campus with Joseph, an assistant headmaster. He's a great guy, wonderful smile and very helpful. The campus houses about 1300 students, with a total enrollment of over 1500! The buildings are all two story cement block painted yellow, and the staff housing is all one-story bungalows like ours, or smaller. The campus is large and mostly covered with dried grass or sandy soil due to the dry season which will last through March.

We met the headmistress - it was like meeting the queen. Her office was huge and air-conditioned and the conversation was very formal. We haven't seen her since as she currently lives off campus.

It's hard to eat in the heat, and the Ghanaian food has a unique smell and hard to eat, for me. For example, today I ate rice and beans that Jennifer, one of the teachers, made for us, and that ice cream bar on our shopping trip. Mike is faring a bit better. Jennifer prepared fried chicken for him and he ate it right down.

I did my first load of laundry by hand in the shower. In fact, I just combined taking a shower and washing the clothes to maximize my time under cool running water. We have a clothes line in the hallway for hanging the clothes and most things dry in a day. The towels we bought from REI are awesome - they dry in a few hours at most.

12/3/09

Today was the breaking point for me. I hadn't been able to sleep very well at night and would fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon for hours even though I was sweating just laying there. Plus, I couldn't get enough food in me to give me energy. While I slept in the afternoon, Mike went to the school computer lab, which has 2 old desktop computers and an Ethernet cord for his laptop. They also have somewhat effective a/c in there, but when I visited him later, the body odor from a bunch of sweaty teenagers negated the refreshment of the a/c, so I went back to the house and laid back down on the couch worshiping the ceiling fan.

In the evening, Lucy's sister, Vicki dropped by to meet us. She looks and sounds just like Lucy and it was fun to talk with her. Her husband is a pastor and she is a stay-at-home mom with 4 kids - 2 still live at home. She will bring them to visit us soon.

Jennifer sent over some more food for us in a plastic basket, carried over by a couple students, but I couldn't stand being in the same room as the smell. I hope this goes away because the whole country smells like their food and I can only breathe through my mouth for so long before I look like a large-mouthed fish.

12/4/09

Today Mike and I woke up early and went on a 2 hour "Health Walk" with the students and staff to celebrate a national holiday, Farmer's Day. We were both worried about walking for that long in the heat, but it turned out to be a great day for both of us physically and emotionally. We were like a parade going down the side of the road, winding all through Tema. It was a great way to see the city without looking so conspicuous as "obronis" (oh-brew-nees). We could stare and take pictures and talk to people without drawing too much attention to ourselves. A few small kids spotted Mike and waved wildly at him, shouting "obroni, obroni" and he waved back just like a mayor on a float :) The conditions we saw as we walked along were unbelievable. The sewers are open culverts here, and they have concrete bridges over them every so often so that you can cross them without jumping, though sometimes we had to jump them anyway to cross the road with the group. People were selling all kinds of stuff, from full-size living room furniture sets to fried plantains to bars of Dove soap to Ghanaian clothing to leather dress shoes to candy to wicker baskets to bicycle parts. Everyone looked remarkably healthy and functional considering the heat, the dirt, the smells, the random children running everywhere in bare feet, the goats wandering along the roadside, etc. Our heads were on swivels, we couldn't stop staring from one side to the other. Every time I looked to the right, I would glance to the left and feel like I was mising something important. Mostly, I couldn't believe the absolute poverty of most of the people I saw. It was like the stuff you see on commercials and in books on Africa - all the stereotypes were there. And yet, people moved around like it was the most ordinary day in the world. My outlook on life will NEVER be the same. When we got back, we were told that the two slum areas were on the outskirts of Tema, so what we had seen was clearly ABOVE what COULD be. Really?!?!?!??

If I'm not careful, I could be on a constant soapbox about the need to provide basic healthcare, food, education and clean water for everyone in the world. I have SO MUCH MORE than what I need. And that's living in the TEMASCO staff housing that I have now. I have running water, a bed with a mosquito net, a kitchen with food in it, a toilet, sachets of clean water in my freezer, money to buy a taxi ride to anywhere I need to go, and the education to know what's available to me. I am RICH!

12/5/09

Mike and I took a taxi to Accra for the first time. We ate a real meal at a sports bar which was reputed to have safe, fresh food. I had a taco salad!!!!! I thought I had died and gone to heaven. And I had a bottle of passion fruit juice - Coke and bottled water is getting very old. Mike had chicken strips and french fries. I could have eaten spoonfuls of the ketchup at our table - it tasted so good. Then we took a taxi to the Accra mall, which was a very modern mall similar to our malls - overpriced, loud, crowded, everyone dressed up, etc. We did some shopping at Shoprite, a huge grocery store and at Game, a Walmart-type department store. I fell asleep in the taxi on the way home - too much activity for me.

Teaching Assistants

Just a note to my students back in G-town (as a side comment, I have seen some people type G-town as G'town, but that would be pronounced "guh-town" and that makes little sense in my world):

If you are interested in working as my teaching assistant during the 2010-2011 school year, please contact me before class schedules are due (Dec 21). I will select TA's based on past performance in my class(es).

The best email to contact me is educate4peace@yahoo.com

Thank you

New Pictures

In the past few days, we've ventured out a bit, visiting the streets of Tema, and making our first trip to Accra.

I'll have more time to share stories later. In the meantime, here are some pics of Tema, and our house. The captions should give you an idea of what you are looking at.

Welcome to Ghana!

It was a Monday morning at 8:00 when Cori and I hailed a cab outside my sister's apartment in Chicago to head to O'Hare airport. It was a Tuesday morning at 9:30 when we stepped off the plane at Kotoka Airport in Ghana's capital Accra. 19 1/2 hours of travel is all it takes in 2009 to journey from the upper-midwest to the "center of the face of the earth." (Ghana lies just a few degrees north of the crossing of the equator and the Prime Meridian, the point of 0-degrees longitude and 0-degrees latitude).

Stepping off the plane in Accra was amazing! To gaze upon Africa, inhale its air, hear its sounds, all for the first time, was a joy I can not describe.

If Ghana has a national word, it must be "Akwaba!" (ah-KWAH-buh): "Welcome!" The people are so kind, so warm, so...WELCOMING!

Our first days have been filled with countless new experiences, many of which I will recount in the coming days. The heat (Daytime: 90. Nighttime: 82. Dew Point: 78!!)has sapped our energy leaving us with little to devote to creative activities like blogging.

In the meantime, please enjoy the first contributions to our Ghanaian Photo Blog