Last weekend I attended Funeral Day with a colleague, Gyimah, at his hometown of Twenedurase. I’m still in the process of editing all the video and pictures – I took 7 GB worth – and once I do, I’ll post many of them to my shutterfly site and tell stories of my time right here on the blog.
In the meantime, here are some images of the experience:
Saturday I will be hitting the road with Chris Gyimah, a math teacher. We are headed to his village located in the Eastern Region of Ghana. It’s also in Ghana’s “high country” so Gyimah promises me it’s going to be cooler there.
Why are we going? It’s funeral day in his village. Apparently it’s common in rural places to have designated funeral days every so many weeks. He says “when there are enough dead bodies” they have a funeral day. This saves people the hassle of having to travel to the village too frequently to attend funerals. He says with a chuckle, they just “keep them on ice for some time.”
I’ll take plenty of pictures and video and share them when I return on Sunday.
In non-partisan economic circles there’s very little debate that the federal stimulus passed last year had a positive effect on the economy.
Where Obama and Co. got themselves into hot water was their underestimation, at the time the stimulus bill was being promoted, of the recession’s severity. Had the administration correctly forecasted potential unemployment the public would have a greater appreciation for how well the stimulus worked.
If you prefer to listen to someone explain why the stimulus worked, here’s economist Mark Zandi from Moody’s Economy.com
By the way, I have not encountered any Ghanaians who are aware of the US recession. And quite frankly, while I know it has devastated millions of American families, I have a difficult time remembering that when I’m faced each day with the struggles of the average Ghanaian: 
Yes, the recession in the US has been severe, but life here is much, much different.
Before arriving in Ghana I thought I had some idea of what to expect from the weather: Heat.
Well, I was wrong. Sort of.
You know that line, “It’s not so much the heat; It’s that gosh darn humidity!”
My first days (uh…weeks, uh…months) in Ghana were about sweat. And I don’t mean the “I just finished working out so I’m all sweaty and need to take a shower” sweat. I mean the “I just took a shower and toweled off but I’m still wet” kind of sweat. The “what the heck? I’m soaking wet and all I did was eat a cookie” kind of sweat, the “I drank four liters of water today and haven’t peed once” kind of sweat, the “when I wear a colored shirt my nipples are outlined by a white circular salt stain” sorta’ sweat. Get the picture? It ain’t pretty.
Before arriving here Cori planned to keep a weather diary – you know, record the daily weather and post it on this blog, looking for trends and whatnot. %5B29%5D.jpg "It's 86.9 degrees at 5:07AM. Super!")
We had read and heard about this seasonal dry period known as harmattan: when the prevailing winds shift to the north east, bringing dry, dusty air from the Sahara down to the coast. It is supposed to kick in around Christmas, and when it does, the Ghanaians told us, we would suffer: cracked lips, burning eyes, brittle hair, etcetera. We would frequently ask the Ghanaians about the temperature of the harmattan. Some would tell us it would become much cooler. Others would say hotter. But they all emphasized how dry it would be. Miserably dry. So dry, they said, that you would have to put “this type of, cream, on your lips.”
“Chapstick?” I replied.
“That is it!”
From my conversations with them I have concluded that most Ghanaian’s do not understand how humid Ghana is compared to the higher latitudes. It’s jungle humid here. In Wisconsin, chapstick is nearly equivalent to car keys, wallet, and call phone in terms of things you will find in people’s pockets or purse. It’s a way of life.
They also said the harmattan would come after a big rain. So we anxiously waited.
We had a big rain the second week after we arrived. The next day, no change.
Three weeks later, lots of lightening and heavy rain. In the morning, hot and humid. Ugh.
So, Cori continued to track the weather and we noticed a pretty clear trend: it wasn’t changing. At all. At times I have seriously questioned if the weather station is working properly. We realized there would be no point to posting a weather log online because it it would look something like this:
| High Temp | Low Temp | Dew Point |
| 96 | 80 | 79 |
| 95 | 80 | 79 |
| 95 | 79 | 78 |
| 95 | 80 | 79 |
| 96 | 81 | 79 |
December passed. No harmattan.
January came and went. Ditto.
Some people told me “Harmattan. In da nort. Dey have eet in da nort.”
I secretly wished I was living in “de nort.”
Saturday night it started raining around midnight. At 1AM I was awakened by the downpour on my tin roof. Shortly the power went out. At 3AM I was awakened by the power coming on (I had accidently left my bedside lamp switched on when the power was out).
Sunday morning it was pleasantly cool: about 77.
The high temperature Sunday was a chilly 83. I didn’t use the a/c once! Even opened all the doors and windows.
Around 5PM Sunday I asked one student if he thought it was cold (it was 81 at that time). He said, “yes, very cold"
When I got out of bed this morning I went to the thermometer: 75
“I’m still dreaming” I thought. “Please don’t wake up!”
Now it’s 9AM and still only 84 degrees. Normally it’s well above 90 by this time of the morning.
Could this be what I’ve been waiting for?
I’m an avid user of Google Earth, a program everyone should have downloaded and installed on their computer.
Now the folks at Google have made available an amazing collection of high resolution satellite image overlays of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding countryside. It’s an amazing, and horrifying, set of images. I randomly zoomed in to parts of the city and everywhere I looked there was damage, destruction, and tent cities. Here are a few random screen shots:
Go here to download both Google Earth and the high resolution images
I saw on-line tonight that Sarah Palin, while answering questions after her little “Tea Bag” speech, appears to have been using crib notes written on her hand. Here’s the video:
It immediately reminded me of an episode of Growing Pains in which Mike Seaver (essentially the Dennis the Menace of 80’s prime time TV) prepares to cheat on his US History test by writing answers on the bottom of his sneakers. However, he is encouraged to stay up all night cramming and ends up not needing to cheat. Alas, after handing in his test (and apparently acing it) he is beaming with pride, tips back in his seat and puts his feet up on his desk, exposing his crib notes to the teacher.
So, I searched the Internet for an image of those infamous shoes and look what I discovered:
The first answer on his right foot is…
“ALASKA”
* “Boner” refers to Mike Seaver’s best friend on Growing Pains
First thing in the morning the houses came out to the athletics field to set up their house tents – their home base for the day of competition. I was assigned a role at the event: Chief Official of the Field Events (can you see me puffing out my chest). So, as the students prepared their areas, some staff worked to set up the sound system, and the day’s sponsors (Cowbell – a dairy company; and Tigo – a mobile phone company) erected their banners and various 
Seriously, it gave me the freedom to walk around and snap a lot of pictures during the day. You can see the entire collection here.
There is one boy’s shot, and one girl’s.
There’s one discus for each gender.
There’s one javelin.
There’s one pole vault pole.
There is no box to plant the pole vault pole. Instead they used a handle-less pick axe to chop out a box-shaped hole in the ground.
Temasco actually has a high jump/pole vault pit (mat) which many Ghanaian schools do not (It’s that yellowish block-of-cheese-looking thing in the picture). However, can you see an American child jumping on that? Or, more accurately, can you see the parent of an American child allowing the child to jump on that?
Few students own or wear athletic shoes. some compete in socks. Most compete in bare feet.
It was 97 degrees Friday and humid as a jungle.
I did not see a single student being tended to by a paid athletic trainer, a coach (there are no coaches), or a parent. I saw no student icing his shins, or complaining about her various cramps and muscle pulls.
I saw a few students limping after their event. And I saw a few others pick splinters or who-knows-what out of their bare feet.
It was a good day.
If you are familiar with the tragic story of the Rwandan genocide – perhaps you have watched Hotel Rwanda – then I think you’ll find this story of interest. A woman – now in her early thirties – returns to Rwanda from the Congolese refugee camp in which she has lived for the past decade and a half for the first time. She doesn’t know what she will find when she gets there: family, friends, a place to stay? It’s an outstanding bit of journalism and a gripping story.
As a side note, here in Ghana one of the local stations carries the Al Jazeera English news network for a few hours each day. I’m familiar with the network – their video can be streamed online and years ago I made it a regular stop of mine on the Internet – but watching it on television has given me a new appreciation for its level of professionalism and the depth of its coverage of global events. The other international news option for me in Ghana is CNN-World. The contrast between the two networks makes CNN appear about as legitimate as a “morning zoo” radio show. It’s unfortunate that Al Jazeera has been stigmatized in the US, because it could provide Americans with excellent (and, frankly, much needed) insight into the rest of the world.
Some might compare him to England's Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, the pudgy, very near-sighted ski jumping spectacle of the '88 Calgary Olympics. But Nkrumah-Acheampong says he prefers comparison to the Jamaican bobsled team that inspired the movie "Cool Runnings." He told CNN "If you want to be a sportsman, be a sportsman. If you want to have fun then do sports for leisure. Don't take the seriousness of sport and make a mockery of it." 
The holder of a 60-day Ghanaian Visa, I had to leave the country before the end of January to avoid staying beyond my documents. It’s a multiple-entry visa, so I am allowed to come back to Ghana as often as I wish for the next 7 years. But I can not stay for more than 60 consecutive days. So, this weekend I convinced a couple of my Ghanaian teaching colleagues to join me for a one-day trek to neighboring Togo, and its capital city Lomé.
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