June 2012
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April 2012
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August 2010
6 posts
Thursday, August 5, 2010
This morning, Annabel, Kelly and I headed over to Reverend James’ house (next door to the school) after breakfast because his wife, Mary, had promised to braid Annabel’s hair in cornrows with Ghanaian flag-colored beads. Mary and her five year-old daughter Alexandra, who had no school, greeted us, and invited us into an unbelievable home. The outside was unfinished cinder block, still under...
Monday, August 2, 2010
Kelly woke up this morning with severe chills and a 103 degree fever, so we decided to head to the hospital. For my part, I had a 100-degree fever and didn’t feel great, but was in decidedly better condition than she, at the very least. Will was to accompany us to the hospital, and asked Mr. K to call us a cab immediately at 7am when we awoke, because we were pretty concerned about Kelly. After...
Sunday, August 1, 2010
This morning, Will woke up exceptionally sick, vomiting and feverish. We diagnosed it as the infamous FRS (Fried Rice Syndrome), i.e. fancy food poisoning, probably from his Geotess’ dinner the night before (it was a bit of an obruni move to order fried rice though, to be fair…). The rest of us headed to church with Kate and Baba Akologo. Kate was dressed in what looked like a pink princess...
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Breakfast at the hotel the next morning was only slightly more successful than our initial attempt at dinner the night before had been. We paid a bit too much for cornflakes, powdered coffee, a few pieces of hard, toasted butter bread and some milk that was highly questionable. Afterwards, we took a cab to Makola market, the large, central market of Accra. Unfortunately, it seemed to be in...
Friday, July 30, 2010
We spent the morning typing up the last few straggler exams, and discovered, to our chagrin, that Reuben and Stella had stayed late the night before, re-formatting all the exams we’d typed. Despite our protestations and explanations, Mr. Kabutey insisted that our exams were not spacious enough for the children to “relax between questions,” so he had instructed that our extensive work to shorten...
Thursday, July 29, 2010
After a finishing my black tea, bowl of rice milk, and two slices of butter bread, I went outside to brush my teeth. Behind our small house, I found an older girl, perhaps about 12, hiding. Often, when the kids come a few minutes late, they hide behind the house and wait for a good moment to run the 50-yard distance into the school compound, because the teachers stand outside brandishing their...
July 2010
27 posts
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Today was a long day, hot and muggy inside the classrooms and dusty outside. It was punctuated nicely by brief breaks during which we could read (we’ve all become very avid readers lately, and I am particularly enjoying Gone with the Wind), make friendship bracelets with the kids, and get teased by Dornuki for no reason in particular.
After school, Jerry really wanted to take us to his...
Monday, July 26, 2010
School today was a bit bizarre, because after the bell rang for first break, not a kid seemed to move, and none of the usual noise, eating, fighting, and chaos that we’ve come to expect ensued. We soon discovered the reason: Apparently there is to be a PTA meeting on Sunday afternoon, and Mr. Kabutey was going around to each classroom with a large cane, handing out invitations to each child to...
Saturday, July 24 - Sunday, July 25, 2010
We awoke this morning at 6am, mostly because all of our Rastafarian friends (who had been sleeping on mats around our tent and inside their courtyard) were awake. Kelly immediately noticed that her small purse, which contained her camera, wallet, and Annabel’s wallet, and which had been in the tent when we went to sleep, was missing. With the help of a half-dozen rastas, the five of us scoured...
Friday, July 23, 2010
Today we ran early, before school, and enjoyed some nice bucket showers before breakfast. Our running is not particularly serious, and certainly not always consistent, but always a nice diversion and an excellent time to clear our minds. We could tell, however, with the mugginess already setting in at 6am, that today would be quite hot.
In school, we had a number of successes today. I...
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Today we were to go to the Accra Airport to pick up the package my mother had UPS’ed to us, containing more string, or rather embroidery floss, to make friendship bracelets. Class Six has been churning them out, their company in full swing, and lots of the other kids also enjoy making the bracelets after school. As a result, we almost ran out of string, and my mother agreed to send some more...
Wednesday, July 21, 2010: Part Two
First of all, I apologize for the inconsistencies of the posts in the last week. Internet access has been very hard to come by, and simultaneously there is quite a lot to write about. Here goes: After the scene with Comfort and the other students, David Waters asked for a brief tour of our quarters to check out our living conditions. As we showed him our small house, tiny room with thin wooden...
Wednesday, July 21, 2010: Part One
At worship this morning, Mr. Kabutey pulled us aside and pointed us in the direction of two obrunis who were heading up the drive to the schoolyard. After introducing themselves, we learned that they were Anita Tarlton and David Waters, a couple in their mid-sixties from South Carolina who come to Ghana every year for about two weeks. Anita started coming in 2001, and has come back ever since,...
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Today had a few moments of excitement, the first of which was in the morning. While Kelly was tutoring reading to a first grader, Kelvin, on a bench outside the compound, she saw a huge bull with enormous horns on the nearby soccer field, approaching the school. The women who sell rice from large bowls at Break were outside too, awaiting the bell. When they saw the huge animal, they told Kelly...
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Today we read and relaxed. Because of an accident with my phone in Accra on Saturday, I can no longer use it to post to the blog, so I tried for the first time to connect and operate the 1993 DOS computer at the Kabuteys’ house, as well as the wireless modem that Mr. K purchased. It took me about 15 minutes to turn on the computer, about ten to load the Vodafone Wireless program, and then just...
Saturday, July 17, 2010
We woke early this morning, and after some refreshing bucket showers, headed to the Accra Mall. As we were leaving school, the kids were arriving for their Saturday classes. Many were wearing sweatshirts because of the cold. It was just over 75 degrees F outside, and we all smiled, thinking of Hanover.
For all its flaws (for instant the detached, and perhaps also elitist attitude of the...
Friday, July 16, 2010
Today was a flurry of activity, beginning with Madames Kelly and Annabel making crowns in the KG class. The class is enormous, with 42 four and five year-olds crammed into one room, and thus somewhat unwieldy. Nevertheless, crowns were a huge hit, and all the tiny kids paraded them around for everyone to see during First Break. The paper of Selassie’s crown was wrapped around his head twice to...
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Today began smoothly, with Philip cruising through Charlotte’s Web, and Clifford acing his spelling test. I found “A Little Princess” and gave it to Rose, excited that she would get to read my childhood favourite. Unfortunately, things got a little out of control after that. Mr. Kabutey sat Will down in his office, extremely concerned, and told him that the WPE credit card had...
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Today began with Worship, which was particularly exciting because, for reasons unbeknownst to me, Madame Janet handed out white hankerchiefs to about 2/3 of Class Two, to be used for dancing during their procession to the offertory bowl. It was similar to the dancing down the aisle to the offertory at church, except much less organized. The kids dance a curious combination between traditional...
Monday, July 12, 2010
Today was fairly low key, although, of course, still pretty exhausting. Connie discovered that a few of the girls in Class Six were taking string and making bracelets in their company activity, but hoarding them and not giving them back to the company when they were finished. Connie used it as an opportunity to explain “embezzlement”, but was still very frustrated at the kids’...
Sunday, July 11, 2010
This morning Annabel, Kelly, Connie and I resolved to go to church with Madame Emma. We put on skirts and dresses, and after some tea with bananas and rice milk, we headed out. Madame Emma looked positively ravishing. She wore one style of traditional Ghanaian dress that involves a skirt very tightly fitted from waist to knees and then bell-shaped below the knee. Her top was a narrowly tailored...
Saturday, June 10, 2010
Today was probably the most wonderful day we’ve had here. It was stressful and frustrating at times, but mostly just positively delightful.
Our plan sounded simple; we were going with Dornuki and one of her friends to see Toy Story 3 at Accra Mall, and maybe go shopping in a market or visit the nearby Cadbury Chocolate Factory afterwards. But life is rarely predictable, and things did not...
WatchOn Friday, during our tutoring session, Clifford sung this song for me!
July 8, 2010
Thursday was fairly calm. It began notably when Connie was writing down the names of the teachers and asked Dornuki how to spell the Class Five teacher, Carriage’s name. Turns out it’s actually Courage, and we’ve had it wrong this entire time. Oh boy.
During tutoring, Philip cruised through the Cat and the Hat. Maybe we’ll try Charlottes web tomorrow. Adorable little...
July 7, 2010
This morning, as a Wednesday, began with Worship. The kids sung hymns in small groups, listened to short Bible stories, and had the week’s “Memory Verse”, John 3:16 (one of the few that I recognized, thanks to the large amount of ‘Testamint’ candies I consumed in my youth) explained to them. Then they all assembled, one boy drummed a beat and the kids marched up,...
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
School began as usual after the long holiday weekend, despite the face that many of the kids were absent. School fees were due last week, and a lot of kids whose families hadn’t been able to pay were reluctant to come back.
I had Class Two Creative Arts first period, and we were making envelopes out of construction paper by folding and taping them, then decorating. I thought I was being...
July 5, 2010
Today was very calm, which was quote a relief after yesterday’s excitement. We slept in, and after breakfast undertook a massive spring cleaning that produced piles of dirt from the floor of our two small rooms, as well as bags and bags of ‘rubbish’. Afterwards, Annabel got a gold star for her masterful trimming of Sir William’s hair (Dornuki even said she liked it, and...
Fourth of July, 2010
We woke up early, leaving the hostel by seven am to head half an hour east, to the Kakum National Forest. When we arrived in the rainforest, we entered a small, government-run tourist center. A young boy tried to sell us water bottles filled with fresh palm wine, but we didn’t want to risk going blind (as Richard jokingly warned), so we opted for breakfast at the center’s small...
July 3, 2010
This morning we quickly packed our bags (meaning we threw a camera, a tube of toothpaste, sunscreen, our swimsuits, and five pb&js into a bag) and took a cab to Accra Mall to meet Richard and Harold (our Ghanaian Dartmouth liaisons/superheros) and the Asi Daahey girls, who had spent the night in a hostel in Accra. We took a number of trotros and finally ended up at a bus stop in Tema. It was...
July 2, 2010
Today was more or less a grand build-up to the Ghana-Uruguay World Cup Quarterfinals match. We headed into Accra in mid-morning, stopping first at the lab where Kelly and Connie had gotten blood samples taken to see if they had malaria. Kelly’s came back negative and Connie’s positive, although Will’s mom said it was likely that they both had had the disease, and Kelly’s...
Cooking with Nurse Emma
Nurse Emma, Mr. Kabutey’s wife, works at a hospital in Tema. She cooks us breakfast and lunch before she leaves in the morning and dinner when she returns around six pm. She is soft-spoken, but a very talented cook, immensely intelligent woman and nurse, and quite kind and caring. Anyway, when we got back from Ada, Will, Annabel and I asked if we could help her make dinner. She was...
Thursday, June 1, 2010 : Ghanaian Republic Day
The day began at six am, when we grabbed a little food and piled into a van, heading East to Ada, the region where Asi Daahey school, home to four other Dartmouth volunteers for the summer (Laura McFeely, Elise Smith, Andrea Imhof, and Isa Guardalabene). The headmaster of their school, a man we know as Dr. Nartey (he has a PhD in Linguistics) is the Chief, or King, of the whole region of...
Later yesterday afternoon, while the girls were still resting, Sir William filled up a huge duffel with his dirty clothes and convinced Dornuki to teach him to do laundry. It was quite a spectacle, the male obruni struggling to do the traditionally female task. A lot of the oldest girls, as well as ten year olds Kate and Abigail, crowded around to watch and help as he learned to scrub the collar...
June 2010
38 posts
June 30, 2010
Today began at about three am, with some very exciting middle of the night booting by Kelly and Connie (I slept through the mayhem like a rock, so I’m not exactly a primary source. Anyways, they woke up this morning with nausea and some muscle/joint pain, although their fevers had largely gone down. Nurse Emma, Mr. K’s wife, guessed that they both had malaria, and decided that they...
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
The day began early, with 8:15am Creative Arts with Class Two. Sometimes it seems as though they are more riled up in the morning. Anyways, using my mother’s tried-and-true “first you wash and then you play” method, I entered the classroom with a large, clear ziplock full of the distinctive Popsicle sticks, squares of paper, glue sticks and black, red, green and yellow crayons...
Monday, June 29, 2010
We began the day tutoring English. We’re a little frustrated, because Mr. Kabutey just informed us that the Ghanaian Language and Culture teacher is on maternity leave, so we’re supposed to be teaching those classes too. However, we’re obviously not really qualified. We also explained that we’re pretty busy already tutoring and teaching Creative Arts. Still, he wants us to...
Sunday, June 27, 2010
After yesterday’s fiesta, today was much more low key. It was quite hot, so we spent the day indoors reading and watching the Germany/England and Argentina/Mexico World Cup games. (Kelly as a resident of Brownsville, Texas and practically a Mexican citizen, was particularly devastated about the outcome of the latter.) We spent some time making friendship bracelets with Dornuki, did a lot of...
World Cup Fever
Because this is the first African World Cup, there is a LOT of pressure on Ghana, the only African team to make it to the second round, to win. It’s a particularly powerful Cinderella story as well, because Ghana came in to the tournament with a very poor ranking overall, and only fourth of the six African nations to qualify (after Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria). Also, their...
