Rolling Right Along

My counterpart, Amakye, is finally back from his summer courses, which makes me happy. Since he is a science teacher at the local JHS the only time he is able to go to school is during school breaks, so I'm left on my own for a while, but I manage. I've met a lot of other people from my town that act as unofficial counterparts, so it works. I finally went to the school today since classes have resumed. I sat with the teachers in their room and discussed project ideas and how they spent their vacations. We also talked about the final examinations from last term and this terms entrance examination. I was cringing the whole time. How the teachers can deal with teaching here is beyond me. I would go crazy. All the PCV Education volunteers are tough cookies.

After all this I sat and listened to the teachers argue, for about two hours, about what they think the passing level should be. Wait for it...30% or 40%. When I heard that I actually dropped my jaw a little and the teachers looked at me funny. It is really sad to me that this is what the expect the children to get in order to pass. I can remember being sad about getting a B+ during college, so I can't imagine what a 30% must feel like!

One of the teachers mentioned that he has noticed a lot of his students have trouble reading and writing, especially English. I think I've already mentioned this, but in Ghana all the teaching is done in English, so you if you can't read, write, or speak English you're kind of screwed. I thought it might be a good idea to start some sort of reading or English club that way the students can practice their English skills. I thought either I could read simple stories to them so they can hear what proper English sounds like or meet as a group and go over their homework and whatever kind of help they need. I'll keep pestering the teachers about it, but I personally think it would be a great project, if the students are interested that is.

Amayke and I met at school this morning so I could fill him in on what he missed during our Reconnect IST. I went over grants, primary/secondary project ideas, past PCV projects, and my own ideas for Afere. The soak away pits and household latrines are going to be our biggest projects so I gave him all the information Ambrose and I had gone over and our action plan. I'm really hoping things will start picking up now that everyone is back and ready to start working! If everything goes to plan I am going to be really busy these next two weeks.


Ambrose, Amakye, and I met at school for a couple hours this morning to discuss our action plan for the soak away pits. Lucky for me, Ambrose knows a lot about soak aways already and was drawing different versions of them on some scrap paper. He has already enlisted some students from the JHS to go around town and collect stones to fill the pits with. Ambrose, Amakye, and I all know the benefits of having soak aways...health/hygiene reasons and general community attractiveness...so we decided we need others to realize this too. Since we are using the students of the JHS to collect stones, we are going to start our education with them. Tomorrow we will visit the individual classes of the JHS (Form 1, 2, and 3 - the equivalent of 7th, 8th, and 9th grade) and discuss the benefits of soak aways as well as do some small malaria education. Once we have finished educating the students it is our hope that they will then go home and educate their families, but I'm not getting my hopes up. In order to make sure our message is understood and community wide, we will be taking a list of names of the JHS students and visiting their individual households. Since we will have already taught the students, we are planning to use them to help educate their families on soak aways and malaria. On Wednesday evening we start visiting the households and get this ball rolling.

We have also discussed the possibility of doing a household latrine project. I thought it might be a good idea to do this project in conjunction with the soak aways. Something sort of like, "if you can build your soak away and understand the benefits of it, then we can help you get a household latrine." Ambrose and Amakye seem to like the idea so we are going to tweak it to our needs and hope for the best. I'll have to write a grant for the household latrines because it is a higher cost project than the soak aways. For the soak aways the families will provide the necessary materials, which isn't much.

Tomorrow afternoon Alisa and I will be going to the SHS in Juaboso to meet with our health club. Our plan is hold elections for President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasures and so on and so forth. Last term they gave us a list of topics they would like to discuss, so we will revisit that list and hopefully add to it. I'm really excited about this club and I think the students are too. They also speak English a lot better, which makes things easier.

Hopefully on Thursday Alisa and I will be teaching a health lesson at the Juaboso Hospital. We are still working out the details as far as what we want to do. We need a translator, but usually we can get someone from our LNGO to help us. A couple weeks ago we did an impromptu malaria education session and it went really well.

I called my HIV/AIDS man this morning but I learned that he has traveled and won't be back until next week. I really want to get this project started. Even before I came to Peace Corps I was very interested in HIV/AIDS and hoped I would be able to do a related project, so if this is successful I will be very happy. I'm going to start going to the VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) days and observing how things work and gauge interest in forming the support group. If not, we can still do some HIV/AIDS education, individually or in a group.


My biggest cultural exchange of the day happened in my courtyard this afternoon. It's really hot outside so I thought I could soak up some much needed sun. Pasty doesn't even begin to describe my upper legs (I never wear anything above knee-length). So I put on my tank top and Nike shorts and sat in the sun. After probably three seconds, my Ghanaian mother comes running up to me shouting "Nana Akua, daabi daabi daabi," which I met with a confused look. "Daabi" means no in Twi. She told me I needed to get out of the sun and sit under the tree. I explained that in America, and many places in the world, lighter skinned people sometimes like to make their skin darker. She couldn't believe this. I kept saying I do this all the time in America and its ok. She just laughed and eventually went back to grinding her pepe (spicy pepper, like salsa almost). My legs are still white, but tomorrow is another day and hopefully it doesn't rain!