Our house, in the middle of the street

I just uploaded a few photos I took this morning of the area around my house. I thought I should post an entry explaining small-small about what I might variously refer to as “my house,” “our house,” “the house,” “T’s house,” or “Hey, it keeps the rain off.” I lose track of what details I’ve blogged vs. what I’ve emailed, so I thought I’d post a snazzy all-in-one point-of-reference, complete with our highly-detailed, exactly-to-scale, super-technical floorplan, from which to orient yourself.

I say “our” floorplan, because I share “our” half of the building (it’s something like a duplex) with another teacher. For now I’m just going to refer to her as “T”, until she says otherwise. She’s lived here alone for the past four years, so when I moved to school housing, I really moved into a room in her house. This had (has) pros and cons, as you may imagine. Suffice to say… I believe we both are adjusting well. Things are working out, but I reserve the right to vent my one-room-frustrations here in the future.

A few notes: As is common in Ghanaian architecture, the rooms in the house are oriented around an open-sky courtyard. This means that I can lock my room door without restricting any of T’s access to the rest of the house. It also means that we can hang our laundry to dry in the privacy of our courtyard, instead of outside. Also, regarding the toilet and shower room: we don’t have indoor plumbing, but we do have a toilet - to flush, simply pour a bucket of water into the bowl. The shower room is more appropriately called a “bathing room”, and is just a concrete room with floor drain. There are no showers without plumbing; I’m proud of the fact that I can bathe with half a bucket of water.

One more thing; when viewing the floorplan, you might wonder “who’s ‘???’?”. Good question. If you find out, please let me know. (Apparently, the room belongs to another teacher, who uses it a few times a term - another teacher whom I’ve yet to meet. School Powers That Be are said to be moving “???” to another room in another house on campus, in order to give me access to ???’s room in our house, but that other room has yet to be vacated, though the teacher who lived there retired last term. Confusing? I know.).

Update, Apologies, and my Site

“What day is it?” A friend asked me this yesterday, in complete seriousness. It took me a fraction of a second too long to reply. “Monday!” For those of you not paying attention, that means it’s Tuesday as I write this now. If I’m lucky it will Tuesday when I post this also — 7 days from now.

Time has a weird way of manifesting itself here. On the one hand, a day can drag on to infinity — but on the other, a week will fly by. My apologies for not keeping up my end of communication; part of it is due to losing track of time, a lot of it was because it’s amazingly difficult to find time (and money!) to get myself to a (functioning) internet cafe. Sorry, all. Thanks in advance for the pile of emails I opened my inbox on today — I’ll work on replying to them offline and try to get back online before September.

This past week I’ve been on “site visit”; while the days are pleasantly long, the week has somehow vanished. I still have a few days left before returning to training, and I’m enjoying every moment. Suffice to say I really look forward to moving here in a few weeks. We swear in on the 19th of August, which gives me over a month before classes start for the term. Plenty of time to get to know my new site.

Oh yes. My site. My school is Asin Manso Secondary School, in the Central Region. The local town is - amazingly enough - Asin Manso. Feel free to google it and send me anything you learn; you’ll probably find out more than I already know fairly quickly. The town itself is a 10-15 minute walk from my school gate, which is not bad at all*. The student body is relatively large for a school receiving a volunteer: around 1600. I will be the 76th faculty member… meanwhile, at least one of my fellow trainees will be the 6th teacher at their school. I can’t imagine how different our experiences are going to be! I live on campus, as do another 20 or so other teachers. I don’t actually have a house or flat of my own; I share a compound house with another teacher. “Compound house” means a collection of rooms all open onto a central courtyard. I have one room, plus I share access to a kitchen, bath, and toilet. No running water but I only carry a bucket 55 steps to the water source (I counted). Electricity is present and fairly constant.

Though I only have one room, I plan on visiting Peace Corps-neighbors often for mental breaks and cooking fiascos. My nearest is less than 10 minutes away, and the kitchen there is somehow* awesome. Cape Coast is only 40 minutes away, so I also plan to visit the “Big City” at least once a month (even if only for banking, post office, etc.).

School is closed for now, so I haven’t met many staff or faculty members yet. The ones I have, though, are incredibly kind and welcoming. Before I arrived I was worried about the possible dynamics that might come with being the newest, youngest, whitest, peace corpsest, etc.-est teacher in such a big school. My department counterparts, housemate, headmaster, co-teachers: all that I have met have immediately accepted me as just another teacher, which has been good.

So that’s all I know about my site for now. Once I swear in and move here for good, my schedule should be less Property of the US Government and more my own. With any luck that will mean more frequent blogging and email writing. Until then: Life is good.

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* Note on Ghanaian English: I typed a few Ghana-English terms in this entry, and almost deleted them afterwards — but decided to leave them in, along with a Fun Cultural Tidbit. There are a lot of small words, phrases, sounds, gestures, etc. that contribute to Ghana-English. Two of the most common are use of the words “at ALL” and “somehow”. “Koraaaa” is the Twi equivelent to “at ALL”, and is used often. Stress, volume, and length of the last sylable extend the emphasis. “Me’n pe se di banku koraaaaaaaaaaaa” - I don’t like to eat Banku AT ALL. (Sorry, fellow Ghanians. Banku doesn’t like me; it’s mutual.) The pronounciation is somehow similar to “a TOLL”… which brings me to the other word, “somehow.” The short explanation is to simply replace any American-English instance of “sort of,” “kind of,” and in some instances “maybe” or “so-so”, with the Ghana-English “somehow”. The long explanation is somehow more nuanced, but I have yet to completely grasp it. Now go, speak somehow Ghana-English, and have no trouble at ALL.