And now for something completely different

As I said in one of my last entries, I actually had a really terrific weekend. Most of the photos I’ve just uploaded I’m in the process of uploading were from that Saturday (8/11/08). It’s a convoluted tale, but the short(ish) version is that due to a miscommunication, a bus left the school Saturday morning with 51 students on board, headed for a student “Rally” a few hours away… without any teaching staff. Meanwhile, I was on a second bus full of teaching staff, bound for a funeral a few hours away as well. A lot of confusion ensued, but the main idea is that I “heroically” volunteered to chaperone the student trip, and so got off the Funeral Bus in Cape Coast and joined the Rally Bus instead. The students were relieved (their plans weren’t changed!), the faculty were relieved (their plans weren’t changed!), I was relieved (my plans were changed!).

It was awesome.

The “rally” turned out to be a semi-annual (?) conference of the National Union of Presbyterian Students in Ghana (NUPS-G), which was held at a meeting hall somewhere on Sekondi University campus. It was an interesting experience, but a lot of fun too. There was music, dancing, “drama teams”, and preaching (it felt very familiar in a lot of ways!), followed by a 2-hour “prayer/healing” session(less familiar, but still interesting - let’s just say I didn’t have a translator, but neither did anyone else in the room). The campus was gorgeous, and the weather was nice, so I went for a walk towards the end of that final session. My parents have been asking for pictures of me for weeks now, so I took a few shamelessly goofy photos. Blame them, not me!

After the afternoon of “Rally”/church, we had a few hours to kill before the bus returned to take us home. A handful of students passed a hat among themselves, and convinced a security guard at the (walking-distance-away) massively beautiful Sekondi Sports Stadium to give us a private tour. That was also awesome: apparently this is one of the stadiums the Black Stars play at regularly. In any case, it was way nicer than the last stadium I’ve poked around in. On the way back from the tour, we passed a pond that had become the local swimming hole: I’ll warn you that there’s no such thing as “swimming suits” for most kids around here, but I tried to only upload the more “discreet” photos. It’s too bad, because some of the ones that didn’t make the cut are absolutely hilarious. The swimmers were having a great time showing off their diving skills for the group of students and the Obruni with a camera.

We got back to school at 9pm, tired but happy. It was a good day.

The next day I went to the beach for my birthday, but that’s another story.

On suckage, part II

[Note; I actually had a really great weekend between my last entry and this one. Fear not for my tenuous emotional state, loved ones! I’ll return to carebear-and-rainbow mode shortly.]

I often get asked, by strangers and acquaintances alike, for things. It comes with the territory of being white and foreign; from the “rich Obruni” stereotype. The history of missionaries in this country does not help koraaa (”at alllll”). Being asked “what mission are you from?” and “what will you give us?” in the same breath is not altogether uncommon.

Two days ago at market a random woman told me to bring her a drink. I say “told” instead of asked, because the phrasing translated to “you [will] bring me a Pure Water”, and as a Twi statement there was no danger of having heard misspoken English “would you bring me a Pure Water?” “Pure Water” refers to the 500ml plastic sachets that cost .05ghc, or “5 t’ousand” - about $0.05, so hardly an imposition. It was the principle of the matter that offended my precious senses (that, and the fact that I was tired and hot, and would’ve like a Pure Water myself, had I the spare change left in my pocket).

It’s a terrible reality on many levels: my emotions alternate between frustration and helplessness. There are times when I wish I could give whatever is being asked, but there are many many more times when I’m simply astounded by the shameless audacity of the begging. There’s an ingrained sense of entitlement that seems a part of learned culture, from early childhood on, and which serves to hold back so. much. development and progress. This is not only me venting my culturally-biased, inherently negative worldview - it’s a statement I hear made often by Ghanaian friends (my housemate being foremost among them).

Aside from being frustrating, this phenomenon is also detrimental to my ability to do my job here. Many, if not most, of my faculty coworkers have yet to take me seriously as a teacher. A lot of it is based on stereotypical descriptors (foreign/white/single/female, amusing oddity), but there is also the misconception regarding why I’m here: I’m seen not so much as a teacher (to say nothing of “3 goal-oriented PCV”), but as potential windfall facilitator. I’ve been on staff at this school since August, and already the novelty of my appearance is fading: I’ve been faced with confusion, even subversive hostility, based in large part on the “why haven’t you bought us new computers yet?!” question.

Last week, during the same afternoon that led to my previous blog entry, I had an interesting encounter with a teaching colleague. We were discussing the computer situation, and I was relating my excitement at finding so many “extra” computers. The resulting exchange upset me so much I copied it down a few minutes later (”Ghana English” and all), ostensibly ‘taking notes’ during the staff meeting.

Him: But why don’t you just buy new computers?
Me: (trying to joke it off) Oh, I’m too poor! I’m a Volunteer, remember?
Him: Ei! No no no, you are rich.
Me: Oh, why? You know I make half your money!
Him: Ok, so just call your American friends and tell them we need new computers, they’ll send them.
Me:No, I can’t do that, I am just a teacher. Peace Corps doesn’t want us to work like that.
Him: (Conspiratorially) Oh, don’t mind them. Just have your mother pick two or three computers when she comes to visit.

This conversation affected me on so many levels: my visceral reaction was a lump in my throat and clenched fists (which happens a lot at staff meetings…) — if it was so gorram easy for my mom to buy “two or three computers” then she would be able to visit sooner than later (hi mom, don’t feel guilty, I’m just making a point :) ). Close on that thought’s heels was “you have no. bloody. idea., do you?” [cue self-pitying internal monologue] you’ve never even left the country, much less the continent, and the idea of uprooting yourself from everything you’ve ever known and loved for an extended period of time, willingly transplanting into an incredibly unwelcoming and alien environment, in which you’re seen by colleagues not as an equal but as some conglomerate of gift-bearing amusement/unintelligent-lesser-being — that’s completely outside your realm of comprehension, isn’t it? [/end moment]

Closing out my mental reaction to the passing conversation was resounding emotional deflation: I’d just spent 20 minutes in conversation with this particular colleague, and was beginning to feel warm-fuzzies with the idea oh wow, maybe I’ve FINALLY been able to make a connection here!. Bubble, meet pin.

Sometimes my job sucks

I know I haven’t written in a while, and I know I owe at least 3 people emails. As they say around here: Sorry, sorry-o. I’ll catch up eventually — but not tomorrow. I learned today that tomorrow I’m “expected” to attend a funeral with the teaching staff (or rather, the percentage of teaching staff who deign to show up, unfortunately I live on campus so can’t escape): which, for the uninitiated, means leaving campus at 7am and returning sometime after dark. The hours in between will be spent sitting under outdoor awnings with hundreds of strangers, watching everyone around me become gradually more intoxicated, and slowly losing my hearing due to the constant (and max-volume’d) music. Funerals are social events with direct bearing on community status; very little mourning is actually done. They commonly take place weeks, even months after the deceased’s passing; the celebration itself is supposed to last 40 days.

If that came across as somehow more bitter than the average Sara, sorry-o. There’s been a lot of minutae piling on this week, and I’m somewhat upset about losing my “Saturday Beach Ritual” to a funeral. Oh well. Day-after-tomorrow’s another week, right?!

The only other thing I want to vent share is probably the most disheartening of this week’s “pile”. A few days ago, as I closed class for the day I ran into the other ICT teacher. I’d spent the week teaching classes the meaning of “Data Representation,” complete with the tiniest introduction to Base₂ math and Binary numbers. The majority of the students were able to grasp the concept, but relating a pile of boring theory to the “Real World” of the computer lab was another story. So when I saw the other ICT teacher, I asked him if there were any spare computer parts on campus which I could take into classes for visual demonstrations (“This is a hard drive.” [unscrew cover, play with magnets. Prep the great “reveal” moment of magnetism=binary force.] “ooooo.”). At best I expected to get a bricked hard drive or two out of a random storage closet. In fact we did head for a random storage closet that I’d never seen.

Inside were 25 dusty, cobwebby, flashback-to-the-90s, computers.

Twenty. Five.

Let me remind you that I am teaching ICT at a school whose student body totals 1600+. With a lab of 10 working machines.

When I picked my jaw up off the floor and regained coherency, I asked my coworker why on earth we weren’t making use of these machines, and got two answers: 1, the machines belonged to a private party, though said party hadn’t visited campus since 2006. 2, as Pentium Is the machines were “too slow to run even Windows 98.” I asked for the name and phone number of the private party, trying to joke that “maybe my Obruni power can do us some good!” I never was able to resolve that angle; the best I got was that I’d need to speak with the headmaster first. So I tried the “these are perfectly good machines! There’s so much that can be done to make old computers useful!” (case in point.) I was greeted with a disbeliefing laugh as he ushered me out of the storage room and locked the door.

So today my goal was to speak with the Headmaster and let him know we could use these machines. He was out, so I spoke with the Assistant Head, who seemed not to realize the machines were there - but gave his go-ahead, with the caveat that I would “need to speak with the Headmaster first”. Sigh.

Oh, and as I walked out of his office, he alerted me to the fact that there would be a mandatory staff meeting at 9:30. In half an hour. Sigh two.

During the two hours before the the staff meeting actually began at 11:45, I chatted with a few of the other teachers. My subversive goal was to gather more information about this mysterious “private party” who apparently stored his computers in our closets. Ultimately, I got back to the same original ICT teacher who introduced me to the storage room. This time, apparently seeing that I was serious in my intent, I got the full(ish) story from him:

Unnamed “Private Party” originally brought the computers to campus in 2005, with the intent of leasing them to the school for the then-nonexistant computer lab. Sometime between that point and 2006, the school decided the lease contract was too expensive and so cancelled it. Private Party has yet to collect their machines. After much blinking and jaw-dropping on my part, this is what I was told. We have 25 antiquated computers that don’t belong to us gathering dust. The private party who originally leased them has not contacted the school, nor has the school contacted them, since 2006. The machines will continue to gather dust until either we use them or the owner retrieves them. However, in order to officially USE the computers, we would have to reactivate the lease contract. So… we have 25 antiquated computers that don’t belong to us gathering dust…

The end. If I told you I didn’t have to leave the staff room at that point and take a walk to clear the tears of frustration… I would be lying.

Class Assignment

A few weeks ago I gave an essay assignment to all 4 of my ICT classes (which means I graded upwards of 180 essays; should have been over 200 but many students didn’t turn it in). The question was simple: “How do you imagine technology will affect your culture in the next 5, 10, and 20 years?”

My goal wasn’t to get anything from class regurgitated, but rather to see if they could apply what we’d discussed this term in a somewhat creative and self-aware manner. Reading all the responses gave me a whole new perspective on how the material I’m teaching will always be received in a fundamentally different manner from that which I originally imagine it is, due to our respective cultural filters. I ended up writing down quotes from nearly every paper I received; here are my favourites:

Doomsday and Roses:

• “Technology will destroy the world.”
• “Technology will make the world a peaceful and beautiful place.”
• “Technology will not allow us to live in peace in this world.”
• “The future will be very enjoyable due to technology.”
• “People use technology to tell lies, because of this in 5 years we will suffer a lot in the nation.”
• “Corruption and robbery all will end and it will be peaceful in the world.”

“…And get off my lawn too!”

• “In the olden days, you wouldn’t see West African young ladies wearing all this short dressing that we are experiencing nowadays. I suppose that it is the modern experiences that is affecting us all. In 10 years coming we will see that our young sisters will wear an underwear only and say that it is the modern thing.”
• “In the future man will leave the planet and build a mansion and stay there through technology, which is very greedy because God created men in His image and has given them the place to live and worship Him and you don’t want to establish yourself on another place which is very very bad.”

Reminders that I’m not in Kansas any more:

• In the next 20 years there will be a computer/laptop in everyone’s house. (similar statement was made in multiple essays)
• “Technology will help us to get off the planet and this universe in the nearest future. It will even help us get to the sky to see how the moon, the sun, and the stars look like from the sky.”
• “In 10 years communication will be easier and faster because at that time when you get your mobile it can call a person in America or any place you like.”
• “In the next five years cell phones will have special receivers which will pick calls and answer them in the owner’s own voice.”
• “In the future digital cameras will take pictures and print them at the same time.”
• “In the next 10 years I expect technology to be improved to produce automatic tanker systems which will provide every home with water.”
• “There will be robots and machines which will collect litters from the streets to improve upon sanitation and stop diseases.”
• “In the next 10 years mobiles will be cheap for even adolescents to buy their own.”
• “In 10 years the prices will be very cheap so that every individual can afford to get at least one computer in his or her life.”
• “In the future they will be sending text messages even if the person is just near you.”
• “There will someday be a new technique of teaching in the classroom by the aid of internet. Through the use of internet students will not find it difficult in learning and writing their notes, because theories and notes will be internetted directly into their various computers.”
• “In 20 years all feeder roads will be tiled.” (or “all minor roads will be surfaced”)
• “In 10 years time they will not use chalk to write on chalk boards because there will be a flat screen for teachers to use with the computer instead.”
• “Students will not go and sit in class to learn but rather use the internet from home.”
• “In 10 years time people will no longer need cash but can simply use an E-Zwitch card whenever they make a purchase.” (E-Zwitch is an independent debit card provider emerging in West Africa)

Computing by candlelight

Happy Halloween!

Mind Dump

Mind dump, because I’m too spastic to type a real entry today.

• The time/season-disorientation I expected has finally hit. It’s almost Halloween, and my mind is still stuck in June. Very strange.
• Met & chatted with a random Obruni in Cape Coast on Saturday; he’s been overlanding all over West Africa since June. Definitely fueled my ever-changing COS-trip dreams.
• I made biscuits and gravy for breakfast today - with no fridge, no milk, no oven. I am awesome.
• On an unrelated note (really! My food is safe, my water yesterday wasn’t), it’s been an “ORS-tastic” day. Fun.
• It’s amazing how such days have become just another part of living in Africa.
• I’m trying to dry limes, and I think it’s working. YAY!
• I’ve felt very MacGuyver this week: added a spring and latch to my screen door, built a drying rack, and made a bunch of new candleholders with nails and tomato paste tins. All materials cannibalised from rubbish heaps on campus. My housemate is in awe of my hammer+leatherman+recycling skills. I’m changing the world one trash pile at a time!
• My cat eats too much sugar. This is bad for her teeth and my sanity. I can has hyperactivity?!
• Every line of poetry, every awestruck utterance, every attempt at descriptive language, that has ever been meant to describe a starry sky: was written with last night’s sky in mind. It was awesome in the best sense of the word.
• Speaking of hyperactive cats: there’s a gecko on my wall right now, and Yosh is trying to attack it.
• I walked out of every class this week either immensely happy with the world, or completely crushed and disappointed. Very Six Flags.
• More on class drama in a future post. I really do have about 3 half-written entries, so I’m not completely full of you-know-what.
• Photos uploading as I type this - busy day at Cape yesterday.
• I. Love. Maps.
• Long hikes. I’ve been obsessing on them for a while. Originally considered either the LT or possibly the AT as viable post-Ghana options. Now I’m thinking a little more exotic. Too early to plan, you say? Never!
• Obviously, I’ve been doing a lot of travel-dreaming this week.

Birds flyin’ high, sun in the sky, breeze driftin’ on by, etc.

(I know, I’ve posted a lot lately. It’s my turn for internet [until tomorrow], so I’m upping a backlog of stuff while I can!)

It’s funny how the most menial or otherwise-insignificant tasks (as in; tasks that, were I living in any other place and time but here and now, would be trivial) can make me feel so accomplished. Today I’ve:

• Been first Master to Assembly (granted this is true for every weekday; it’s at 6:45am I would like to add!)
• Taught class. Detoured from ICT for half an hour in the direction of World History. (It’s a great story, if a little shocking. Ask me later.)
• Gone to market (see previous entry)
• Finally done (some of) this week’s laundry (rain began to fall out of a CLEAR SKY as I hung the last piece. It was awesome.)
• Put beans to soak for tomorrow’s cooking. (I always forget and end up missing lunch and having lupper at 3pm)
• Glutted thoroughly on PB & Banana sandwiches (with powdered milk-milk on the side)
• Finished the work I started yesterday - now have a (rough) week-by-week outline of this term, along with a few skeleton lesson plans for each week. It will help me 1) stick with the syllabus, and 2) remember where, when, and how I want to deviate from syllabus (which is to say… a lot)
• Put class rosters and grading sheets into a spreadsheet. Organizing is fun!

In any case, I think I’m posting this because at the moment I am really in a good mood. For no specific reason at all, but having actual classes to teach helps. Feeling usefully accomplished (small-small) does wonders for a Type-A psyche. Also, after talking to my mom (Hi Mom!) today, I realized that my last few entries have been somehow less-than-perky. My intentions with blogging this Journey were never to give the day-by-day run down of Life As a PCV offered by so many other Peace Corps blogs (not that I’m knocking them at all, that’s just not completely why I’m doing this). Neither was it to offer sugar-coated pseudo-introspective reviews. Rather (oh heck, why am I doing this again?!), I wanted a way to track myself as I learned from and grew out of whatever I experience in the next 27 23 months, and not all of my paper-journal entries need be privatized. I’m sharing with You, dearest, as my family or friends of various stripes - all of whom I love and respect enough to want input from (be it commiserative, remonstrative, bored-ative, whatever).

Nevertheless, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m sitting around here moping day after day, so I thought I should offer relief from only posting the lower (not necessarily lesser) side of my experiences. I’m actually enjoying myself. I give myself a solid 70:30 ratio of content-warm-fuzzy vs. woeful-despondent-hopeless days. Considering the horrors I sometimes hear from my training group-mates, I think I’m doing pretty well. I know I’m “spoiled” as far as site placement goes (Beach Corps = winnar), and my school is definitely upper-echelon as PCV-schools go. There’s a lot of crap to take, but there’s a lot of good interspersed. I’m surrounded by a lot of people, and have no privacy — but a lot of the people I’m in contact with are good people, and privacy can be found in the strangest of places (I take super-long bucket baths, for instance). There are women in my market who dash me bananas before I even ask to buy some. There are security guards at the gate to my school who hit on me and ask me point-blank to “join them in bed” - but there is also a guard who strolled with his little boy to campus after dinner, just to make sure I locked the door when my housemate was out of town. There are teachers who ignore my contributions and exclude me from conversations solely because of my sex, who have no interest in my presence as a coworker at all - but there are also teachers who wake up early to get to my door by 5:30am, on the chance I want to go running with them, because they know I would go anyway and they want a non-sleazy situation in which to offer friendship outside of school. There are countless strangers who chant Obruni kokoo maa che, (etc) taunts every time I walk past - and there are toothless old ladies who offer me minerals (soda) every time I pass their house, and say they are trying to “spoil me to never leave Ghana”. Most incredibly: there are motivated teachers at this school. There are motivated students in my classrooms. Not many, but enough. There is vast potential for growth and change — not just outside of my ego’s orbit, either. I’m happy. I’m blessed. I’m still here.

Be still, and know that I am God.

That’s something I’ve been doing a lot of this month (I mentioned it a few posts back). It’s good advice, that I’ve found precious hard to follow for an indefinite amount of time. If you look it up, though (hint: Psalm 46), read the entire chapter: I really like David’s description of the Untame Lion I follow. It’s nice to remember there are countless facets of unfathomable intricacy to my God: there’s a lot more to things than a half-asleep Tame One holding a checklist, keeping score. Actually… I think there will be more on that in a future entry. Oddly, I need to be less-perky to hash out what I want to say about that topic. Stay tuned.

Market Day

I went to market today, which was sufficient enough to make me feel accomplished. The nearest market to me runs Sundays and Wednesdays, and I’m usually there at least one of those days. Without storage space or a refridgerator, I basically am limited to shopping for a few days at a time (as is everyone else here, which is why markets are generally open twice a week).

I had a good trip this time around, so decided to blog about it and post a photo. So counterclockwise, starting with the bread:

• Bread (1.00)
• Bananas (free)
• Groundnut Paste (1.80)
• Bissap (.10)
• Okra (.20)
• Onga (.10)
• Tomatoes (.20)

I go through 1-2 loaves of bread a week. Prices of basic market goods are universal, and bread is very easy to find - if I’m lazy, I just get it off of a woman’s head out the window of a tro-tro. Yes, really - so I buy it often. It is generally consumed with the following two items.

The bananas were dashed to me as I left the market, I was going to buy some anyway but a woman gave me 4, so I didn’t have to. The price for 4 would have been .10, by the way. Because the smallest coin in circulation (commonly; not technically) is the 5ghp “nickel”, that means it’s impossible to pay for fewer than 2 bananas.

The groundnut paste (which is just “organic sugar-free no-preservatives-added peanut butter”, by the way) is a 2x/month purchase, so while it did take a chunk out of this week’s market allowance, it all evens out in the end. I was going to pick it up Sunday, but my Groundnut Paste Lady was all sold out and so I had to wait. The container is mine; the paste is sold by “spoonful”, my container holds 18 spoonfuls. You do the math!

When people speak of the “nectar of the gods”, what they don’t realize is that they are actually referring to Bissap. This frozen lump of ruby goodness is my personal reward for dragging my lazy self to market (20 minutes each way, people!) under a noon-day sun. It’s a sweet tea made from hibiscus flowers, with so much ginger you’d think it was actually pepper-tea. At market it’s sold frozen: a bissap-pop. If I had a freezer I would have it every day, but as it is I literally chase down the Bissap Girl every time I go to market. I could write an overly-emotional Ode To Bissap, but I’ll stop now.

Okra and tomatoes are self-explanatory, I hope. These will be cooked with onion, hot pepper, gari, and beans (which I picked up last Sunday) tomorrow.

“Onga” is just boullion. Flavour powders and cubes are staples in all Ghanaian recipes, (”Maggi” is the most common), but Onga is one of the few easily-obtained varieties that doesn’t have any MSG. Since meat is too much trouble to deal with, I’ve become mostly vegetarian — but I still give in and use small-small Onga in beans, stews, etc.

So there you go. An average mid-week trip to the local open-air market. Total time: 1 hour. Total cost: 3.40, or “34 t’ousand”. Now try to hit up your air-conditioned, over-priced, mega-supermarket with the same perspective you had last time!

The Internets! I has them!

In a way, at any rate. It’s a long story, but the idea is: GPRS (mobile phone internet access) is available in my area, and there is another PCV who was interested in getting internet access setup as well… so we combined our resources and were able to buy a fancy-shmancy phone and data chip. After spending 5 hours of effort today (about 4 hours more than it would have taken with “real” internet access backing my efforts), I was able to get the GPRS working with Ubuntu. That means that I officially have joint custody of real honest-to-goodness internet access! Granted, it’s slightly slower than the last dial-up modem I used - but who cares. It’s unlimited!

The upside for you is that, hopefully, I will post photos and blog entries more often. I also at the very least will be checking email more often! Ah, internet. I feel so very non-Stereotypical Peace Corps right now.

I couldn’t care less.

Monsters in the Attic

Friday, 4 September 2008
There are things in my ceiling.

Carpenter ants, at the very least. Spiders too. And mysterious squeak-skritching things, that prove their otherwise-invisible existence with night sounds and falling detritus.

Because my ceiling refuses to meet walls along at least 90% of my room’s perimeter, I have a Problem. Not a big one, compared to the horror stories I receive periodically, in 160 characters or less, via SMS (PCV communication form of choice). But a problem nonetheless. Lines of big black ants appear magically overnight, resistant to insecticide and capable of chewing my windowsill to dust. Spiders sneak impudently along the tops of walls, invading my nightmares from just beyond the reach of a broom. And, most frustrating, the dust and dirt and bits of chewed wood and decrepit spidersweb falls sporadically out of the cracks, showering down my walls with the sound of soft rain. Sweeping and spraying and cleaning and cursing does little. Last week I gave up, and decided to Do Something.

If I were back in the States, this would have meant driving down to the local mega-hardware store, standing in the (air-conditioned) isle devoted to sealants, leisurely choosing one of the dozens of caulk varieties available, driving home, and - aided by a sturdy stepladder - in the space of an hour the problem would be solved. Alternatively, if I were to be really lazy, I would have grabbed that ladder and a roll of duct tape, and the solution would’ve been no less functional for its inelegance.

…But I’m not back in the States. So this is what really happened:

• I send a text to my nearest neighbor venting my buggy frustration. We take a trip to Cape Coast, the nearest city, in search of a solution.
• There are no mega-hardware centers in Cape. There are not even mini-hardware centers. The closest things are the paint-and-plaster sellers, in their little market stalls along the main road. I begin my search with them.
• Some time later I decide “caulking” is impossible to explain across language and cultural boundaries, and start just describing my problem. I am offered plaster and paint, predictably, neither of which will suit my needs. I walk on.
• After a stop for lunch, I end up buying a 10m roll of roofing tape: 4″-wide, silver-backed, rubbery-sticky goodness, intended for all-weather permanently-adhered use among roofing shingles, but the best solution to my problem that I can find. A bit of overkill, maybe, but at least a potentially workable solution. The roll costs 13ghc, which makes me cry a little on the inside. I focus on my shiny, spider-free, future.
• After returning home, it takes me a further three days to work up the willpower and courage to construct a tower of desk, plastic lawn chair (aka “My Desk Chair”), and stool: my ceiling slants from 10′ to 11′ above solid ground, and stepladders exist as mere beings of myth.
• It takes most of the morning, but with 10m of tape I am able to tape the worst of the cracks, covering 75% of the perimeter. It takes another hour to clean up the mess that has resulted on ground level.
• After deconstructing the Tower, I collapse with shaky legs onto my bed, and proceed to blog the experience. Fin.

Oh, Ghana. Source of Frustration, Motherland of Invention, Buggy Wonderland… and I never cease to find pleasure in conquering your latest whim. Bring it on.