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!

In which I visit beaches and go off on tangents

Saturday, 27 September 2008

Today marked the third (fourth?) “official” occasion of what is becoming a weekly ritual for me: every Saturday, I go to Cape Coast, head for the Beach, and spend a few hours letting the wind blow the cobwebs out of my soul.

Mind you, the beach itself is a rocky, dirty, foul and polluted territory, and has little in common with the tourist-and-tanning-oil drenched, salt-white sands of the Gulf Coast back home. Children (and more than a few adults) have no qualms about using the beach for their own personal latrine (even today I saw, or tried not to see, a kid perpetuating that truth). Trash and …other things… litters the beach; suffice to say it’s not a place to toss a towel and umbrella for a sunning session. So I don’t actually go onto the beach itself. Instead, I go to Castle Beach Restaurant, which - astoundingly - is adjacent to Cape Coast Castle, and situated on the beach. It’s a wide open, stilt-built affair, with solid wooden floors slick with constant damp. It’s definitely intended primarily for tourists and outsiders, as the location and menu both attest, but I’ve seen equal parts Obruni and Ghanaian patrons. Generally speaking, though, the beach-facing section is left remarkably empty on Saturday mornings - a few locals might troop through, but never stay long. Hungover tourists don’t stumble in until noon-ish, and when they do, most head away from the wind and wet and towards more sheltered tables.

“My” table faces the beach, with nothing to obstruct the view - or the airflow - but a wooden railing. Thanks to Castle Restaurant’s elevation, most of the less-savoury aspects of the beach are substantially dampened. The breeze is constant, the atmosphere is deliciously unobtrusive, and the drinks are reasonably priced. More importantly: I can sit and think and read, and nobody bothers me. I can bring in outside food and drink and the staff overlooks it (granted, they know I’ll eventually buy something anyway). I can sit for hours and not be hustled. I’m waited on but not catered to. I’m respected as a customer but not as false royalty. I know full well how lucky I am, and I the fact that I really am a Spoiled Volunteer doesn’t escape me at all. It’s glorious.

I arrive with full bag, armed and ready for Serious Business. Book, iPod, notebook & pens, matches & cigarettes, an impulse buy of two oranges from my walk up the street. The staff knows my face. They greet me and follow me to my corner, asking where “my Brother” is, and whether I’ll want a drink now or later. I’m predictable, and it’s easy enough to recognize returning Obruni faces, but it still gives me warm fuzzies to be remembered. I told M (my neighbour PCV; the “Brother”) that this is Ghana’s Cheers, only with more beach and less laughtrack.

It’s absolutely worthless to write this all up, as the only thing conveyed will be a shadow of reality, but I wish wish wish that somehow I could transfer the contentment I find in my Saturday morning beach-flavoured hours to you. It’s a moment out of time, of relaxation and calm, of being and not doing, of sensory satisfaction and simple pleasures. I usually feel that I’m doing precious little here, if measured against the lofty standards I originally painted onto myself before arrival. Being, though, is utterly exhausting, cliched though that may sound. To understand the peace I find Saturdays, sitting at that rickety-crickety-slimy-grimy table in the corner of Castle Beach, you’d have to understand the emotions that wash in with my personal tides throughout the week. I want to write of those too, to explain and convey and transport a complete sense of place - but even that only comes out with a hollow ring.

There have been times this month where I’ve contented myself with groundnut paste peanut butter and tea for days on end (boo hoo, poor suffering volunteer that I am, a thousand tiny violins weep for me), because it’s too mentally exhausting to go to market for anything more substantial. I shake my head and struggle to understand so many actions that surround me daily - I find them illogical, and fight to quell the urge to Change Things. My Obruni-Barbie smile hangs by the door, to be donned before leaving home every morning. I laugh off the marriage proposals (standard fare, and only half-jokingly offered), too-personal questions (my age is none of your business, neither is my virginity), corrections and arguments (even though it’s not the Ghanaian way, I promise that my way of [cooking, shopping, walking, breathing] does work!), friendly teasing and less-friendly heckling (Newsflash: I understand a lot more Twi than you think) as a matter of course, because if I didn’t I’d have no time or energy to devote to anything else. And then, come Friday evening, as I look forward to the next day’s mental vacation, I’m exhausted by my own senses of bitterness and unfulfillment: what, really, have I done this week to merit such a reward?

And in the end, as I struggle to relate it all, to help you comprehend: I still come up short.
And maybe too, also in the end, the reason for that is that I am still struggling to comprehend. I’m disillusioned and content, depressed and at peace, busy to exhaustion and bored to tears, alternately regretful and excited. I’m thrashing and fighting against the world and against myself. Through it all, though, I’m trying: to be quiet, to hear, to look, to see, to Be Still and Know. And so it goes.

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.).

Perpendicular perspectives

Thursday, 18 September 2008

It’s 6:45am, and there is a girl scrubbing our bath. I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with this, but I must admit… she’s better at it than I am.

Let me explain. I’ve been told before, by other PCVs and by Ghanaian teachers alike, that student labour on a teacher’s behalf is not only common, but expected - by both teachers and the students themselves. Apparently there is some sense of duty and honour conferred upon the students selected to be personal housekeepers to teachers, ranking them up there with class leaders and prefects. Even so, when the knock came at 6:30 this morning, from a female student (males don’t do housework…) with broom and scrub-brush in hand, I was still a little shocked. Her name is Irene, and she told me this is “her job;” she works for my housemate. She seemed surprised when I thanked her for coming, saying simply “I do this… that is why I came”.

It’s an infinite collection of small things like this that contribute to my utterly complete, albeit cliche, “culture shock.” Floundering around and trying to make sense of things, while still regaining my sense of self, is a constant struggle. Where do I stand, where should I stand, on an issue like this one? It’s not as clear-cut as student caning (which is an entirely different issue; one which I will gladly discuss in another arena), but even so I don’t find myself able to mentally resolve it easily. Disregarding the fact that this wasn’t my arrangement at all, but that of my housemate, I am still at a loss. The cultural and moral construct that formed who I am finds itself caught between repulsion at the idea of the Mistress (as in female teacher; me) being entitled to unpaid student labour — and knowledge that to refuse would be seen as a gross affront, by and towards both the student body and my fellow teachers. I, who leisurely sipped a mug of coffee in my pajamas, watching a student who has long been out of bed rush through sweeping, scrubbing, and water fetching in order to make it to morning assembly on time. Yet all the while, I am told, there is a sense of pride enjoyed by those “selected” for such extracurricular duties. Irene told me more than once about how kind my housemate is, how glad she is to work for my housemate, how she considers the woman a mother, and how much she has learned from her. Indeed, the woman whose house I share is an incredibly kind, caring person - and I have no doubt what Irene says is true. In fact the issue my subconscious has is not with my fellow teachers at all, but rather with the system in which we all find ourselves. When all’s said and done… it’s just plain “weird” to me when I see students labouring intently for teachers, and to have all parties involved accept it with ease. And that, in a nutshell, explains the feelings that I’m trying to resolve.

…and on a slight tangent, I find myself just at this second wondering what, exactly, contributed to my present-day mindset: the country I grew up in, sure; the family into which I was born; the beliefs that shape my perspective; the experiences that I’ve encountered. And then… I wonder how much influence the fact that I never actually attended school in my life, before university, comes into play. Is the student-teacher relationship in this country something that shouldn’t strike me as so adverse after all? I don’t know. I do know that my lack of formal “public school” experience does still contribute to how I approach teaching and what I put into - and get out of - the classroom now. (On even more of a tangent, I also must admit that learning the basic structure/order/schedule/idea of a Secondary School - not just in Ghana, but in general - during Training scared me silly. It was all so completely foreign; I felt totally out of my element and actually doubted my abilities as a teacher. ‘No one else is having trouble with these ideas, what’s MY problem?!’ Which, in retrospect - considering some of the arrogant ideas I had during my self-possessed, pompous years as a teenage homeschooler - I find very funny. :) )

Anyway. Ultimately I’m not going to change the system, and that’s not my intention in any case. Maybe what bothers me most is that there are actions I don’t like, whether from a cultural or personal standpoint, that others don’t even notice enough to mind. It doesn’t matter if it’s student labour, school caning, bureaucratic corruption, or blatant sexism. Yet my mind sees the possibility of morphing slowly into one of “them” - other PCVs, other teachers - and accepting what once appalled me without a second thought. Maybe I can see that happening… and I’m not sure I can accept what it means.

An update on updates

It’s great having internet access. All those things I told myself I’d take care of…eventually… can finally be marked off my list.

One thing I’ve been meaning to do has been to increase the exposure new updates got within the site itself, especially after “batch” updates of two or three blog posts and a pile of photos. Following RSS feeds remains, of course, the best and easiest way to find updates — but not everyone is using a feed reader (Hi, mom!). In that case, finding new things could be “somehow” difficult.

To address that, I revamped the front page to simply pull content directly from said feeds. Yay, technology! Now my great multitude of beloved readers (again, Hi mom!) have yet another way in which to stay on top of things.

In other news; school officially “opened” yesterday, which means that students have started arriving on campus. The next week or so will have little activity for me to participate in, as more students arrive - and those that are here keep busy with groundskeeping. With any luck, there will be a Faculty/Staff meeting before the end of this week. Hopefully then I will learn more about the upcoming term’s schedule and classes. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

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.

This Moment

21 August, 2008
Let me tell you about this moment.

It’s Thursday, mid-afternoon, just past 3 pm. I spent my morning exploring the local “big” town, the district capital about 20 minutes away. The sprawling town is still decidedly smaller than the “big” city of Koforidua that I grew accustomed to living near this summer. I was able to pick up a few necessities during my walkabout, including matches and kitchen knives, but I’m still headed to a nearby market day tomorrow to find other (more edible) goodies. I’m at site for good as of yesterday, which means sitting happily alone in the little blue-painted cube I now call my own. Aside from shopping, the biggest accomplishment of my day was treating a new mosquito net with insect repellent.

In the background of this moment I’m listening to the Olympics in Beijing via BBC World Service, bounced to my corner of Ghana from Ascension Island. I had to look at a map for that one, by the way. My world feels both very small and very big, and I’m not sure where I fall in its Big Picture. The change in routine this past week left me with parting gifts: a stuffy-headed, sore-throated cold, uneven sunburn, mysterious insect bites, and copious amounts of exhaustion… but even so, I’m ok. I find myself breathing deeply, relaxation trickling into my toes. Here, now, I can sit - and simply feel, breathe, hear, be. Tomorrow the frustration can return, next week the exasperation may take hold, and sometime soon I will return to feeling helpless, hopeless, and fed up. So be it; those moments will come on the coattails of their own stories. It is this moment I want to share. In this one, as the second hand ticks slowly around my dusty clock’s face, I am smiling. I am content. I simply… exist.

Life is good.

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

One obscenely, horrendously, incredibly long update

Super Extreme Update Extraordinaire.
(Which I know is long overdue.)

Where am I? What am I doing? What’s the news? How am I? I’ve done a terrible job answering those questions since June (June??!!), I know. I’m going to try and remedy that a bit now. Grab a sandwich, it’s gonna take a while.

Where am I?
I am at site. I moved here for good (or until my Close of Service, whichever comes first) last Wednesday. The first day of classes for 1st Term isn’t until September 14th…ish… — which means at the very minimum I have three weeks until I start teaching. That’s assuming I actually teach on the first day of class, which won’t be the case if I am assigned a roster full of Form 1 students (which is most likely given the way the ICT curriculum works). Which brings us to the next question.

What am I doing?
Good question. The one everyone is asking, especially after they’ve done the maths and realized I have 20-some days to “sit around and do nothing”. Actually, truth be told, that is what I’ve done for the last 48 hours or so. It’s been blissful. If you kept up with my Asia Travels last year, this weekend has reminded me of the interlude I spent in Hong Kong: a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and a lot of mental stretching and deep breathing. Clearing the cobwebs out of my brain’s corners; sweeping the popcorn up between shows. My biggest accomplishment since arrival has been washing a massive pile of laundry, the scale of which put Kilimanjaro to shame (it’s funny to think how I define “massive pile of laundry” now, versus a few months ago.). The high point of today was having my 50gal water barrel delivered, along with the worthier-than-gold water filter (yay, no more subsisting on sachet water! I’ve traded chlorine for chalk as a flavour additive!). I made two trips to the borehole and called it good. If my barrel holds 50 gallons, and I consume 15 gallons a day (stupid flush toilets that suck water, give me a pit latrine anyday), and only have two 5 gallon buckets with which to transport water, and find myself sweaty and muddy after only two borehole trips, and splash a lot while walking slowly and pitifully past at least 6 Smalls on the way… I should have a full barrel before nightfall. Arithmetic is so much easier when one calculates the Small Child Factor.

On a less immediate scale, though, I do have a bit here on campus to keep me busy between now and whenever I start teaching. Regardless of my actual first day of classes, I’ve also been assigned the role of Head of House for a girls’ dormitory, the actual scope of which I’ve yet to ascertain. So as soon as faculty begin to trickle back to campus I will need to corner another Head of House — and figure out exactly what the job description includes. Additionally, I’ve got to find the right person to pass me on the the other right person who knows the school carpenter, so that I can get a bookshelf and clothing shelf built posthaste (or at least within the next two weeks. I’m desperately tired of living out of a suitcase!). Optionally, if the school would just dash* me the lumber, I have a hammer and a lot of motivation.

Outside of my Primary Job Description of “Secondary School ICT Teacher”, Peace Corps requires encourages “Secondary” (or even Tertiary) Projects. The scale and scope of those are up to the individual volunteer, but the idea is to facilitate branching out from the home community (which in my case is the school campus, on which I both work, eat, and sleep.) into the surrounding area (isolated though I feel her at school, there are no less than three seperate communities within walking distance). While I won’t realistically be starting anything secondary for at least a term, there’s still a lot I can do while I wait. The over-cliche, much-derided, somehow-pretentious phrase - community integration - nevertheless makes a good point. This weekend notwithstanding (I needed it, ok?!), a substantial part of my “success” (measure that how you will) here will depend on my connections to, impressions upon, and ultimate integration within the communities around me. As isolated as I feel even when I go to Market Day on my own, it won’t help to give in to the impulse to stay on campus, fetch water, cook supper, and read a book.

So ultimately… all that flowery talk is just a way of saying I’m going to be doing a lot of walking around, waving at kids, greeting people, getting lost with the intention of getting found, saying the same things over and over (”Yen fre me ‘obruni,’ ye fre me Ama Serwaa! Me ye teachani wo AMASS. ‘Peace Corps’? Peace Corps. Peace corpse? Ahaa.” Etc.), and buying two eggs or “2000″ (roughly 1/4 loaf) bread at a time just so I have an excuse to visit more than one market seller. And wait, I’m getting paid (well, somehow) to do this? What’s the catch?!

What’s the news?

        I moved to site!

Really. That’s the news.

Bonus: my clothes are clean. This is GREAT NEWS.

How am I?

You have a lot of good questions. I’m still trying to answer this one myself.

For now, I can tell you that the 10 weeks of Pre-Service Training was . Ultimately, it was a learning experience, which (obviously) was the intent. For better or worse I’ve “passed” with flying colours, successfully sworn my allegiance to the US Government, and made the transition of a single letter, from “PCT” to “PCV”. I conquered a lot of initial fears, made a lot of friends (and maybe a few enemies), tried a hell of a lot of new things — and, I believe, successfully navigated The End Of The Honeymoon’s dark waters. A lot of drama has been inevitable. Stick 35 34 33 32 shellshocked USA natives together with the same in HCN trainers, morph everyone involved into 24/7 cultural lab rats, add copious amounts of stress, miscommunication & frustration, simmer for 10 weeks — “drama” is putting it kindly. I contributed to my share, and if anyone who still hates me is reading this, I apologize. Sincerely.

But aside from all that… I’m still here.

And sometimes that’s enough.

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*Language Lesson of the Week:
    ”Dash. v., see: To Dash. Small gift or favour. Can be lighthearted, e.g., “Your sandals are very beautiful! Dash me your shoes!” (note; may actually be a serious request, obrunis take care) or used in a legitimate sense, e.g., most edible market items are expected to come with a dash. Many things are bought in value and not unit amounts, e.g., “10,000 bread” instead of “1 loaf bread”; it’s common to have the seller “dash” a fractional unit amount over the agreed upon value amount. This is where building relationships within a community comes in handy: there may be 10 women selling tomatoes, and each of them sell the same pile of tomatoes for the same 3000 pesowah - but if you visit Auntie Vic instead of Sister Giftie each time you’re making spaghetti? She’s still going to put just 3000gp tomatoes in a bag, but after a while, she’ll start dashing you a little more on top than her neighbors would. And if she doesn’t then you go back to Sister Giftie very contritely, and maybe dash her some of your American-cooked spaghetti by way of apology. The American in me is flabbergasted by the commonality of “free stuff.” The broke Volunteer in me is very happy.

Also, that reminds me:
“Living in Ghana” Tip of the Week:
If you keep reading this blog, and you try to follow any mentions of prices and currency, I’m probably just going to confuse you. A lot of that will be just because I don’t like numbers, but a lot of it is also due to the recent re-denomination of the Ghana Cedi. Until December 2007, one Cedi was worth 10,000 Pesowahs. 10 Cedis, then, equalled 100,000 Pesowahs, and so on and so forth. After December 2007, however, one Cedi now equals 1,000 Pesowahs. Officially, “everyone” has switched over painlessly to the new system; realistically, though, you’re still going to hear both used interchangeably. The exchange rate, incidentally, is very close to 1GHC = 1USD (thought the USD is actually fractionally weaker at the moment, which I find funny). So when I tell you I’m making 6 dollars/day (or 60,000 Ghana Cedis on the old system, get it?)… I’m dead serious. Perspective-altering, isn’t it?