School's Out For Summer

I'm really hoping that you just sang along to the title of this blog.

Actually, school is NOT out for summer in Ghana. Here, the schools have 3 trimesters, each about 14 weeks, and we are currently in the middle of the 3rd trimester.

What I'm referring to, of course, is US schools. And how did I know that they're out? (aside from looking at my calendar and facebook that is...)

Accra has been inundated with obrunis!

Last weekend, Jamie and I went to pick up the new WPE volunteers from the airport.  We stopped at the mall on the way there for the usual:  a trip to the bathrooms with flushing toilets and milk chocolate from the air-conditioned grocery store.  While we were people-watching in the food court, I realized just how many more young white people were around relative to what we normally see.

It makes sense.  Ghana, as a developing country with a stable government, is the recipient for a lot of volunteers.  And I imagine the vast majority of volunteers are high school and college students who use their summer vacations for the opportunity to travel, to make a difference, to be an agent of change.  As I was preparing for my arrival in September, it seemed like everywhere I turned, someone knew someone who had spent time in Ghana.  And technically, I myself, am a foreign volunteer working in Ghana, one who finds it hard to believe that a whole year has gone by since I graduated from Dartmouth (how did this happen?). So in many ways, I'm not any different from the hordes of people arriving for the summer.

But seeing the many new arrivals made me realize two things.  1)  I've been here (in Ghana) a long time.  Long enough to be able to notice changes in the foreign population. 2) I've really come to see Ghana (specifically, Tema) as one of the places that I could consider "home" (along with Marietta and Hanover).  I have habits about where I buy certain products, I have routines regarding how I spend my time.   It's rare that I do something extremely new or different or something that completely shakes up my world.  For the most part, life here is just life. (And I mean that in a good way -- I have never been a fan of unnecessary excitement or drama).  My time here has made this community a part of my life, a part of me. Even if, to the average Ghanaian, I still look like just another obruni.

Baby Booming

Yesterday evening, as I was sitting in a classroom waiting for Mr. Kabutey so that we could begin our training session, I remembered something that he said back in the fall.  When I had just arrived, I engaged in many a discussion with him about education in Ghana, the students at Manye, and the challenges that they face.  One thing that struck me as odd was his view of female education.  I distinctly remember him saying, “We need them to stay in school.  We don’t want them to get pregnant.”  I remember thinking, “Wow. This man is so clearly from an older generation.  Girls don’t just get pregnant and stop going to school anymore.” …

Since my arrival at Manye, two female students have become pregnant and proceeded to drop out of school. Not out of high school. Out of junior high. One, out of JHS 1, the equivalent of 7^th grade. The other out of JHS 3 (9^th grade). Earlier this week I heard that another girl in JHS 1 has already had an abortion.  Even though they aren’t exactly legal. Three girls, out of 25. That’s a lot.

And to be honest, for the life of me, I don’t think I can explain to you why this rate is so high.  Sexual education in Ghana is undoubtedly more comprehensive than in the United States. (Disclaimer, my experience with sex ed was entirely at a public school in Georgia, meaning all we covered was puberty, its accompanying physical changes, and STIs).  Students here not only cover the topics above, but also prostitution (this one comes up a lot), wet dreams, condoms and their effectiveness in preventing AIDS and other STIs. Even older men taking advantage of younger girls and the importance of not listening to those creeps (creeps is my word).  And this is just what I’ve observed.

At the same time, premarital sex is highly condemned. And girls in junior high and high school are told by society that they shouldn’t have boyfriends, that they should just be thinking about school, their education and God. Students can get in trouble at school if a teacher or headmaster finds out that they have a boyfriend. Or if they find out that they are even flirting with boys.

Well, clearly, they’re still having sex. It makes me wonder – by condemning romantic activity at all, do girls (and guys) fail to see the difference between kissing and going much farther?  Is it the mentality that, “I’m not supposed to kiss, but since I have, I might as well have sex?” And even I want to accept sex as normal 13-year-old behavior (which I’m not sure I’m ready to do), is its social taboo preventing the participants from buying condoms? From what I’ve observed, most of these oh-so-young girls are not engaging in this behavior with their peers --the guys are usually older. Does this age difference create a harmful power dynamic that prevents girls from making demands (like condom use)? Does law and religion prevent girls from choosing to get an abortion if they have the means?

Whatever the reason that these girls end up accidentally pregnant, I think it sucks. I think it sucks that the rest of their lives will be affected by this one event. That their education is cut short by their personal life. That their job opportunities are limited from stopping school.  That their self-esteem is rattled by the community’s censure. It sucks that I hear the young women labeled as “bad girls” – when their male counterparts are pointedly ignored.  It even sucks that it took me 6 months to realize how bad the situation is, to get worked up enough to blog about it. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single thing about it that doesn’t suck.  

License to Kill?

Like 90% of the US population, I consider myself to be a “better-than average” driver. Just kidding! All things considered, I’m probably pretty average.  My reflexes are decent (inherited from my father). I get great gas mileage.  And I am pretty good about only braking when necessary (which contributes to the good gas mileage).  I will admit, it was tough learning to drive stick shift. But, I did just peachy learning to drive on the left side of the road while I was in South Africa.

In full disclosure, one area I must admit that I struggle with is spacial awareness. Judging where my bumper is in relation to a curb or another car can be tough. Luckily for me, my car, and my insurance, I usually err on the side of caution, thinking I’m about 2 inches from something when it’s actually a foot away.

Here in Ghana, I must be in the minority.  Drivers here squeeze through gaps in traffic leaving only the smallest amount of space on either side. Trotros drive on the shoulders, cutting in at the last minute to avoid as much traffic as possible. The sheer skill (or aggression) is almost beautiful when it happens well.  But looking at it critically, it’s disastrous. It’s a miracle that there aren’t accidents every 5 minutes.  It's like the jungle. But instead of eat or be eaten, it's cut off or be cut off.

So there are accidents. Often. And occasionally, people die. One evening, on our way home from Accra, Jamie and I noticed that across the road, a trotro had crashed into a truck. Our taxi driver pulled the car over to see what happened – and there were two people dead laying in the shoulder.

The point of this entry is not to expound on the horrors of driving in Ghana. Or to criticize the seeming blatant dismissal of the “rules of the road”.  To be honest, a lot of the practices remind me of the way people drive in Atlanta.  (When I told my boss that, he was horrified by us Southerners.) My point is that we’re not all that different. Apparently so far this year there have been only 734 deaths from traffic accidents in Ghana.  In 2008 in the US, about 19,000 people died from car crashes in the first half of the year.  But there are about 250 million cars in the US, and only about 1.1 million in Ghana. So conclude from that what you will. 

I would rather focus on this: a few driving situations handled differently than in the States.

1. Roundabouts (aka Traffic Circles):  The right of way seems to belong to those entering the roundabout, not those already inside it.
2. Rubbernecking:  This is taken to the extreme in Ghana. People don’t just slow down the way they do in the States. Here, they pull over, get out, and walk over to the accident.  And this isn’t just people in their own cars – people driving other people do it too.  Once, when we were on a trip with students in a trotro, I literally had to instruct the trotro driver (who had been an hour late picking us up) not to stop to look at an accident on the side of the highway.
3. Traffic lanes:  These exist, sort of.  On the biggest roads, there are often two lanes on each side of the divider. But on any and every other road, lane designations are subject to interpretation.  This  applies in particular to dirt roads, which abound in and around Tema.  In a taxi, you might double your traveled distance between destinations because your driver is winding back and forth across the road, trying to avoid mud puddles, especially bumpy areas, slower moving vehicles, etc.

Needless to say, I see driving in Ghana as an adventure. Tomorrow, my boss is returning to the States for 2 weeks, and in the mean time, I will be responsible for driving our staff anywhere we need to go (that isn’t more easily/cheaply reached by trotro or taxi). Thanks to my newly-received International Driving Permit (thanks Dad – I bet you’re wishing you didn’t get it for me, right?) So, wish me luck as I endeavor to weave my way both through the unpaved streets of Tema and Ashaiman and the unique driving culture here in Ghana. 

Grasscutters -- Not Lawnmowers

So far I've written very little about the actual work that I do here in Ghana.  Mostly this is intentional.  This is a personal blog that I'm using to share my thoughts with friends and family, so I'm being pretty candid, sharing the good and the not-so-good parts.  In work, just as in life, there are moments of good and there are moments of not-so-good.  However, I'm the member of a generation who is constantly hearing the message, "Don't write about your boss/students/coworkers/company(insert any work-related entity here) on the internet. It is public, it is permanent, and it will come back to bite you in the ass." But it's not as if I'm just living in Ghana -- I am actually working, so I figure to have a true picture of my life, I should include some examples of my work. 

One of original assignments back in the fall was to create a School Improvement Team (SIT).  Basically, this is a group of parents, teachers, students, administrators, community members who collaborate to find creative solutions to school problems. Manye's SIT is called the MAC, Manye Advancement Committee, and back in November, they decided that they wanted to start a grasscutter farm at the school.  Now, this isn't as crazy as it sounds. First of all, grasscutters are not lawnmowers -- they are a large rodent whose meat is considered a delicacy here in Ghana. They are named grasscutters for their large teeth which cut the grass that they eat, and grasscutter rearing is a newly developing and profitable industry (actively encouraged by the Ghanaian government). 

(googled image of a grasscutter)

Given the abundance of challenges at Manye, you might wonder what makes this a solution? Well, to put it bluntly, Manye's problems all come down to money.  I'm not saying that inundating the school with money will solve the problem, because it won't. First, the money has to be used effectively, and the money has to be a stepping stone, or leverage to implement other changes that will improve the quality of teaching and learning. But those changes can't really happen without money. At least at Manye, and here is why:  when I arrived in the fall, the school was struggling to raise enough from school fees to pay the salaries of the teachers. Try asking a teacher who hasn't been paid in 6 weeks (and whose monthly salary is only about $80 to begin with) to stay late to learn new ways of teaching. Try justifying spending money on teaching and learning materials (like maps, books, science equipment), when employees aren't being paid. 

But let's get to the point. The MAC decided to start a grasscutter farm to breed and sell grasscutters, and then use the money to provide scholarships to committed but financially challenged students.  Hopefully these scholarships will both encourage students and supplement the school's finances. 

ANYWAY... yesterday, the first grasscutters arrived! 3 males and 3 females, which will soon be joined by 6 more females.

(Prince and Rockson helping transport the cages from the fabricator to Manye)

(Mawusi, Tetteh, Elorm, Rockson, and Sir Sam helping set up the cages)

(Alex and Mr. Tamaklo and 4 of our grasscutters in their special transportation cage)

Here are some fun facts about grasscutters that I never would have known without this project. 

• A male grasscutter can mate with up to 4 or 5 females.
• Grasscutters eat maize stalks, cassava sticks and peels, elephant grass, and a variety of other scrap foods. 
• Grasscutters don't need water to live! Just kidding, they do.  But they often manage to get enough water just from the foods they eat. (Ours are going to have water bowls, just to be safe). 
• Grasscutters are indestructible.  They don't get sick, they don't die, they don't have any problems. Once again, just kidding. But this was one argument used by a parent who was lobbying for the grasscutter project back in the fall. Pretty impressive sounding, isn't it? 

Getting into the field of "educational consulting," I thought I would be spending most of my time dealing with teachers and students, teaching and learning with some management thrown in.  I never knew that I'd learn about animal husbandry and I never imagined I'd become familiar with an animal whose name sounds like a teenager's summer job. But something I've learned is that education is not as simple and telling kids to attend school and teaching teachers to teach.  Each community or school has its own characteristics that may create deep-seated obstacles to these desired outcomes.  In the States, you probably wouldn't see animal rearing as a way to improve the quality of education... But here, it often takes unorthodox (aka WEIRD) ideas to solve problems.  And the fun part of my job is seeing these creative solutions actually get put into place.

 =) 

Game On

On Friday afternoons, many Ghanaian schools end classes early (at second break, around 1:30pm) and have something called Games for the last hour and a half of school.  Now, my experience is limited to Manye, NAP and stories about other schools from friends, but I am confident, the activities that occur during Games period vary pretty greatly depending on the school and it's organization.

Manye tends fall into the more "unorganized" category.  Often, Games is just a synonym for extended recess, where kids run around, or the headmaster, Mr. Kabutey, will have kids work on the school farm.  Once, there was an essay-writing contest; once they spent the whole hour arranging the kids into four sections (like teams) that will be used for various activities; once they held elections for prefects.  

Yesterday was a bit of an exception -- Games period was used for a Quiz Bowl. Two contestants each from P1, P2, and P3 sat on a bench behind a table and took turns answering questions asked by Sir Eric, the math teacher.  The top 4 entertaining moments from the afternoon were as follows:

4.  A group of 5 or 6 P1 students kept trying to help out their classmates by jumping up and down and mouthing the correct answers (or at least what they thought were the correct answers). 

3.  Sir Ashitey, the P2 teacher, yelled at some misbehaving students to "SMILE," because if they didn't, they wouldn't go to America. 

2.  Several of the boys in P5, P6, and JHS 1 tried to stump me on math problems.  When one of them told me to write 25% as a fraction in its lowest form, I wrote 1/4 on the paper.  They then all yelled, "Madam, you must show your workings!"

1.  Sir Eric asked the P3 contestants to fill in the blanks/provide the complete word:  A - D - J - __ - C - T - __ - V - E.  Jamie couldn't do it.

On Complacency and Volunteers

Part of the reason that my blog slowed down is that after living here in Ghana for several months, my life started to have routines. I had gotten over much of the excitement of being in a “new place”.  I stopped thinking about “exploring Ghana” and just was thinking about living my life here, much as I would in the States.   

The arrival of 3 volunteers from Dartmouth in January helped with this sense of complacency.  They reminded me of all the new and exciting things Ghana had to offer.  During the time that they were here, I tried fufuo ne nkatinkwan (fufuo with groundnut soup), bought Ghanaian fabric and had clothes made, visited Cape Coast and learned about the history of the slave trade, and (for the first time) ate mangoes.  Respectively, I found those experiences 1) surprisingly tasty and no where near as scary as Katrina had led me to believe; 2) fun, relatively inexpensive, and unfortunately addicting; 3) interesting and sad, more accusatory of African slave traders than Europeans/Americans, and much larger in South America/the Caribbean than the US (not quite how I remember learning about it in school); and 4) SOOOOO GOOD – Jenn, I’m sorry for never listening all those times you tried to convince me to try mango.

Having three more girls around meant that Jamie and I were also able to indulge in some more traditional American (and not necessarily Ghanaian) pastimes.  We giggled over episodes of Sex and the City, shared experiences from our time at Dartmouth, and reminisced about all the good American food we missed.  As the volunteers were much newer to the country, we also talked a lot about Ghana, its educational system, its culture – all things that I might normally write about it my blog.  However, having discussed these issues with the girls, I found I didn’t really feel the compulsion to write it all out again. Flushing it out orally with peers gave me a sense of peace and understanding that eliminated my emotional need for a blog.

Our volunteers left in March.  Right after that, I experienced a wake of homesickness that made me realize how much I enjoyed spending time with people who have shared similar life experiences. Now, I'm not saying that it's bad to branch out, or to spend time with people who are different from you.  I think it's incredibly important. And to be honest, I thought I had done that at Dartmouth (and to a smaller extent, even in high school).  But what I didn't realize was that just by going to Dartmouth, sharing that experience of being a university student in the United States, (and being among a limited population of Americans in Ghana) all the people I met there FEEL more similar to me than different.  And I realized how comforting it is to be in a place or with people where you don't always feel different. No matter how self-confident you are, it's always nice to fit in. 

The Prodigal Blogger

So, it has been almost four months since my last blog post.  Oops!  Anyone who has ever looked at my childhood diaries (which I actually hope is no one) should realize that I don’t exactly have a good track record with journaling. Throughout my [pre-]adolescence, I would diligently enter my thoughts and emotions every couple days for about 2 weeks, and then six months or a year would pass before my next entry. So I personally wasn’t too surprised when I found it hard to keep up with these entries, as much as I enjoy writing them.

To be honest, I had actually given up my blog as lost… but recent events (three in particular) have inspired me to begin again and to continue on as conscientiously as possible.

1. I took a 10 day vacation with my parents.  After meeting in Rome, we embarked on an amazing cruise of the Eastern Mediterranean, which involved an abundance of four of my favorite things in life:  cheese, ancient ruins/Greek mythology, olives, red wine.  On this trip my parents subtly reminded me that some people do read my blog and have been wondering why I haven’t posted anything. Recent event #1.
2.  Upon my return to Ghana, Jamie and I realized that we only have 11 weeks left here in Ghana. (76 days as I write this).  I realized that there is still so much that I want to do and see here in this wonderful country, and that I don’t have as much time to do it (or write about it) as I thought.  Recent event #2.
3.  I learned that Katy (the consultant from NAP) has also been keeping a blog, but that she just recently shared it with friends/family back home. After some sneaky googling, I found her blog.  Not that I’m competing with her, but reading her entries reminded me of all the day-to-day stuff that I still haven’t explained to family and friends. And how many of the stories that I share with my coworkers will have been forgotten by the time I return home in August. Recent event #3.

So, consider this the renaissance of my blog. I’ll do a couple quick summary entries here at the beginning to update everyone on what’s been happening in the past several months, as well as the adventures I hope to have as my time in Ghana comes to a close.

P.S. About the title of this entry:  for the longest time, I assumed that in the parable of “The Prodigal Son,” the word prodigal referred to the fact that the son came home. (Hence, the pun emphasizing my return to the life of blogging).  One day, however, I decided to look it up (just to check), and discovered that I was wrong. (After seeing my unremarkable GRE Verbal scores, I shouldn't have been surprised at my error).  Using the nifty thesaurus on my MacBook, I found the following as some of the synonyms listed for prodigal: extravagant, spendthrift, profligate, imprudent, generous, lavish, unsparing, abounding in, abundant in, rich in.  Outside of that specific biblical reference, prodigal actually refers to someone who does something in excessive or to the extreme.  

Once again – oops!

I chose this title, despite it's potential inaccuracy, to emphasize my "homecoming" to my blog and with the hopes that in my remaining 11 weeks, I will actually come to embody this moniker through many many posts!