Happy Independence Day!

Monday June 30th, first things first…not sure if you will read this Casey but…Happy Birthday, sorry I am missing your birthday for the first time in 9 years. I am happy to report that I am feeling almost 100 % better. The malaria was in fact mild and though I felt pretty sick on Friday, I felt much better by Saturday. I even joined Jeanette in town on Saturday to meet with a seamstress to get more dresses made. On Sunday I was told the baby naming ceremony would begin at 2. While I was dressed and ready at 2, I was well aware that the ceremony would not be starting then. As I was telling my Grandpa last night on the phone, nothing in Ghana happens on time. I believe it was about 4:30 by the time everyone was gathered in the room and all preparations were made. Martina (the other volunteer from Switzerland) is in Accra for the weekend so it was just me at the ceremony. I wore the skirt Delia, one of the vocational school students, made for me and attempted to look nice by applying some make-up. While the entire ceremony was done in Twi, I still found it very moving. Lastly just about a half hour, most of the ceremony was reserved for prayer. When I say prayer, I mean Pentecostal, Ghana prayer so this means loud to the point of shouting. It seemed as though the ceremony is combined with a baptism because the person performing the ceremony put several liquids on the babies head. Georgina looked beautiful as she held her baby and I have a few lovely photos from the day. Halfway into the ceremony the pastor revealed my baby sisters name: Foustina Rosemond Yaa Anima Appiah. Wow, what a mouthful. Her name was then shouted over and over again for quite some time and then people brought forth any gifts for the baby. I had two small outfits, baby wipes and baby booties I found on Saturday. I was told “God Bless You,” numerous times and I simply smiled and nodded in return. After the prayers and gifts (which were to be opened later) a few women that live in the community passed out meat pies and minerals (soda). Just then a storm came out of nowhere and it began to shower outside, accompanied by thunder and lightening. I rushed to my room to put buckets where necessary and scanned the ceiling for any new leak marks. For the rest of the evening the electricity was on and off. I had planned to have the kids in my room for our Sunday night movie. When the generator was juiced up I realized I really did not want 15 kids with wet, dirty feet in my room but at 7pm, like clockwork I hear a knocking on my door. I was in the middle of telling them why I wanted to wait until the next time when one of the older kids reminded me that I could bring the dvd player into the big living room again. Perfect. After setting up everything I had not only 15 plus kids watching the movie but several adults left over from the ceremony. It was amazing how interesting Disney’s “Monsters Inc” could be to people of all ages. The movie finished around 9 and I went back to my room to get ready for bed. I then discovered a new leak…just above my bed. Thankfully it is not too bad and with the mosquito net, the bed was hardly damp. If the rain continues however, it will get much worse. Even though I have told Naomi several times about the various leaks in the roof, I called one of the guys in to see. Arick, one of the guys living at Columbus, and is my host father’s “right hand man,” came in to check it out. There is in fact mold beginning to grow in some places and he had no idea it was this bad. Hopefully the roof will be repaired very soon.
Today is the 30th and tomorrow is yet another Ghana holiday. Therefore I did not expect to see many students in school today. Thankfully this was only the case for the vocational school. While I was disappointed because I had truly spent time on my STD lesson, I felt the three students present were attentive. I had three images to show them and I got the usual reaction to an image of a penis infected by an STD (yuck). On Thursday (with the hope that there are more students) I will have an extensive discussion in HIV and AIDS. I then moved to class 4 to work on their math lesson. They are still working on charts and graphs but most of them are understanding the lessons and they still get very excited when I award them with a sticker for good work. After lunch, as promised, I did an art project with my class. The art project was pretty much coloring pages ripped from a coloring book my mom sent me but I made sure each student had an activity of some sort to complete as well (a crossword, word search, word scramble, connect the dots, a maze, etc.) Using colored pencils and crayons are always a hit, no matter the project. Now I am off to town. Since tomorrow is a holiday (for the workers I am told, no one really knows what this holiday represents), I am going to stay at Alison and Tony’s (in the Palace).
Wednesday July 2nd: Yet another week is half over and I have no idea where the time is going. Monday night I enjoyed a delicious dinner of steak kabobs and potato wedges and a glass of wine. Perfect. I spent the Ghana “holiday” with Jeanette. We were running about all over Kumasi, from the grocery store to the post office, bank, cultural center, etc. We could not stop talking about our experience in Ghana thus far and how few weekends we have left to get everything done.
Today Osei (class 4 teacher) came to school, gave the kids an assignment and quietly slipped out. Mr. Boachie (class 5 teacher) informed me that he headed to the hospital because he was ill. After being sick last week myself, I was sympathetic but I wished he had told me himself. Regardless, I took over the class. We worked on the math lesson, which took longer than normal for some reason, I graded the work and gave stickers to all but 5 kids! They are doing much better. Then I gave them homework-words to study for a spelling quiz tomorrow. I wonder who will do better on their quiz, class 4 or class 5? My class kept asking about P.E. and asked if I could take them this Friday. I took this time to explain that Friday the 4th is my countries Independence Day, so I would not be in school. I am going to Accra to celebrate with other Americans I have met over the past 4 months. A few of the kids looked worried and said, “But you will come back right?” This did make me smile and feel appreciated. I told them I would be here for the remainder of the term-through examinations. This seemed to please them. Now the kids are in the church for their bi-weekly blessing and I am waiting for a new volunteer. I was told a girl from the U.S. (though I don’t know which state) will be coming to Columbus for the next month and will be sharing my room. Hmmm…a few months ago I would have loved the company but now I am being a bit stubborn and realize I have my stuff literally everywhere in the room and can’t see where there is room for someone to move in. I’m sure we will get along great and now I will have another person to celebrate with on Independence Day.
Thursday July 3rd: School is over and I am getting ready to head to Kumasi. I will stay with Jeanette tonight and she and I will leave for Accra early tomorrow morning. I mentioned that they last time we were in the capital we spent a good part of our Friday night at an Irish Pub? Well I called Denise (one of the owners) and she and her husband our putting us up in their guest house for free. How lovely. There is still no volunteer. She didn’t show up last night and no one can tell me when she will be arriving. Oh well, I will be gone this weekend and we will just have to figure out where to put all of our stuff when I return. Today went well, although there was only one student in the vocational school so I have to postpone my very interesting lesson on AIDS verses HIV until next week. I decided to drop nutrition and try to get in a lesson about rape and abortion before I write the quiz I am supposed to give the class. There just isn’t any time left. I began the day with my spelling quiz for class 4. Just as I assumed: half the class wrote every word correctly or missed just one and the rest got at least 5 (out of 10) wrong. I gave them just one day to study so perhaps next week I will give new words at the beginning of the week and have the test on Friday. After the test the class would not stop pestering me about taking them to P.E. After promising me they would do a better job of listening, I grabbed the soccer ball and they ran down to the “field.” We played for a good 45 minutes and I was very proud then I only had to ask three times to stop playing and head back to school. After a lunch of somewhat burnt rice and tomato paste I helped class 4 with their math lesson and now I have to quickly pack and head to town. I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July. Hopefully it will be great weather. For anyone who will be attending a barbeque, please have a hotdog for me accompanied by a ice cold beer.
-Erin