Thank You

Just wanted to write a quick and final thank you to all of you who have supported me over the past six months.  Your emails, messages, donations, and just general good wishes have been really appreciated.  Finally I wish to thank my parents for there continued support.  I wish to publish a public retraction of my high school statements, you are officially not the worst parents in the world.

Welp that's it and that's all folks.  Ghana thanks, you've been great.  America here I come!

My Ghanaian Top Ten

As incredible as it seems the time has almost come for me to leave Ghana.  My bags are of course not packed, but nonetheless I will be leaving Mother Africa on Saturday.  For my last full length blog I figured I would share with you, my loyal readers, the top ten things I will miss about Ghana.  So here we go:

10)  Transportation:  The most common type of transportation in Ghana is tro tros.  Imagine a 70's VW van cramped with 20 people in it and you may have a rough image of the hellish fun a tro tro provides.  I typically take them a few times a week and have come to enjoy all of the fun they bring.  When I don't take a tro tro I can normally be found on Dela's motorcycle.  I have kept that information off of the blog in an attempt to keep my mother happy, but with no more motorcycle rides to go I can safely report that I have ridden on the back of the bike with Dela many times.  That being said I will not report on our one fall together...

9) Bucket Showers:  It took me awhile to become accustomed to showering in a concrete cube but I  must say I will miss the feeling of showering outdoors.  Bucket showers provide me the only chance of my day to feel cold and I have come to love them because of it.  I think I will like showering indoors again, but they just don't have the same character as a bucket shower.

8)  Soccer:  Over the past few weeks there has been a loyal group of around 20 men, not boys, who have been playing football daily.  I have been playing fairly regularly and I have come to really enjoy it.  Not surprisingly they tend to be more athletic than me but in a lot of ways it feels a lot like a carefree high school practice and I certainly enjoyed being back in that atmosphere.

7)  Adastech:  Adastech is the name of the local high school, which is only three years old.  While it is still going through several growing pains I have come to really enjoy the students.  I have been teaching English twice a week to the second year students and I will definitely miss them.  In addition the third years, the schools first class, provide a real mix of students because several are older than your typical high school students as they only returned to school because Adastech was built.  I have found the to be very interesting and consider many of them friends and will certainly miss them.

6)  Traveling:  I can now say I have seen much of the Southern part of Ghana and have tremendously enjoyed my weekends exploring.  From the people I have gotten the chance to talk with to the sites that I have seen it is definitely sad to know I won't have any more Ghanaian adventures.

5)  Scholarship winners:  Over the course of my six months I have gotten to spend a few days with all five of AYEC's five scholarship winners.  Perhaps I am happiest to report the tremendous growth I have seen in them even in the few short months they have been in school.  I accompanied one of them, Precious, to her first day of school and she hardly said a word to me.  When I saw her a few weeks ago she was happy to tell me all about school and her post high school plans.  It was really a great change and I truly hope nothing but the best for them in their remaining two years in school!

4)  My locals:  Several of the older people in Helekpe do not speak English but the ones that do have given me terrific insight into what it is like to live in the village and of their hopes and dreams.  They have served as my daily entertainment and I will miss my conversations with them.

3)  White House lunches:  The White House is a nice restaurant located close to the office in Ho and has served as my regular lunch spot on my twice a week office days.  It has also served as the official lunch place for all of the other volunteers who have worked here.  That means it has seen as many of ten of us gather to talk about our shared frustrations, triumphs, and funny stories.  Another volunteer, Iain, nicknamed these occasions Beer with Brad days and I must say I was honored.  I will miss having the time to sit with interesting people and hear about their experiences.

2)  Mary and Eunice:  My two caretakers.  These women have done everything for me over the past six months. They have cooked three meals a day for me and have washed my clothes a countless number of times.  In a country where being late is the norm Mary and Eunice have served every meal to me on time and have never once missed a meal.  I can't tell you how much their hard work has impressed me and how much I appreciate it.    Not to mention the fact I will miss having all of my meals cooked for me!

1)  Dela:  The easiest spot on the list.  Dela has served as my Ghanaian guide and has easily become my best friend here.  There are a countless number of things I will miss about Dela.  I have come to love his expressions such as, "Being a man is not a day job," and, " The Bible says a man's name is worth more than riches."  But I will also miss watching how hard he works to put himself and his kids through school in addition to doing anything anyone in the town asks of him.  He is truly a special guy and I will miss getting to talk with him everyday.

There ya have it folks my top ten.  Check back on Thursday for one last mini blog then I am off.

Helekpe Wins!

I apologize if the title of the blog spoils the exciting interschool soccer tournament from the Adaklu District in Ghana this past Friday, but I trust not too many of you were anxiously awaiting the results.  Anyway, let me fill in some of the details for you.

Last Friday was a big day for middle schoolers at four local schools.  The four schools, all very close to me, met for interschool sports.  The day featured volleyball and soccer and included tournaments for the girls and boys.  Obviously most importantly for me was boys soccer not only for obvious reasons, but also because I have come to like many of the boys on the team.  I had been told the team would be leaving Helekpe at 6:30am in order to rest before its first game.

I arrived at 8:30 am and found the festivities just beginning.  The beginning of the day featured a weigh in, yes that's right folks, every boy and girl who wished to play soccer for the day had to meet weight restrictions, which were surprisingly tight.  I assume this is because there are a few twenty something year old kids in middle school and perhaps it would be unfair to let them play.  The weigh in itself did not surprise me, as I had been warned that some boys were very nervous, but what did surprise me were the actions of the teachers/coaches.  At one point one kid was surrounded by teachers all screaming and the boy himself had to weighed in three times!  Eventually the district coordinator ruled the boy could play which led to much rejoicing from his teammates.

Helekpe would not play its first match for a few hours, much to my disappointment, so I made myself familiar with some of the local vendors buying popcorn from a nice girl for 10 pesawas (roughly 6 cents) and a half liter bag of water from another vendor as its standard 5 pesawas price.  The Helekpe girls were playing at this point and I made my way over to see an action packed match.  I will spare you the details except to say the game came down to penalty kicks.  Again I will spare you the details except to say the came ended not with one team winning but rather an incredibly heated argument featuring both coaches, many spectators, and towards the end seemingly every male in attendance over the age of 25.  Indeed the ended up calling the match a draw.  I thought the result sucked but was happy when both teams ran off and formed, what I would learn over the day, the traditional circle of singing and dancing to celebrate their perceived triumph.

The boys got under way two matches later and in a rain shortened came managed to come away with a 1-0 victory.  Not to much to report here except to say that the celebration by the Helekpe faithful was not dampered by the rain and went on for about 30 minutes after the match ended.  Interestingly enough some of the players took part but none lasted more than ten minutes and the celebration only intensified with them not in attendance.

The boys played the winners of the other match two hours later in a rather exciting game.  Helekpe got out to a 1-0 lead courtesy of a penalty kick by one of my best friends but were matched late by a determined Abouda side.  The game went to penalty kicks as well.  Again the penalty kicks were interrupted by a ten minute adult male argument but this time the district director of athletics would not call the game and when a young "Short D" made a PK for Helekpe-the title was ours!  The singing and dancing circled was formed and a few Helekpe teachers were hoisted in the air.

I had to leave at this point to get home for dinner.  But was pleasantly surprised about an hour later when the entire middle school paraded through town celebrating the win.  Apparently they all walked the half an hour back singing and dancing the whole way!  The win may have been impressive but to me the celebrating was definitely the highlight of the day.

The Four Million Cedi Family

I have a lot of time to think here and a lot of it is spent thinking about development in terms of how to make it happen and what it will look like when it happens.  Being here has obviously given me a much better foundation to think about but unfortunately I still find myself without answers (unfortunately I am not alone.)  One of the particularly interesting facts here is that even when people make it out of the community and are successful they still keep a house in their community.  This shows just how important history and ones family/village is to people here.  I have struggled a lot with this though as it seems to me like a waste of money.  That being said I also enjoy how strong communities are here.  It did make me wonder though what if a family here somehow struck it big.

Thankfully thanks to the government of Ghana this is not such a vague concept anymore.  After four months of being here (this was a few weeks ago) Dela and I were walking when he mentioned that the land for the wildlife refuge, a few kilometers from his house, is on land that used to belong to his wives family.  Dela was telling me they own lots of land and that it is valuable, in fact, the government bought the wildlife refuge land for four million cedis (roughly 2.8 million dollars.)  Now I hear high numbers all the time because a few years ago Ghana devalued it currency so one cedi today used to be worth 10,000 cedi just a few short years ago.  I asked Dela if that was in old money and he said it was not, it was actually 4 million cedi. 

Obviously I asked what the family, lead by Dela's brother in law, did with the money.  Well first of course they had to divide it up amongst the family, and since in Ghana they practice a standard family, that meant dividing up the money somewhere between 100 and 150 different ways.  However, they did not simply divide 4 million in equal parts instead the leader of the family simply divided seemingly at a whim.  Disappointingly for Dela's wife her brother only gave her 400 cedi.  However, this only intrigued me more: if a few people received most of the money what could they spend it on?

Well in some ways they did the same thing most people would do with it.  They are in the process of building a few bigger homes in their community and also investing it.  The investments look a little different.  The biggest investment I have seen is a large truck used to haul building materials and goods, but it is an investment nonetheless.  But by and large this newly wealthy people live seemingly no different than anyone else.

The leads me to some good and bad conclusions.  First of all development, and I am only speaking in my narrow perspective, will not mean leaving behind small villages.  People will always take pride in where they are from and therefore will always keep some tie to the community.  Unfortunately, I wonder whether these ties will slow the process of development overall.  If people we always trying to move towards cities it would mean that only cities, which are already closer to development, needed to develop more, but now we still have to develop each small village.

Again I do not know if this is good or bad, but realistically think it is both.  Like I said at the beginning I have a better foundation to think about, but still no answers...

Bringing in the New Year with Gin and a Slaughtered Goat

Happy New Year to my loyal readers!  Christmas and New Year tend to blend into one very long celebration in Ghana.  In Helekpe that means every night there is drumming, dancing, and some very drunk men.  It was definitely interesting to see but I never spent more than ten minutes each night watching the festivities.  Cool to see but the possibility of getting talked to by a drunk Ghanaian was more than enough to send me home early.

However, that isn't to say I didn't bring in the New Year in style!  Apparently when you buy, or in our case rent, land in Ghana you do more than simply pay for it.  AYEC is renting five acres to start our new farm which should generate enough income to make AYEC self-sustaining particularly in terms of paying school fees for our scholarship winners.  The cost to rent the land was 30 cedi (22 dollars) per year per acre.  However, we also had to go through the tradition Ghanaian customs.  That meant a few weeks ago we had to go and see the land with the landowners and bring them to bottles of gin.  Then we paid for the land and went back to make it official by writing a contract.  When we went back we had to bring two more bottles of gin, a big jug of palm wine, a live male goat (confusingly known as a rum), and fifty cedi cash.  We did this all on New Years Day at 6am.  As custom dictates I took a shot of gin and then watched as the goat was slaughtered.  To be clear they use both the goat and the gin to offer some as a sacrifice to their ancestors who first claimed the land.  It was certainly interesting to see, but I don't think when I leave here I will find myself longing for the days of slaughtering animals.

That being said AYEC now has a farm for a year and when we harvest our first crops around June we should be able to use that money to secure the land for somewhere between five and ten years!  It is definitely exciting because it means AYEC does not have to ask future volunteers for money and it means our scholarship winners will be paid for.

January will mostly be spent getting the farm ready to go so that the planting can happen when the rainy season returns in late February or early March.  The other big plus of starting a farm is that one of the local teachers majored in agriculture in training college and has offered to help, so the farm is in good hands from the start!  Other than that January will be used looking to raise some more money so that we can use February, oddly enough my last month here, to renovate the local middle school. It won't be easy but if we can get it done all of our goals for my time will have been accomplished.

Other than that not much to report from the motherland.  As always your comments and emails are appreciated.  If nothing else please pray for the Ravens for the next month! 

Education

So far in my blogs I have tried to avoid anything remotely close to an intellectual topic.  However, part of the enjoyment of writing these blogs is that I do not have to see anyone's reaction.  So I am going to climb atop my soapbox for a minute and talk about education here in Ghana, specifically Helekpe.  I should preface my opinions by saying I attended The Park School of Baltimore, few more liberal K-12 schools exist that I know of, followed by Drew University, a liberal arts college.

Education is Ghana, at least the schools in the villages I live in, tends to consist of three steps.  Step one is the teacher telling the students what he or she needs to know.  Generally this is a definition of a word or term.  Step two consists of the student writing that definition down verbatim.  Step three is that student memorizing that definition again verbatim.  The problem I see here should be readily apparent: there is no thinking involved!

I could give you many examples of this but my favorite comes from my good friend Nelson.  Nelson is five years old and a wonderfully cheerful boy.  He runs absolutely everywhere and he absolutely cracks me up.  A few weeks ago Nelson learned to add at school.  If I asked Nelson 3+2 he would count three fingers on one hand, two on the other, look down, then up at me showing me five fingers, and would yell, "Five!"  The system worked great, and despite some struggle he could even do 6+4.  However, if I asked Nelson 4+7 that garnered much more confusion.  As I am sure you know one hand is limited to five fingers.  So Nelson would count out four on one hand, five on the other, and then get confused.  The trusty system he had learned had failed him.

Obviously Nelson is only five so perhaps the struggle to learn addition is an international problem, so let's look at another boy.  Stephen is 15 years old and comes over every night to talk to me and ask me questions.  Stephen dreams of attending senior high in Kpando, a nearby town, that has a very good senior high school.  He works very diligently studying for two hours a day.  He recently got a book that he learned the government often takes questions from for the BEC (the high school entrance exam) from and has been carrying it around religiously.  Last week Stephen brought over his government exams and while flipping through science I noticed he had gotten one wrong.  The question was which planet has the largest orbit.  Stephen had selected Jupiter.  When I asked Stephen why Jupiter he said it was because he knew it was the largest planet.  When I asked him what about the question saying something about orbit he said he had not learned what orbit meant.  I said ok well let's put orbit in context and try and figure out what it means.  As I walked through this with Stephen it was apparent he had absolutely no idea how to use context clues.  This is really the heart of the problem.  If your education relies solely on being told things you better make sure you are told absolutely every single fact that mankind knows because you lack the ability to figure anything out yourself.

I also want to be clear that this problem is not nationwide.  I know this because while working at this local high school I have talked to some of the other teachers.  A lot of the other teachers are doing there national year of service and come from other parts of Ghana.  They share my frustration that the students never ask questions.  That problem stems from the same issue as if you are told everything you need to know there is never a need to ask anything.  You simply write things down and wait to write the next tidbit of information down.

I could extend this blog onto how this dependence on being given things extends to some of the larger problems I see in the village but I wish to climb down from my soapbox for now.  If you made it this far thanks for reading and for those of you who are teachers or interested in education please let me know your thoughts.

A Day in Ghana

I had the pleasure to talk to my family on Thanksgiving and my dad actually gave me a good idea for a blog.  Apparently people want to know what I do on a day to day basis.  I will do my best to give you an idea of what life here is like, but obviously everyday here is different.  That being said let's walk through a given Tuesday...

6:30am:  At this time, or 7:30am, I get three knocks on my door from either Eunice or Mary (my caretakers) telling me that breakfast is ready.  Breakfast is typically an egg sandwich along with hot chocolate.  Eating hot chocolate outside in Ghana can be tough, but it is nice nonetheless.

7:30am:  I have recently started teach English twice a week at the local senior high school and this is when my class starts on Tuesday.  I will do a blog next week on teaching but it is certainly very challenging to teach in a Ghanaian classroom.

9am:  This is typically when I leave school and my day greatly slows down.  I normally stop on my walk home to see the tailors who are working on school uniforms for the orphans.  However, still I am usually home by quarter after nine and then have nothing to do until.

Noon:  Every day at noon Mary or Eunice brings lunch.  My lunches and dinner can vary and the local food is difficult to describe.  Typically though I am praying for red red which is beans and fried plantain soaked in oil.  Every meal I eat alone, but again outside, and at high noon that is again quite a hot part of the deal.

After I finish up lunch I have no obligations until my committee meeting at 4pm.  Typically I spend my time reading or typing up documents for the committee.  Often Dela will come back on a break from school and we can chat a little then.

4pm:  On Tuesdays and Friday AYEC meets at four to discuss updates on existing projects and what types of other projects will would like to work on.  Meetings can last anywhere from 5 minutes (typically when we are just waiting for something to be done there is nothing to talk about) to half an hour, and normally last about twenty minutes.  Dela and I then walk home together and kick around some other ideas with just one another.  I also use this time to figure out exactly what happened in the meeting since most of the time discussions are in Ewe (the local language.) 

When I return home I am typical swarmed by the local kids and they stay until...

6pm:  Once again it is delivery time from either Mary or Eunice.  Like I said I eat all my meals alone and if any kids even approaches my Mary or Eunice yells at them from across the small yard that separates us.  Again I typically eat in around twenty minutes and then the kids come back.

I stay outside playing with the kids until whenever I want to take my bucket shower and then call it a night.

I do not want to give any false impressions about my days here in Ghana.  I along with the other volunteers are all working on a lot of projects but with that being said there is still a lot of down time.  I think it is the natural result of not having a job while most people in the community are busy during the days.  I still feel I am being productive and doing a lot, but I do wish there was a little less down time. That being said I definitely feel as though I have adjusted since I have already been here two and a half months!

Don't think I can escape this blog with saying a quick giving of thanks. I am incredibly thankful for all my friends and family who have been supportive of me while I am here.  It makes my day to get emails from back home.  I am also thankful for those who have contributed to AYEC's projects.  If you haven't that is obviously fine too but please, please, please consider making a donation.  Again I love getting emails so feel free to send me one at brad.mendelson@gmail.com