First Entry

1st Entry!

I’ve been living in Ghana for only 15 days now, but it feels a lot longer than that.  When the 24 other Peace Corps Trainees and I got off the plane, we were greeted by a wave of heat and humidity that hasn’t left.  After a few days you just get used to it, and now the heat only really bothers me during the middle of the day if there aren’t any clouds and when I’m trying to fall asleep.  In fact, I rarely use a blanket.  I’ve been sleeping on a foam mattress with a sheet over it, and I have my sleeping bag out next to me, but I’ve only thrown it on 3 or 4 times total.

Ghana is really beautiful and almost all of the people are nice and pleasant.  We spent the first 5 nights at Valley View University just outside of Accra; it seemed like a huge leap at the time (and going from the USA to Ghana is a pretty big leap) but Valley View was more like America than we realized.  At VVU we had running water, electricity (sometimes), food served on a buffet, and we all lived within a few hundred feet of each other.  We learned survival Twi (other than English, the most widely spoken language in the South) which is mostly the ability to say, “Good morning. How are you? I’m fine.”  This seems easy enough now, but anyone who’s had to take a crash course in language will tell you it’s very intimidating.  Thankfully, Peace Corps Ghana has a really amazing staff, and almost everyone has at least 10 years of Peace Corps experience.  They are very supportive and helpful, and aside from the hot, day-long sessions about common sense safety issues, everything has been worthwhile.  I’m sure even some of the things we talked about in the Safety and Security sessions will come in handy sometime.

Anyway, our time at Valley View was fun, and I won’t forget the Accra Quest or Lou butchering me with a “haircut.”  Accra Quest was the first time they let us off campus, and they forced us to head into Accra in groups of 4.  Everyone had to go visit a few different places and make it back to Valley View in 5 hours.  This means that you have to board a tro-tro (taxi minivan that holds 22 passengers) and get around knowing only 5 major landmarks.  Since everyone is so nice and helpful we had no problems traveling to the Flagstaff House and the University of Accra Library.  I know I was initially worried about people trying to take my money or scam me, but the opposite happened.  The other people on the tro with us made sure we got the correct change and weren’t overcharged, and one man even led us to the taxi station that would take us where we needed to go.

To understand my “haircut” and why I’ll never forget it, you really need to know Lou.  If you don’t know him, then here’s Lou in a nutshell.  Luciano Triassi: Italian-American New Yorker, 5’3” tall but muscular, Army Veteran who curses like one, former teacher, former hobo, volunteer, 70 years old.  Lou has seen it all, doesn’t really care what you have to say, and will say whatever is on his mind, especially if it’s, “I don’t care what you have to say.” Or something like that. He likes to keep his answers short, sweet, and to the point, and everyone in our group already has 5 funny stories to tell about him.  I think I have the most though because I was his roommate in DC and at Valley View.  I could probably write 1000 words about him, and some of us have been talking about starting a blog for him so we can record his stories. 

The haircut has been my most traumatic Lou experience, and it happened at Valley View.  Lou plugged his hair clippers into the wall outlet adapter and flipped them on.  They made a lot of noise, and Lou said, “Hmmm, they’ve never made that noise before.” But everything seemed to be working fine, and when he offered to trim up the hair on my neck, I agreed.  The right side went okay, but the haircut was hurting me and it felt like someone was grinding sandpaper on my neck.  I asked Lou if he had cut me and I put my hand on my neck to check for blood.  Lou said, “No.” and that I just needed to hold still, but my hand said otherwise.  There was a small dot of blood on my palm.  “Whatever.” I thought, I just wanted him to finish the other side so my neck didn’t look half hairy and half bare.  Lou tried to trim the left side with his right hand and I cringed. I definitely got scraped that time.  He then said, “Maybe if I flip them over and use my left hand, this will be easier.” “Whatever, just hurry up.” The next pass was the worst and then Lou tried one more time and said, “I think I should stop. This looks like it’s hurting you.” I agreed and put my left hand to the left side of my neck, and when I pulled it back, it was covered in blood.  I rushed over to the mirror and I could see a bloody mess on the back of my neck.  “Wow, that’s crazy. I almost feel bad about that. I’m glad I tried that on you before I did myself.  You’re really bleeding a lot. I almost feel bad.”  He suggested shaving cream and a razor to finish the job since I still had a bunch of hair on my neck, and that was clearly what we should have been doing the whole time.  I went to a bar (they are called a spots here) a little later, and I got to tell everyone there about how Lou cut me up.  That sparked everyone’s Lou stories, and his legend continues to grow daily.

Enough about Lou, this is my journal/blog.  I’m very happy to be in Anyinasin, I like my host family a lot.  My mom Akua Anokyewaa is in her early 40s but you would probably guess younger if you saw her.  I have 3 brothers and 2 sisters; Appiah (18 looks 15), Cynthia (17), Arama (14), Kwame (13), and Kwaku (2).  My mom doesn’t speak a lot of English, but everyone else besides baby Kwaku can translate between Twi and English.  We live in a two-building compound with a dirt area in between that serves as the kitchen, dining room, and play room.  Each building has 4 doors to the outside and I’m currently the only one living in my building.  My mom and her family live in 2 of the other rooms in the other building, a cousin lives with her family in another room, and then another family lives in the fourth.  My building seems to be for guests and storage. Grandma stayed in a room here for a few days, but she left to go to Kumasi with another family member yesterday.  I have a large room, and I keep it locked almost all the time.  I trust my family, but I have expensive things and the area around our house is a high-traffic path.  We have electricity, but no one here has running water.  We fetch water from a well, and store it in barrels.  My brothers like the rainy season because the barrels are positioned to catch the rain water from the gutters.  We have an outhouse which is pretty nice for outhouse standards, and we have a shower stall with 3 and a half walls that are 4 feet high.  It’s not the nicest place around here, not even close, but it has a warm homey feel that I like.

Being a foodie I’m going to write another entry solely about food some other time. I eat plenty and almost everything is an oily red soup, which as you can imagine hasn’t really helped my travellers’ diarrhea.

This week was the first week of practicum and I only have 1 more week to go.  I’ll explain more about it once I finish. All you need to know about it now is that my students like me, but they don’t know very much math.  They mostly teach for a test, and the essay questions are graded very harshly.  Creativity and critical thinking are not the focus, rote memorization is.  It pretty much goes against everything I learned in school, but as we have been told many times, Peace Corps teachers are only teachers.  There’s nothing we can do about the systemic problems and the Ghanaian way of teaching.  Volunteers who focus on those problems lose focus on the children whose lives they can change and end up getting depressed.  So I’m just going to focus on helping my students learn as much math as they can, and if they truly understand the material, I believe they will succeed on the WAEC test. Check back in 1 year to see how actually teaching has changed me.

I miss lots of things about America: family, girlfriend, friends, the food, the constant supply of electricity, running water, roads without potholes, safe and reliable cars, not having to rely on taxis, internet, and the freedom to do whatever I like whenever I like.  This is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m still in the honeymoon period, but I’m going to enjoy it.  My fellow Peace Corps Trainees and my host family have made this transition a lot easier and I just want to thank them for that.  Let me know what you would like to hear about in the future.

As they say around here, “Bye-bye-o!”

PS I have a cellphone, but reception is spotty around my house.  I’m also 5 hours ahead of Central Daylight Time, so keep that in mind. I’ll personal message anyone who wants my phone number, but I don’t want to post it to the internet for everyone.