School's Starting Part 2

19th August - Present

So far my time in Bodada has been uneventful, but pleasant.  I live in a nice-sized, EP church-owned compound with ten rooms, and two of them are mine.  My bedroom is about the size of a dorm room, and it's pretty spartan.  I have a bed, 2 plastic chair, and as of yesterday I have a desk provided by EPJHS.  My second room will be a kitchen/dining room, but it's still under construction.  The carpenters have to pour new cement for the floor, the room needs painting, and it needs a ceiling.  I'm told that the ceiling will be wooden beams with woven mats placed between them to "Keep the lizards out of the soup."  Sounds good to me, right now lizard soup doesn't sound too tasty.

The first day I arrived my counterpart Godwin and I went into Hohoe (the second largest city in the Volta Region) to buy a USB modem, voltage regulator, and other supplies.  I impulse bought an electric kettle on the recommendation of my shadow visit host, Mike Shoup, and I can honestly say that it competes with the USB modem as my favorite purchase.  I mostly just use it to heat up water for my bucket bath, and after my first warm bucket bath I couldn't remember how I tolerated bathing without warm water.

Since my kitchen is still under construction I didn't buy a propane tank or a stove which cost almost 150GH₵ combined.  This means that I get to use the pastor's stove (same setup as I would buy) whenever I cook something, which is nice but I would prefer my own space.

My second major adventure was to the Tuesday market town of Kute which is located on the border with Togo.  Although it's listed as 5km away from Bodada on my information sheet that I got about my site, it took almost an hour of traveling to get there.  The drive was beautiful: there were mountains, forest, farms, and small villages along the whole way.  Like Bodada, Kute is between two mountains, but the mountains that form the border with Togo are noticeably larger than the Ghanaian ones.  The town is small, but market itself is large because Togolese and Ghanaians both buy and sell there.  Nothing too interesting happened there, but it was nice to get to use my Ewe market skills.  Unfortunately I don't think I'll go there too much (at least until I buy a bicycle) because traveling there costs as much as traveling to Hohoe (which offers a larger market with better prices).  Jasikan (the town that really is 5km away) has a large market on Fridays, and it's large enough that I buy most things regardless of the day of the week.

My third adventure was meeting Kate Pote in Hohoe for shopping and meeting other volunteers.  Kate is the closest volunteer to me (about 30 minutes away from me at Akpafu Sec. Tech.) and is a science teacher there.  Akpafu is on the Hohoe-Jasikan road about 10 minutes from Hohoe, so whenever I end up going there I'll probably see what she's doing.  We just went to the market and then met up with Scott and Nathan who are also PCVs in Volta.  Scott teaches art in Hohoe, and also helped open up a store called Our Talking Hands which sells traditional Ghanaian art products made by students at a Deaf Art School (in Ghana all people with mental disabilities who go to school go to "Deaf" schools...sad but true).  Scott is really committed to this place, and he helped the owner create a Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/0urTalkingHands and a website http://ourtalkinghands.com/.  Nathan lives in the Northern part of Volta, and was just swinging by before his trip home to California.  I probably won't see him too much, but he's the head malaria dude in Volta so we'll be in contact.

My fourth and final adventure was school!  It started yesterday, 4th of August, but we won't start actually teaching until next week.  Schools here don't have janitors or grounds crews because they have lots of free labor at their disposal.  That's right, school children do all the sweeping, mowing (called weeding and done with machetes), and cleaning.  The first week is dedicated to getting the school presentable and in full working order.  Tomorrow we'll be reviewing last year's exams, and it'll be a good chance for me to gauge the actual level of the students.  These last two days have been pretty slow, I just show up, talk with the other teachers and the headmaster, and then go home at the end of the day.   I'm still not sure what my teaching schedule will be because the headmaster hasn't even figured out the schedule yet...such is life in Ghana. 

The last two weeks and a half weeks have been pretty slow going, especially compared to the schedule we had during training, but it's been very relaxing.  I've met a lot of people by going to church and many more people come over just to talk with the pastor.  I've been out on the town a little, but not too much.  Mostly I've just spent time with the people who live in the compound (Pastor Jean-Paul, Sarah, Patricia, and Michael), and spent a lot of time reading too.  I recently finished the last two books of the Hunger Games series, and I'm on to the fourth Song of Fire and Ice/Game of Thrones book.  I'm really happy that school has started though because it will give my life a little more structure, and I'm really looking forward to meeting the students and teaching.  I do know that I'll be teaching all three grades ICT (computer class) and Godwin and I will split the math (known as maths here) and science classes.

I'll try to blog more too. Let me know what you want to know about via Facebook, email, or comments.

School's Starting!

Wow, it's been a really long time since I've posted anything.  Sorry to the 7 people who regularly read my blog.  Anyway, I'll give you an update on my life, and hopefully I'll revisit the food blog soon.

End of July through 15th of August: 

My life revolved around learning Ewe.  Everything I heard about the Peace Corps language program before joining was very positive: it's total immersion, you become fluent, and it makes integration a lot easier.  I feel like by being assigned to Ghana we missed out on these opportunities.  Ghana is different from most countries I know about because the official language English is only used in schools and government.  Everyone who graduated from senior high school speaks English well, but at the junior high level and in the villages they don't speak English so well (if they speak it at all). 

Ghana is also very split concerning the local languages; the government only recognizes 7 local languages, but there are over 100 distinct dialects.  For example the language they speak in Bodada is Lelemi.  Everyone here speaks Lelemi, and it's in the Akan family of languages (same as Twi- the most widely spoken native language).  Lelemi is not officially recognized by the Ghanaian government because so few people speak it.  Most people of Bodada also speak Twi and Lelemi, but they all grew up speaking Lelemi, so it's their best language.  Because the government doesn't recognize Lelemi, the local language part of the BECE and WAECE exams (where students from small villages usually score the best) don't offer Lelemi.  0 of 13 students passed the BECE last year at my school.  The grading is from 1-9, 1 is the best, and anything below 7 is considered a passing grade.  I have my work cut out for me. (And so do my students because they don't even get a freebie from Lelemi being on the test.)

So beside the fact that I don't know the local language of my village, I couldn't even be immersed in Ewe (considered the language of the Volta) because we were in Eastern Region where they speak Twi.  The British were better at colonizing by the time they got to Ghana.  They had a basic idea of what worked and what didn't based on past colonizing ventures (North America and India to name the big ones).  The British did do some development (they allowed people at the local level to rule themselves).  Do I think what they did by creating a colony was good? No.  Maybe it's the same in South America, but I am under the impression that the Spanish did a better job eliminating local languages and people.  Do I think that's terrible? Yes, so many years of tradition and unique history have been erased forever from human knowledge.  Do I think the local language learning would be easier in a country with a single unified language? Absolutely.

Peace Corps sets the required level of language fluency at Intermediate-Mid, and in Ghana we have 5 weeks to get there.  Inter-Mid means that you can form complete, grammatically correct sentences and a sympathetic listener can understand you.  I learned vocabulary and grammar for Ewe so I could get around in a few different situations: extended introduction, market adventure, asking for directions and directing people, and travel scenarios.  I passed the test, and I actually had a pretty good grasp of Ewe (I didn't just memorize some dialogs like some do).  I can put my own sentences together which is more than most people, but I've been told I have a chip in my brain that helps me learn languages.  If Peace Corps graded me on my Spanish level, they would give me something like Advanced (and I'm definitely not fluent).  I guess different people of different ideas about language fluency *cough cough* Sam and Paul! Keep taking Spanish, you know more than you think you do! *cough cough*

Most Peace Corps programs have language and technical training together for the whole 10 weeks, but due to the Ghanaian school schedule and our arrival time we do all of our technical training (teaching) first, and then we move on to language.  Basically we had 5 intense weeks for each, and that forced us to cram really hard to pass the language test.  There was a lot of unhappiness in our training group related to the language training schedule.  But at the end of the day we teach in English, and even in villages, enough people know English that you can get by without any other language.  I do plan on learning Lelemi, and it's amazing how little Lelemi it takes for people to love the fact that I'm trying.  They always tell me I'm doing great, and I can only say the greetings right now.

16th of August: Swearing-In

This was a lot of fun.  Everyone's homestay parents, prominent members of the community, other PC volunteers, all of the PC staff, and even the US Ambassador to Ghana were all in attendance.  My mom, her sister, and I were matching in our outfits and I'll get some pictures up soon (there are some on Facebook already).  We only lost 2 people to early termination during training (really good compared to PC as a whole), and one of those people didn't even show up in DC.  24 of us swore in and took an oath (very similar to the President's Oath of Office) to accept our roles as Peace Corps Volunteers for two years.

That night I exchanged gifts with my homestay family.  They gave me a bunch of pictures from swearing in and other occasions, and I they gave me the cloth for the outfits to match my mom.  I had my mom (real mom from America) mail some stuff, and my family loved it.  They especially loved the candy, soccer ball (football here), perfumes, toy truck that makes noise, and baby clothes for Kwaku Peter Vanney.  They were a really good family, and we got along well.  I plan on visiting them sometime during my service.

17-19th August

Our whole training group went to Bunso Coco College for two days to learn about Peace Corps Ghana's other sectors Agriculture and Health.  This was a lot of fun because the sessions were led by current volunteers, so we got to meet more people!  Then we all went our separate ways to go to our sites.  I need to get going to school now, so I'll give you the rest of the updates later today.

Food Part 1

I'm not really sure of the best way to go about writing this, so it's just going to be a stream of consciousness.  I'm going to try to organize it by categories, but we'll see how that goes.

Most Ghanaian food is eaten with your hands, and that doesn't sound too difficult until you realize that most Ghanaian food is a soup or stew.  Granted, you get a starchy ball of something to help you eat the stew, but kind of like eating rice with chopsticks, it's really hard unless you grew up doing it or have a lot of practice.  I could probably write a 2000 words about the proper way to eat each food, but I won't get into that now.  Just don't eat with your left hand; it's considered incredibly rude and disrespectful because that's the hand you wipe with.

Here's another interesting thing about food that I've noticed: people have the set way of making something and only that specific way is the proper way.  Different families prepare things differently, and no one quarrels about that, but if an American tries to add a sauce or vegetables to something that it doesn't  belong on, the Ghanaians will let you know.  For example, many of us wanted to put cabbage on our hamburgers one day (no lettuce so why not) when we had a caterer, but they insisted that we couldn't do that because the foods weren't meant to go together.

Starches:

Fufu, bankou/akple, kenke, and rice balls  are the four most common starches eaten in Ghana (or at least Southern Ghana, I'm not sure about the North).  Besides rice balls which are just balls of white rice, the starches are made from some combination of corn, cassava, plantain, yam, and/or coco yam. 

Fufu is made by pounding boiled plantain and cassava (although yam and coco yam can be substituted) in a giant mortar and pestle with water.  The mortar and pestle is only used for pounding fufu, and it's bad luck to pound an empty one.  The pestle is just a big stick as thick as a forearm and usually about four or five feet long.  The business end is flat because of the beating it takes, and its edges are all curled back up to keep splinters and pieces of wood out of the fufu.  The mortar is a big heavy hourglass-shaped piece of wood carved from a single block.  They are usually about 16 inches in diameter, and the part that takes the pounding is flat.  It takes a lot of work to make fufu because you have to pound the ingredients until you get a sticky ball the consistency of bread dough.  Basically you are adding air into the starch until it's smooth.  Also, you don't chew it, you just swallow the chunck that you "cut" from the ball with your index and middle fingers.  In my opinion, it's mostly tasteless.

Bankou, also known as akple in the Volta region, is a ball made by "driving" fermented corn dough together with fermented cassava.  Different regions eat different strengths of bankou (I don't like it after it ferments for too long), and truth be told, akple is actually different from bankou, but I don't really know why yet.  You just mix the fermented doughs together in a big pot over a fire and stir vigorously; this one also takes a lot of work because you have to cook it for at least 30 minutes stirring constantly so it doesn't burn. Bankou tastes like a grainy, earthy, sour ball of corn flour.

Kenke is made by steaming corn dough in corn husks or sometimes banana leaves; it's a lot like a tamale but it's not filled with anything.  Bankou and fufu are usually balled up and put directly into the bowl of soup, but kenke is usually served on the side and dipped into a sauce or thick stew.  It's often eaten with "pepe" (Ghanaians trying to say pepper), and it's pretty similar to salsa.  It's also eaten with stewed meats.  Kenke doesn't have much flavor either, and just tastes like corn.

Rice balls are just made by mixing over watered rice until you get a starchy mass.  They are the easiest thing for me to eat here because we eat rice all the time in America.  They think rice is an American food, and I just find that hilarious because we consider rice to be an Asian food.  Rice balls are generally served in the soup directly like bankou or fufu.

Soups:

All the soups here have the same basic ingredients as American soups: onions, tomatoes, peppers (the hot ones), pepper powder (think chili powder), salt (or a processed spice packet made by Magi that is mostly salt but also has other spices), and water.  By adding tomato paste and a meat (usually smoked and dried fish) to those basic ingredients you get what they call light soup.  It's basically a simple tomato soup, and it can be eaten with any of the starch balls.

The vegetable soups that I've had are contumiri, okra, and garden egg (egg plant), and unless you specifically tell them not to, they will add smoked and dried fish.  They all have less tomato than the light soup, and but otherwise it's the same.  Contumiri (I have no idea how to spell it) is the green leaf of the coco yam, and if you don't boil it for a really long time, the acid in the leaves won't break down and can cause kidney stones.  Also, the older a leaf is the more acid it has, so many Ghanaians only eat the young leaves that grow from the center of the plant.  Contumiri stew is usually eaten with boiled yams or coco yams, or occasionally bankou (no fufu though); it kind of tastes like spinach.  Okra stew it really sticky and slimy because the okra is just boiled and then ground or diced.  Ghanaians insist that okra stew must have fish in to be okra stew, and it must be served with bankou.  Okra stew is not my favorite, but it's not too bad either.  Garden egg is what they call egg plant over here, and an egg plant is they plant itself.  They really do look a lot like eggs here because they are white not purple and much smaller (you guessed it, egg sized!)  The soup had a nice taste of vegetables, and I think I had it with bankou.

I've also eaten palm nut soup and groundnut soup.  Palm nut soup is made by boiling a big pot full of little red palm nuts, then beating them in a special mortar and pestle to separate the flesh from the seed.  The flesh is rich and nutty, and it makes a delicious soup full of umami and savory flavors that I am unable to describe.  It's prepared similar to light soup, but they use red oil (palm oil) to add more flavor and calories.  I like it best with chicken and fufu.  Groundnuts are peanuts, and the soup is a thick peanut broth that I think goes best with beef and rice.  I'm not sure how it's made because my host mom hasn't made it for me.

Meats:

I've only been here for about two months and I've already had a crazy amount of meat variety.  I've eaten fishes of all variety including shark, chicken, beef, pork, snail, snake, squirrel, rat, cat, and dog.  Probably more too, but that's all I can think of now.  Most have been smoked and dried to preserve the meat (because there are no refrigerators here) and then added to soups, but occasionally they will be fried in red oil or stewed.  By adding the meats to soups you greatly improve the soup, but you tend to lose a lot of the meat flavor and just get a bland smoky flavor.  Also, the extra cooking made the squirrel and rat particularly tough.  I haven't had a steak since I left America, and the beef, chicken, and snail have only been served in soups.  Besides eating fish with pepe, fish is usually just smoked, dried, and added to soup also.  The pork and cat have been two of my favorites so far.  The pork that I had was cooked on the street and stewed in a giant pot.  Because we were eating it late in the day, they only had fat and skin left, but the fat had been cooking for a long time and melted into sweet, salty, pork goodness in your mouth.  Cat was first fried in red oil and then stewed in a tomato based sauce with lots of spices.  We ate it with kenke, and the meat was succulent, juicy, and sweet.  I've only eaten dog I've had has been smoked fresh and then added to rice jollaf.  It was good, but mostly tasted like smoke.

Up next: Street food, fruit, and everything else!

Job Shadow

On June 16th, a Monday, I left Bodada for Saviefe Gbogame.  I took a taxi from Bodada to Jasikan, a trotro from Jasikan to Hohoe, and a small bus from Hohoe to Ho.  In total the trip took around three hours, but it felt longer than that because the roads are full of potholes and my bus was stopped at a police checkpoint for 15 minutes because our driver did not have his proper license or insurance or something.  Once in Ho, I called Mike Shoup, a current volunteer stationed in Saviefe Gbogame, to pick me up from the taxi station.  Mike was in Ho because he had helped another trainee (Sam who will takes Mike's place when he finishes in a few weeks) get to her shadow site.  I made better time than Mike had expected, so we went to the Vodafone internet cafe.

After that we went to a little spot that Mike frequents when he's in Ho and chatted about life as a Peace Corps Volunteer and our lives back in America.  Mike has integrated really well into his community: he's fluent in Ewe (although he would tell you he's not), he knows everyone in town, and he's got a group of guy friends, mostly other teachers, who refer to themselves as Parliament (Mike is of course the foreign minister).  I told Mike about my pre-Ghana life, and it turns out that we had pretty similar stories.  There are a lot of similarities between the two of us, and if I end up like Mike in two years then I'll be pretty happy.

We took a small, cramped bus to Saviefe Gbogame, and I know I complain about the roads a lot, but this road was the worst I've been on so far.  It took us over an hour to travel about 30 km (I think that's probably a high estimate).  The town is pretty small, but small towns are good for PCVs because you can actually feel at home if you make an effort.  Mike also has a pretty sweet home with a grass yard and toilets (no running water, but you just dump a bucket full down the hole to flush), and Mike has a great landlord who lives there too.  He says that they have really become his second family.  That night I just met some of Mike's friends, and we took it pretty easy.

The next day I visited Mike's school, but it really was not that exciting because it was end of term exam week in Ghana.  The Ministry of Education requires a standard end of term exam for all Ghanaian students, and the tests are full of typos, terrible questions, and just flat out incorrect English.  For example, one question on the Information and Communication Technology test asked students the number of buttons in the navigation panel of a factory settings version of Internet Explorer.  Not only is the number completely useless even if you have a computer in front of you, but also the tests don't always include answer keys.  Mike just gives out bonus points for terrible questions, so the math test for Form 2 had five bonus points (on a test with 40 questions).  I graded most of those (maybe 3/4 of them) and the scores ranged from 9 to 22 (that's including the 5 bonus points).  Also, I got to look at some solutions students gave for the essay and short answer portion of their social studies final, and it was pretty bad...maybe half the class got 0's (grading extremely generously).

After school Mike and I went to a neighboring town to visit a friend of Mike's from Bodada, visited an akpeteshi distillery, and hung out with Parliament until David (another trainee) got into town that night.  Hanging out with Parliament entails sitting around a circle in plastic chairs talking and drinking.  It was a lot of fun talking and drinking with those guys, and I hope I can get a similar group of Ghanaian friends in Bodada. 

It was pretty late when David showed up because he had a rough time getting to Saviefe.  He's technically in the Volta Region, but he's outside of the main Volta strip on the East side of Ghana.  His site is in Bejemsi which is northwest of Kete Krachi in between the two northern forks of Lake Volta, so he has to travel by ferry to get anywhere in the South.  Turns out that all the ferries are currently broken, so he had to take a big canoe across the Eastern part to get into the rest of Volta.  Then he had a terrible time waiting for taxis and trotros to fill on his way to Saviefe; I think he told me it took him 13 hours total (and that's just traveling within the Volta Region)!

David arrived around 8 and was starving, and so was I because Mike and I hadn't eaten since 10:30 that morning.  Mike had been arranging a special feast for us, and unlike most plans he tries to make this one ended up happening.  Mike's best friend is a rasta who doesn't smoke weed (he drinks though) and is an amazing cook, so whenever they have something special Rasta Mensah is involved.  I'll just come right out and say it now, we ate cat, and it was delicious.  I'm glad we weren't there for the killing and butchering, but I would have liked to watched them cook the meat.  Apparently the deep fry it in red oil (palm oil pressed from the palm nuts), but I don't know anything else that went into the thick stew that we ate with kenke (corn flour steamed in either corn husk or banana leaves, I can't remember which one it is).  Although we all had a pretty good buzz from drinking all afternoon on empty stomachs, I don't think that's the only reason the meat was so sweet and tender; I think cat meat is probably just really good (deep frying it obviously helps too).

The next day (Wednesday) we went to school with Mike again, and just lounged around reading and watching movies.  Apparently that's a pretty typical day for Mike, and he said he's gotten really good at just sitting and doing nothing. Then we had snake for dinner.  It was also good, but not as good as the cat.

On Thursday Kate Mansfield came to visit me and hang out in Saviefe Gbogame.  For those of you who don't know who she is, Kate is a fellow Decorah person who's a year younger than me, and I know her because everyone in Decorah knows everyone else.  Kate's going to start her 5th year at UW Madison, and was in Sokode Gbogame (45 min bus ride from Saviefe Gbogame) volunteering at an orphanage with a few other people.  So Kate and her friend Vanessa got on the bus and met us in Saviefe around 8:00am.

We immediately went out to a palm wine farm to see the process and sample some of the local drink.  Palm wine is made by cutting down a palm tree, cutting off all the green parts, cutting a hole in the trunk to collect the watery sap, and collecting the liquid in a jug.  It's all very unscientific, but very cool.  Apparently a single tree can produce wine for weeks varying between four liters of wine (litres in Ghana) in the beginning and as little as 2 liters towards the end.  You could still collect the liquid produced by the tree after it stops producing a significant amount; however, the liquid begins fermenting as soon as it leaves the tree leaving you with extremely strong (maybe 20% alcohol) wine by the time your jug fills.

We went early in the morning so the wine we sampled would be fresh, thus very sweet and fruity.  And it definitely was sweet!  The "wine" had very little alcohol and tasted as sweet as soda.  The flavor was slightly fruity, but the sweetness overpowered the unique fruitiness of the wine.  We tried some of the slightly more fermented stuff also (I had taken a few drinks of that on previous days), and the unique palm wine flavor comes through more strongly.  As I'm writing this about a week after the fact, I can't recall the taste and flavors, so I can't give you a good foodie description.

This farm was also an akpeteshi distillery, but he wasn't currently distilling anything.  It looked like a moon-shining operation that you would find in the Appalachians: oil barrel with a fire underneath (for boiling the wine), copper tubing to collect the alcohol vapor, and two barrels of water through which the copper tubing runs and is coiled (to cool the alcohol back into a liquid), and the end of the tube where the alcohol drips out.  The first batch of liquid that comes out of the still is just wood alcohol, so that gets thrown out.   It's just pure akpeteshi flowing out of the tap after that.

For the rest of the day we just hung out and visited with people.  This involves drinking, and I probably drank a little too much.  I ended up falling asleep at 6:30, but it was a fun day.  The next morning David and I took the bus to Ho, then boarded a large trotro to Koforidua, and then took taxis and trotros back to Anyinasin.  All in all the trip took a bit over 5 hours, but it seemed like less time.  For the next few weeks everyone will be focusing on learning their site languages, so that's Ewe for me.  It's going well, so I should have no problem passing my interview exam.

I swear the next blog post will be about food.

Site Visit Part 2

Yesterday, Friday, I returned to Anyinasin from my site visit and job shadow trip.  It's nice to be back, but at the same time I'm really looking forward to going back to Bodada.

Last Saturday I met two of the three chiefs and two of three queen mothers in Bodada with the help of my counterpart and my headmaster.  I met one of the queen mothers who was just sitting in a store, went to the stool chief's house, met another queen mother, and then went to visit the chief of Bodada-Buem.  I didn't end up meeting the paramount chief or one of the queen mothers, but I don't remember which queen mother I didn't meet.  The paramount chief is basically the head chief of the area, but the stool chief has similar authority.  I'm not really sure what the difference is, but here's what I do know: every town has a chief (like a king-mayor, chiefdom is inherited); every region has a paramount chief (I think he's elected from the other chiefs but I'm not sure); and stool chiefs rule over regions as well.  The paramount chief and stool chiefs work together, but I don't know where the stand on the hierarchy.  I'm pretty sure that the paramount chief rules over a group of people, in this case it's the Buem people, and they choose the site for the paramount chief based on the safety and protection an area can offer.  Since Bodada is in the middle of the Buem area, and it's between two mountains, it's a very secure location.  I found this information fascinating, but I've probably bored many of you reading this already.

Each time you meet a chief or queen mother you have to go through the same formal greeting and introduction.  It goes something like this:

                "Good morning chief, how are you today? We mean no ill will and carry with us no bad news.  As you know, many months ago we applied for a Peace Corps Volunteer to come to Bodada and teach at EP JHS.  Thankfully our application was accepted and by God's grace our volunteer has arrived.  His name is Peter Vanney, but he's known as Ofah Yaw (I'm not sure how you spell it, but it means Uncle Yaw).  He's here primarily to work as a teacher, but he's also here to help all of Bodada.  He'll be leaving here on Sunday and will return at the end of August to stay for two years.  He's from America and will be learning our language and getting to know many people in the community. We've come to visit you to gain your blessing and to inform you that he'll be living with us."

So then the chief says, "Yes, you are welcome." and he goes around to shake everyone's hand (in a counterclockwise motion so as to never have the back of his hand facing someone whom he hasn't met [you only shake with your right hand]).  If you're meeting a queen mother, then the ceremony is over; however, if you're meeting a chief you are offered a shot of some alcohol.  In most cases it's akpeteshi, but sometimes the chief will have beer or Schnapps.  It's not impolite at all to decline this drink (just like America some people don't drink alcohol), but I have taken it every time it's been offered.

On Sunday the 15th, I went to church and then hung out with my counterpart and his friend Castro.  Church was a long ordeal, and since the pastor (my landlord) broke his arm on Friday in a motorcycle accident, a few different people gave sermons.  For a while everyone was worried that the pastor might have been seriously injured (you hear motorcycle accident and you know it can be bad), so it was nice to hear that he only broke his arm.  It was completely serendipitous that he broke his arm the day after I arrived, but I couldn't help but think some crazy people might connect the accident to my arrival.  Like I said, I am glad that it is only a broken arm.  Church only lasted a little over 2 hours, but since I had to sit up on the stage the whole time so they could introduce me to the congregation, it seemed a lot longer.  The sermons were mostly in Twi, occasionally they would translate parts into Ewe and Lelemi, but none of it was in English so I didn't understand a bit of it. 

The woman who was leading church in the pastor's stead introduced me as Ofah Yaw to the congregation.  Basically she went through the whole chief speech and then asked me to say a few words.  I thought this situation might arise, so I told them good afternoon in four languages (English, Twi, Ewe, and Lelemi), the crowd loved that. (Rural Ghanaians are almost always happy to see a white person, and they are especially happy to see a white person who can speak some of the local language.)  After that I didn't really have anything else to say; I just told them that I was happy to be in such a nice place and that I looked forward to meeting everyone more when I return in August.  Then they sang a few more songs, and church was over.

Godwin was late to church because he had to run out to one of his friend's farm to pick up a bottle of palm wine.  Palm wine is the fermented liquid inside palm trees, I'm hesitant to call it sap because it's ridiculously sweet and very watery.  I'll explain more about it in a later post, but it's really not too strong, between 5% and 12% alcohol.  Anyway, after church we went to Godwin's house and split a liter of it, and then we went to visit Godwin's good friend Castro.  We hung out there for a while and drank some more palm wine while watching a replay of the Spain-Portugal Euro Cup semifinal.  It was a fun afternoon, and I think I'll get along just fine with those guys once I return to Bodada.  I just hung out an packed up my things that evening and on Monday morning I left Bodada to travel to Saviefe Gbogame for my job shadow.  More on that next time.

PS These are my school break times if anyone wants to visit me of buy me a ticket back to America: December 14 - January 7, April 19 - May 13, and July 25 - sometime in late August.

Lelemi, Twi, and Ewe

Bodada-Buem in the Jasikan District of the Volta Region.  That's where I am now.  This town is actually on the map that Shannon and my dad bought for me, so those of you playing along at home can find it by going north from Hohoe, which is north of Ho. Bodada, meaning "Ancient Stone,"  is a small town (1500 people) in a gorgeous part of Volta.  There are mountains (the ancient stone for which the town is named) to the east and west of the town, but they aren't mountains like the Rockies, more like the coulees near the Mississippi River around LaCrosse or Prarie du Chien.  The scenery honestly reminds me a lot of that area, except for the fact that I am surrounded by rainforest and tropical trees.  I really will try to take some pictures soon.  There is kind of a problem with being busy and having a large camera: I can't just take pictures whenever I see something cool.  It's bulky so I don't carry it with me, which is dumb, because it's not going to make me stick out any more than I already do...I'm the only white person within 40km.

So here in Bodada they speak Lelemi, then Twi is the second most common language, and finally Ewe is the third.  Most people know some English, but everyone is better with all 3 of those other languages than English.  Lelemi is a language of the Buem people who came to this area from the Ashanti region.  I haven't been able to figure out if the Ashanti forced them to leave, or if they were Ashanti who left the rest of their people for whatever reason.  I'll have to ask some of the elders or maybe the chief.  Anyway, when I found out that Ewe was the 3rd language I wanted to switch to learning more Twi, but Ewe will be more useful since Ewe is much more widely spoken.  So when I return to Anyinasin in a week, I'll continue to learn Ewe.  However, I will be able to spend some time learning Lelemi because Justin Akpanja, one of the Peace Corps drivers, is actually from Bodada (and his uncle is the chief!)  Justin was very excited to learn that I was going to Bodada, and I am happy to know that I have already have a friend who is family to the chief.

I met my counterpart teacher on Monday, and he seems quite nice.  His name is Godwin Agbobi (the "gb" sounds mostly like a "b" in Ewe), and he graduated from a college of education five years ago.  He helped me move all of my stuff from Kumasi to Bodada, and thank goodness for that because I probably have about 120lbs of stuff spread between 4 bags.  Did I mention the trip took us about 10 hours?!  And that's not counting the hour and a half we spent waiting for the bus to load in Kumasi.  One of the biggest problems that Ghana has with infrastructure (besides not having enough money to build stuff) is that they don't have highways or interstates or bypasses.  The main highway will take you right through the middle of every town you pass, so you can't just cruise...ever.  And the roads are full of potholes, but still...10 hours to drive halfway across a country the size of Oregon seems ridiculous.  No nevermind, it's just the way things are outside of first-world countries.  Anyway, Godwin is the school's math, science, and ICT (internet and computer technology) teacher, so he's very happy to have me to help share the workload.  He's a bright guy, he speaks English very well, and we've gotten along well so far.

I arrived in town last night around dinner time, and a welcome committee of Evangelical Presbyterians and teachers from EP JHS (Evangelical Presbyterian Junior High School) greeted me upon arrival.  They had been expecting me all day, but they weren't upset at all that I kept them waiting; they were just happy that I was finally here.  I'm staying at the pastor's house, Jean-Paul Agidi, and he's a pretty young man for a pastor.  I'm guessing that he's only in his 30s.  He was joined by the headmaster of my school Headmaster Gyamebi (sounds like "Jah-meh-bee"), most of the teachers from EP JHS (there are only 8 total), and some church elders known as Presbyters.  They already had dinner ready for me, and I was starved after hardly eating all day.  But as tradition demands, we went around and did the formal introductions first.  This is the Ghanaian way, and it was not annoying, I just want people in The States to know that tradition and formal greetings are a big deal.

I only have one room to myself right now, but Pastor Agidi has told me they are going to put up a wall around the outdoor walkway to make a little sitting area and kitchen for me.  The rest of the house is very nice for Ghanaian standards: they have electricity, a tv, satellite dish, refrigerator with freezer, and even a water faucet outside (but no running water inside).

I haven't done much in town yet.  I got a tour in the dark last night, and got a more extensive one today.  It's pretty small, but not tiny.  They have four small JHS's and one senior high school.  My school is one of the smaller ones, and it doesn't have electricity.  When I visited this morning everyone was very excited, and the students especially liked it when I spoke some Twi and Ewe.  They also loved the fact I've eaten fufu and had some apeteshi (distilled palm wine).  The school itself is in a state of disrepair although you can tell that it used to be gorgeous.  It's just a big rectangle with 3 large classrooms and a teachers' lounge/office, but the walkways around the outside are nice and wide.  The school sits atop a bit hill and the roof is supported by cement columns.  It kind of reminds me of a big antebellum mansion in the South of the USA.

I'll let you know more about Bodada as I learn it,  and the food blog will come once I return to Anyinasin.  Also, Bodada has an MTN tower in town so I have excellent 3G coverage! Hoorah! I'll have internet when I come back here in August.

1 Down, 26 More To Go

So I've officially been in Ghana for one whole month, and it seems crazy.  I've already done so much! I've learned krakra Twi (small small Twi, which means a little), taught at a middle school in Africa for two weeks, and started learning Ewe.  I have a new family and over 50 new friends!  It seems so strange when I think about being at site away from all the other trainees.  We've become a pretty close group, and I feel like I know everyone well.  I'll definitely miss everyone when we split up.   I'm also somewhat used to not having running water.  A shower right now would be fantastic, but bucket bathing is actually quite refreshing.  It would probably be a lot less tolerable if I weren't right by the equator.

That being said, I definitely miss a lot of things about America.  Family, girlfriend, and other friends are at the top (that includes everyone at Magpie by the way), and American culture is right behind them.  It's just so different here than in America that I can't even really describe it in a blog.  Hopefully you can get a sense of all the differences by reading this because I really can't make a simple chart.

I really will write a food and drink blog soon.  For now all you need to know is that the only thing that is the same is that I sometimes have an egg omelet  sandwich for breakfast (not a typical Ghanaian breakfast, but my mom knows that I love it­).  Everything else is different.  They eat a lot of fish here, and the main carbohydrates are cassava, yam, plantain, and rice (which they think is an American food but I laugh because we think of it as an Asian food).

It's also pretty hot here, and since this is the rainy season it rains nearly every day.  I can't wear shorts here.  Occasionally I'll wear some khaki shorts, and I haven't gotten any comments about them.  But I've been told that only punks wear shorts (late teen/early twenty boys), so I mostly wear khaki pants since I'm a professional teacher.  It's really not a big deal unless it's really hot, and contrary to popular belief, I don't actually sweat that much.  Also, I was voted best dressed, so I must be doing something right.

I'm also happy to say that I'm having my first shirts made now.  I bought some fabric with Victoria a couple weeks ago after teaching, and when my mom saw it she brought out some more fabric she had purchased for me.  I'm getting a tunic made from the material I bought, and I'm getting a button-up shirt made from my mother's fabric.  Victoria and I ended up buying the same fabric that day because it's pretty awesome, and it will only be goofy that we have the same fabric for another 2 months.  People might think we're married though because married couples really do dress to match.  My mom and I will also have matching outfits!  We'll be looking very sharp when I swear in.  Pictures will definitely make Facebook and/or this blog once I get the finished product.  I'll also buy some more material that doesn't match anyone else soon.

That's about all that's new.  It's a little frustrating that I learned a bunch of Twi from my family, and now I have to forget it and learn Ewe.  But I'm really not even upset because knowing Twi greetings is very useful if you live in Ghana, regardless of where you live.

Up next: Food or Site Information!