one month today i was about to leave for amsterdam! i just realized i've been away for almost a month now (i'll have been in ghana for four weeks this thursday) and i had to do a serious double take to make sure my math wasnt off. i cant get over how fast it is going by now. all of a sudden, i'm not convinced 3 months is long enough... suppose its a good thing i have school in september to drag me back.
this weekend we visisted what might be best described as a ghanaian paradise... its this little coastal village right on the border with cote d'ivoire called axim (az-im). we stayed at this resort where every group gets their own bungalo right on the beach. innnnnncredible. it made the tro-tro ride out here completely worth while. one thing that is endessly entertaining in ghana are tro rides. this particular weekend of rides is one for the record books. on our way out, we pulled over in a little village (you just flag down trotros and they pull over if they have room then you jump off when youre where you want to get off) and this woman jumped on, bringing her two goats along. obvoiusly, goats couldnt come up in the front of the tro (one of the few rules attached to riding trotros) and so they went in the "trunk". the trunk is just a small gap at the back of the bus that is maybe 6inches wide. the goats got slipped under the seat (my seat) and just made this hilarious baaahing noise for the first little bit. i nearly died laughing because this noise is just so ridiculous. they stuck around for maybe an hour, and got more comfortable (and ballsy) as the ride went along. part way through, i felt this warm licking on my feet and looked down to see one of the goats kissing me. i put my feet up on my chair, which only prompted the goat to come right out from the trunk and literally sit at my feet. JP (a guy i was traveling with) wasnt lucky enough to have room to pick up his feet, and got licked for the rest of the hour. in total, we ended up sitting on tro tros for 6 hours. it was long but... what can you do really.
on saturday, we took a day trip to a village built entirely on stilts. it can only be reached by a one hour canoe ride (it poured rain for the greater part of that hour) and has apparently existed since the 14th century. that information though is questionable... the 'chief's assistant' who we were supposed to ask questions to kept giving us one word answers but the translator would ramble on for like 10 minutes. the people that lived in the village also seemed less than impressed to see us.. i think they get a lot of westerners travelling through to see where they live and yeah, just are kind of fed up with us all. i would have felt pretty bad about going and gawking at this village, except that our tourism is pretty much the villages only source of income. despite being built on water, they are not a fishing community. they do some agriculture but even that is only minimal. they dont recieve any money from the ghanaian government because they're not recognized as a village, beacuse they're not settled on land at all. i also felt less bad about this trip because the kids at camp do the very same thing to us every day (and certainly dont pay us haha). after a month here, i feel a lot like i'm an animal in a zoo. feeding time at hte zoo is particularly exciting and normally attracts a crowd of like 5 or so kids. afternoons the crowds reach at least 10, with them all sticking their faces throug the screen saying "wa wo ma (white woman), please give me sheet (which sounds more like shit than sheet)" its really cute and fun most of the time, because there is an endless number of kids to play with but sometimes after a long day "wa wo ma" just makes me cringe inside. anyway. back to the weekend... the rest of it was mostly just relaxing on the beach and what not. these weekends away where there is actually quiet have become an incredible way to unwind and keep energy up for the week to come.
havent got much planned for camp this week. the kids just finished writing part of their midterms on friday so i spent most of yesterday marking and what not (thrilling. i know.) i also finally got a reading comprehension exercise ready (took forever.. i had no idea reading kids books and making up questions would be such a project) which we started today. it went suprisingly well (i wasnt very optomistic going into it). all 15 kids (biggest number of students yet!) managed to stay quiet and do their work for almost an enitre hour.. with these guys, thats a massive accomplishment. it seems too (not to jinks it) that they had fun doing it... most of them did pretty well with reading and writing (although a couple are really struggling still and i have to spend hte entire hour working with them), with some even finishing their questions.
one of my favourite things to do with the kids right now is to do 'free write' type period where they do stories or whatever and hand them in. its a really cool way of getting to know the kids a bit better, and to start to wrap my head around what they're living with. the other day, i got them to write a short story about anything they wanted... a few have kept writing memorized stories (some teachr really drilled in a story aobut a chicken and an egg...) but others went more on their own. i ended up getting stories about parents dying (not necessarily theirs, and not necessarily true but words none the less) or a lot about being hungry. none of them personally said 'i am hungry' or wahtever, but just that kids choose to write about characters are hungry, rather than bunny rabbits and kittens (which was stupidly was i was half expecting) is really interesting, and hard. i've also had them write down the names, ages and locations of people in their family.. one girl wrote down that her two younger siblings live in liberia, that her parents live in the US and that she's currently being raised by her older (she didn't know how old though) brother and sister... ive always known stories like this are very much realities for the kids i work with, but they all seem so normal (despite being hungry and tired.. which they realy keep in check despite it all) and yeah, its a huge wake up call when it comes crashing back that they've got lives i cant even comprehend.
on that happy note... i'm going to attempt to post this. i'm hoping that on thursday i can spend some time in accra at the super fast internet, and maybe post some pictures! if not, i'm off to TOGOOOOO this weekend so i'll post more after that!
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