its not every day a friend is able to mobilize a bunch of other friends and get $1300 in 7 days. when i got the news that dan had gotten this much money together, i was completely floored... i still cant really get over it still. after reading my last post about prince, and talking to me over msn last week, he decided he wanted to do something. he thought that he could maybe get 300-600 together over the weekend... that alone surpassed all my expectations. i talked to my sister on the phone on sunday night to hear that she'd noticed this facebook group that had already raised over 300 in like a day and from that point on, i only got more and more excited. i've spent most of the week trying to remember all the people on camp who i've had to say sorry but i just don't have that kind of money to so that i can find them and tell them that now i actually can help them out. i was all giddy just thinking about it... a welcome change from last weeks mood and series of events.
today, once i had the confirmed number in donations (which is actually now $2000 because of donations made from my family), i got to start spending! imagine how many people i can help out if $5 is all most are asking for. i had a quick moment of panic when i was like shit, what if i cant spend it all... what if i dont know enough people to give $2000 out to... then i realized that was totally ridiculous. i'm pretty sure somebody will be willing to accept money. the first person i helped out was a woman who did a bit of washing for me when i first got here. vivian is maybe in her mid-fourties and has been sick for awhile now and it has recently gotten really bad. i'd already agreed to get TB and malaria tests for her. today she got the results back, with positives for both of the diseases. instead of my usual 'ahh i don't know how i'm going to afford treatment for all this even though its only $17' and attempts at finding somebody to go halves on it with me, i could tell her htat it was no problem and we went to get treatment right away. $20 later (we got food so she could take her billion pills), she was at home with her two sons, hopefully on the path to recovery.
next on my to do list was to visit renato, an AIDS patient i've been going to visit for the past few weeks (months now actually..). he went to the clinic a few weeks ago to get checked for opportunistic infections and walked out with a $500 medical bill. obviously treating all of these diseases is not only unfeasible but slightly impractical... renato, sadly, is on his last leg i think. he's been on and off ARVs for so long now that they have limited effect... what i decided to do instead is treat the ones that cause him the most pain (syphilis and gonorrhea). those two cost $50 to treat and hopefully that will make his last little while more bearable. the stigma against him is really bad in camp and has the ability to totally crush him when he isnt feeling well... he says that getting any treatment at all makes him feel stronger and more ready to fight. i think that for him, there isn't a lot more you can ask for.
i know that just throwing money at people doesn't solve any of the underlying problems, and that people might be critical of what i'm doing right now. the thing is though that this money is able to make the people in the middle of this crisis a little bit happier, and make their lives a little bit more bearable. its not always a sustainable problem (although i do try to give money to people will be able to get a long term benefit out of it all - education or buying seeds to farm or something like that) but for them today, its enough. i wish so badly that there was a way i could capture the reactions that i get from people when i give them hassle-free money. i personally find it all a bit unwarranted, but its nice all the same (i dont know that renato's promises of a 11 story house, a rich husband and three children is something that i'll get for giving $50 that isn't even mine to him). a lot of the time on camp i feel like i'm not doing much and i start to doubt why i came here at all... some how though, between running this summer school and the ability to give out an incredible amount of money, i've become more sure of myself. that alone, to say nothing of the people that really do benefit from the money, is pretty incredible.
i flat out don't know how to get across how grateful i am to every person that helped out with that money. all of this has meant so much to me and to people around camp and i just don't know how to translate those feelings over a blog. i'll be sure to take pictures and write down exactly where all the money spent so that everybody can see, but even that just doesnt seem like a big enough illustration of what you've all pulled together to do.
thank you again.
"had it been another day, i might have looked the other way, and i´d have never been aware..."
Friday, July 25, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
60 8-10 year olds is too many.
i think i'm still holding onto my sanity... i've had to double check a few times this week though. its been a big one.
its been 10 weeks now in buduburam and the pressures of life on camp have started to show through this week more than before. i think this is both something to celebrate and struggle with. ive caught myself thinking to myself that life on the camp really isnt that hard for people sometimes (relative to other refugees and even other ghanaians or liberians of course) and i start to wonder if maybe my time and energy would be better spent in liberia. the faces and activities that i see on a daily basis around camp and at school don't differ that much from what i might see at home.. sure the kids are a lot thinner, but even that starts to loose its effect on me. the incredible abs and arm muscles that show through come to dominate over the fact that they exist because they're hungry. kids smiles and their constant demands for footballs make me forget that despite this energy, they may have only eaten once today, if at all. in that sense, i think its a good thing that i'm now able to see past it all without looking. maybe i'm learning a bit more about the camp and the liberians that i wouldn't have known otherwise. at the same time, its incredibly hard to deal with and so, you have to take it all with a grain of salt i guess.
anyway.. just as i get carried away with how okay things are on camp, you get weeks like this one to jolt you back into the realities of camp. on wednesday, just as i was getting to recooperate with sex and the city from a chaotic first day of summer school with 50 8-10 year olds in my class who could have cared less what me and my co-teacher were saying, my neighbour came to my door asking if i knew prince. everybody on camp is named prince, so i had to figure out which one he was talking about.. turns out, he was talking to the prince whose picture i have posted on the right. i'm totally obsessed with this kid, and his twin sister propsper. they're two years old and constantly come to my door to snuggle. recently, prince has taken to trying to open mouth kiss me.. together, they're the definition of kids that make you forget that people are hungry and in trouble. my neighbour came to tell me that prince had died that morning. he didn't know the details, but from where we sat on my front porch, we could hear prince's mother sobbing. it turns out that he came home from this massive birthday party the day before and his stomach had started to run. he was sick all night and in the morning, they took him to the clinic. a visit to the clinic costs about $1 to get the card to see a doctor, and then whatever the medication costs (for standard sicknesses, probably not more than $5). prince however, wasn't lucky enough to make it to the clinic... he died on the way there. after talking to more people, i found out that prince had been sick for awhile with a lot of littler things that didn't warrant a trip to the clinic. thing is that here, unless youre really sick (and can find an international volunteer to pay) you probably won't go to the clinic, let alone the hospital. there are so many what ifs with his story... i'd noticed that he was particularly light in comparison to prosper the day before he died but i thought that maybe i just hadn't noticed this before... kids get so small here that i have no idea what size a two year old should be. i just figuredf prosper was the bigger twin.. she's always been the noisier one of the two, so it was sort of fitting. i guess that wasn't the case.
prince's death, while it is far to ordinary here, has had somewhat extraordinary repercussions. for me personally, i lost a kid who i looked forward to seeing everyday. for others, i think its just brought reality to the happy little dreamland that we live in in our respective guest houses. while we very much live in the middle of this camp, with screaming babies and blaring music all around us, its still such a bubble that we seem to frequently get lost in with gin and charades.
that wasn't a hugely uplifting post i guess.... stories about my first 2 days at our summer school program should turn that around though. just picture me and another guy from the US attempting to control 60 8-10 year olds who think us as authority figures is the biggest joke ever. i spent yesterday shreiking at kids until i lost my voice because they just would not sit down. i gave up and started slamming the door until they listened. the first time i did it, all of them whipped around looking totally stunned. sadly, it lost its effect pretty fast. luke (co-teacher) and i resorted to a mass game of football that we seriously thought would result in a lot of broken legs. picture 30 kids chasing after the same little soccer ball on a rocky field. excellent. i'm sure our teaching awards are in the mail as we speak.
we've established a feeding program at this school (that is more substantial than the one they were aready running) and so by the time we were reading to give out the food, our numbers had swelled even more. after giving out bread and water, kids went totally haywire and we just sent half of them home. it got to the point where luke and i would go up to the kids and ask (okay, yell) do you want to be here? if they said no, they'd leave and then if they said yes we'd politely ask them (yelled) at them to go sit down and be quiet (shut up). more stellar teaching. i think the only lesson that they took away from that class was that 2 20 year old white guys cannot control mass amounts of children that respond best to flogging (hitting). god only knows what i'm going to do with them on monday when luke isnt there.... maybe i'll just go by a lot of sedatives or something.
its too early right now to say how i think the school is going. its right back to that sense of total helplessness that i felt when i started teaching with my grade 3s at the begining of my time here. i figured out the ropes though to them, and sent them off to graduate today happy with the little steps they've each taken (i sound like such a teacher-). i hope ill learn the ropes to thsi summer school too, but i just dont' ahve as much time to sort it all out and it feels like a much bigger project that i seem to be in charge of. a big wave of volunteers, who are pretty critical to the school right now, are leavnig in 2 weeks so thats going to be yet another wrench in the functioning of the school. i'm hoping the local teachers will be rested enough after 2 weeks that they'll be ready to come back and work with us.
wish me luck.
its been 10 weeks now in buduburam and the pressures of life on camp have started to show through this week more than before. i think this is both something to celebrate and struggle with. ive caught myself thinking to myself that life on the camp really isnt that hard for people sometimes (relative to other refugees and even other ghanaians or liberians of course) and i start to wonder if maybe my time and energy would be better spent in liberia. the faces and activities that i see on a daily basis around camp and at school don't differ that much from what i might see at home.. sure the kids are a lot thinner, but even that starts to loose its effect on me. the incredible abs and arm muscles that show through come to dominate over the fact that they exist because they're hungry. kids smiles and their constant demands for footballs make me forget that despite this energy, they may have only eaten once today, if at all. in that sense, i think its a good thing that i'm now able to see past it all without looking. maybe i'm learning a bit more about the camp and the liberians that i wouldn't have known otherwise. at the same time, its incredibly hard to deal with and so, you have to take it all with a grain of salt i guess.
anyway.. just as i get carried away with how okay things are on camp, you get weeks like this one to jolt you back into the realities of camp. on wednesday, just as i was getting to recooperate with sex and the city from a chaotic first day of summer school with 50 8-10 year olds in my class who could have cared less what me and my co-teacher were saying, my neighbour came to my door asking if i knew prince. everybody on camp is named prince, so i had to figure out which one he was talking about.. turns out, he was talking to the prince whose picture i have posted on the right. i'm totally obsessed with this kid, and his twin sister propsper. they're two years old and constantly come to my door to snuggle. recently, prince has taken to trying to open mouth kiss me.. together, they're the definition of kids that make you forget that people are hungry and in trouble. my neighbour came to tell me that prince had died that morning. he didn't know the details, but from where we sat on my front porch, we could hear prince's mother sobbing. it turns out that he came home from this massive birthday party the day before and his stomach had started to run. he was sick all night and in the morning, they took him to the clinic. a visit to the clinic costs about $1 to get the card to see a doctor, and then whatever the medication costs (for standard sicknesses, probably not more than $5). prince however, wasn't lucky enough to make it to the clinic... he died on the way there. after talking to more people, i found out that prince had been sick for awhile with a lot of littler things that didn't warrant a trip to the clinic. thing is that here, unless youre really sick (and can find an international volunteer to pay) you probably won't go to the clinic, let alone the hospital. there are so many what ifs with his story... i'd noticed that he was particularly light in comparison to prosper the day before he died but i thought that maybe i just hadn't noticed this before... kids get so small here that i have no idea what size a two year old should be. i just figuredf prosper was the bigger twin.. she's always been the noisier one of the two, so it was sort of fitting. i guess that wasn't the case.
prince's death, while it is far to ordinary here, has had somewhat extraordinary repercussions. for me personally, i lost a kid who i looked forward to seeing everyday. for others, i think its just brought reality to the happy little dreamland that we live in in our respective guest houses. while we very much live in the middle of this camp, with screaming babies and blaring music all around us, its still such a bubble that we seem to frequently get lost in with gin and charades.
that wasn't a hugely uplifting post i guess.... stories about my first 2 days at our summer school program should turn that around though. just picture me and another guy from the US attempting to control 60 8-10 year olds who think us as authority figures is the biggest joke ever. i spent yesterday shreiking at kids until i lost my voice because they just would not sit down. i gave up and started slamming the door until they listened. the first time i did it, all of them whipped around looking totally stunned. sadly, it lost its effect pretty fast. luke (co-teacher) and i resorted to a mass game of football that we seriously thought would result in a lot of broken legs. picture 30 kids chasing after the same little soccer ball on a rocky field. excellent. i'm sure our teaching awards are in the mail as we speak.
we've established a feeding program at this school (that is more substantial than the one they were aready running) and so by the time we were reading to give out the food, our numbers had swelled even more. after giving out bread and water, kids went totally haywire and we just sent half of them home. it got to the point where luke and i would go up to the kids and ask (okay, yell) do you want to be here? if they said no, they'd leave and then if they said yes we'd politely ask them (yelled) at them to go sit down and be quiet (shut up). more stellar teaching. i think the only lesson that they took away from that class was that 2 20 year old white guys cannot control mass amounts of children that respond best to flogging (hitting). god only knows what i'm going to do with them on monday when luke isnt there.... maybe i'll just go by a lot of sedatives or something.
its too early right now to say how i think the school is going. its right back to that sense of total helplessness that i felt when i started teaching with my grade 3s at the begining of my time here. i figured out the ropes though to them, and sent them off to graduate today happy with the little steps they've each taken (i sound like such a teacher-). i hope ill learn the ropes to thsi summer school too, but i just dont' ahve as much time to sort it all out and it feels like a much bigger project that i seem to be in charge of. a big wave of volunteers, who are pretty critical to the school right now, are leavnig in 2 weeks so thats going to be yet another wrench in the functioning of the school. i'm hoping the local teachers will be rested enough after 2 weeks that they'll be ready to come back and work with us.
wish me luck.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
guess its been awhile...
well. i guess its kind of been awhile... sorry, yeah? as they say here. things have really been picking up on camp lately and i really just havent found time to be on the internet...
its exam time right now at school (yes, grade threes write exams... the littlest pre schoolers do them too, which is totally ridiculous). last week was all revision, and this week is the actual writing. so far, it gone pretty well... i have a few kids that still don't understand things like long division so i'm having an after-school session with them to give it one last go before they move onto grade 4. i've noticed that with these kids, who are generally a bit slower to pick up on things, i get really frustrated with them and stop wanting to teach them. i reluctantly keep doing it though, because you start to realize that these kids are behind because teachers get frustrated, stop working iwth them, and then they just fall further behind, making things more furstrating and making less teachers want to work with them. not rocket science or anything, but it really makes me appriciate teachers in general, particularly those who only work with kids who are struggling.
since school is coming to a close on friday, our attention has been turned towards establishing a summer program for the kids on camp. after talking with a couple of the local volunteer teachers, i've sort of taken on this project. what i've found is that a lot of the teachers at CBW are now turning their attention to getting themselves back to Liberia (now that they don't have a job here) and so their willingness to do a purely voluntary teaching program during the day is kind of low. they're eager to lend a hand, but the planning is falling on our shoulders. i'm personally kind of pumped about it, because it means we can take charge and really get the ball rolling. we've decided to make this school totally free, with no uniforms required and we'll provide pencils, papers etc. we want to get as many kids as possible (i might be kicking myself for saying this on wednesday when i'm up to my armpits in kids) so yeah, no barriers to enter.
we're hoping to have a big focus on reading at this summer school, using the books that we have in the library. what i've found with my grade 3s is their ability to read new material is really limited. they're wicked at memorizing and reciting, but putting a new book in front of them is totally foreign. i did this free reading stuff with my kids and they'd never done it before, but it worked really well. hopefully, the same will happen just on a bigger scale with these guys (or.. it will be total chaos). we also want to push free writing and stuff like that here.. this whole creativity idea is something that isnt really pushed at CBW, probably due to a lack of resources and teacher training. whats cool right now is that we have a bunch of trained teachers here with us, hwo have experience and ideas that we can really put to work. because they only just got here, they didn't really get the chance to do any official teaching, but i think they might actually be more useful in this program than during the actual school year.
we started to do outreach today to let the camp (population of about 20 000 now... it was 30 000 when i got here) know about our school. we've divided the internation and local volunteers into groups that will go into each of the 12 zones on camp. today i did one zone and got an incredible response from the people. a lot of people were so excited to hear that it would be totally free and that we would be establishing a more in depth feeding program (although how we're going to buy and cook rice for hundreds of kids is still a mystery...). i think that the first few days are going to be totally chaotic and insane at this school, but hopefully by august we'll have something established. its a big project, but it feels really good to be doing something that, while we wont see any real results, is going to be a bit more concrete and really beneficial to the kids who are just sitting around right now because they cant get themselves to school.
the orphanage and the pee has also been keeping me busy. yesterday we took some of the older kids to a recreation day that CBW hosts every tuesday. these kids, like the ones i met in uganda, continue to just blow me away with how they take care of each other. not only do they make western kids look like huge weenies, but they really put the kids on camp to shame as well (who, until this point, i thought were pretty self-sufficient). they don't have a choice in how fast threy grow up, but it just blows my mind that one woman (regina) and a couple helpers are able to raise kids that not only do well in school, but are so polite, well mannered and generally well rounded. at the field, one kid started beating on one of the ARCH (the orphanage) kids and rather than starting a mass brawl (which is normally what happens) the ARCH kid came over to tell my friend that this kid was beating the crap out of him. that being said, isaac, a 2 year old at the house, continues to punch me from the second that i come in the door. regina says its a twisted sign of love that he only gives to me... i'm not totally sold though.
i'm rushing right now to get to dinner at a teachers house tonight... he always makes me and my friend come over for dinner (which ends up being a boring discussion of how he can marry british royalty). i'm not thrilled about going this week but... he's found me in the internet cafe so, i guess i'm going to go eat some fufu and fish soup with him. lucky thing he has a really nice mother who is cool to hang out with.
i'll be in accra later this week and will give a bigger update then... i just felt bad it had been so long! hope canada day was good - it overlaps with ghana's republic day so it was kind of overshadowed here.
its exam time right now at school (yes, grade threes write exams... the littlest pre schoolers do them too, which is totally ridiculous). last week was all revision, and this week is the actual writing. so far, it gone pretty well... i have a few kids that still don't understand things like long division so i'm having an after-school session with them to give it one last go before they move onto grade 4. i've noticed that with these kids, who are generally a bit slower to pick up on things, i get really frustrated with them and stop wanting to teach them. i reluctantly keep doing it though, because you start to realize that these kids are behind because teachers get frustrated, stop working iwth them, and then they just fall further behind, making things more furstrating and making less teachers want to work with them. not rocket science or anything, but it really makes me appriciate teachers in general, particularly those who only work with kids who are struggling.
since school is coming to a close on friday, our attention has been turned towards establishing a summer program for the kids on camp. after talking with a couple of the local volunteer teachers, i've sort of taken on this project. what i've found is that a lot of the teachers at CBW are now turning their attention to getting themselves back to Liberia (now that they don't have a job here) and so their willingness to do a purely voluntary teaching program during the day is kind of low. they're eager to lend a hand, but the planning is falling on our shoulders. i'm personally kind of pumped about it, because it means we can take charge and really get the ball rolling. we've decided to make this school totally free, with no uniforms required and we'll provide pencils, papers etc. we want to get as many kids as possible (i might be kicking myself for saying this on wednesday when i'm up to my armpits in kids) so yeah, no barriers to enter.
we're hoping to have a big focus on reading at this summer school, using the books that we have in the library. what i've found with my grade 3s is their ability to read new material is really limited. they're wicked at memorizing and reciting, but putting a new book in front of them is totally foreign. i did this free reading stuff with my kids and they'd never done it before, but it worked really well. hopefully, the same will happen just on a bigger scale with these guys (or.. it will be total chaos). we also want to push free writing and stuff like that here.. this whole creativity idea is something that isnt really pushed at CBW, probably due to a lack of resources and teacher training. whats cool right now is that we have a bunch of trained teachers here with us, hwo have experience and ideas that we can really put to work. because they only just got here, they didn't really get the chance to do any official teaching, but i think they might actually be more useful in this program than during the actual school year.
we started to do outreach today to let the camp (population of about 20 000 now... it was 30 000 when i got here) know about our school. we've divided the internation and local volunteers into groups that will go into each of the 12 zones on camp. today i did one zone and got an incredible response from the people. a lot of people were so excited to hear that it would be totally free and that we would be establishing a more in depth feeding program (although how we're going to buy and cook rice for hundreds of kids is still a mystery...). i think that the first few days are going to be totally chaotic and insane at this school, but hopefully by august we'll have something established. its a big project, but it feels really good to be doing something that, while we wont see any real results, is going to be a bit more concrete and really beneficial to the kids who are just sitting around right now because they cant get themselves to school.
the orphanage and the pee has also been keeping me busy. yesterday we took some of the older kids to a recreation day that CBW hosts every tuesday. these kids, like the ones i met in uganda, continue to just blow me away with how they take care of each other. not only do they make western kids look like huge weenies, but they really put the kids on camp to shame as well (who, until this point, i thought were pretty self-sufficient). they don't have a choice in how fast threy grow up, but it just blows my mind that one woman (regina) and a couple helpers are able to raise kids that not only do well in school, but are so polite, well mannered and generally well rounded. at the field, one kid started beating on one of the ARCH (the orphanage) kids and rather than starting a mass brawl (which is normally what happens) the ARCH kid came over to tell my friend that this kid was beating the crap out of him. that being said, isaac, a 2 year old at the house, continues to punch me from the second that i come in the door. regina says its a twisted sign of love that he only gives to me... i'm not totally sold though.
i'm rushing right now to get to dinner at a teachers house tonight... he always makes me and my friend come over for dinner (which ends up being a boring discussion of how he can marry british royalty). i'm not thrilled about going this week but... he's found me in the internet cafe so, i guess i'm going to go eat some fufu and fish soup with him. lucky thing he has a really nice mother who is cool to hang out with.
i'll be in accra later this week and will give a bigger update then... i just felt bad it had been so long! hope canada day was good - it overlaps with ghana's republic day so it was kind of overshadowed here.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
it's been a stinky day today
as i sit here at the CBW internet cafe on camp, i've come to realize that i genuinely smell today. its mildly embarassing. less so because it prooves that ive had a big couple of days. i'll try and describe the smell right now... then i'll explain why. id have to say its a combo of baby pee, garbage, sewage, sweat, chalk and general camp dirt. its probably lucky that i have no computers on either side of me, people might not appriciate me much right now. i'm going to go home andtake the bucket shower right after i finish this, i promise.
i'd have to say the stench started early saturday morning (6am!!) on the CBW bike trip (yes, i biked) out behind camp through hilly farm lands on bikes with no breaks and a seat that didnt stay on. this trip started with a two hour leg out to this little village where we got palm wine. its wine that is tapped like maple syrup from a palm tree and is distilled until its got all boozey and stuff. the CBW staff loaded us up with that at about 1030 am and then sent us on our way home. i kept having visions of a repeat of last summer where i went home with a third degree burn on my foot, buti think i handled the path quite beautifully and came home all in one piece.
on monday, after a jam-packed weekend in cape coast again, four of us came down with different renditions of food poisoning. it was glorious. i think i was lucky in what i caught, because i just slept all day and dealt with a stellar fever and an achy body. i was convinced most of the day i had malaria, but managed to recover by tuesday thankfully. the others had variations of 'the scurge' (explosions on both ends... sorry thats so graphic) and my fever which really sucks when you're working with a shared bucket toilet. we're surviving though, and should probably live to see another day. i have never appriciated tylenol and pepto bismol more though. i have also never hated the barack obama song more (its a song made by somebody in west africa and plays on repeat here).
i'm going to skip over tuesday so that i dont start rambling too long. it poured rain yesterday morning which is the universal sign not to work (unless youre a teacher because then you still have to at least show up, even if you only have 3 students). because i had no kids, we pretty much just let them read while bobby and i talked about a bunch of different things that are probably more interesting to me than you guys.
today is the day that really explains my stench... this morningwe got up at 6 (well, it was supposed to be 6 but we were clearly running on african time this morning) to shovel shit. the path out to the CBW football field is essentially over a garbage dump so this morning we made a new one through bush that was taller than me. the first wave of people went through with machetes and chopped downthe big stuff. the next group, which i was apart of, was the raking group and went through pulling away the fallen weeds and then attacking the mountains of garbage underneath. among the treasures i found out there were a purse, an old syringe, a few things that were once t-shirts, and a million poo bags. there is this awful habit of putting poo in black pastic bags that do not decompose ever. they just make mountains. its so frustrating because there could be such an easy solution to this problem. just use newspaper, brown bag or ANYTHING that breaks down. the third group went through after us with shovels pulling out the roots of plants nd what not, and shovelling away the most stubborn garbage. after about an hour of this, the teachers left to go to school, smelling like garbage and totally exhausted. bocolo (the head of recreation at CBW) brought donughts for us halfway through the day which made it all the more worthwhile.
teaching itself has been pretty uneventful this week. monday i obviously didn't go and tuesday we didn't teach. today i spent math class teaching kids how to tell time on a clock. it was apparently the most boring lesson ever, so we ended up just making a human clock which worked suprisingly well. it was hilarious too.
after school i got home and had one of my most intense afternoons yet. i met this guy on camp through a friend who is my age and who a friend of mine was sponsoring through computer school. he's always been really friendly with the volunteers and had been after me to go on a walk around camp with him for awhile now... i was just always busy with other things and never got around to it. today, i found myself iwht a spare hour and finally took him up on it. i find that i have a hard time reading people here, and figuring out who is genuinely wanting to be your friend and who just wants money. i try to give everybody a fair chance, but more often than not things don't pan out. this guy generally talks our ears off about his plans for moving back to liberia and his dreams of starting some kind of agricultural business or gold mine. he's got a really good head on his shoulders and really understands what is gonig on in liberia, but we've all been hesitant to give him money because we know he's already being generously sponsored.
anyway, our talk today started out with him telling me more about his dreams for liberia. his ideas of creating a society that is peaceful, autonomous and self-sustaining are really intresting, especially beacuse he was one of the few people that made me feel like what i was studying in school was moderately relevant to the real world. normally, i feel like i'm wasting a good chunk of my time in those desks. the talk got more mind blowing though when he started talking about his experience in liberia. i don't want to go to far into the details because it is his very personal story that is kept relatively secret on camp. boiled down though, he basically told me about his experiences as a child soldier under Taylor. his story, compared to others i've heard through people, was relatively lucky. him and his brother (15 and 17 at the time) managed to escape onto a boat travelling to takoradi, ghana months after being captured. what shook me was that he was born 2 months after me. while i was probably inside in january, 2003 complaining about not wanting to go skiing, he was watching his parents be chopped apart in frontof him because they didnt have enough minerals to pay off the rebels (mineral accumulation was a huge component to the taylor regime). while i was at school complaining mme. sandor's lessons on civics and careers, he was running for his life while his friends dropped dead on either side. hows that for a lesson in perspective? minutes after this talk, we entered the director of his school's house and sat down to watch a really weird indian movie on the guys DSTV while eating cookies and drinking pop. my friend hardly seemed phased by it all, while i sat there slightly bewildered.
i got further put in my place on a trip with a sierra leonean refuge out to his sister's orphanage. his sister lives in a small home, no bigger than my dining room andkitchen combined, with about 30 kids of all ages. she lives there full time, and works with the help of an 8-month pregnant woman, the guy fro sierra leone (who i constantly see wandering camp so i dont think he's here that much), one other guy, and sporadic volunteers. she said at one point this afternoon that "you probably wouldn't believe me if i told you i only ever sleep two hours a night". she was right. i didn't. somehow, she was still not only functioning but smiling at the kids. i couldn't help but think of my reaction to somebody asking me to do something remotely strenuous after only having had 2 hours of sleep. i'm going to try and spend free time out there.. its a 24 hour job for her and she said that any free time we had she'd totally appriciate. despite the pee and poo, they're really cute. one 3 year old boy named lucky boy (the second kid named lucky boy that i've met here) spent a third of his time beating the crap out of me, another third wailing with his head tipped way back (then opening his eyes to make sure we were still looking) and the final third, doing this hilarious but dance where he looked like he was an 80 year old man in a walker dancing to nigerian hip hop. he was priceless.
anyway. that brings me to now, and my current smell. its been a pretty incredible day (topped off with speedy internet) and i am now in desperate need of a shower.
i'd have to say the stench started early saturday morning (6am!!) on the CBW bike trip (yes, i biked) out behind camp through hilly farm lands on bikes with no breaks and a seat that didnt stay on. this trip started with a two hour leg out to this little village where we got palm wine. its wine that is tapped like maple syrup from a palm tree and is distilled until its got all boozey and stuff. the CBW staff loaded us up with that at about 1030 am and then sent us on our way home. i kept having visions of a repeat of last summer where i went home with a third degree burn on my foot, buti think i handled the path quite beautifully and came home all in one piece.
on monday, after a jam-packed weekend in cape coast again, four of us came down with different renditions of food poisoning. it was glorious. i think i was lucky in what i caught, because i just slept all day and dealt with a stellar fever and an achy body. i was convinced most of the day i had malaria, but managed to recover by tuesday thankfully. the others had variations of 'the scurge' (explosions on both ends... sorry thats so graphic) and my fever which really sucks when you're working with a shared bucket toilet. we're surviving though, and should probably live to see another day. i have never appriciated tylenol and pepto bismol more though. i have also never hated the barack obama song more (its a song made by somebody in west africa and plays on repeat here).
i'm going to skip over tuesday so that i dont start rambling too long. it poured rain yesterday morning which is the universal sign not to work (unless youre a teacher because then you still have to at least show up, even if you only have 3 students). because i had no kids, we pretty much just let them read while bobby and i talked about a bunch of different things that are probably more interesting to me than you guys.
today is the day that really explains my stench... this morningwe got up at 6 (well, it was supposed to be 6 but we were clearly running on african time this morning) to shovel shit. the path out to the CBW football field is essentially over a garbage dump so this morning we made a new one through bush that was taller than me. the first wave of people went through with machetes and chopped downthe big stuff. the next group, which i was apart of, was the raking group and went through pulling away the fallen weeds and then attacking the mountains of garbage underneath. among the treasures i found out there were a purse, an old syringe, a few things that were once t-shirts, and a million poo bags. there is this awful habit of putting poo in black pastic bags that do not decompose ever. they just make mountains. its so frustrating because there could be such an easy solution to this problem. just use newspaper, brown bag or ANYTHING that breaks down. the third group went through after us with shovels pulling out the roots of plants nd what not, and shovelling away the most stubborn garbage. after about an hour of this, the teachers left to go to school, smelling like garbage and totally exhausted. bocolo (the head of recreation at CBW) brought donughts for us halfway through the day which made it all the more worthwhile.
teaching itself has been pretty uneventful this week. monday i obviously didn't go and tuesday we didn't teach. today i spent math class teaching kids how to tell time on a clock. it was apparently the most boring lesson ever, so we ended up just making a human clock which worked suprisingly well. it was hilarious too.
after school i got home and had one of my most intense afternoons yet. i met this guy on camp through a friend who is my age and who a friend of mine was sponsoring through computer school. he's always been really friendly with the volunteers and had been after me to go on a walk around camp with him for awhile now... i was just always busy with other things and never got around to it. today, i found myself iwht a spare hour and finally took him up on it. i find that i have a hard time reading people here, and figuring out who is genuinely wanting to be your friend and who just wants money. i try to give everybody a fair chance, but more often than not things don't pan out. this guy generally talks our ears off about his plans for moving back to liberia and his dreams of starting some kind of agricultural business or gold mine. he's got a really good head on his shoulders and really understands what is gonig on in liberia, but we've all been hesitant to give him money because we know he's already being generously sponsored.
anyway, our talk today started out with him telling me more about his dreams for liberia. his ideas of creating a society that is peaceful, autonomous and self-sustaining are really intresting, especially beacuse he was one of the few people that made me feel like what i was studying in school was moderately relevant to the real world. normally, i feel like i'm wasting a good chunk of my time in those desks. the talk got more mind blowing though when he started talking about his experience in liberia. i don't want to go to far into the details because it is his very personal story that is kept relatively secret on camp. boiled down though, he basically told me about his experiences as a child soldier under Taylor. his story, compared to others i've heard through people, was relatively lucky. him and his brother (15 and 17 at the time) managed to escape onto a boat travelling to takoradi, ghana months after being captured. what shook me was that he was born 2 months after me. while i was probably inside in january, 2003 complaining about not wanting to go skiing, he was watching his parents be chopped apart in frontof him because they didnt have enough minerals to pay off the rebels (mineral accumulation was a huge component to the taylor regime). while i was at school complaining mme. sandor's lessons on civics and careers, he was running for his life while his friends dropped dead on either side. hows that for a lesson in perspective? minutes after this talk, we entered the director of his school's house and sat down to watch a really weird indian movie on the guys DSTV while eating cookies and drinking pop. my friend hardly seemed phased by it all, while i sat there slightly bewildered.
i got further put in my place on a trip with a sierra leonean refuge out to his sister's orphanage. his sister lives in a small home, no bigger than my dining room andkitchen combined, with about 30 kids of all ages. she lives there full time, and works with the help of an 8-month pregnant woman, the guy fro sierra leone (who i constantly see wandering camp so i dont think he's here that much), one other guy, and sporadic volunteers. she said at one point this afternoon that "you probably wouldn't believe me if i told you i only ever sleep two hours a night". she was right. i didn't. somehow, she was still not only functioning but smiling at the kids. i couldn't help but think of my reaction to somebody asking me to do something remotely strenuous after only having had 2 hours of sleep. i'm going to try and spend free time out there.. its a 24 hour job for her and she said that any free time we had she'd totally appriciate. despite the pee and poo, they're really cute. one 3 year old boy named lucky boy (the second kid named lucky boy that i've met here) spent a third of his time beating the crap out of me, another third wailing with his head tipped way back (then opening his eyes to make sure we were still looking) and the final third, doing this hilarious but dance where he looked like he was an 80 year old man in a walker dancing to nigerian hip hop. he was priceless.
anyway. that brings me to now, and my current smell. its been a pretty incredible day (topped off with speedy internet) and i am now in desperate need of a shower.
Friday, June 20, 2008
happy war refugee day!
holidays are not nearly as big a deal here as they are at home. this is the second day now that i've showed up to school only to find out that it is a holiday and there are apparently no classes. both times, the registrar of the school finds this out only minutes before i do and makes the executive decision to send everybody home. not that i'm complaining- its always a good suprise.
to celebrate, i decided to come into accra to use the highspeed internet and get course stuff sorted out. sadly, ive had absolutely no luck accessing the courses for this fall, and have spent most of my time creeping around on facebook and sending emails. the airconditioning and flush toilets are nice though... on a day where it feels like its a billion degrees out, this isnt too bad of a spot to be.
i just finished a really good week at school (even if it was a short one). we did a couple different teaching strategies this week to see if the kids would get more into the projects. the biggest hit was our trip to the CBW library, where they each got to pick out a book for the next week that they'd do a project on. they really never do stuff like this because they don't have textbooks and like i said, the major teaching strategy is drills and repetition. they were all super excited to get a book to read, and after they'd found one, they sat down in litte groups and read with each other. i've never seen them so quiet and focused. kind of cute...
the rest of the week i would assign different projects for their books (write the title, author, main characters and describe them etc). up until today, by recess the kids are normally so antsy and insane that i just let them go. this time, they worked PAST the recess bell. two of my boys asked if they could stay in and work and read some more. after recess, they kept asking to keep reading instead of doing environmental studies (normally a big hit). it was the greatest- i'm hoping that they don't loose interest in this project before the week with the books are up and that i dont run out of activities to do wth the books. its kind of mindblowing that nobody has done this with them before.. when i wrote a list of things i wanted them to find for me on the board, they all asked what title and character meant. Like everything here, its hard to know what is normal for grade 3s and what isn’t... i don’t know if its even fair to say that an idea of normal for them can even exist because they all come from such different backgrounds and have such different coping mechanisms, strengths and weaknesses
this week we also did a bit more work with their free writing (another thing they never do which completely blows me away). I have them do biography type projects, mainly for my own interest because it’s a cool way to get to know them a little bit. I’ve found that most of these guys are between 10-12 years old, meaning that if they were born in Liberia, they left the country when they were really young and don’t remember much of it at all. A couple of them were born in cote d’ivoire, missing Liberia all together (it was a transition country for a lot of people here). They will none the less go back to Liberia soon as Liberian citizens. I’ve got one kid leaving in the next few days.. hard to know when though because the UNHCR keeps making the process go faster and faster. They all say they’re pretty excited, but it still gives me such an uneasy feeling. As far as trauma type events go for these kids, I think luckily, they’re too young to remember the most awful stuff. We were watching the Patriot the other night with some kids peering through the window, and that got all this on my mind. Some of my neighbours who I’ve become pretty close with (a couple 14 – 16 year old boys) I think have seen a lot more than they let on…
I think my kids have to deal mostly with the repercussions of war and the family divides it has created. Its really common to hear about families where one parent is here, and the other is in either Liberia - because they didn’t make it out initially, or have already repatriated – or somewhere in the West. I guess because seeking refuge status is so hard, people just take what they can get. One of my girls is being raised by her siblings while her parents work in the US, sending remittances through Western Union and what not. Another guy, who works with CBW, hasn’t seen his wife in years because she managed to get refugee status in Australia. All of this obviously isn’t nearly as traumatizing as war, but I think it, and the effects it has on kids, flies under the radar at times.
Anyway. I should try to accomplish at least something productive today, so I’m going to work on uploading pictures.
On another note – I’m looking at doing this school funding thing soon. I’ve been talking with CBW (the $10 program) and I don’t know that its worth giving them money right now. It’s a wicked cause, its just that theyre winding down right now and preparing to move to Liberia and wont have a school there yet for at least a year. I’m now pushing the Hope Foundation.. it’s the one that sends people to computer college and other advanced programs fo $50- really beneficial for the people who get into it… It sets them up with a lot of job opportunities that pay pretty well back in Liberia. If people are interested, let me know maybe within the next few days so that I can start giving numbers to William, the guy who leads Hope. I’m sorry to people who have emailed me and I haven’t emailed back… internet time just seems to go by really quickly and by the time my hour is up, I always have so much more to do.
to celebrate, i decided to come into accra to use the highspeed internet and get course stuff sorted out. sadly, ive had absolutely no luck accessing the courses for this fall, and have spent most of my time creeping around on facebook and sending emails. the airconditioning and flush toilets are nice though... on a day where it feels like its a billion degrees out, this isnt too bad of a spot to be.
i just finished a really good week at school (even if it was a short one). we did a couple different teaching strategies this week to see if the kids would get more into the projects. the biggest hit was our trip to the CBW library, where they each got to pick out a book for the next week that they'd do a project on. they really never do stuff like this because they don't have textbooks and like i said, the major teaching strategy is drills and repetition. they were all super excited to get a book to read, and after they'd found one, they sat down in litte groups and read with each other. i've never seen them so quiet and focused. kind of cute...
the rest of the week i would assign different projects for their books (write the title, author, main characters and describe them etc). up until today, by recess the kids are normally so antsy and insane that i just let them go. this time, they worked PAST the recess bell. two of my boys asked if they could stay in and work and read some more. after recess, they kept asking to keep reading instead of doing environmental studies (normally a big hit). it was the greatest- i'm hoping that they don't loose interest in this project before the week with the books are up and that i dont run out of activities to do wth the books. its kind of mindblowing that nobody has done this with them before.. when i wrote a list of things i wanted them to find for me on the board, they all asked what title and character meant. Like everything here, its hard to know what is normal for grade 3s and what isn’t... i don’t know if its even fair to say that an idea of normal for them can even exist because they all come from such different backgrounds and have such different coping mechanisms, strengths and weaknesses
this week we also did a bit more work with their free writing (another thing they never do which completely blows me away). I have them do biography type projects, mainly for my own interest because it’s a cool way to get to know them a little bit. I’ve found that most of these guys are between 10-12 years old, meaning that if they were born in Liberia, they left the country when they were really young and don’t remember much of it at all. A couple of them were born in cote d’ivoire, missing Liberia all together (it was a transition country for a lot of people here). They will none the less go back to Liberia soon as Liberian citizens. I’ve got one kid leaving in the next few days.. hard to know when though because the UNHCR keeps making the process go faster and faster. They all say they’re pretty excited, but it still gives me such an uneasy feeling. As far as trauma type events go for these kids, I think luckily, they’re too young to remember the most awful stuff. We were watching the Patriot the other night with some kids peering through the window, and that got all this on my mind. Some of my neighbours who I’ve become pretty close with (a couple 14 – 16 year old boys) I think have seen a lot more than they let on…
I think my kids have to deal mostly with the repercussions of war and the family divides it has created. Its really common to hear about families where one parent is here, and the other is in either Liberia - because they didn’t make it out initially, or have already repatriated – or somewhere in the West. I guess because seeking refuge status is so hard, people just take what they can get. One of my girls is being raised by her siblings while her parents work in the US, sending remittances through Western Union and what not. Another guy, who works with CBW, hasn’t seen his wife in years because she managed to get refugee status in Australia. All of this obviously isn’t nearly as traumatizing as war, but I think it, and the effects it has on kids, flies under the radar at times.
Anyway. I should try to accomplish at least something productive today, so I’m going to work on uploading pictures.
On another note – I’m looking at doing this school funding thing soon. I’ve been talking with CBW (the $10 program) and I don’t know that its worth giving them money right now. It’s a wicked cause, its just that theyre winding down right now and preparing to move to Liberia and wont have a school there yet for at least a year. I’m now pushing the Hope Foundation.. it’s the one that sends people to computer college and other advanced programs fo $50- really beneficial for the people who get into it… It sets them up with a lot of job opportunities that pay pretty well back in Liberia. If people are interested, let me know maybe within the next few days so that I can start giving numbers to William, the guy who leads Hope. I’m sorry to people who have emailed me and I haven’t emailed back… internet time just seems to go by really quickly and by the time my hour is up, I always have so much more to do.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
to go or not to go to togo (whitty. i know)
well, we decided to go to togo (tiny country east of ghana - deal with the brackets all you whiners)... it was an adventure, to say the least.
we ended up making a 4 day weekend out of the trip, just because it is kind of far and there was a lot of the country we wanted to explore. we left early friday morning (with a very hungover becky, who made the trip a lot funnier). we had to get visas sorted out in accra because, for whatever reason, i thought a single entry visa was smarter to buy than a multiple entry one. i was wrong. we spent the day getting our visas changed (pure luck that they were willing to do this for us, normally its a 2 week bureacracy-packed process). it took most of the day and ran very much on 'african time' where they'd say come back at 1230 to pick it up, but then make us wait and watch hilarious nigerian soap operas until 3pm. its times like that when you catch yourself thinking how nice it would be to be back in the west where things run on actual time. just as i was thinking that though, i remembered that if i was in canada, the immigration officers would have told me from the begining to go home and do it the regular 2-week way because they dont make exceptions for tourists who decided they wanted to go to another country for the weekend just cause. we got it though, and left for togo a bit behind schedule. i did get to ride in the front of the tro tro though which was thrilling.
we had to cross the border into togo at night which was kind of nerve racking.. everybody around was pretty sketchy and was trying to rob us by pretending to know where bathrooms were.. luckily, our tro tro driver had his friend walk with us so we were okay and crossed eventually. sadly, the good reputation i thought canadians had internationally came to an abrupt end. when paying for my visa to enter ghana, i was charged double what the australians were and also more than the american. apparently, we have really high rates for visas and so other countries retaliate by charging canadians just as much. touche.
the hotel that we stayed at in lomé (the capital) was pretty nice, but unfortunately was full of white men coming to togo for sex. charming hobby that togo is apparently known for.. prostitutes come from ghana and nigeria to work in togo, probably at this hotel. we spent a good chunk of our first night watching old ugly white men drink and then spend time with stunning togolese women and thene eventually, start looking really excited and proud then go upstairs with them as their new pervy buddies cheered. absolutely disgusting and something i just cant understand.
we spent 2 days in lomé going around and seeing the sites... it used to be the paris of west africa (former french colony) and so i got to practice my french and eat lots of baguettes mixed with lebanese food... we went to a market full of animal guts and giant fish, walked along a gorgeous beach and got absolutely pummeled by rain at one point. the real kicker of the lomé visit was when i was changing money and had the money changer make off with $20. he and his little buddies managed to distract me and pull this huge swipe on me and two of my friends, making off with almost $100 total. the twerp. its hard to describe how sneaky this guy was without doing a dramatic reenactment.. but he was good.. i was kind of impressed a couple hours after i was done being mad.
after our stint in lomé, we went to togoville.. a village just east of lomé and a major voodoo centre. after a few more glitches caused by the libyan president's visit to the country and taxi drivers who dont know where theyre going. in togoville we did this tour of the major voodoo parts of the city and also hit up a spot where in the 1940s, there was a report of the virgin appearing over the lake. it warranted a visit from the pope and everything... got to see the pope boat that he took out there and everything. pretty interesting, but a little bit hilarious. as much as i love seeing things like this across west africa, you cant help but leave feeling like you've been conned. i might have mentioned this in my last post about the stilt village and how it felt like it was one big show for the dumb white tourists. ahhh well. all part of the experiene or something like that.
on monday we came back to ghana to get back to work and everything. itwas a really long trip home with massive pot holes, police checks that made us get out of the car and a lot of swerving. we stopped at the mall in accra around dinner time to get some pizza and other supplies from the grocery store than finally went back to camp. just as i thought my adventure was over, i realised i'd pulled a where's waldo move by leaving my wallet in the taxi. whoooops. luckily, it had no money in it and all that was there is stuff i can replace. still felt like a massive idiot though. i think i managed to get all of the dumb tourist mistakes overwith in one weekend.. knock on wood.
as for this week.. i havent got a lot planned. i came back after 2 days off to a class that was actually happy to see me which was kind of fun. it was also really cold today, to the poin that camp looked somewhat hilarious all bundled up for +15 weather.. one kid came to class with a full blown winter jacket on. i think it also made them slightly more relaxed and willing to make division flashcards and write stories. it was a nice change from last thursday when all the local teachers had to go to a meeting with the UNHCR (who is guaranteeing teachers jobs when they return to liberia because there is such a shortage). it meant that school was run all by international volunteers who have absolutely no authority at school. i think i broke up 10 fights between kids.. at one point i turned around to see one of my boys on top of his desk ready to pounce on two other kids where were throwing fists at him. its a lucky thing that in grade 3 they're not very big and i can still pick them up and plop them in desks on the other side of the room. its only ever a short term fix though because in 5 minutes they've moved again. sadly, i think the only way i can get the kids to behave is if i have bobby (my liberian teacher) in the room with me. i've come to terms with it haah.
whaaat else has happened since last week..... oh. on tuesday night i went to ahve dinner at my afrian mother's house. this woman, christine, had apparently adopted me as her daughter while i'm here and insited on me and a friend coming to her house for dinner with 2 teachers (one of whom is her buduburam son.. she's got a lot of adopted kids). anyway. she made us one of the major traditional liberian foods.. fufu and soup. fufu is maize (corn) that is pounded into a powder and then mixed with water and cooked into a doughy ball type thing. the soup is made with fish and really hot peppers (dont know if i mentioned that.. its incredible though!). i'm hopingthat soon she'll have me over to learn how to make it, or at least try other food.
alright. theres more to type but i just noticed how long this was getting. i hope everything is going well at home... i miss it all a lot, but have decided that i'm never coming back - even with all the shit that happened this weekend, i wouldnt want to be anywhere else!
we ended up making a 4 day weekend out of the trip, just because it is kind of far and there was a lot of the country we wanted to explore. we left early friday morning (with a very hungover becky, who made the trip a lot funnier). we had to get visas sorted out in accra because, for whatever reason, i thought a single entry visa was smarter to buy than a multiple entry one. i was wrong. we spent the day getting our visas changed (pure luck that they were willing to do this for us, normally its a 2 week bureacracy-packed process). it took most of the day and ran very much on 'african time' where they'd say come back at 1230 to pick it up, but then make us wait and watch hilarious nigerian soap operas until 3pm. its times like that when you catch yourself thinking how nice it would be to be back in the west where things run on actual time. just as i was thinking that though, i remembered that if i was in canada, the immigration officers would have told me from the begining to go home and do it the regular 2-week way because they dont make exceptions for tourists who decided they wanted to go to another country for the weekend just cause. we got it though, and left for togo a bit behind schedule. i did get to ride in the front of the tro tro though which was thrilling.
we had to cross the border into togo at night which was kind of nerve racking.. everybody around was pretty sketchy and was trying to rob us by pretending to know where bathrooms were.. luckily, our tro tro driver had his friend walk with us so we were okay and crossed eventually. sadly, the good reputation i thought canadians had internationally came to an abrupt end. when paying for my visa to enter ghana, i was charged double what the australians were and also more than the american. apparently, we have really high rates for visas and so other countries retaliate by charging canadians just as much. touche.
the hotel that we stayed at in lomé (the capital) was pretty nice, but unfortunately was full of white men coming to togo for sex. charming hobby that togo is apparently known for.. prostitutes come from ghana and nigeria to work in togo, probably at this hotel. we spent a good chunk of our first night watching old ugly white men drink and then spend time with stunning togolese women and thene eventually, start looking really excited and proud then go upstairs with them as their new pervy buddies cheered. absolutely disgusting and something i just cant understand.
we spent 2 days in lomé going around and seeing the sites... it used to be the paris of west africa (former french colony) and so i got to practice my french and eat lots of baguettes mixed with lebanese food... we went to a market full of animal guts and giant fish, walked along a gorgeous beach and got absolutely pummeled by rain at one point. the real kicker of the lomé visit was when i was changing money and had the money changer make off with $20. he and his little buddies managed to distract me and pull this huge swipe on me and two of my friends, making off with almost $100 total. the twerp. its hard to describe how sneaky this guy was without doing a dramatic reenactment.. but he was good.. i was kind of impressed a couple hours after i was done being mad.
after our stint in lomé, we went to togoville.. a village just east of lomé and a major voodoo centre. after a few more glitches caused by the libyan president's visit to the country and taxi drivers who dont know where theyre going. in togoville we did this tour of the major voodoo parts of the city and also hit up a spot where in the 1940s, there was a report of the virgin appearing over the lake. it warranted a visit from the pope and everything... got to see the pope boat that he took out there and everything. pretty interesting, but a little bit hilarious. as much as i love seeing things like this across west africa, you cant help but leave feeling like you've been conned. i might have mentioned this in my last post about the stilt village and how it felt like it was one big show for the dumb white tourists. ahhh well. all part of the experiene or something like that.
on monday we came back to ghana to get back to work and everything. itwas a really long trip home with massive pot holes, police checks that made us get out of the car and a lot of swerving. we stopped at the mall in accra around dinner time to get some pizza and other supplies from the grocery store than finally went back to camp. just as i thought my adventure was over, i realised i'd pulled a where's waldo move by leaving my wallet in the taxi. whoooops. luckily, it had no money in it and all that was there is stuff i can replace. still felt like a massive idiot though. i think i managed to get all of the dumb tourist mistakes overwith in one weekend.. knock on wood.
as for this week.. i havent got a lot planned. i came back after 2 days off to a class that was actually happy to see me which was kind of fun. it was also really cold today, to the poin that camp looked somewhat hilarious all bundled up for +15 weather.. one kid came to class with a full blown winter jacket on. i think it also made them slightly more relaxed and willing to make division flashcards and write stories. it was a nice change from last thursday when all the local teachers had to go to a meeting with the UNHCR (who is guaranteeing teachers jobs when they return to liberia because there is such a shortage). it meant that school was run all by international volunteers who have absolutely no authority at school. i think i broke up 10 fights between kids.. at one point i turned around to see one of my boys on top of his desk ready to pounce on two other kids where were throwing fists at him. its a lucky thing that in grade 3 they're not very big and i can still pick them up and plop them in desks on the other side of the room. its only ever a short term fix though because in 5 minutes they've moved again. sadly, i think the only way i can get the kids to behave is if i have bobby (my liberian teacher) in the room with me. i've come to terms with it haah.
whaaat else has happened since last week..... oh. on tuesday night i went to ahve dinner at my afrian mother's house. this woman, christine, had apparently adopted me as her daughter while i'm here and insited on me and a friend coming to her house for dinner with 2 teachers (one of whom is her buduburam son.. she's got a lot of adopted kids). anyway. she made us one of the major traditional liberian foods.. fufu and soup. fufu is maize (corn) that is pounded into a powder and then mixed with water and cooked into a doughy ball type thing. the soup is made with fish and really hot peppers (dont know if i mentioned that.. its incredible though!). i'm hopingthat soon she'll have me over to learn how to make it, or at least try other food.
alright. theres more to type but i just noticed how long this was getting. i hope everything is going well at home... i miss it all a lot, but have decided that i'm never coming back - even with all the shit that happened this weekend, i wouldnt want to be anywhere else!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
just about one month in little liberia
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!
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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