End Of A Chapter

December 14, 2010

It’s been a long time since I’ve written. I think writing is a useful exercise to process your experiences and gain understanding, but, especially when you are feeling overwhelmed, it’s often the last thing you want to do in those precious moments of leisure.

Hence, it’s been a long time—but I repeat myself. The school term ended, I turned in my exam grades yesterday, and now I write to you from a plane somewhere in the airspace over Nigeria or the Central African Republic, en route to Nairobi, Kenya. From there, I’ll take a 12-hour overnight bus to Kampala, Uganda, where I will meet my beloved sister who is working there for four months through the American Jewish World Service Program (Thankfully for my parents, our remaining, supremely rational brother had the wisdom to pass on the opportunity to complete the Lee Africa Trifecta). I look forward to spending the holidays with her, traveling through Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda. I will especially be interested to compare the cultures of West and East Africa, and my sister’s urban experience with my own rural one.

Speaking of which, my rural experience in the village came to a head in the last few weeks. When I last wrote, I said we were discussing with the chief the last-ditch effort to broker a deal in which the school would become a jointly-owned, community establishment rather than that of a private, effectively absentee landowner who doesn’t seem to have the interests of the students at heart. It had become clear that, otherwise, our NGO could not establish an effective partnership at the school and so would be leaving at the end of the school term.

This effort failed. The chief met with the school proprietor to try to draw out any interest in this scheme (we knew the proprietor had previously been interested in selling), but, now that the school is running well at a 120+ pupils, he is no longer interested. The chief made clear to him that this would mean our NGO would be leaving the village—a result which he would be unhappy with—and the proprietor responded that the chief should not worry because he’d continue a number of the policies we had put in place and that he would attract other “whites” in the future. In any event, we “whites” are leaving, and I hope any other ones will do their homework first.

Ultimately, as outsiders, we can’t force the issue. Only if we can support the school and community organically should we stay. There is a good chance, if the proprietor follows through on continuing the policies he has promised to maintain, the school will be okay. However, as you know by now, I seriously question his integrity and competence. As for the chief and other village elders I have spoken with, they  all believe the school will fail again once we leave; I truly hope they are wrong. Honestly, there is nothing that would make me feel better than to see the school that I have poured my heart into these past four months not need me or any other outsider.

Even once we made the decision not to have organizational presence at the school, I seriously considered staying on just as an individual teacher. After all, I have really grown attached to the village: the beautiful green mountains I wake up to outside my room, the market women’s indefatigable laughter (I think often at my expense), and, most of all, the children I teach and have, in doing so, come to know and love.

But, ultimately, I think the school will have to face certain realities, and my presence will just delay whatever those are. Moreover, by leaving now and seeing what unfolds, there is a chance that we could come back on better terms before my time here is through, should the proprietor change his mind (I promised the chief that I would check-in at least once a month during the next school term, but I admit this contingency plan is more a hope than anything else). Finally, I am committed to Pagus:Africa, and as the on-the-ground representative of this small NGO, it is important we choose the schools we support wisely. There are a LOT of village schools in this area that desperately need help, so we must choose those schools where there exist eager, focused, and capable Ghanaian partners whose visions we can support rather than trying to concoct one for them. I believe that the development world, on the whole, should temper itself in this way—bleeding hearts alone won’t help make systemic change.

That being said, my decision to go has been painful. At the monthly PTA meeting last week, I had to get up and tell the parents I was leaving earlier than planned, and there was quite an uproar. Of course, I couldn’t tell them the truth about why I was leaving, because otherwise they would be even more likely to withdraw their children from the school—you see, there is such an irrational faith in the “white man” here (which has led to the burgeoning class sizes this term) and, as a result, my departure would inevitably lead to an irrational withdrawal as well. To compensate against that, I just said how unfortunate it was I had to go and how much faith I had in the school and its leadership. I felt conflicted about lying to them about the latter part, but I still believe it was the right thing to do: they can judge for themselves next school term and withdraw or continue accordingly, but they ought to at least give the proprietor a chance, no matter how stupid I think the man is.

More important was telling the kids, which was even harder. But I think they and I both will always remember these past few months with some warmth and excitement—I am sure they were highly unusual for us all.

Okay, that’s all for now. By the next time I write, I will know where I am going to be next term, but it will be in this same general region of Ghana. By now, I think we are in Democratic Republic of Congo airspace. Whoot! Oh, and don’t worry, Mom and grandmoms, that is AIR space. It’s safe up here.

p.s. A professional, adventure photographer came and stayed with me for a while so, as a result, I have some pretty awesome photos from this experience! I will post them in due time. 

Hello!

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile, but changes are afoot. Lots of news coming. Please check back in a week!

Nothing and Everything

About Nothing Of Importance (written 11/09)

I just felt like writing about my lunch today and wasn’t going to put it online, but I thought why not. I promised a few of you no effusive poetry about Africa and the world, but I never said I wouldn’t put up mundane descriptions of nothing in particular, so bare with me…

I exited the Immigration Office through a small parking lot and into a courtyard of gravel and unkempt grass. An array of cement-block government buildings, like the one I had just left, sat around the perimeter in no particular order, each 3-4 stories high with the typical cross-iron windows. They reminded me of cheap motels in Florida, but here they are the preeminent, modern buildings that house the district capitol offices for the Volta Region.

Like any open space in Ghana that has even the most minute chance of snaring a passer-by, several vendors had set up shop in the shade of the trees selling various snacks and trinkets. At one stand, a woman stood inside something reminiscent of a ticket booth serving food through a square opening. I decided I was hungry enough for lunch, and so I went to scout it out. I found her dishing beans and fried plantains out of a set of large pots and pans. There were a few benches set out in front to allow customers to dine in. I ordered the food in Ewe to practice/show off (Ewe is the language they speak in the Volta Region and I’m trying to, at least, get down the basics), and she laughed unashamedly out loud.

“Peppe?” She asked as she began scooping out a large helping. Her benign tone masked the grave danger of the word. Too much peppe sauce can disintegrate your insides before you can mouth the word “W-A-T-E-R.”

“Small, small.” I switched to English, given the importance of the question. Well, their English. I have quickly adapted their version. In their version, important words are often repeated twice.

“Gari?” She continued. (Ground cassava.)

“Plenty!” It really mixes well with the beans, adding a starch to offset the mush.

I sat down on a nearby bench with my bowl and a coke and took out a book. The attendant in the Immigration Office said the paperwork for my Visa extension would take 2-3 hours, so I anticipated 4-6. In any case, I certainly had time for a leisurely lunch.

After an hour of reading and intermittent chatting with the woman (we established we were both born on Monday, a very relevant fact given that friends and family here use nicknames for each other based on the day of the week they’re born), I paid my fee and even left a tip. Tips aren’t heard of around here, but, then again, I’m rich (comparatively), and the bill was roughly 70 cents. And, plus, it was a very pleasant lunch.

 About Everything of Importance (written 11/16)

Now for the real update...

I have just returned from the house of the chief, or “Na-Na.” His house is made of cement and modest in size but towers over the mud huts and thatched roofs one passes to reach it. It is my third visit in a week—there is something of a crisis looming at the school in his village. The school director has made official, through a letter to my NGO director which he read to me as courtesy before sending it, that he refuses to effectively all the terms that were asked of him in return for our support (terms which he previously agreed to). He refuses to limit class size or prohibit corporal punishment. He cites as his reasons a long history of failed partnerships between foreign and African entities, but I know that his main reason is desire for all the money he has seen flow into the school now that we are here (As an aside, because I have studied the history of abusive Western organizations in Africa, I find it particularly offensive when he willfully misuses it to justify his own greed).  Of course, in concluding, he wrote that he encourages us to continue helping his school, so long as we can “compromise” with him.

My NGO director, Ellen, received the letter, and she, Myles (the other volunteer), and I talked things over. Understandably, Ellen doesn’t want to work with an obstinate partner when there are so many other schools in need. On the other hand, leaving aside the sentimental stuff, Myles and I don’t want to give up on this community. We have seen the warm welcome we have received here, the great need, and the potential for a prosperous partnership with the school. In fact, I did some calculations and, even with no financial support from the NGO, the school fees we are bringing in now would cover the all the necessary expenditures, including paying teachers and the headmaster higher wages than what they are taking now (this is big because the school has operated at a loss throughout most of its ten years in existence). The hitch is that the finances are only stable if the NGO maintains some type of presence to entice the parents to continue to enroll their children and if there is no director siphoning off money. The problem is that with the current director, neither condition can be met. The only way would be to buy him out.

Which is exactly what we are trying now, through some delicate politicking. Alas, this is the final attempt to salvage the situation and, if it fails (which is likely), I will most likely have to volunteer at a different school after Christmas break. Here is the basic premise: The chief and community fully support our NGO and don’t want us to leave. The teachers are unhappy with their very low wages and are threatening to quit if the director does not provide them their promised raises at the end of the month. Most parents will withdraw their children if we leave, and the director will go back to operating at a loss. Finally, the director has made clear in the past his interest in selling the school to save his pocket book.

 In other words, we have a lot of bargaining power. The basic idea would be to have some sort of board of directors, made up of village elders and in collaboration with myself and Ellen, buy the school back and run it as a community school with our support. There are a lot of details that I have been considering that would have to be worked out for proper accountability, but the basic principles we are banking on are (1) the school director recognizes his own desperate circumstances and is willing to sell at a reasonable price and (2) that the village elders would see the benefits to the community to having a well-run school amongst an otherwise completely failing local education system and therefore would willingly and honestly collaborate with us to get there. Over time, this relationship between our NGO and the community would bring more possibilities to help them prosper in a more organic and complete way than even the most successful partnerships the NGO has had at other schools.

But I am getting ahead myself. As I said, I just returned from meeting the chief. I found him sitting idly on a lawn chair in his portico dressed in a (disappointingly) unceremonious, checkered, button-down shirt. He greeted me warmly, and we went through the perfunctory introductions I have learned are not only customary, but necessary. Then, I told the chief that Ellen, my director, had sent the school director the letter refusing his “revised” conditions and informing him of our imminent departure (a bluff that may, unfortunately, become true). This is part of the plan, one which the chief and I devised in our last meeting (I find him to be remarkably cunning and understanding of NGO partnership intricacies). In the letter, Ellen would be mentioning that, in the interest of the community, she had given me the go ahead to inform the chief that our partnership would be ending. This was a calculated move so that, when the chief “invites”—commands—the director to come meet him to discuss why the NGO is leaving his community, the director wouldn’t feel it is a surprise attack, a coup d’état contrived by his foreign partners (which is partially what it is, although the chief and elders do genuinely want to find a way to keep us here… so it’s only that we have to present the initiative as led by them with our assistance, rather than the other way around).  I will be absent from their meeting so that the chief and the director can discuss more openly the opportunities to salvage the situation, and the hope would be that the director will raise the option of selling himself. Afterward, the chief will call on me and we will meet.  If he does show interest in selling, the chief and I would subsequently have to convince the community leaders to raise some money themselves for the purchase, since my NGO wants to assist them to do it rather than simply buy it for them.

It’s a bold move, but we are all out of options. At least, I hope I can sleep well knowing that I have done all I could. I am very tired of this saga. Whatever happens, whether I stay here or go to another school, I hope I can just focus on teaching next term. I didn’t think I would get so caught up in politics here, but I must say it has truly been an extraordinary experience: maneuvering through this system—one governed by traditional age-grade politics, a confusing spoils system that at once seems hopelessly  corrupt yet efficient and even acceptable, and a strong sense of propriety that often means what is said is not what is meant to be heard—is  a challenge, to say the least.

 Alright, that’s enough for now. Thank you for the encouraging words you have sent. I’m sure that the next time I write, I will know which way the wind is blowing, and whether I’ll be sailing or not. I’m not sure what I personally want anymore, although I do know I am very tired and this instant coffee is just not cutting it…

Two Months in Africa--What Have I Actually Been Doing??

I can’t report any huge developments on the school since I have last written, so I’d like to use this entry to talk about some other things about which I have yet to write. However, first, I think I ought to give those of you who care a coherent summary (something I realized I have yet to do) of what I actually do here, what my organization is trying to accomplish at the school, and where we stand now. This is coming mostly in response to a couple of friends who wrote me recently and said they still have no idea what I’ve been doing for two months in Africa! For the rest of you, feel free to skip the next seven paragraphs….

Okay. So halfway through my senior year at Penn last year, I decided I want to volunteer as a teacher in Africa. I found Pagus, this small NGO that effectively consists of one woman, named Ellen,  in Philadelphia, and a small, intermittent supply of volunteers. Ellen has spent the last four years supporting the development of a boarding school in rural Ghana through a scholarship for the impoverished students, infrastructure development, and short-term volunteer trips (Having visited the school, I must say she and the school director have done a fantastic job). Now that this partnership has matured and the school is, more or less, independent, Ellen decided to launch another effort with a new school. The director of a dying school in a very poor village, called Likpe Bakua, had been courting her for years to help, and she recently agreed. Around the same time, she accepted me as her first long-term volunteer, and I agreed to go to this village as a volunteer teacher and a sort of Pagus representative.

The school was created ten years ago to provide a better alternative to the government schools in this deprived region of Ghana, and it runs from daycare to 6^th grade. From what I can gather, the founder managed to maintain some stability in the school but eventually gave it up and sold it to the current director, Francis. Francis, who is a regional pastor and “big-man” of the area (he owns a car, goats, second house in Accra) decided to buy it up  because he either saw it as a business opportunity or because he has a big heart and wanted to save the children (I am now putting it at about a 70/30 mixture of the two, respectively). Francis enjoyed a brief period of seeming success (up to 180 students in his first year) and then suffered an abrupt dive into depopulation, bankruptcy, and disarray. In actuality, he operated at a loss for all the three years he has owned the place, and no more than half the student population was ever really paying. The abrupt collapse came when the school bus driver quit because he wasn’t receiving his money, and, without him, the greater part of the student population which was attending from outside villages suddenly had no way of getting to school. The rest of the school floundered, the headmaster and several teachers quit, and many parents withdrew their children because they thought the remaining teachers to be irresponsible or incompetent (I know this doesn’t paint the current management we are dealing with in a positive light, but in all fairness, I must say this community is also extremely difficult when it comes to education of their children. Many don't see the point and refuse to pay promptly or fully. As a result, the school can’t afford quality teachers and so the education became as worthless as they already felt it was. Classic chicken and egg).

I don’t believe Ellen had any idea the extent to which this school was rotting when she decided to sign on, and I obviously had no clue. I thought I would be spending my time adapting to the culture, trying my hand at teaching for the first time (to which I felt very unqualified but very excited), and just learning from the kids. I thought that to be plenty for the year. But when I arrived, I saw a school that lacked toilets or drinking water, textbooks or qualified teachers. Its roof leaked and the window panes were spoiled. There was no semblance of class structure, no clear authority figure, and no committed leadership. Most of all, there were almost no kids. Needless to say, I didn’t really think I had time to just focus on adapting to the culture.

I dove in from day one, organizing a sign-in rotation system for the oldest students to fetch river water for the school, buying clocks and pencil sharpeners, re-testing some of the children who were clearly above or below their assigned grade, revamping the class schedule, and so on. I was emboldened because the headmaster and teachers were very receptive and welcomed all the new ideas; I tried to make it a collaborative process but the state of the school was so dire that, when they seemed unwilling or unable to actually contribute, I temporarily accepted promoting dependency for the sake of salvaging the school. All the while, I was teaching approximately four hours of class a day, primarily Math and English for the 3^rd-5^th graders, along with shorter classes in Information and Communication Technology and Creative Art (I hope Mrs. Mattingly, my elementary school art teacher, is not reading this). In the evenings, I would meet with the school owner/director to hammer out the details of our NGO-school partnership or even the chief of the village to find out about how the community viewed the school. (I need to mention, at this point, that a couple weeks in, another volunteer named Myles arrived to stay for three months with me in the village. Fresh out of high school, I was skeptical about having him around, but Myles has turned out to be extremely effective, mature, and a fine partner.)

Anyway, over these past two months, I’ve learned that running a mile a minute can’t take you backwards in time. It is easy to forget the bounds of your role when you see obvious problems that can so easily be fixed, and no one else seems to be trying to fix them. But I really should have known better than to think we could turn the school around on a dime. After all, you are tampering with issues that transcend the school; they run deep into the culture, community, and history. Nonetheless, I can’t say we didn’t make progress. With the subsidized fees and the presence of foreigners, the student population ballooned. With the improvements in structure and infrastructure, it began to function like a proper school. We were even able to hire two new teachers—both infinitely more qualified than the previous staff.

But it is this rapid progress that allowed my delusion to carry on for so long and made the realization that I wrote about in my last entry that much harder to bare (For those of you who don’t want to read back, I reached a breaking point in the “negotiations” with the school director because he didn’t want to agree to the terms of the agreement my NGO director had made with him via phone/email prior to my arrival—there were some serious misunderstandings about what those terms were, of course). Just as I magnified, in my own mind, the significance of the immediate progress of the school, I magnified this failure into a true crisis: I questioned the whole experience here, my purpose, blah, blah, blah. I was spreading myself so thin I couldn’t see the intrinsic value of the experience or the real impact on some of the kids.

But, as I wrote before, ultimately this event served to temper my expectations, my demands, and my disappointments. I have now decided that, if the partnership fails, I’ll stay on as a teacher for the year (after all, that’s all I wanted to be in the first place). Of course, it won’t be easy for me if the school reverts back to its former state, but I think I now have the experience in hand that I’ll avoid another existential crisis and accept the impact I can make in the realm I can make it. Before, I hadn’t truly convinced myself (even if I told myself I had) that no matter what happens, it’s not a waste. I’m 80% sure I’ve convinced myself now. If I can get the other 20% there, I’m invincible.

Okay, summary finished. Sorry that took so long. What about the rest of my experience here? Let’s see….I love the village I am living in. It is nestled in the foothills of the mountains that separate Ghana from Togo. It is very, very green. It has a few shops in the town center and vans that pass through that stuff people like sardines for the 30 minute trip to the nearby town of Hohoe where the market is. I would guess the village consists of one to two thousand people, comprised of seven clans (which are indistinguishable to an outsider) led by seven family heads who report to the chief. The people are very kind and, after two months, some of them have even begun to stop gawking at me! Only a few of them have passable English. I have begun to learn their language, but it’s slow coming.

I stay at an informal guesthouse here run by one of the wealthier townsmen and his wife. They rent out six rooms that extend from their own house, each furnished with an uncomfortable bed and a ceiling fan (yes, there’s electricity, although frequent blackouts). The bathroom is communal, but the toilet flushes and there’s a real shower (I was almost disappointed when I saw the shower head; I had been mentally preparing myself to shower with a bucket for a year). Needles to say, no hot water, but I rarely miss it. Besides a “guard” dog, a puppy, a cat, and two kittens, the couple lives alone with their 11-year-old grandson, Denis. I love having Denis around, who is also one of my students, and he is finally getting over his shyness toward me—he even followed me (barefoot) on my evening jog tonight.

As far as food and water go, I have a gas cooker and a refrigerator, so I make a lot of my own food and boil my own water. Tonight, I tried to recreate my Mom’s tuna casserole (it was more like milk-pasta pudding, but it was tolerable). The madam of the house has adopted Myles and me as her own and sometimes makes us very tasty local dishes for dinner as well. The variety of food here is extremely lacking, but I’m making due. On the whole, I’m pretty comfortable with life here. If nothing else, there are so much fewer distractions here than back home that, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have time to actually read!

And, because I am trying to make this entry a catch-all, and it is already interminably long, let me conclude with a bullet point list of things I miss about home (besides my family and friends):

·         Whole wheat bread

·         Gym

·         Meritocracy

·         Salads

·         Muffins

·         Real Coffee

·         Unbelievable efficiency

·         Complete disinterest in your existence when walking down a street

Reality

These past two weeks were the toughest for me yet. A real dose of reality. I came into this thinking I was better than the rosy-eyed Westerner wannabe-hero because I knew some history on the country as well as some history of “development” gone sour, and that my expectations were tempered with this knowledge. But between the ballooning population of this once dying school, my 4^th-grade students begging me for more math homework, and a hundred kids dancing and laughing in complete bliss during Friday games, I really forgot all of it. I forgot the history, the politics, the skepticism. I began to believe the headmaster, inept but good-natured, was beginning to hold his own. I began to believe that the teachers were starting to show a little more commitment to their work. I really felt as if this school would begin to transform like a dream, slowly at first but then with decisive strides.

About two weeks ago, the cold, mundane reality began to dampen this dream. It’s the petty things, you know. Sometimes things so petty that you don’t even put them on the list of things to remember not to take for granted—like a photocopy error or an ill-timed rain over a leaking roof. And then there’s those larger obstacles that seem at once insurmountable yet equally petty, able to suffocate the dream without even commanding a solid presence themselves….

The principal obstacle of this kind was the school owner’s refusal to be fully financially transparent with us because of some rather contrived fear about his personal freedoms. No matter how hard I tried to explain to him that, by providing this very relevant and harmless financial information, we would be able to invest the money that would take his school out of bankruptcy, begin to turn him profit, and, not to mention, markedly improve the quality of education for the kids he claims to care so much about, he wouldn’t budge. We spent hours each day going in circles about this, he insisting on coming to an agreement about profit-sharing before releasing the rest of the school finances while I insisting on the reverse order. Ultimately, we were getting nowhere, except that I was going to bed drained and waking up frustrated: Almost 120 eager children, and one man’s irrational demands threatening to derail the whole thing! Without this financial information, we wouldn’t be able to ethically fund the scholarship or any other investments in the school, and my tenure as a teacher there would have to end with the partnership.

 It was really hard for me. I thought, could I have tried so hard for these children only to fail so fast? Would this be the first time in my life I would have to accept my determination was not sufficient?  What would happen to the children?

This would be a nice time to say the owner has come around and we have turned a corner, but I can’t say that (yet). What I can say is that I’m going to bed tonight without too much soul-searching. I spent the weekend sitting in the shade on a lawn chair at the guesthouse, reading an outdated Newsweek and sipping coke from a glass bottle, recuperating after a grueling week. Between pages, I spoke with another guest passing through, an itinerant Hungarian man who has spent the last ten years traveling Africa as a self-professed “moth-er,” a moth hunter and scientist (He has discovered and named several new species himself). He also runs his own ecotourism NGO to try to promote forest conservation in a continent that has less than 10% of its original forests left.

While we were sitting there, we heard a chainsaw rev up and attack a nearby tree—a common sound around here as cocoa farmers push further into the forest. He says every time he hears the sound, he suffers inside, and I believe it when I see his face. He says he knows he can’t win this fight for the trees and biodiversity, and soon it will all be gone. And yet, he has been doing it for ten years, and his resolve is unwavering.

 I’m not sure what meeting him did for me, but it somehow quelled my anguish. He is fighting on an infinite slope with no measurable goals, yet he is somehow content, in an odd way, because he is fighting. He says the things you see on this continent make you a humbler, more patient, more balanced individual back home, even if he may never go home.

I don’t know if it was him or the Coke, but I regained my composure this weekend. I remember the history that had tempered me before, now mixed with the experience of my six weeks here so far and the insights people like the Hungarian moth-er are helping me develop. I remember now that there can be no complete “success” here, but neither is there failure, because I really am learning something either way.

Macy

I am new to this “development” line of work, but I would presume immediate gratification does not occur frequently, and, if it does, it will crack upon deeper reflection: Those expedient tasks which are successful may only skirt the real problem at hand or, worse, reinforce it. Other tasks that ought to be simple and effective are intolerably slowed by the ingrained flaws of the system. So when I tell you that, one month into my Ghana experience, I have just experienced near-immediate gratification in dealing with one particular child at our school—and that this gratification will endure my deepest reflections—you must understand how lucky I feel.

The child is a nine year old girl named Macy. Many of these children are cute, but she’s certainly top 5. She is unbearably sweet, and her smile melts the room. She also happens to be completely deaf. She has been attending the school here—one which is not equipped to educate children who can hear, much less those who can’t.

I have tried in small ways to include her in my classes, and she has clearly been appreciative: In my first week, she  brought me a present nearly every day. The best was a huge bag of oranges from her family farm. A different day, I was helping the kids cut the grass before school with machetes and, as always, sweating profusely. Before returning to class, I asked one of the teachers if I could borrow her handkerchief to dry off. Macy saw this, and, in the afternoon, she handed me an envelope with the words written, “Your gift.” There was a brand new handkerchief inside.

I assumed that schools for the deaf were hard to come by in this rural region, but I decided to inquire anyway, as I knew Ghana’s government is actually relatively supportive of the disabled. As luck would have it, I found out the regional school for the deaf is in Hohoe, only a twenty-minute drive from the village! Upon this discovery, I was determined to get Macy into that school as fast as possible. I felt every day was another day wasted when, only twenty minutes away, there was a school for the deaf—and, as it turns out, a rather prestigious one at that—waiting for her. Of course, she is just one of nine children in a poor farming family, and so the fees quickly became the obvious roadblock.

And Ghana bureaucracy didn’t help either. Everything becomes so damn complicated here. As required, we took her into town the following Monday morning to the government testing facilities to have all her senses tested. However, for inexplicable reasons, most of the staff was absent, including all those who test for hearing. They insisted on proceeding, nonetheless, and she went home that day having only her VISION tested: A completely deaf girl who uses her eyes as the primary means to communicate, and they only test her vision—sick. They ought to test their own senses next time.

Anyway, after a series of hic-ups, a little diligence finally paid off. Today, I took the father and Macy—a very, very excited Macy, who carried her traveling bag around our school in the morning to show her classmates and say goodbye—to the new school where she will board for the next 9 months. We have managed to procure a sponsorship for her from our organization to cover half the fees, and the appreciative and truly elated father has promised to cover the rest. In the taxi on the way, she was on my lap (no car here travels with less than two passengers per seat, it’s the law) and we were practicing the sign language alphabet from a small booklet I picked up—we are now five letters in to her new world.

Okay, so it took three weeks, but I still consider this gratification to be remarkably immediate for something that will have a positive impact on her entire education (she can stay at the school through senior studies and even vocational training) and her subsequent life. If I fail to do anything productive this  year for my own school back in the village, I will sleep well at night knowing Macy is not there anymore. I will miss her though.

Sunday Church

The internet was totally down for a solid six days this week, so I had to hear from a Peace Corps volunteer in the market  about Roy Halladay’s no-hitter, and I certainly could not blog. Good news is I found out there’s a guy in the nearest town who has a satellite and can get any channel for a proper monetary token. If Phillies go World Series, I know where to go.

I think I will be posting something else shortly for this past week, but here is what I meant to post last Sunday:

“Mr. NE-TAN?”

It was Francis’s son, timidly standing outside my door. I opened my cell phone to look at the time. It was 8:27 a.m. No way, a Ghanaian arriving early. Albeit 3 minutes, but still early. Not in my entire month here had any Ghanaian done anything on time, much less early.

Ahhh, but it’s Sunday, and we’re going to church. If they do anything on time here, it would be Sunday church, I thought….

Ghanaians are extremely religious. There are a multitude of Christian sects, along with significant minorities of Catholics and Muslims. Nothing seems to happen here that can’t explicitly be related to God or demon spirits, whether it be crop output or a student’s behavior. Every meal begins and each meeting ends with prayer. Most shops lack formal names; instead, they paint slogans on their front rafters like “Our Savior Always,” “Christ’s Blood Cures,” or, the oldie but goodie, “Oh, Jesus.” Here, Sunday is a true day of rest—the only day this farming community stays home from their farms.

This particular Sunday, our school director, Francis, was taking me to his church where he serves as pastor. They dress very well on this day, and so I had found my nicest slacks and collar shirt to put on. As I rushed to put on my dress shoes, the boy asked me if he could polish them down with a rag. Slightly embarrassed, I accepted—they were pretty muddy.

We loaded into Francis’s ancient German Volkswagen. I think it was from WWI, and it had been stripped of everything not necessary to make it go forward. We travelled an undulating dirt road from our small village to a smaller village, where we parked under a tree in no particular direction. We got out and walked past a few small shelters and made a sudden turn toward a modestly-sized mud hut that appeared out of nowhere. I ducked my head under the low-hanging corrugated roof as we entered and, about to ask what we were stopping here for, I realized I had entered the church. The aluminum roof, dirt floor, and wooden housing were all barren, but there were a few rows of wooden benches and, at the front, a small table draped in a brightly-colored African cloth with a slender blue vase and four pink lilacs neatly poking out. Despite the faded chalk of addition problems  scratched onto every inch of the wooden support beams and a worn chalkboard in the corner, it felt very becoming as a sanctuary. It was as if it were constructed just to prove that that any room in the world could be sanctified through the conviction of the congregation, and it reminded me of the stories my grandparents told me of praying in a barnyard at one of the member’s farms before our synagogue in Carbondale was constructed.

I won’t take you through the whole service, but between an old man in traditional garb doing some spiritual boogie that resembled the chicken dance and Francis’s sermon that likened the race of the sperm cells to the egg to God’s love, let’s just say it was sufficiently unusual. I did enjoy the hymns.

Afterward, we visited a sick man who had gone blind in a nearby house and prayed with him (I was told I was teaching some of his grandkids, but he couldn’t remember which ones).  Whatever my skepticism about religion—and especially the intense brand of Christianity practiced here—one can’t argue with the solace it brings a sick, lonely man to be visited and prayed for on a Sunday afternoon. 

School Pics

Week 3

We are three weeks in, with 57 students, one quarter of which have actually paid. Compared to 28 students at the end of the first week and only four paying, I say we are making progress. With the schedule that Myles and I have implemented now for the five teachers, some semblance of order is settling in (although one teacher can’t tell time so I have to tell him when it’s time to switch).

But at some point last week when I was attempting to teach a classroom of 10-12 year-olds how to read, with only five books to share—and even those missing several pages—dealing with constant interruptions from a child with serious ADHD that had, until recently, been treated with the cane to beat the “demons” out of him, realizing that but a handful of these kids even knew the alphabet, beginning to teach the alphabet only to be totally interrupted by the commotion of fighting children in the next classroom where I found the teacher had left for no particular reason, noticing the headmaster doodling on scratch paper in his office in the following room entirely oblivious to the chaos…I nearly decided this whole thing was a farce, and I should throw in the towel. But then there was today: I was teaching these same children, and we were finishing the alphabet and moving on to long and short vowels…and they were standing elated, shouting the vowels at the top of their lungs…. In the classroom next door, the previously-absent teacher was lecturing in a deep voice on climbing vs. creeping plants, now re-motivated with a well-received discussion about actually having a schedule….At the furthest end, I could hear toddlers giggling in the nursery classroom, and I thought about how, without this school, they would otherwise be tightly strapped onto the backs of their mothers as they were selling goods in the market all day or, at best, sitting at home unattended with nothing to do. All of this together, I felt almost gleeful, and I laughed out how drastically your spirits can change when you feel the fate of 60 kids is—at least partially—in  your hands. I always admired teachers, I think, but now I understand why.

The Struggle At Hand

Last weekend, I climbed the tallest mountain in Ghana (on the border with Togo) with some German tourists I met here. It was a struggle, but nothing compared with these past two weeks of teaching….

If I was only concerned with teaching the children who show up to school, I think things would be fairly easy-going. Generally speaking, they are bright, eager to learn, and hilariously cute. However, all these positive traits are undermined by the overall chaos of the school. The first week, there were no classes. The teachers simply sat around and “planned,” leaving Myles and myself (there is another American here for a few months; he’s just out of high school but very mature) to entertain 20 kids with nothing to do for six hours. They must be starved for attention, because EVERYTHING we did, they loved. I think their favorites were practicing English through some short role-playing skits I wrote and playing “Simon Says” which was converted to “Chief Says” (hold your judgment about my stereotyping; the chiefs are still essential to their way of life here, evidently). The other teachers would hear the laughter and stop their “planning” to come watch us. Each day they assumed we would just do something new and exciting, as if we were magical Americans with a magic bag of tricks.

This week, we finally began with classes. Well, except that we still had no idea who was teaching what because the headmaster still hasn’t finished a proper schedule. It was so frustrating that we actually just took the schedule home to do it ourselves today. I was supposed to teach math, science, English, and “Information &  Computers Technology.” I opted out of teaching the science this term because it seems to be primarily about Ghanaian plants and animals which I know nothing about and, even the little chemistry and physics that they do cover, I realized I ought not to teach because their English is far below the level to understand such concepts. As for the computer class, they have one computer, and it’s broken—I’ll have to be creative.

Coming to the point, I am suppose to be volunteering both to teach and reorganize this struggling private school. Public schools here are terrible, overcrowded, underfunded, and lack a sufficient number of quality teachers (Okay, quick story about public school science teacher: I was planning a science lesson somewhere in town, and a young boy was looking over my shoulder. He asked me if I teach science and I said I did. He said he wished he had a science teacher; his own had refused to teach them that week because they are “unruly.” I asked what he meant by this, and the boy said the teacher was pissed that, after slapping a child in class, they reported him to the administration.) Anyway, these public schools could used some help, but NGO’s can’t work as easily with them as the private ones, and so here I am.

But the state of the private school in this village is not much better. The school has been dying because children don’t pay their fees and, as a result, teachers are underpaid. Many student come the first two weeks of each term and then, once payment is demanded, they never show up again. Students arrive late, and some teachers (including the HEADMASTER) arrive later. My organization, Pagus Africa, which has just begun their partnership with the school this year, has subsidized the fees to half their original value, on condition of prompt payment from the parents. The organization hopes to jump-start the still-young school and begin a cyclical process of improvement between the students and teachers.

The bottom line is, my job is very difficult because I have been sent not only to teach, but to help implement this program of subsidies and general improvement in an environment where “implementing” doesn’t seem to be the strong suit. The school director and teachers love to talk about how their prayers have been answered with our arrival (G-d rules everything here, but I will save this commentary for another time) and all the change they anticipate, but I have yet to see them do anything unless pestered repeatedly. They only complain that the village people don’t respect education, but one father in the village told me today he doesn’t send his kids to the school because it’s a MESS.

HOWEVER, he has changed his mind and plans to send his children tomorrow. Now everyone in the village is saying they want to send their kid, nephew, and maybe even come themselves. Why? Because there are white people.  They aren’t looking at our resumes. Most aren’t even bothering to meet us face-to-face. They just hear about our skin color and assume everything will be different now. In this way, the teachers and village people are making the same mistake. After I told the headmaster today, for example, that I thought it was important to stress that the Americans and the teachers improve the school together, explicitly saying he couldn’t always rely on a steady supply of American volunteers, he nodded and smiled, saying that he only hopes there will always be white volunteers here (they nod and smile frequently here, especially when they have no idea what I’m saying). Unless they change this mentality, it will all end in either disillusionment or dependency.

That said, we are only in Week 2, so I am trying to keep an open mind and recognize it’s a gradual process. As consolation, even if I totally fail to help revamp the school in a sustainable way, I can already tell the relationships I am building with some of the kids here will be mutually very meaningful—and the benefits to us both will be, unlike in the  case of the school itself, neither insignificant nor fleeting. 

Photos of Accra

"Football." Everywhere.


Waiting in line for a "tro-tro."

Some last-minute selling. They literally run along as the van moves
to finish transactions and somehow never drop the goods.

Inside.

Accra coast

Jamestown Lighthouse, built in 1839 by the Brits. Next to it is Jamefort, where they
kept slaves for shipment. I went inside. People live there now. It's eerie.

Fishing boats cover the sea here.

Sorta cute, sorta painful.

From Accra to Hohoe

My one week in Accra was plenty. I will miss Felicia and the kind family that made me feel at home there, but not the stench of wet garbage and fish, or the dust and exhaust that stifle you on the streets.

Getting around is hell as well. There are more craters in the road than the moon. Not potholes, craters. Drivers constantly weave and jostle to avoid them, their hands at the wheel like a toddler’s playing an arcade game for racecar driving. When there is absolutely no way to avoid them, they simply create new lanes for themselves on the roadside. However, most roads are lined with deep, open gutters for drainage, so this is, well, problematic.

Then the intersections. There are very few streetlights, so usually it is simply a game of chicken—even if your opponent is a semi-truck. Of course, no one wears seatbelts, and most cars don’t even have them. But don’t worry about the safety of those in the cars, because the women walking along the road to the market and the children playing unsupervised in the street are much closer to unpleasant death….

Okay, enough about Accra. Wednesday I traveled the four hours from the city to the town of Hohoe in a tro-tro (a tro-tro is a small van crammed full of passengers, which I would also complain about had I not used up my bitching-about-transportation word limit). The director of my school picked me up, and I am staying with him through the weekend. The village where I will work and live is just 20 minutes away, and classes begin next week.

Hohoe is part of the Volta region, and this area is absolutely beautiful. The Volta river (which powers much of the electricity to the country) winds its way through valleys and mountains plush with greenery. People grow a lot of rice and cocoa here, and everyone seems to have a farm.

Even if you have a different job, you have a farm here too. That’s just how it is. When Francis and I drove to see the guesthouse in the village where I will be staying, the wife of the owner told her 10 –year-old grandson to get in our car and drive with us to their cocoa farm to fetch his grandfather so that we could negotiate a price. We did, and we settled on 90 cedi a month (a “discount,” he said, because I would be teaching his grandson). For anyone who wants to visit, they have a spare room and a flush toilet!

Anyway, I like this area a lot. It has shops and a market in the town, but it’s not so chaotic or dirty. And I feel very welcome. Children still stare as I pass and giggle the world for whiteman (oh, I forgot to mention the language here is different than the one in Accra). But I think they will get used to me soon, and maybe I will begin to blend in eventually—well, figuratively speaking.

Oh, one more thing I have to mention: Until I came to Volta, the best bananas I’d ever eaten were the tiny ones they grow in Chiapas, Mexico. Here, these are equally good and twice as big! Francis bought two dozen bananas from a woman on the road carrying them to the market for 1 cedi (~ 70 cents). He said they would go bad soon, so he ate six on the drive. I ate three, and then he asked me if I don’t like bananas….

A Jog To Remember

On the plane ride over, three different flight attendants asked me what I was going to do in Ghana. Subsequently, one offered me unlimited free booze throughout the 11 hour flight, and another said I should be on some Anderson Cooper show I’ve never watched (I liked the first one; the other was a tad ridiculous). Despite the smooth flight and the wine, I didn’t sleep a wink.

At the small airport, I warded off about three dozen men welcoming me to Ghana and checking to make sure I had someone to pick me up (oh yeah, they were ALL taxi drivers). Eventually I found ‘Auntie Felicia,’ the aunt of my Dad’s former law student who gave me, a stranger, an open-ended invitation to her home in Accra whenever I wish to return from the countryside where I’ll be teaching. We rode to her house where we lunched on cassava, plantains, and fish with spinach and pumpkin seeds (the cassava had zero taste, but the fish-spinach dish had plenty of taste to go around).

In the afternoon, I thought I might go for a jog to stretch my legs, since I was told the area was safe during the day. Felicia told me the sea was a straight shot from the house, pointing the way. If I was not back in an hour, she said with a smile, she’d send a search party.

After jogging a couple miles along the road, the pavement turned to red dirt and the colorful, gated houses turned to crowded rows of aluminum shacks. Everyone I passed began to stare at me, some happily yelling things like “Boroni” (white man) while others laughed and muttered to their neighbors. I had to dodge the chickens meandering the path and the children kicking makeshift soccer balls.  I had long lost sight of the ocean in the crowded shacks, but an opening revealed that the sea was, in fact, parallel to me, and I had was not an inch closer to it than when I had set out! Tempted to continue, but remembering promises made to a few friends and my mother less than 24 hours ago to be careful for an entire year, I decided to keep my promise at least through the first day and return to the house.

Well, that proved to be more challenging than I thought. I must have taken a turned from one winding path to another after entering shack-land, but I could not find the turn because every path looked identical. I slowed down, thinking it better to walk rather than sprint in the wrong direction. The sun was beating down, and my shirt was soaked (although this happens to me in air-conditioning too so I really only paired these thoughts for effect). Trying to systematically check the paths from the point I last remembered, I began walking down one way until I was sure it was unfamiliar and then backtracked. Of course, those who were watching me (which was everyone) clearly thought I was either pathetically lost and/or off my rocker. At this time, I had no phone and I had not brought money (woops).

After almost an hour of this futile game, a stout woman approached me and, in a domineering tone, said, “Where are you going? I see you pass by me many times and I think ‘this boy is lost.’” I told her where I was trying to go, and she snapped, “You wait.” She then began asking several women around her about the street I was trying to return to, and then beckoned me to follow. To summarize the rest of this circuitous journey, she led me around shack-land, in seemingly no clear direction, frequently asking people directions to the street (in the native tongue) and, more often, seemingly explaining to them with a wry smile what the heck she was doing escorting this sweaty, white creature. Eventually, after introducing me to her daughter at a variety shop and to her first-born son in the market, we got into a taxi and drove a few miles until, at last, things looked familiar again, and the road became paved once more. Upon dropping me off, she exchanged a laugh with Aunt Felicia, wrote her number down for me, and gladly accepted my 10 cedis (more than three times the return taxi fee), although she had asked for nothing.

From this experience, I learned a few obvious travel lessons of which apparently I need reminding (don’t roam around on no sleep, carry some money, etc.). Also, my conviction was reinforced that it is a universal rule, wherever you are in the world, that you can always look to women to help you when you are in need, especially those with children—they just seem to get it.

 Oh yeah, and when I trying to find my way back, I stumbled upon the ocean, ironically.  The waves crashed on a narrow beach filled with children in their undies or totally naked, playing alongside men unloading fish nets from large kayaks. See, I was never lost. 

Why I Carry A Graphing Calculator....

I only began packing the day before my flight, but I worked remarkably efficiently choosing what items to bring. I had to balance clothes, medical care, and supplies for the school in Ghana in which I would be teaching math and science for the coming year, all the while keeping the load reasonably light for traveling to other countries afterward. When I came across my graphing calculator, this atypical efficiency was replaced with what all of you who know me are more familiar with--decision paralysis. I considered the possibilities: Would this item seem starkly worthless if I'm teaching primarily addition and subtraction? Might there be some kids with proper schooling who already are on to algebra? What if the next Einstein is simply waiting in Bakua, Ghana for a graphing calculator? With this last thought, and a new found conviction, I took my glittery-blue TI83+ and shoved it into my already full suitcase. Perhaps it would be a waste, but perhaps Young Einstein would be waiting. In any case, it had been at my side all through high school and college, so I saw know reason why I should abandon my faithful friend on the eve of the next chapter of my life.