Chestnuts Roasting

The exams have been graded, the scores recorded and to the beach I run. I considered myself properly prepared for a very un-Christmaslike Christmas. Having spent the last few years in San Francisco, I am used to the un-White Christmas paradigm and it ceases to bother me. Other volunteers complained ceaselessly about it “not feeling like Christmas”. To them I say: Well, sometimes Ghana doesn’t even feel like reality so why would you think Christmas would be the exception. I spent Christmas with a few volunteers at one the many paradisiacal Beach Resorts, massaging my toes in the sand, wrestling with the brutal Ghanaian surf, and of course drinking beer. What else should a Christmas be but extreme relaxation? This objective was most certainly achieved.

This is the hammock in which I spent the majority of my Christmas Eve. No complaints.

A picture of the Tree House you can sleep in, if you so desire and I do.

When you have nothing to do, doing nothing somehow the thing you want to do least, so my friends and I made a plan that upon waking one morning we would walk the beach down to a place we called “The Big Rock”. It is literally just a big rock but it gave us enough structure that the day seemed like busy one (by West African standards at least).

This is a picture our successful arrival at the Big Rock. Yes, glory was in the air.

Standing on the Big Rock looking back.

Who could complain about a Christmas Eve sunset like this?

Happy Holidays to All.

A Monolith of Frustration

Although, I have not yet received my new camera I’ve been told it is in the country somewhere. This is great news and means I am probably only a few days away from beginning to compliment my posts with photos again.

In the meantime, I will painting this depressing scene with words. My first term as a teacher in Ghana has ended and I’ve been abandoned by the students which have for the most part become some of greatest friends. There is a pile of no less than 800 ICT exams and 100 Picture Making exams and reports to grade before my vacation can go on. This sucks. I am beginning to realize that I simply have too many students. Even as I am recording grades in my grade book, I am discovering there are students who’s educational strategy is to not go to class or hand in any of the classwork and then get at least 50 points on the final exam which translates to passing grade and therefore safety from canning per the Headmaster’s promise. (He has vowed to cane each of the 1300 students 6 times for every failing grade they receive. This would be simply impossible, considering how many students fail each term. I just honestly don’t think it is promise that can be kept).

All the little things are clawing at my patience. Students write their names one way on one test paper and another way on another. It is literally a miracle if I don’t make a thousand mistakes transferring this information by hand from my Excel spreadsheet to the students’ Terminal Reports. It is no wonder schools in America made computerizing grade books such a high priority- the time savings would be profound here, that is if time was scarce. It isn’t so, hand writing nearly 1000 Terminal Reports somehow seems like a manageable task. Once this mess is resolved I will make a B-line to the beach and not leave until school reopens sometime the second week of January.

Form 3 Final Projects

I taught my Form 3 (the equivalent of a high school senior) Art students how to construct canvases out of local, readily available materials. We use a type of would called WaWaa and fabric from large sacks of flour that bread makers sell at ridiculously cheap prices. Their midterm exam was to properly construct a canvas for inspection and their final exam was to use the canvas to paint a scene. In addition to painting the scene they were also required to hand in a written analysis of their use of materials and a short story about what their painting was about. These are few of my favorites:

Artist: Cornelius Anan Gyan

Artist: Alfred Ni____ (I can't spell his last name)

Artist: Lawrence Miano

I was quite pleased with all the results I received, not to mention the stories they wrote were fascinating too. I consider it one of my greatest victories as an educator in Ghana.

The Demise of a Blog

Blogs are great (sometimes). They are a way to communicate experiences, tastes, distastes, and general intellectual banter to an indeterminably large (or small) audience. I feel guilty that I’ve let mine wither and I am making a concerted effort to give it the proverbial mouth-mouth. In reviving this blog, I’d like to take a moment to discuss why blogs crumble and what I can do as a blogger to prevent that from happening again. With the decade ought come a whole new resolve, and this time around I mean business.

A number of factors, as I see it, lead to the demise of a Blog and trust me there are thousands of dead blogs clogging the internet, like a broken down jalopy on the Information Freeway. There are so many, in fact, that when I troll for blogs (usually about art, news, or Fashion) I’ve made it habit to first check the date on which the blog was last updated. If it wasn’t updated in the last two weeks chances are it won’t be updated in the next two, or ever again if we want to be realistic. So why is and how is that blogs find themselves in the so called blog graveyard? Well, I can think of four relatively sound reasons. (Please, none of this should be read as me trying to find excuses for my gross neglect. This is simply me justifying to myself why I am not the only one who has neglected her civic duty to keep her blog fresh and dynamic).

The first (and what I see to be the most legitimate reason) a blog dies is that the specific event, the blog was created for passes. This event can be anything from the birth of a child, the marriage of a couple, or Serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in some obscure foreign country. The blog is designed to chronicle specific information about a certain period in time. Obviously, when the time passes the blog to will wiggle its way into the ground. This will most likely be the C.O.D. of the blog you are reading right now. Someday in the not so distant future I will no longer have stories about crab elbows or tro-tros to share and my life in America hardly warrants the kind of rigorous public scrutiny blogging can offer.

The second reason, (possibly the most optimistic) is that people grow (for the better) out of their blogs. As we are no longer living in the age of pretty pink diaries with heart shaped locks tucked snuggly under our Serta mattresses, blogs come to rescue as our outlet for our deepest darkest thoughts, that used to be so safely kept under lock and key. The mentality of someone who blogs in this way, is baffling, but if I really think about it, I can see the logic. Perhaps making seemingly insignificant but incredibly personal information so ridiculously public, may in fact, hide it from those who know you best (in the real physical world). An example of this style of blog death would be: maybe you started a blog as a freshman in high school to channel your ultra-angsty insignificant thoughts, but upon graduating high school (and potentially being struck by lightning) you’ve realized any additional subject matter you discuss should be placed at totally different URL altogether. Regardless, people change, things happen and eventually a blog may not serve the purpose it was originally intended to serve. I propose we all be held responsible for maintain “Blog Mission Statements”, which would be displayed at the top. That would save blog trollers like me, a whole lot of time and effort looking for “the good stuff”.

Thirdly, a blogger doesn’t know what he is getting himself into and simply lacks the drive and stamina to keep the blog fresh. There is simply no excuse for this. If you are too lazy to update a blog, you are probably too lazy to think of anything worth read to post on it (save hilarious pictures of puppies and the occasional must-see YouTube clip). Perhaps bloggers should be given training blogs in the beginning and if they can prove themselves consistent posters, then they will be allowed to blog with the big dogs. Laziness, has never, and will never, be a legitimate excuse for anything (except, I’ve found, occasionally in West Africa). These people should be fined for their slacking.

Fourthly, and potentially most rarely, the technology which you use to maintain your blog goes missing or becomes increasingly unreliable. This is what I like to call the Peace Corps Volunteer excuse. Whether, it is always true that our blogs generally go astray (save Brendan and Guillermo), it is certainly easy to tell our friends and family this is the case. The internet connections, if you can find them, are frustratingly slow and rarely working due to the requirement of consistent electricity, which has also become a bit of a novelty item. Technological excuses aside, we also lose perspective at a staggering pace. Sometimes we, as volunteers constantly encouraged to integrate with rural undeveloped communities, simply find ourselves in experiencing something totally ludicrous which all of the sudden becomes commonplace and insignificant to us. For example, I have a friend in the Volta region who takes part in the sacrificing of no less than 7 animals a week. I am told he has some pretty rowdy river Gods that require extra attention. I’m sure he’s blogged about it once or twice but when the ritual happens every day it hardly seems reporting to an already waning fan group. Another example, I am writing these posts from the comfort of my home on a Thursday afternoon because classes were canceled for some sort of all school sports competition. In America, this would never be a last minute surprise. It would have been carefully planned, voted, on and compensated for in exchange for teacher workshop days. Here, in Ghana, it is just another surprise day off.

I would like to put my neglect under category number four due to the fact that majority of my blogs take the basic form of SILLY/UNUSUAL PICTURE coupled with WITTY PICTURE EXPLANATION AND REFLECTION. Well, we all know by now one of my conniving students stole my digital camera around Halloween which made my comfortable style of blogging virtually impossible. For this, I apologize. I have since, by the grace of my sweet sweet mother and father and fellow PCV Sonya’s sister, received a new camera and can resume my comfortable posting style. (After this explanatory post, of course).

But, like I said it is a new decade and I have a feeling the 10’s are going to bring us nothing but blue skies, bountiful harvests, and regular blog posts. Now all I have to do is not lose my camera and pray to God that the internet connection here doesn’t get any worse than it already is.