Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride

Hitchhiking may be a thing of the past in America what with our overwhelming paranoia and strict law against in on nearly all major highwaysl, but here in Ghana it is still a great shoestring method of transport. It is surprising how eager people are to pull over pick up a few Obruni and sometimes even go out of their way to tote them to their destinations. Gotta love that Ghanaian hospitality.

Most of the time the recipe for a free ride goes something like this: with your backpack snuggly at your back--you gotta look like you want it--position your Chacos along the roadside, hold out your left palm and gently tap the back of your right hand with two fingers extended against it. This is the Ghanaian sign for begging (it gets over used in my classroom when I am BEGGING my hundreds of students to be quiet while I try to teach). Within 10 minutes, someone will stop a few seconds down the road- quickly jog to the car, greet the driver and any passengers that may be present (I like to compliment ladies clothing, it gives you something to talk about after you are invited in the car) mention your destination to the driver and see how close he can get you. Generally once the driver stops, he will feel obligated to take you even a small way down the road, the way I see it- the closer the better. Once in the vehicle, make small talk with the driver, he usually has a cousin living in the US or is himself a resident simply on vacation in Ghana, returning to the US any day now. I whip out all the stops and try to use as much Twi/Fante as I know and a good fufu joke always goes a long way. Most of the time the rides are uneventful, maybe some grooving reggae tunes will set the pace or a quick stop to pick someone up or drop someone off will be made. This is most of the time- however occasionally, you get lucky—real lucky.

On my way from Kumasi to Kukurantumi a few other volunteers and I were fortunate enough to bum a ride with two Ghanaian gentlemen in excellent spirits (that may be a pun because I am pretty sure at least one of them was drunk which I am realizing is generally the case when you are with more than one Ghanaian). Sure enough they were cousins and one of them, who lived in the Bronx, was returning to the US any day now. The ride started out in the usual fashion, we pretended to love fufu and groundnut soup and they talked about President Obama. Just as the Bronx resident was confessing his secret love for George W. Bush (I believe his exact words were “He is never afraid of any man”, whatever that means) we see a most hilarious site. Beth, one of my fellow PCVs spots it first- a Rastafarian on a motorcycle with a Baboon clinging to his back. The man is driving on the shoulder because his motorcycle doesn’t have the power to keep up with the big dogs on the Accra-Kumasi highway, so naturally we zip by him. I barely even caught a glimpse. However, Beth convinces the guys to pull over so the motorcyclist can catch up with us and then we can snap some photos. It was truly a ridiculous site. Enjoy!


As if that wasn’t enough laughter for one ride, not more than 40 minutes down the road, the driver sees someone on the side of the road holding up a dead animal. We stop, he buys the animal, more photo ops. I am still not sure what kind of animal it was but man did it really smell up the back seat. Photos wo ha:

Roadside Buffet

Beth and I

After the bush meat was purchased it of course needed to be butchered which was yet another stop on our wild adventure. A few hours later we arrived safely at the Bunso junction. Hopped in a tro and headed for the hubsite. Hitching isn’t always the fastest way to get there but it certainly is the cheapest.

Ghanaian Wedding

A colleague of mine Mr. Isaac Wiredu was kind enough to invite me to my first Ghanaian wedding. Not as the bride, this time, but as an honorary guest along with the rest of the Aburaman SHS faculty and staff. The wedding happened to be in Kumasi on a weekend when I was there for some meetings and so I was very much eager to attend. Here are a few pictures from the event. Don’t all these teacherfo clean up nice?!

Me and 3 of my female teacher friends
The Happy Couple
Sporting some serious Kente

Art IST

I was thankfully invited to workshop portion of the Art Teachers Inter-Service Training. This was by far one of the most productive and inspiring Peace Corps training attempts I have endured thus far. A group of no more than 10 of us, were taken on daily field trips to learn about traditional Ghanaian arts. The three workshops were in ceramics, wood carving, and bead making. Each one afforded us the opportunity to see profoundly undervalued craftsman who have dedicated themselves to a life artistic creation.

First Stop: Afari Village outside of Kumasi. We visited the Afari woman’s Pottery Co-op where a group of about 8 woman showed us the process by which they create ceramic pots and grinding bowls for sale throughout Ghana. Although the previous government in power brought several pottery wheels for the women to use, they failed to supply adequate training so the women rely on a traditional method of hand sculpting pots. They are so good at what they do, it is virtually impossible to tell that the pots and bowls they sculpt were not thrown on a pottery wheel.

The shape is perfect without the use of mechanization


They add a thin layer of red clay for their signature look


The woman make over 50 pots and bowls every day

Next Stop: The Foase Wood Carvers. Again Foase is a village right outside of Kumasi which several master carvers call home. We learned about the various types of local highly carveable woods and were able to watch the masters at work. The strength and precision required for this craft is a lot to wrap your mind around. Their work is generally sold to the Kumasi cultural center for resale and someone also mentioned J.C. Penny’s getting a lot of its African decorative art from Ghana, I am assuming the carvers in Foase may have something to do with that.

A master carver sketching out his plans for a mask. He explained that most of the time they don't sketch, they simply see the face come out of the wood as they carve. They are Truly masters.



A few love/fertility idols carved during the 2 hours we were visiting. The carvers are extremely productive.

Last Stop: Bead Making village. Although, the actual bead making process seemed a little mundane to me, in that the skills required to make aesthetically pleasing beads were well within my reach, the village itself was fascinating. As we walked through the village if you looked down you could see hundreds of broken beads and bead making molds that had been swallowed by the Earth. Each of the mud houses had beads sculpted into its clay bricks, not by choice but by circumstance. Every inch of dirt in this entire village was somehow an archaeological tribute to the bead making craft.

We had the opportunity to make some of our own beads:

Picture 2

A close-up of the Bead Mold with cassava twigs placed



The clay oven fired up with all of our bead creations baking inside

Hard at work, placing cassava twigs into the bead molds



The finished product

Students and Puppies

Isla and the Puppies

It turns out Hiawa (Alex’s site) not also names some of its babies after me it also has puppies and students. His dog, Isla who has only three paws (I don’t know why that matters- other than maybe you will someday ask me to tell you the story of how she came to have three paws, which only goes to suggestion incredible strength of character for all parties involved in the odyssey), gave birth the second day I was there to two puppies which we had to go into the bush to find i.e. send students into the bush to find. When they were peeled from their nest, the puppies were brought to Alex’s house where most of the pictures were taken. I mean, who doesn’t like pictures of puppies?

Sleeping Puppies get extra points

Stupidly Cute

A few of Alex's JHS Students post Puppy Extraction from the Bush.

From what I know of the internet, these pictures alone will increase my blog hits by no less than 15%, guaranteed.

A Namesake

It’s virtually inevitable that upon arriving in West Africa, and attempting any sort of community integration a child will be born and it will be named after you. There is a village in Senegal with no less than four 5 or 6 year old Modjulies running around and even a Joelking. Well, finally my time has come, but in a most unexpected way.

About a week ago, I attended a conference in Kukurantumi (you may remember the name from my Pre-Service Training posts) for ICT, Math, and Science PCVs. Each volunteer is asked to bring a counterpart who would also benefit from the learning tools and methods discussed throughout the weeklong event.
This is a wonderful opportunity for us as volunteers to get together with Ghanaians (and PCVs) from all over Ghana and discuss challenges we face and strategies to resolve them.

Paa Yaw is Alex’s counterpart (you may remember Alex from the Lerry’s Cornflake Picture) and I have grown to know the two of them quite well. Alex stays in the Western Region a short 6 hour trip from me so I’ve had the opportunity to visit his site and meet Paa Yaw several times. Well, on January 1st, 2010 Paa Yaw’s wife gave birth to beautiful baby girl. Although, the hope was for a boy that would in turn be named after Alex, a girl it was and low and behold she needed a name, more specifically she needed my name. Per Alex’s listing of all the female PCV names Yaw chose mine (along with several others as Ghanaian tradition dictates- a name from the father side, mothers side, day of the week, order of birth, etc. This is why I had such a hard time figuring out who’s who in my grade book) for his daughter. I think he name is Arianna Effia _____ _____ Gyapong. I couldn’t figure out the whole thing.

The Naming Ceremony occurred in a Catholic Church at Dawn Service and for most part remains somewhat of a blur to me. It was still dark out and despite my eyes being opening my mind was not necessarily there (you all know my brain doesn’t wake up until at least noon regardless of what my body may be zombieing around pretending to accomplish). Here are two pictures from the event:

Paa Yaw and His wife sharing a Fanta (significance unknown)

This is Alex and I with the happy family. I don't know why this picture is blurry. Sorry-o.

A Very Cape Coast New Year!

New Year offered more beaching and fraternizing with other volunteers. Here are few picturesque moments:Picture 1

View from our Cape Coast Hotel

Looking Like Tourists in front of the Castle

Relaxing on the Beach

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.