Kathi and Joel in Ghana

The moment I've been waiting for a good 8 months- the arrival of my mother and father! I have a month-long itinerary to keep them busy, exhausted and totally overwhelmed with Ghana. Due to the fact that I have been increasingly less able to identify Blog worthy opportunities- I've asked my Mom and Dad to take pictures and post Blog entries. I would like them to recount their journey to share with everybody.

A few lovely pictures during our time are posted below and accounts of their adventures should soon follow:

Environment Technical Training

The more time I spend in Ghana the more I respect the limited scope of my knowledge. I've realized that the moments I am most actively helping my community and they actively helping me actually happens when I play the role of the student. In the classroom I've implemented such programs as “Fante Friday” where I give students the opportunity to teach me about their culture, language, and interests. So often here the role of “Teacher” is so rigidly absolute. It is a loaded title that just compliments the, at times, detrimental oligarchical Ghana society. For example, for a teacher to admit they perhaps do not know the answer to a student's question would be far worse, culturally speaking, than to supply the student with blatant misinformation. The concept of lifelong mutual learning is absent and as a result students that have the potential to be motivated in their studies by challenging their educators and in exchange being challenged remain bruised and beaten in aspiring for futures outside the limited scope of reality presented to them.


I like to take a different approach, constantly reminding students (and fellow teachers) that as Phil Collins so eloquently says in his hit Something Happened on the Way to Heaven, “I don't know. I don't have all the answers.” I mean who does really? In an effort to level the playing field and potentially start some lucrative projects with school clubs and such- I decided to (on my own dime- thanks for supporting your eager-to-learn-new-practical-skills-volunteers Peace Corps) attend the Environment Technical Training in Techiman. The training included a whole bevy of information that I think all Education PCVs in Ghana should be presented with. The week was packed with hands-on activities for several popular alternative livelihood projects. We learned about mushroom farming, bee keeping, rabbit farming, grasscutter farming, animal rearing, mango farming, cashew harvesting, and many small agro-processing practices. I am hoping to work with a few teachers in my school to implement a few of these projects to help the school generate income for facility maintenance. In addition to some sweet instructional workshops the training also took us to the Tano Sacred Grove (the source of the Tano river), a Monkey Sanctuary, as well as the Kristo Buase Monastery. It was a magical week of learning and relaxation that was much needed after such an intense month of being a trainer. Here are a few photos from the training:

Monkeys love juice boxes

Mushroom Harvesting and tasting

One Year Down

Time is fickle vixen and if you don't watch out, she'll pass you right by. The arrival of June marks my one year anniversary in Ghana. I can't believe it has been that long and what is even more unbelievable is that in just one more year I will be moving on to the next step- whatever that may be.

June also marks the arrival of the new potential volunteers. We call them PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) until they earn their V (Volunteer). I remember when I arrived thinking that was petty and wholly unnecessary but now that I've put in the time I realize the importance of instilling the sense of earning your Volunteership. Come August 13th, the survivors will be granted their upgrade from PCT to PCV.

This year I return to Kukurantumi (the place where it all began for me as well), but this time as a trainer not a trainee. Being a trainer is no small task and it has presented me with so many soul crushing reflections on my own progress. Through observation and interaction with these fresh off the boat Americans I have a fresh perspective of myself. The whole process has made me feel so much farther from America and current American culture, that Ghana truly feels like my home. I don't know what an “iPad” is but I can cook a mean garden-egg stew. I try my best not to make value judgments on my changing perspective and I am learning everyday more how to simply take each day as it comes. I am certainly more comfortable here than I am not.
Meeting all these new people and remember 75 new names is another problem altogether. Strangely enough, one of the trainees happens to be blast from my past. It is a reminder that the world is small and I am by no means unique in my trajectory.

More Posts

I just wanted to give you a heads up that I was finally able to post blog entries from March and April. You may need to go into the Archives to look at them due to their untimely posting. I hope you enjoy!

A few pictures

The Best Dogs of them All

Isla and Herbert in all their loveliness. These dogs are just too photogenic to pass up:

Building Stuff

When we weren’t painting we were building. Alex and I made a pretty mean carpentry team. Here are a few photos of the projects we completed:

A compost bin A garden fence, although we can't take credit for this one in particular. The students built this one. The first of many gates A goat pen and grazing extension
Yet another Gate

A closeup of the goat sanctuary

Yes, we even do custom kitchen furniture

Palm Wine

After the stop at the mining site it was on to the place where Palm Wine was being tapped. In case you are curious, Palm wine is a semi-alcoholic drink very common in Ghana. It is made from the liquid in the palm tree and the process requires a palm tree be dug up by the roots and tipped over on its side so all the liquid from the roots drains out of the sides. Palm wine can be drank fresh in which case it tastes like a Smirnoff ice mixed with coconut milk or it can be further distilled and made into an evil hard alcohol from hell called akpeteshie. Fresh palm wine is tasty and refreshing, akpeteshie gives me a week long hangover.

Palm wine tapping sites are generally located in the bush near a grove of palm trees. The one we visited on this particular day happened to be next to a river which was perfect for cooling the copper pipes in the process of distilling the akpeteshie from the fresh palm wine.

Here are some photos to enjoy:

Distilling the akpeteshie

A scary dude pounding fufu

Gold Mining

Hiawa is in the Western Region and right in the thick of Gold Country. Although the omnipresence of Gold mining is conspicuous (new SUVs often zipping through the town filled with foreigner prospectors), I had never had the opportunity to visit an actual gold mining site. The men who work the mines are called Galamse boys and are known for being very strong, a little rowdy, and always throwing their money around. Galamse work pays very well sometimes up to 70 Ghana cedis a day (roughly $50) and in the Western and Ashanti regions Galamse work is easy to find. This all poses an interesting problem for promoting the value of education in these communities. Considering most Ghanaian teachers make roughly 8 Ghana cedis a day and even well paid professionals less than 30 Ghc, how is it that you can justify coming to school and working hard to better your mind when with your body alone you can accumulate quite a lot of wealth. In fact, Alex has two students the Aguri brothers, who live less than a 10 minute walk from several mining sites but a 2 hour walk from their JHS. How can you possibly explain the value of walking two hours to school when simply working across the street could make you a very rich man by the age of 30. It is a problem indeed.

My mining site experience went a little something like this: One afternoon after a long day of painting Paa Yaw met us in his taxi and asked us if we’d care to see how palm wine was made (more on this later). This offer usually includes a delightful walk through the woods and frankly a glass of Palm wine was just what this girl needed after a long day of World Painting. We drove a several minutes out of town, down a dirt road, and were informed that we would be making one stop at the mining site before continuing on to our Palm Wine destination.

I honestly don’t know what to say about this particular experience other than my jaw dropped to the ground as I stepped over the ridge to see a large pit full of workers mining gold by hand. This is no 49’s gold rush operation but more of a man-as-machine situation. The sound of the pit alone was astounding with its rhythmic clanging and banging. It was an assembly line of sorts- one man would place a shovel load of earth into a tin pan which would be tossed to another man, again to another man, and then handed to another who would dump the dirt through a hand-cranked sieve. The work seemed never ending-- tin bowls being tossed every this way and that but all in perfect rhythmic efficiency. It was truly a site to behold. The pictures definitely do not do it justice and I am unable to post the video I took.

Truly an Unbelievable sight

A view of the mining site from the top

Galamse Boys

Painting Stuff

Next term I have grandiose plans to work with my Visual Arts classes to slather my school with painted murals. One of these paintings is going to be a world map. Having never actually drawn or painted a world map before, and given the enormous number of students I will have to control in implementing this project in my own community, I thought why not use some of 4 week vacation to go help another volunteer paint a map at his school. A little practice round if you will.

So, just after festival time in Abura Dunkwa, I headed to Hiawa to paint a world map at the Hiawa Catholic JHS with Alex. With the exception of the walls of the school not being perfectly perpendicular and thus causing our map to look a little crooked, I think a great job was done by all- by all I mean Alex and I, as we drew and painted to whole thing after realizing the project took far too much skill for adolescent Ghanaian hands. I believe that my SHS Visual Arts students, however, will be quite capable of completing the map themselves. All of the skills required are well within the topics we’ve covered in our Picture Making classes this year.

Here are some pictures of the process:

It sure does help to have a monstrously tall friend to comfortably sketch those hard to reach areas.

Alex

Countries Painted

Best shade of blue for an ocean ever!

Frame ala Ari

A detail of our hard work