Clinic Construction

Posted on October 14, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

The cassava sticks we planted (the little angled sticks coming out of the ground)

This was a great day! I feel like the last week has been so productive, and today was no exception! James, Yara, and Anna were travelling for the weekend, so it was just me at the farm this morning. I was nervous about managing to wake up and motivate myself to go without any company, but it actually wasn’t that bad. AND I got to do something new at the farm! We planted cassava sticks. You start out with a pile of sticks that are about 4’ long, dig a hole, shove the stick in, push the dirt back around it, and chop it with your machete to be 8-12” long. I haven’t gotten to use a machete to actually cut things in a while, but don’t worry, my skills are still exceptional. After John showed me how to do it, he and Anthony watched me try once to make sure I had it right. No pressure. My machete instincts took over, and I chopped that cassava stick like a Ghanaian. Yes, you should be impressed. I ended up planting most of the little field by myself, so I must have convinced them that I knew what I was doing.

Before they started work today, there were no walls at all. This was at the beginning of the day when I arrived and they had been working for an hour or so.

I was the most excited about the next part of my morning… I got to help with the construction at the clinic! I’ve been telling Joe for weeks that I want to help, and a couple days ago he finally asked me if I wanted to go and work. We headed over after breakfast, and after I jokingly gave him a hard time for saying hi to a guy on a motorbike without asking for a lift, he called one of his uncles to take us there. Yes, it’s less than a 15 minute walk, but it was hot and as Joe pointed out, princesses don’t walk. I guess that nickname is going to stick, but if it comes with motorbike benefits, I’ll keep any complaints to myself.

Elisha and me carrying mortar to one of the masons.

We got to the clinic, Joe shoveled some mortar for maybe a minute, and he vanished. I didn’t know where to go or what to do, so I just stood out of the way and watched how they did things until the guy mixing the mortar, Elisha, called my name. He knew my name! I was excited about that, and when he said, “do you want to help…”, I’m pretty sure my whole face lit up, and I ran over without even waiting to hear what he wanted. I started out by just helping him carry the mortar to the masons who needed it. They were starting to put the walls up, and honestly, I didn’t mind standing around just watching for a while because it was cool to see how they did things. Anyway, I gradually started getting more responsibilities. I got to mix mortar with Elisha, shovel sand, clean the site, measure things, make sure walls were straight, wind up the strings (that they use to line up the blocks), carry blocks, fetch things, etc. You know, all of the high-level tasks. I was just happy to be there. I felt like I was part of the team when Senyo, one of the masons who is really good, made me his designated tape measure holder. After that, he started trusting me to break blocks for him! When there was a gap that needed a block smaller than a full one, he measured, told me the size he needed, and I broke it to that size.

Breaking one of the blocks. Refer to the dreaded ax hammer in my hand.

They kept asking me if the work was hard or if I was tired, and I kept saying no because I wanted to prove myself. They asked if the sun was too hot and told me I could go in the shade, but I shook that off too. I was doing fine until my hands started to fail. I had gloves with me but obviously didn’t use them because no one else uses gloves, and I don’t want to look soft. I know, stupid. Extra stupid when the tool they use to break the blocks is a mini-ax with a handle that’s like a piece of rebar (imagine a metal cylinder with a thick metal wire wound around it… aka not smooth at all). I got to the point where I couldn’t even break a block because of my blisters. Senyo figured out my issue, felt my palm, shook his head, and said, “too soft,” before showing me his hand for comparison’s sake. I have a lot of work to do.

When it was time for me to go home for lunch, I said goodbye to everyone and headed out with Joe. I actually think that they looked sad to see me go! They were all saying, “wait, you’re leaving??” That made me feel better because I was a little worried that they were just tolerating me because they felt like they had to, even though I told them that I was happy to help if I could but would happily stay out of the way if I would just be a bother. I told Joe to follow up and see if they’d be okay with me coming back because I really enjoyed myself.

For the way home, Joe asked if I wanted to take another motorbike. I said, “oh no, we can just walk,” and he looked at me, shook his head, and said, “no, it’s too hot.” Well like I said before, I’m not going to argue with a free ride. He had trouble getting in touch with anyone, said we just had to walk, and we got about 50 feet down the road before someone stopped to pick us up. That’s the princess life, I guess.

This is what it looked like when I left. They were pretty close to finished for the day by the time I left, but they did add a bit more afterwards.

The rest of the day was quiet. I was exhausted after working for 5 hours in the sun during the morning, so I mostly just hung out and enjoyed some time in our mostly empty house. Clarina left around 3PM, and I stood with her by the street until she got a tro tro straight to the airport. I really am an emotional mess now when it comes to people leaving. I almost started crying AGAIN. I can’t even think about the fact that someday soon it’s going to be my turn.
Anyway, for now, I’m going to ignore that unwelcome truth and instead focus on enjoying my weekend with the house basically to myself. It’s so nice to have some quiet and time to sit and relax without a million things going on around me. At least until tomorrow when new volunteers come, AND NICK IS COMING!

Back to the Poop Hole

Posted on October 13, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Our farm numbers were back down today; only Anna and I went. We were rewarded with a morning of carrying massive palm branches from a nearby farm to ours. The pig house roof is made from palm branches, and it broke in a couple places. We cut new branches (by “we cut” I mean John and Anthony cut and Anna and I carried) to replace the ones that were crumbling. I was just happy to have something new to do, and it was a fun challenge to carry the branches without toppling over or running into anything. Plus, the actual labor wasn’t very hard which was a nice change from hoeing.

After breakfast, I took a trip to Baptist to see some of the kids getting measured for new uniforms. Avy is using some of her donated money to replace the uniforms of some kids whose are in bad condition and whose families aren’t able to afford new ones. I don’t know that the kids understood what was going on, but I can’t wait to see their reactions when they get their new uniforms!

I didn’t spend the whole morning at the school as usual because Joe and James were taking cement to the clinic and asked me to come along and help. Turned out that they really didn’t need help because you only need two people to pull/push a cart with five cement bags on it. Joe told me to get on the cart too, and I thought he was kidding until he stopped walking and insisted. Well okay, I’m not going to refuse a ride if it’s repeatedly offered. I got on, and he and James took me the whole way there. I don’t think the people in town had seen anything like it before because they were all laughing and taking pictures. Joe started calling me Princess Lara, and I’m a little worried that it’s going to stick.

We dropped the bags off, and I feel like I made up for my ride there because I pulled the cart most of the way back to the market and insisted that James ride for part because he was whining about being tired from the malaria (but then refused to take it easy, so what can you do?).

If you were wondering how John managed to nail the roof in the middle of the poop hole…

I took it easy for a couple hours after lunch because it’s so incredibly hot, and around 3PM, John stopped by to pick me up and walk over to the farm. I decided that I couldn’t keep procrastinating on this poop hole roof, especially since it’s been raining and the hole is just going to keep getting wetter (the hole is to turn the pig poop into fertilizer for the farm). Really, it’s stupid that I’d been putting it off because I didn’t even need to build the roof. John and Anthony built it, and I just had to supervise and make sure they did what we wanted.

Presenting: the most fabulous poop hole roof ever!

We fixed the last two columns in place, added the beams to support the roof, and put on the roofing material. I can now confidently say that this is the most beautiful and intense poop hole in all of Ghana (*disclaimer* this statement is pure speculation. But really, how much competition can there be?). The whole thing took maybe an hour and a half, and after seeing the construction in action, I’m positive that having them do it was the right choice (even if it wasn’t totally intentional). John took about three hammer swings to do what would have taken us ten, and I’m pretty sure that we wouldn’t have been able to manage parts of it. Anyway, it’s finished now, and I’m happy for that. All that’s left is to finish filling in the dirt around the walls… ehh that’s a project for another day!

Parent Teacher Meeting

Posted on October 12, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

The morning started off with hoeing again, and this time was even worse than yesterday. With the eggplants, all we had to do was kill the weeds. Today, we were working around the corn, and we had to kill the weeds and move them/some dirt around the base of each corn stalk to help keep the moisture in and protect the plants. There are so many plants because they’re only about a foot apart, and the progress was incredibly slow. At least Clarina and Anna were there with me because it would have been a million times worse by myself. All I can say is, no one is going to complain about sowing again after this.

The whole school in one classroom for worship. I’m still not sure that you can see from this picture how crazy packed the room is.

School was a little different today because it was the parent teacher meeting (during school hours, of course). Avy and I helped in P3 for part of the morning because their teacher was at the meeting (along with all of the other teachers as well, but we can’t teach 8 classes), and I eventually went to sit in at the meeting. Even though every meeting I’ve been to here has been exhausting, I think it’s important for us to have at least one person representing the group at them. Then it’s more like we’re trying to be a part of the community rather than just existing alongside it.

The parent teacher meeting was no exception; it was long and exhausting. The difference with this one was that it was in Ewe, so I didn’t understand anything. The headmaster sat next to me and translated a little bit, but it was more like people would talk for 10 minutes and he would turn to me and say, “now they’re talking about PTA dues”. Ten minutes later, “they’re still talking about PTA dues”. Ten minutes later, “now they’re telling the parents that they should make sure their kids have all the school supplies they need.” So even with that, I still didn’t really know what was happening.

I stayed for about 2 hours until lunchtime when I was happy to have an excuse to duck out. At that point, they were just electing PTA officials (aka probably nominating people for jobs they didn’t want), so I didn’t feel bad leaving. All in all though, I felt like it was a productive meeting. There were maybe 80 parents there… they told us to expect 30, so I thought that was pretty good! The parents also mostly seemed attentive and engaged (though I don’t know what they were saying so I could be wrong). I left feeling encouraged!

Trying to stabilize the desks and chairs but actually just bending nails.

Avy, Clarina, Anna, Yara, and I went back after school ended to get started on our desk repair project. I think I mentioned this before, but the desks at the school aren’t in very good condition. Many of them are missing pieces and have random nails sticking out, and all of them wobble. We bought some nails last week to see what we could do with those, and if we need to buy some wood in the long run, we’ll do that later.

We had only been working for maybe 20 minutes when some guy randomly came and started helping us. After about an hour, we were out of nails, and Avy went on a quest for more. Our biggest shortage was of hammers, so when she saw a couple of guys carrying shovels, she asked them if they had hammers (because apparently having one tool means that you must have them all). They said yes and that they would bring them to the school. Better yet, they brought their hammers and stayed to help! The one guy was actually a carpenter, so he was awesome and we learned a lot from him.

The only thing that stopped us was the fact that got dark around 6PM. We weren’t originally planning to stay that long, but when you have 4 local volunteers helping and there’s a lot being accomplished, you don’t stop until you have to. We fixed all of the desks in the P2 room, plus the ones from the rest of the school that were in really bad shape. Some of them are definitely in need of additional wood. We’ll take an inventory of the pieces that are missing or broken and see how much it will cost to replace them. The nails went a long way though, so we’ll call it a successful day! It was nice to do something helpful that wasn’t expensive, and it was even better because we had some people from the community working with us.

Food Donation to Pink

Posted on October 11, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

It was back to the farm this morning! The only person who came with me today was Anna, and I give her credit for sticking with it. She was rewarded with a fun morning of… hoeing! My old friend, how I’ve missed you. We hoed around some eggplants, and at one point she said, “I wish we were planting corn.” Ha! She now understands my opinion about the four days of sowing last week. It wasn’t actually that horrible because there weren’t too many weeds to cut through, and the field we were working on was small enough to finish in one day.

This is the school at the Pink program orphanage.

We had a fun day ahead after breakfast! Yesterday, some of the other volunteers went to the farm and picked eggplants from the field we planted corn over to be taken to one of the other orphanages supported by our organization (the Pink program). We had a whole crew with us for this trip – Anna, Yara, Clarina, Evans, Joe, Jamie, and me. We took a tro to the town where the orphanage is, Dodowa, and from there, everyone except for Evans and me packed into a taxi with the food for the last part of the trip. He and I walked about 20-25 minutes to get there, which wasn’t too bad except that it was really hot, the sun was out, and there was NO shade.

Front row – Jamie, Clarina, Anna Back row – Yara, me, and the second-in-command at the orphanage

After making the donation, we ate lunch with the two Pink volunteers before heading back to Frankadua. Evans went back to Accra, Joe had already left, and Jamie was transferring to Pink, so our group was down to Anna, Yara, Clarina, and me. We took a tro to Kpong and then had to switch to another one for the rest of the trip. The second tro sat in the station for probably 45 minutes until it filled up, which once upon a time might have bothered me, but now I’m the queen of patience. It didn’t hurt that a bofrot lady AND a fan ice guy came by around the same time, so I double fisted a donut and some ice cream and was perfectly content to wait.

After we got back, we all practiced carrying things on our head! I’m determined to figure it out.

When we finally got back, James said that he went to the clinic again, and he does have malaria. It’s a mild case – they rank it out of 4 pluses with 4 being the worst, and he only had 1 plus. Still though, it’s miserable. He’s taking the anti-malaria meds that you’re supposed to take, but they don’t actually guarantee that you won’t get malaria. If you get it, it’s just usually a milder case than it could have been. Some people don’t take them because they “don’t really work”, but my opinion is that it’s not worth taking the chance, and anything is better than nothing. Hopefully he starts getting better soon because it’s definitely not fun.

Back to Village Life

Posted on October 10, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

We stuck around in Accra for an extra day because Avy and I both had things that we needed to get done, and we needed wifi do to them. The internet situation in Frankadua is, as you might imagine, somewhat of a nightmare. I have data on my phone, but it’s the slowest speed at best and completely not working at worst. The cell network was down all last week, and I guess the cell phone company’s first priority isn’t fixing coverage issues in the middle-of-nowhere Ghana.

Some of the side of the road chaos on the way out of Accra.

Avy has an interview next week for Teach for America that she wanted to prepare for, and I had a million emails to respond to and some blog work to do. I was happy to be able to respond to emails from a computer rather than having to type them out on my phone or, what I do when I have long ones to send, type them in word on my computer, transfer them to my phone, copy them into emails, and send from there.
We left the hotel around 3:30, took a cab to the Tudu tro station, and got a tro from there to Frankadua. I got to sit in the front seat, but it was actually kind of terrible because I was sitting in the front middle on a high seat that left my head about 2 inches from the ceiling and a head rest digging into the middle of my back (what kind of tiny person did they think was going to be sitting on that seat when they designed the tro?). Our driver was a bit of a maniac and was getting angry that there was so much traffic. He kept attempting to cut around the traffic and took some “shortcuts” that I’m convinced actually slowed us down. On one, we almost got stuck in some mud just to try to get around like 10 cars.

So many people and so much stuff everywhere.

Think about the things that people do on the highway at home when you’re in traffic that really make drivers angry… and now multiply those things by about 1000. There are basically no rules when it comes to driving here. At one point, we were on a one lane exit ramp, and people had formed two lanes of traffic. Another time, we drove next to the road in the equivalent of a strip mall parking lot so that we didn’t have to sit in the slow-moving line of cars next to us. Driving on the shoulder of a road to get around traffic is so normal that the shoulder is basically just another lane with its own traffic.
Anyway, we eventually made it home about 4 ½ hours later. We had really good timing because the other volunteers told us that the power had been out for an entire day and was just turned back on. Apparently there was some issue at the pole near our house, and all of the light bulbs exploded in our house and the houses around us. People’s TVs got fried, and anyone who had something plugged in had their transformers totally destroyed. Eek. That just reinforces my idea that the electrical situation in this country is absolutely terrifying. But now all is well, and I’m glad I missed it!

Besides that, James is sick, and I’m pretty confident that he has malaria. He went to the clinic today, but the guy who does the malaria tests was out, so they couldn’t do a real test for him. He thinks he just has some stomach thing, but I don’t believe it. We’ll see tomorrow when he goes back.

Mall Day!

Posted on October 9, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Today was awesome!! Avy and I slept in, ate breakfast, and got ready to go to the mall!! We had big plans for the day including seeing a movie, enjoying air conditioning, eating snacks, and going shopping. Before we could do all of those things, first we had to figure out how to actually get to the mall. Hm. We asked at the front desk and the guy told us where to go to get a tro. He said the walk was about 5-10 minutes. Okay, that’s not bad.

Apparently it’s a universal thing that Christmas decorations come out waaay too early. This is the supermarket at the mall.

Ten minutes later, we were still walking and definitely not where we were supposed to be. Every block, we asked another person for directions, and I’m almost positive that they were all sending us to different places. We walked through some tiny, windy streets and finally ended up somewhere with a bunch of tros. Of course though, it wasn’t the right place… we asked someone and they pointed us across the street… which was a divided road with a fence in the middle. So I would say probably 20-25 minutes after leaving the hotel, we FINALLY found a tro that would take us to the mall. We think they overcharged us a little, but they dropped us off right outside so we’re over it.
First stop was the movie theater to check out the movie times and buy our tickets. There weren’t many options, and we picked Storks, some animated movie I’d never heard of (though that’s not surprising because I’m incredibly out of touch with the outside world). We had about two hours to kill before it started, so we had lunch (I had chicken nuggets and an Oreo milkshake! Does it get any better than that??), bought snacks to smuggle into the theater, and walked around the mall until it was time to go.

I can’t even describe how nice it felt to do something “normal”. We bought popcorn and sat in a cold movie theater and I stuffed my face with smuggled gummies and cookies for two hours (okay I didn’t actually eat the ENTIRE time, but that’s just because I ran out of gummies pretty early on). I enjoyed the movie, but honestly I would have been happy no matter what it was.

Afterwards, we went clothes shopping. At home, I generally hate going clothes shopping, but today it was perfect. I know that probably sounds horrible… like I had to buy some things to feel happy or feel like myself again. I don’t know what to say about that, but sometimes when you’re in a place where everything feels unfamiliar, you need to take a break and do something that feels like real life. Today, for me, watching a movie and buying a pair of pants apparently felt like real life.

By the time we finished eating dinner (a burger!), it was dark and we were not really into the idea of trying to figure out a tro to get home. We took a cab back to the hotel, and now I’m completely exhausted. It was a good day though.

Accra

Posted on October 8, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Avy and I headed to Accra for the weekend yesterday morning because I needed to renew my visa. When you arrive at the airport, they stamp your passport so it’s good for a 60 day stay. If you’re staying longer, you have to go to the immigration office and extend it. I’m here for 80 something days, so I had to extend mine for a month.

Live chickens under a seat in the tro… Because how else are you supposed to transport your chickens?

Randomly last week, Rudolph (our friend who gave us a ride on our way to Ada Foah) was driving by the house and stopped to say hi. He said that he could give us a ride to Accra, and we made some plans to hang out during the weekend. Since our house is pretty far out of his way, Avy and I took a tro to Kpong, and he met us there. We got there about half an hour before he did and went on a search for shade because it was HOT, and the sun was brutal. We were creepily loitering in an alley next to a store for about 5 minutes before some guys came and insisted that we sit inside. We protested that we were fine, but they didn’t really give us a choice. It was really nice of them, so we bought some ice cream from the store to say thank you (and also just because we wanted ice cream).
After Rudolph picked us up, the rest of the trip to Accra was so typical Ghana. It’s like time doesn’t exist here, and there’s no sense of urgency ever. We planned to get to the office around 2, but Rudolph had to stop to pick out some car tires for his friend Phillip, then Phillip got lost on his way there so we had to go find him, then we went back to the shop and got the tires, then finally we were on our way and Rudolph realized that he left his phone charging at the shop, then we stopped and told Phillip to go back and pick it up, and then we actually were on our way. Avy and I probably should have just taken a tro all the way to Accra… We ended up getting there at 4:00 which is about when the office closes, but there was still just enough time to get my form filled out and passport turned in. Phew. Glad that is over with.

We met Phillip at the mall to get Rudolph’s phone back and then went on what felt like a world tour of hostels trying to pick somewhere to stay for the night. Avy said, “this must be what people did before there was the internet”. But TIA (this is Africa), so that’s what we did. It’s a good thing Avy and I had no expectations for the weekend and were happy to just go with the flow. It ended up being pretty fun, though if we were hoping for some big exciting day, it would have been disappointing.

That night, Rudolph and Phillip took us out to experience some Accra nightlife. It was fun but weird for two reasons: 1) there were other yevus (white people) around and 2) the nightlife in Frankadua consists of going to this one bar in town, sitting at plastic tables outside, and hanging out while the TV plays very dramatic and poorly executed Ghanaian soap operas. The nightlife in Accra actually resembles something you would experience in a city in the US. I felt like a girl from the village experiencing the big city for the first time. Hello culture shock!

Today we’ve just been recovering from the few hours of sleep we got last night. Avy has been in touch with a past VCO volunteer, Leela, who spends a lot of time in Ghana now, and we relocated to the hostel where she helps out when she’s in town. Guess what the room has? AC AND running water AND a hot shower!!!!

Our room. You can see the lizard dispensing AC unit above the bed.

Don’t worry though, it was impossible to forget that we’re in Africa because when we were laying in bed relaxing, lizard poop (as identified by Avy) fell out of the AC unit and onto Avy’s neck. She handled it incredibly well and just brushed it off and said matter-of-factly, “oh, that’s lizard poop”. Oh yeah, no big deal.

Did you think I was making it up? Photo evidence.

A little later, she was about to get onto the bed and the AC started making a weird noise that lasted maybe 30 seconds before a DEAD LIZARD FELL OUT ONTO THE BED. And Avy said, “I guess that’s the lizard” while meanwhile I was letting out little panic screams every couple seconds. Can I just say this one more time? Avy was about to get into bed, the AC started making noises, and A DEAD LIZARD FELL RIGHT WHERE HER HEAD WAS GOING AND SHE HAD NO REACTION. She’s been here for too long, I think. Needless to say, we pulled the bed away from the wall to avoid any more potential surprises.

Tomorrow, Avy and I have a day of luxury planned (yes, even more luxury than AC and hot showers, and hopefully no lizards). It’s going to be awesome!

Outdoor Classes

Posted on October 6, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

The P3 outdoor chalkboard. We’re really excited about the P3 teacher because he was so determined to not let the day go to waste. With this, they were able to have normal class, just with better ventilation.

Okay so I apparently know nothing about the size of our farm because when we got there this morning, guess what John handed us? Machetes. More sowing. I could tell that Anna was a little bummed that we were doing the same thing, but like I said, it’s just because this is her first week. I’d be happy to sow every day until I leave if you told me I’d never have to hoe again.

Mixing the sand and cement for the new floors.

This time, we went to another field that I didn’t even know existed. How have I been working on the farm for 2 months now without having any clue about how big it actually is? Crazy.

P3 classroom – “Before” shot. The light parts are where the floor still is and the dark parts are all of the holes.

The floor after they tore out the old one.

School today was kind of awesome. They’re redoing the floors in some of the classrooms because they’re in such terrible condition (I think I mentioned this before?), and the work started today on two of them. That obviously means that those classes (P2 and P3) couldn’t use their classrooms, so they moved all of the desks outside and they had class underneath the big trees in the schoolyard. The P3 teacher had a makeshift chalkboard, and Avy and I taught P2 using little whiteboards. One of the things I love about being here is that there’s a much smaller separation between the indoors and the outdoors. At home, we’re so cut off from nature. Here, it feels like the indoors and outdoors are less segregated… each one is like an extension of the other.

Avy doing song time during one of the breaks.

The P2 teacher, Everlasting, was overseeing the construction, so Avy and I took over his class for him. Avy did some reading stuff with them and I taught them about greater than, less than, and equal to in Math class. The difference in where the kids are skill-wise never ceases to amaze me. Some of the kids got it no problem when we gave them exercises, and others totally did not. I spent some extra time with one girl in particular who got all of them wrong. I wrote out all of the numbers from 1-100, and I pointed at them one by one while she said their names. We got to about 49 with no issues and then everything fell apart. No wonder she couldn’t do greater than and less than… she didn’t even know what the numbers were. We practiced that for a little while and then I moved on to the greater than/less than stuff. I can’t say that I think she understood it completely when we finished, but hopefully it was a bit better. The other thing you need to remember is that we have a language barrier, especially with the younger kids, so me explaining anything is a lot of hand motions and acting and pointing. Not ideal.

Me teaching about the greater than/less than fish who likes to eat the bigger number. This is actually still how I think about which way the symbol goes…

After lunch, Avy and I went back with Evans, one of the staff members from VCO (the org we’re here with), and checked out the drainage issue at the school. Evans has some architecture training, so the two of us tried to come up with an inexpensive but acceptable solution. Basically, the school is a U-shape and all of the water pools inside the U because of how the land slopes. There are two drain pipes at the bottom of the U, but they are way too small to handle all of the water. So the schoolyard floods and eventually overflows into the school building and the classrooms. Good, right? I mean, I look at the design of the school and where they decided to put it on the site and just shake my head. Anyone who took one second to think about it would have been able to tell you that there would be a problem. We came up with something, and hopefully they’ll get the funding to do it.

Seriously the best classroom… as long as it doesn’t rain.

We have another project planned for the school, so after we left, Avy, Clarina, and I went to Juapong (about 3 towns away) to buy some nails. Some of the desks at Baptist are in really horrible condition. Some are missing pieces, some are clearly falling apart, and ALL of them wobble. I can’t even imagine trying to learn while also trying to avoid getting stabbed by the nails sticking out of my desk. Anyway, we bought some nails and we’ll see how things go.

So Much Corn

Posted on October 5, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I bet you’ll never guess what we did at the farm this morning… more sowing!! We finished the field that we started yesterday (over all of the bean plants). It was just Yara, Anna, and me today, plus John and Anthony of course. We finished the field with about 20 minutes to spare, so John took us to a random little patch of ground, probably 15’ x 20’, in an area where I thought we didn’t plant anything and told us to plant more corn there. They’re just putting corn everywhere now. You can’t find a patch of land on our entire farm that doesn’t have it.

Yara and Anna seemed disappointed that we did more of the same thing. We’re coming from completely different mindsets because they’re trying to experience as many things as possible right now, and I’m happy to plant corn forever because I know that most of the alternatives aren’t any better. Like we could be hoeing.

At school, I decided to observe another teacher and went to P6 math class to learn about fractions and greater than and less than. I was pleasantly surprised by the teacher… she did a really good job of teaching the concept and checking to make sure everyone understood. When someone answered a question incorrectly, she figured out what was causing their confusion and explained that part again to make sure the entire class was on the same page. I think that summer school warped my perception of normal school because I saw how much our kids didn’t know and kind of assumed that normal school wasn’t very good. There are definitely a lot of things that could be improved, but from what I’ve seen of the teachers at Baptist, I’m impressed. Yes, I’m sure the teachers all have areas where they can get better, but they seem to care and keep thinking about ways to help get the kids up to where they should be.

I stopped by Everlasting’s class to experience a little RME (Religious and Moral Education) because I wanted to see what it was like. The kids were learning about religious families and where people from different religions go to worship. It’s pretty interesting that they have a class like RME. They learn a lot about Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions because those are the primary religions in the country. They also learn about building a solid moral foundation – things like helping people, honoring your parents, doing good work, etc. It seems like it’s a class that kids all around the world should have to take!

Teacher Meeting

Posted on October 4, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Another day of farm friends! Yara and Anna came back for round two, and Sal joined as well. I thought yesterday that we couldn’t possibly have any more fields to sow, but they managed to find one. Well, I thought today we DEFINITELY wouldn’t be doing it again… I was wrong. This time, we went over a bean field that I didn’t even know was part of our farm. I asked about the bean plants, and they said that they bought the wrong bean seeds and these weren’t good to eat. I think they just like growing corn the best, so now there are going to be like seven corn fields. Also, in case you’re wondering, since the sowing/machete/pinky finger incident of a few weeks ago, I’ve been extra careful with my machete and have had no further issues. Hooray for that!

The corn in the very first field we sowed.. I think it’s been like 6 weeks now since this was planted

At school, Avy and I were planning to observe the P3 teacher, but he didn’t show up. He’s been sick for the last few weeks, and Avy has been getting more and more annoyed that he hasn’t been doing his job. She went home because she said that she was losing even more faith in the school system because a teacher who has been completely blowing off his responsibilities hasn’t been replaced. She didn’t want to teach P3 because that would almost be encouraging his behavior, but then she didn’t want to stay at school in another classroom while knowing that P3 had no teacher. I stuck around and stayed in Everlasting’s class again and helped grade exercises while he taught.

I stepped out of the class for a minute before the first break, and there was a new guy teaching P3! I was super confused. Everlasting said that they had requested a new teacher to take over, but I didn’t think he would be there already!
Around 9AM while I was grading, a paper came around with a sign up for a teacher meeting starting at 9:45 (the beginning of first break). Apparently I was invited, and I figured why not? I was interested to see how it went. At 9:55, Everlasting said, “we should probably go to the meeting”. Oh right. At 10:05, five minutes were spent deciding who was going to do the opening prayer. At 10:10, the meeting minutes from the last teacher meeting in July were read. We all looked at each other for about 10 minutes while the headmaster asked if anyone wanted to add or change anything before accepting them. Only about two of the current teachers had been at the meeting, and they both said they didn’t remember it. Five more minutes. Okay, accepted.

During introductions, one of the teachers asked who the new guy was (the one I saw teaching P3), and the headmaster gave an explanation that didn’t really clear anything up for me. What I got from it was that they needed a new P3 teacher, and this guy just walked into the classroom and started teaching and the headmaster was happy that the problem was solved. Huh? I’m sure I missed something, but I’m glad that they have a teacher now. Hopefully he’s actually a teacher and not just some random person off the street.

Next they talked about forming a committee to collect the printing fees from students for the exams. That discussion probably took another 20 minutes, and three people who didn’t want the job got nominated and assigned to the committee.

The next topic was actually more interesting. For the exams, the teachers often end up reading the questions to the kids because they can’t read them themselves. The headmaster was saying that he wanted to mix up the students in each classroom to make it harder to cheat, and one of the teachers brought up the reading issue. That launched into a whole discussion about how reading is a big problem at the school, and the final decision was that the non-readers in school will be identified and have to attend additional phonics classes after school. I was excited because I think it’s going to be good for the kids, and it was encouraging to feel like the teachers really care about the students.

I left the meeting at noon to go to lunch, and they still weren’t finished. Oh yeah, and during this whole meeting, the kids were all just running wild and not in class. Teacher meetings apparently always happen during school… because that makes total sense. I don’t know. TIA. I’m choosing to focus on the fact that some really good things happened during the meeting and ignore the fact that no one was teaching during that time. I’m interested to see what happens over the next few weeks with all of this momentum!