A Day of “Lasts”

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

Warning! This post is long, but there’s a lot to cover! I’m going to split today into two parts because otherwise there’s too much.

Today marked the beginning of Lara’s Last Weekend of Fun. It’s tradition (unofficial) that when someone is leaving, they get to make the plans for their last weekend. Often, it’s a trip they didn’t get to take yet and want to fit in before going home, but Kumasi was that for me. For my last weekend, I just wanted to stay in town, hang out with everyone, and finish my Ghana Bucket List.

Here’s my list:

Walk across the Atimpoku bridge (did this last weekend!)
Go canoeing on the Volta River
Take a picture with a goat
Catch a chicken
Carry water on my head with no hands
Finish the poop hole (I know, I know… but I had to mention it because it’s on my list)
Climb the mountain by the clinic
Stargaze in the soccer field
Watch the fireflies (yay for that awesome night with the million fireflies!)
Watch the sunset one last time (did this on a run yesterday)
Go to the Akosombo Dam
Eat s’mores
Ride a motor bike home from Juapong (did this last week!)
Have another lip sync battle

And here’s the weekend schedule:

FRIDAY

Last day at the farm
Last day of school
Go to the Akosombo Dam
Lip sync battle

And: picture with a goat, catch a chicken

SATURDAY

Hike the mountain that we hiked before (by the farm)
Hike the mountain by the clinic
Lunch
Go canoeing on the Volta
Bonfire and eat s’mores
Stargaze

And: carry water on my head

SUNDAY

Pack
Don’t cry
Picture with everyone on the porch

Action packed weekend! BUT if everything goes according to plan, I’ll do everything on my bucket list before I leave. I know better than to think that’s realistic, but it’s worth a try, right?

The farm this morning was bittersweet. Will I miss waking up at 5AM? Probably not. Will I miss feeling accomplished at breakfast, having that extra time to spend with everyone each morning, and chopping things with a machete like that’s totally a normal part of life? Yeah, I think I will. Yara made the effort to come today because of the occasion, and it was nice to have one more day with just Nick, Anna, Yara, and me (Ricardo wasn’t there because they already left for Cape Coast). We started digging the foundations for the pig house expansion. I’m a little bummed that I won’t get to work on that, but at least I got to do some construction work on the clinic. When it was time to go, I said goodbye to the guys, the piggies, and the corn, and I kicked a chicken (not really, but I wanted to). And that was the end.

We walked back to the house, I ate my last pancake, and I got ready for my last day of school. I’ve concluded that my coping mechanism is avoidance (only in dealing with things like this though) because I’ve been doing an incredible job of pretending that none of this is real, just like when I was coming here and managed to convince myself that I wasn’t, even up to the point where I was at the airport about to get on the plane to Ghana.

The P2 kids yesterday after they made their drawings

Everlasting, me, and Avy with P2 after I kind of pulled it together

Honestly, I didn’t want to go to school because I knew it would just make me sad, but I forced myself because I knew it would be worse if I didn’t. I went to Everlasting’s class, helped him grade homework, and just laid low in the back of the classroom until it was time for us to go home for lunch. Nick and Avy came in to pick me up, and before we left, Everlasting asked if I wanted to say anything to the kids. I said no because I knew that I would cry immediately, but I did want a picture with the kids. He made me come up to the front of the room, told the kids that it was my last day, and turned to me and said that they had something for me and I should just accept it.

One of the girls stood up and gave me a stack of drawings they had made for me, all with notes saying “thank you” and “safe journey” and “ayko” (good work). It was hopeless… I was barely holding back my tears before, and as soon as she stood up, I lost it. Then, before I had a chance to pull myself back together, one of the boys stood up and gave me another stack from the boys in the class. I was a complete mess. I still am… just thinking about it is making me cry again. After I choked out a “thank you” and kind of stopped crying, all the kids came up and we took a picture (they say “say kenkey!” here instead of “say cheese”. It’s one of their classic foods made from ground corn) while I was crying and smiling and, of course, sweating. It’s a pretty gross combination, so I’m sure those pictures turned out beautifully.

Emotionally, I couldn’t stay any longer, so I said goodbye to the kids and Avy asked if I wanted to pop in to say goodbye to P3. I said sure, but just for a second. As soon as I got inside the classroom, all the girls came up and handed me drawings they made, and I was a crying disaster all over again. We group hugged and then the boys came up and the whole drawings/crying/group hug cycle repeated. As annoyed as I’ve gotten at all those kids throughout my time here, it doesn’t matter anymore. This is what I’m going to remember. One girl in particular, Mavis, kept saying, “Miss Lara, don’t go. I’m going to miss you.” What am I supposed to do in response to that besides just cry more? I tried not to get too close to any of the kids because it can’t be good for them to keep getting attached to volunteers and having them leave over and over again, but there’s only so much you can do.

Me, Avy, and the teachers. The ones I always talk about are standing around me: Mavis on the far left, Mike waving in the back, and Everlasting on my other side

At this point, I just wanted to go home. That wasn’t the end though. Mike, the headmaster, made us all go into his office, and he called all the teachers in as well. We sat down, he told everyone that it was my last day, and he thanked me and said that I’ll be missed. Mavis got up and presented me with a certificate they made to say thank you, anddd cue tears again. You may be thinking that it’s physically impossible for one person to cry so much in the span of about 20 minutes. I probably would think that as well if it didn’t just happen to me, but believe me, I wouldn’t make this up. I should probably drink some rehydration salts because it can’t be healthy for me to be losing so much water. We took a group picture, I cried and shook everyone’s hands, and Avy and Nick escorted me, the snotty, sweaty, crying mess, home.

*to be continued*

See Ya, James

Posted on October 31, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I guess Ghana decided that it needed to give me a parting gift because I felt HORRIBLE all day yesterday. I woke up at 5AM and my stomach felt like a washing machine. I was hoping that as the day went on and things got out of my system I would start to feel better, but no such luck. I had such big plans for the day, and instead I spent 80% of the day laying in my bed and the other 20% running to the bathroom. Wonderful. I think it was just something I ate though because I didn’t have a fever or anything, and by the time I woke up this morning, my stomach felt mostly okay again. Avy was totally not helpful and kept saying, “hmm maybe you have malaria. That’s kind of what it felt like. Ooo or you could have worms!” Yeah, or I could just have an upset stomach. Thanks for the encouragement, Avy.

That night, there was a big party at one of the bars in town to celebrate James’s last night. They rented these massive speakers (they were maybe 10’ tall x 6’ wide), and we could hear them playing music all the way from our house which is at least a 10 minute walk away. At one point, some people from the neighboring town came too, and I’m positive that it was because they could hear the music. I guess there’s no way for anyone to call in a noise complaint… if there was a way, it absolutely would have been done. I was just upset because everyone was dancing, and I really couldn’t dance because of my stomach situation. The ultimate sadness. I probably shouldn’t have gone at all, but I wanted to be there for James and hang out with everyone.

When my alarm went off this morning for the farm, I felt about 85% better which was enough to get me out of bed. If this was any week besides my last week, I probably would have skipped the farm. That’s irrelevant though because it is my last week, and that meant I had to go. We did more machete work… it seems like that’s the new shucking in that we do it all the time and never seem to get any closer to being finished. Fine with me though because it’s the most fun. The only disappointment was that we did short weeds again today, so it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as Friday.
James told everyone at breakfast that he would still be around when we all got back from school to eat lunch, but I didn’t believe him for a second. Last time he was here, he said that he didn’t tell anyone when he was leaving because he didn’t want to have to say goodbye. If that’s how he felt last time, was there any chance that he wasn’t going to do the exact same thing again? No way. But we all went off to school anyway and figured we’d know soon enough if he was telling the truth.

The little piggies. There are only five remaining now, but these all look healthy so we’re optimistic.

I spent part of the morning helping Everlasting until Avy came into the classroom to get me because the one functional computer stopped working. You’re looking at the official IT support for all of Frankadua (and its probably 15 total computers). I went to the computer lab (if you can even call it that) to see what I could do and realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t a problem that could be solved in a couple minutes. I told the teacher that was trying to use the lab that I needed some time to fix it, and she said, “no problem, I can just teach it in my classroom.” I know I’ve talked about this before, but just imagine trying to teach a computer class without using a computer…
I spent about 2 hours working on the computer until it was in decent shape around lunchtime. Luckily, most of the issues were software related rather than hardware related, and though I don’t know too much about either, I’m way more comfortable trying to solve software problems. When I started working, the computer couldn’t even get past the startup screen. By the time I finished, it was completely functional but with some annoying notifications and things to deal with during startup. I’ll deal with those tomorrow. I also think that I need to replace the battery inside. It’s just one of those little 3V puck batteries, but I couldn’t even begin to tell you where I would buy one of those (besides probably Accra but we don’t have time for that). Hmm… I’ll have to do some research. Anyway, moral of the story is that it’s easy to be IT support in a town where barely anyone has a computer and you have access to google.

When we got back to the house for lunch, shocker, James was gone. He said, “it’s easier this way.” Well yeah, for him it’s much easier. For everyone else who thinks they’re going to have a chance to say goodbye and then doesn’t, it’s really crappy. I would be a lot more upset if I wasn’t going to see him again in 2 weeks. Oh yeah, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this… I planned on going to London for a week after Ghana, and now I’m going to visit James in York for a couple of days too. And Sosane is going to come to London to spend a day with me! So much to look forward to even after I leave!

Music Class

Posted on October 28, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

This was the best machete day! My current favorite farm task is machete-ing weeds, and today John took us to work in a field that had some really tall weeds! We usually just do short grass. This was so much better! It was as satisfying as chopping down corn stalks. You smack them really hard with your machete and then just watch them fall. It was definitely much harder than clearing the short stuff, but it was also a million times cooler. Worth it.

The kids carrying rocks through the schoolyard

Nick, Avy, Anna, and I went to Baptist after breakfast and were met by a stream of kids with pans and buckets of rocks on their heads. Typical. There were some big piles of stones in the schoolyard, and the kids were helping to move them to someone’s house in the village who was probably going to use them for some construction work. I didn’t get the whole story, but it’s not really important. Even after being here for almost 3 months and seeing things like this happen all the time, I’m still impressed by the kids and what they’re capable of. They’re always carrying heavy things on their heads or going to get you a chair to sit on or offering to carry your bag or running errands for the school or chopping something with a machete. It’s really an awesome part of the culture here. Kids are taught to help from such a young age.
After the rocks were finally finished being moved, class started. I was planning to help Everlasting in P2, but Nick was teaching P4 because their teacher was out sick. I thought I would be more helpful if I went with him, so the two of us worked on teaching P4 math. They’re supposed to be learning about some more advanced things with operations, but after looking at the homework, we realized that they’re don’t even understand the basics. Due to that, we just taught them some foundational stuff about operations (for example, in addition, the order of the terms doesn’t matter, but in subtraction, it does). By the end, it seemed like they were getting it, but it’s hard to measure that without grading an exercise or a homework.

Just before lunch, I joined Everlasting and Anna in P2 for creative arts class. This week’s topic – music! They were supposed to be learning about making their own instruments. Anna made some shakers last night using beans, jars, and toilet paper rolls, but we don’t have nearly enough resources for their whole class to be able to make one. Instead, we brought what we had, split the class into groups, and gave the shakers to one group at a time. The rest of the groups got a beat to make, and we did a couple rounds of making “music” with each group doing their beat. If I’m being honest, they all sounded horrible (probably because Anna and I didn’t plan beats ahead of time, so they didn’t mesh well together), but the kids had a great time so who cares?

Computer Class Without Computers

Posted on October 27, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

John sharpening a machete. He wets the blade, throws a little dirt on it, and moves the machete back and forth on the rock.

By the time I get home, I’m going to be a machete queen. It’s too bad that this training only started in the last couple of weeks because I think it’s going to be a very useful skill. Would it be weird if I brought a machete home with me? No, seriously… I’m strongly considering getting one, but what on earth would I do with it? Without it, I think I’ll feel lost. It’s like when I went to China and came back and wanted to use chopsticks all the time. Now I think I’m going to find a lot of opportunities to machete things. For example: hmm okay I’m having trouble coming up with an actual example, especially if I end up living in a city again. On a hike if plants are overgrown? In case I get into a fight with a bear? Chopping firewood (but only from very thin trees because otherwise it will take me way too long)? To scratch my back? If I had a fireplace, I would hang it on the wall above like a sword. Sorry, I’m getting sidetracked. Let me know if you have any ideas. I need to justify buying one. Anyway, in case you didn’t guess, we spent the morning machete-ing more weeds. I haven’t gotten sick of it yet.

Doesn’t it look like I know what I’m doing?

After breakfast, I headed to Baptist and bumped into Everlasting and the headmaster on the way there. They had to go to a kid’s house, and Everlasting said that his students were doing some reading practice on their own. When I got to the classroom, there were some kids sitting, some kids standing at the back of the room, and two kids at the front. The girl at the front was reading a list of words, pointing at each one with a piece of broken desk, and the boy was yelling at her anytime she got one wrong. The class was actually under control, so I took a seat in the back and let them keep going. I’m pretty sure that the boy was left in charge, the kids sitting had already read the list correctly, and the kids standing hadn’t. It only took about 20 minutes for things to start falling apart, so I took control (that makes it sound a lot more impressive than it was… I just made them all sit down) and wrote some math problems on the board for them to work on. I was impressed with how well-behaved they were once they had some work to do! It made my job very easy.

ICT class in the classroom. Everlasting has a keyboard that’s not connected to anything to show the kids where the keys are.

Everlasting got back after the first break, and I got to observe him teaching an ICT class (their computer/technology class). The interesting thing about ICT is that the school only has one working computer, so often, the teachers don’t even bother going to the “computer lab”. Today’s lesson was about the spacebar and backspace keys. I must say, I was impressed by his computer-less explanation. To give you an example, for the spacebar, he explained the concept, had a couple kids come up and write sentences, and explained that those kids have spacebars in their minds so they put spaces between the words. He said that he doesn’t have a spacebar in his head and showed what those sentences would look like without spaces. It’s funny because the schools always say that it would be great if we helped with ICT class since we all know a decent amount about computers, but there’s no way I would be able to teach that class better than he did without having any resources.

Isn’t this crazy?? A class of 32 kids trying to look at one screen. The school has two computers, but only one works. We’re talking about trying to donate a projector to each school. That way, even though each kid won’t get a chance to actually use the computers, at least they’ll all be able to see the screen.

Then, I don’t even know how this came up, but during break, he gave me this long speech about how all of the people in the town are always keeping a close eye on the volunteers and how they’re behaving. He said that sometimes, the volunteers act in a way that the townspeople find appalling, such as drinking or smoking in front of the kids or dressing inappropriately. He said that people have an idea in their minds that “yevus” are completely different from them, and when we come to town and they see us trying to fit in, it helps to change their perception. People love it when we try to learn the language and carry things on our heads and go to work on the farm because those are all things that they do, and it makes us relatable. He said that people notice when the volunteers are making an effort to be a part of the community and that he’s heard people saying nice things about Avy and me specifically (probably just because we’ve been here the longest).

I was happy to hear someone affirm my attempts to fit into the community. That’s been one of my goals since the beginning of my time here. I want people (including me) to feel like I belong. Until he said all of this to me, one thing I didn’t realize was how much people pay attention to what we’re doing. I think that’s an important thing to remember any time when you’re clearly an outsider. People are watching to see how you behave, and from that, they form judgements about a group much bigger than just you. No pressure, but you represent a lot of people!

It was interesting to hear all of these things from his perspective, and it definitely gave me some things to consider. I have a feeling that the understanding he’s led me to will continue to help me throughout my journey this year (and beyond).

Weeds, P2, and More Poop

Posted on October 17, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Check out those rows of little eggplants!

I basically forced Nick to come to the farm with me, so I have another farm friend! Yara also decided to rejoin the group which got us to four people going to the farm this morning. Talk about a farm party! It was a good day for Nick to start because we were clearing weeds out of the beds, and that’s definitely one of the more relaxing farm tasks. I also had more “realize how much I’ve learned” moments when I had almost no trouble identifying weeds vs. eggplants and had to check the work of the others (after John showed us what to do, he turned to me and said, “make sure your friends don’t kill all of the eggplants.” No pressure or anything…). I remember my first week when we were hoeing and couldn’t even tell the difference between weeds and fully grown eggplants. Now I can even identify them when they’re only a few inches tall! How exciting! I’m sure these eggplant spotting skills will serve me well for the rest of my life…

After breakfast, Avy and I went to Baptist to teach P2 because their teacher was at the doctor. In Math, they were learning about addition of single digit numbers. We tried to do an activity where we split the kids into groups and used rocks as counters, but it was a total disaster. Imagine any movie where kids have a substitute teacher and totally try to take advantage of that fact, and you’ll have something close to our classroom today. Even with the two of us, it was impossible to keep the kids in their seats and paying attention.

Poop hole “before” picture. You can see that there’s a lot of dirt that still needs to be moved to conceal the wall.

To give you an example, since we obviously don’t cane the kids to discipline them (which is still the method used by many of the teachers here, though we have found some who don’t approve of it), we need to have another method of punishment when they misbehave. After a warning or two, Avy has the kid stand at the front of the room facing the wall for about a minute (or longer if they don’t stand still). At one point, we had two kids standing about 3’ apart, and one was smacking the other on the head with an eraser while that kid tried to do what he was supposed to be doing and not move. I took the eraser and moved them farther apart, putting the hitter in front of the board. Next thing I knew, I looked back and the kid was wiping the math homework off of the board with his face. Seriously?? I’m not proud to admit it, but after that, I started losing patience and motivation and basically shut down. Major props to Avy who battled through it and kept teaching.

When we hit lunchtime, both of us were mentally and emotionally drained. We put some exercises on the board and told the kids we weren’t coming back after lunch because they were behaving so poorly. There was only one thing that could even begin to make us feel better, and that was Fan Ice (ice cream!), so we picked some up on the way home and tried to forget how much we felt like failures.

“After” picture for the day. I pushed the front wall out and added dirt in the front and finished the dirt hill and gutter on the side.

I didn’t feel too bad about not going back to school because I headed to the farm in the afternoon to do more work on the poop hole (aka the pig poop to farm fertilizer converter). After finishing the roof last week, I figured it would be a good idea to ride out that momentum and try to just finish it for good. The only thing left to do is basically the landscaping around the hole. I need to fill in dirt behind all of the walls, slope it away from the hole for rain drainage, and put in a gutter. Also, one of the walls started collapsing, so the most unpleasant task of the day was to get into the hole to add a new support for the wall. That was made infinitely more unpleasant by the fact that there’s already poop in the hole, and of course it was directly in front of the wall I needed to get to. If you had told me even one day ago that I would find myself calf-deep in pig poop, I would have laughed in your face. I’m not laughing anymore. It was disgusting. I probably set a breath-holding world record because I don’t remember inhaling a single time while I was in there.

Grossness aside, it was a very productive work session. I finished 1 ½ sides of the hole which means I have 2 ½ left, plus I’ll never have to get back into the actual poop again. If that’s not something to be celebrated, I don’t know what is!

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.

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!

Back to the Farm

Posted on October 3, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I have farm friends!! Clarina, Yara, and Anna all agreed to come with me this morning! They haven’t fully committed to making it a regular thing, but I’m hoping. I only need them to commit to two weeks because my college friend, Nick, is coming on the 15th (!!!). and I’m planning to force him to come with me.

The sunrise on the walk to the farm this morning

It’s been a week since I last went to the farm, so I had no idea what we would be doing. I was happy to see that the hoeing we started a couple weeks ago was since finished by someone else. Hoeing is the worst. It turned out that we were sowing more corn. Yay! That’s one of my favorite things to do. I was a little confused about what fields we had left because I thought all of them were full. John walked us over to the biggest eggplant field and said that we were going to plant there. Apparently the eggplants are nearing their end of life, so we’re just planting corn around them and I guess they’ll die when the corn gets big enough to block out the sun. I’m not really sure because some of them still have eggplants on them… I’ll have to talk to Joe and see if he’s planning another donation soon.

One of the pumpkin plants that we planted during my second week here. It’s getting so big!!

Anyway, we sowed the eggplant field, and I stopped by the poop hole on my way out. With all of the rain last week, there’s a little lake inside and some of the walls need to be straightened out a bit. I know I need to just suck it up and finish the job, but it’s no fun alone. Maybe I’ll take this week to get back in the farm groove, and NEXT week I’ll finish the hole. Yes, I know I’m making excuses. It’ll happen though, I promise!

Another one of the plants we planted. I don’t remember what this one is… I think Nico called it courgette and according to google that’s the same as zucchini.

After breakfast, we took the new teaching volunteers around to all of the schools so they can start deciding where they want to work. We started at EP, then went to Baptist, and finally to the junior high. Avy and I headed to Baptist after making the rounds because we wanted to observe Everlasting, and we didn’t have to feel guilty deserting P3 because the new teacher was finally there! It’s actually the old P1 teacher, and the new teacher that the government sent is teaching P1.

The P2 kids working together to form groups of 10 bottle caps

It was cool getting to see another teacher in action. I hadn’t done any observation of a local teacher before today, and I think it’s really important to get an understanding of what the kids are used to. I thought he did a really good job with them. He teaches P2, and there are 32 kids in the class. There aren’t enough desks for everyone, so some of them have three people sharing instead of the two they’re made for. Apparently they spent half of last year requesting new desks from the government, and at the end of the year they got sent ten wooden chairs. Unhelpful. So they still don’t have enough.

Speaking of limited resources, here’s how you teach a class when you don’t have enough textbooks for the kids. Most of the classes don’t have a textbook for each student, and you’re lucky if there are enough for each desk to share.

Even with a big class and limited resources, he’s so good at keeping the class under control. They were learning about the number 100, so he did an activity using sticks and bottle caps that the kids brought in (I told you, they’ll bring in anything you ask for!). After Math class, they had Language and Literacy and were learning about morals. Everlasting told a story in Ewe and then told the same story in English, and the kids talked about the morals of the story he told. I liked getting to see a class taught in Ewe. They were learning some English words, so at the same time, we learned some Ewe words. The Ewe alphabet is the same as the English alphabet but with I think 10 additional letters. After class, he taught Avy and me some of the sounds of the additional letters. One step closer to being fluent! Actually though, that’s never going to happen. Ewe is HARD. It’s more musical than English and you need to pay close attention to your pitch and emphases. I’m going to keep trying though!

We checked out a class at the junior high after lunch and learned about vitamins. They have to know all of the alternate names of the vitamins, why your body needs them, and the symptoms of a deficiency. It’s kind of intense… I never even learned most of the stuff they had to memorize. Education is so interesting because different people have different ideas of what is important, and there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer. Here, the schools don’t get a choice of what to teach because all of the curriculum is set by the government and standardized across the country. I can see how that has its benefits, but at the same time, it can be kind of limiting and assumes that all schools and kids are at the same level.