March 30

The month is almost gone! Every anti-malarial pill I take is one less day I have here…

So, last Tuesday I went to Adenta and volunteered at Children of God Community School. It’s a school for kids who aren’t able to go to a real public school. From what I learned, primary education is supposed to be free and compulsory. However, for whatever reason, these children can’t go. Cujoe, the guy that invited me to teach, says that a lot of the children are orphans and/or they can’t afford school fees. Cujoe and some of his friends started the school in Adenta and also a school on Dodi Island in the Volta Region. I know on Dodi Island they don’t even have a school so the children there have absolutely no opportunity. I really admire Cujoe and his friends. They’re Rastafarians who are probably only a couple years older than me and they’ve started these schools. On week days they teach in Adenta and on the weekends they go to Dodi Island. They’re so committed to their cause.

When I got to the school I was kind of hoping to watch them teach the kids for a bit so I could learn about what they do, but they just threw me into teaching a group of nine 12-13 yr olds. I taught them math for a while and then in the afternoon I taught them English. The school is just an unfinished one room building that they broke up into four classes by grouping chairs. Teaching was really exhausting. Not because of the kids, they were really sweet. I just have never taught that many kids. I’ve tutored before, and I helped teach at a summer school in Egypt, but I’ve never been fully in charge of a class like that. Some of the kids are really far behind and I’m not sure what I can do. The biggest problem is the language barrier so even in math they don’t get it because they don’t understand my explanations. After school, Cujoe was really encouraging to me about coming to teach which I really appreciated. I know there was a bunch of advice he could have given me because I don’t really know how to teach in the most effective ways to these kids but he was just really nice about it. He could probably tell I was mentally exhausted. That just made me admire him more for how hard his job is and how optimistic he is. Ultimately, I know I’m going to be getting a lot more out of teaching the kids that they’re going to get out of my teaching. The teachers would have been fine without me and I don’t even know if I was really getting my message through to the kids. I’m going to go back tomorrow and will probably go every Tuesday for the rest of my time here.

Tuesday, I also got very sick. I had diarrhea all day and when I got back from the school I was exhausted. I took a nap and when I woke up I was achy and had chills and a fever. I was really concerned because those are some of the symptoms of malaria and I was hoping to travel this past weekend. The next morning my fever was gone but I was still sick to my stomach. Thank goodness it wasn’t malaria. That would have been awful. I was going to go to the hospital Wednesday morning but I felt well enough not to. Plans still fell through for the weekend though. It must have been something I ate but who knows.

Wednesday, I just hung around and rested so I wouldn’t get so sick again. I hung out with some of my friends because I hadn’t for a while because they were in Cape Coast.

Thursday was pretty dull too… I did some homework and then that night went to a hang out on campus called Time Out. After that we (Amy, Allie, Jenna) ended up going to Osu with some of my friend’s friends and smoked some hookah at restaurant.

Friday… I hung out with Nana and her sister, Nura, for a while. Nura taught me a new way to play mancala which was fun. In the afternoon, we (Amy, Allie, Jenna) went to a rugby game between University of Ghana and a club team. They actually had a couple matches because they’re only 20 minutes long. The first match UG lost. Then in the second match some of our friends were playing, Kyle, Devin, and Caylem, and UG won. Kyle and Devin are from Canada and Caylem is from Scotland so they were the only white people on the team. On Friday night we went out for Devin’s birthday. We went to a sports bar, Champs, which I had been to one other time for Independence Day. They have karaoke there so it’s a lot of fun. After that we went to a club called Cinderella’s which ended up being pretty lame. When we got there it was already 2am (mind you, Ghanaian night life starts really late), and the place was packed (mostly with guys) and extremely hot. We left to go home around 4:30am which is a reasonable time by clubbing standards.

On Saturday, I slept in until 1:30pm. I hung out with some friends in the hostel, did some reading, and then Amy, Allie, Jenna, Emily, and I went to Osu for dinner. We got salads and smoothies. I don’t think I’d had a salad since I left the states. They’re not common here. That night I just came home and read. I started reading Prep. I gave up on Stones from a River for now. It wasn’t fast enough. I like Prep so far.

Sunday was pretty boring. I pretty much just hung around, napped, and read. I tried to go vote for class president of UG because my friend is running, but I couldn’t find where the voting was. That was about it.

Monday... class... etc. I went to see Shutter Island last night with some friends. It was realllly good. I know these are movies that came out months ago in the states but they're new to me.

Today, I went back to Children of God Community School. I was a little afraid to go because it was so hard and exhausting last time so I ended up going a little late (like an hour which is nothing in Ghana time pretty much). It was still hard but it wasn't exhausting in the same way it was before. It probably helped that I have my health today. I taught the kids about long subtraction and nouns and verbs. That was about it.

I had a pretty boring week mostly. I don’t have any crazy cultural experiences to report on and there are no pictures. At least I’m not sick. This weekend I’m going to Kumasi for sure. I can’t wait. I haven’t travelled for the past couple weeks. We also have a holiday on Monday for Easter so my next blog might not be until next Wednesday.