My African Adventures

If I'd never gone to Africa...

2011-12-02T00:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder what life would’ve been like if I’d never gone to Ghana. That I could still exist in a world that was simpler, where my thoughts didn’t reach beyond the boundaries of my university and things were the way they were just because that was the way things were. When removed and distant, I was far more sure that although unfortunate, the circumstances and lives of people on the other side of the world were not inextricably linked to mine. Unable to even care for myself, I considered myself powerless to help. We had all heard the stories and seen the sad ads with fly bitten children’s faces flickering across the television screen. Africa was a dark and curiously lost place, hopeless and wild.

And perhaps if I hadn’t gone I wouldn’t carry the responsibility of children’s lives and progress on my shoulders. My responsibilities would be mine alone, my ambitions focused solely on personal success. I wouldn’t be turning over the confusing reality that a little girl could die because she didn’t have 10 dollars to buy medication constantly in my mind; embedding a fury in my heart and eroding any understanding of why some are born to privilege and some are not.

I never have to ponder this question of an alternative life for too long. I know the answer; that ignorance is not bliss. That though my life has become more complicated in this endlessly confusing and unfair world, I am a part of something larger than myself and my petty fears. That although difficult, transformation can come as simply as a pencil in a child’s hands or a voice being heard by the right ears. That transformation can come just in the knowing that transformation is possible. I know that I am lucky to be afforded the chance to sit at a desk and be taught by some of the most esteemed in academia at my college, but that the lessons and inspirations afforded to me by those I know in Africa is worth more. And while their names may not be known or relevant here, they fight each day for something far more important than grades or roommate squabbles or compensation.

The more time I spend there, the more what I think I know becomes entirely wrong. I watch my misperceptions and stereotypes shatter as the African policeman with an AK-47 over his shoulder approaches me. Fear and nervousness floods through me until I realize all he wants to do is smile, know my name, and say welcome to his country. I’m forced into a constant state of being uncomfortable, with blistering heat and cramped spaces, buses that break down and pot holed roads that throw your head into the ceiling. Goats on your lap and chickens at your feet. Dirt everywhere; in your hair and on your clothes and up your nose. Shocked you realize that no, you really do not need all of those clothes or a hair straightener or a non-fat vanilla latte every morning. All you need is a backpack packed with a change of clothes, a good book, and flip-flops on your feet.

The chaos is, of course, a part of its charm. But even in the clanging metal and hectic market and children fighting with urgency to hold your hand, you find a sense of peace; of calm. Falling asleep to symphonies of crickets and grasshoppers and waking up to roosters and local women chatting outside the window as the sun rises...You find that there are no tones of doom and despair like so many imagine - there is only hope. It's home. And a part of me is always missing when I'm away. I come back and tell their stories, perhaps attempting to help people realize that we are one in the same…they too are silly and ambitious and smart. They too seek a life of happiness, of success, of moving forward rather than backwards.

Though I know I don’t know much about much of anything, I can learn. Even as I stumble and fail, my efforts are better than nothing. I don’t know why or how, but I am one of the lucky ones. I get to witness change spark and multiply. This change comes not because I’m there, but rather because of the unyielding optimism and tenacity sewn into the very fabric of who they are. I've been told before that there is "less value for human life" in Africa. I've never heard anything more wrong. In Africa, people still say hello to one another as they pass on the road. They strive to succeed, but their lives do not revolve around the accumulation of material goods. They do not understand Western depression; they find it legitimately insane that you would be unhappy with any life other than the one you've been granted. I think if anything, Africans retain more value for human life, much of which many of us have lost amid our wealth and time pressed lives. It becomes obvious that happiness is a choice based on disposition, not circumstance. And however happy or hopeful, many still need help, and we are not as powerless as once assumed.

I know that in my awareness of all of this brings the ability to affect change. This awareness evokes both a responsibility to act and a greater hope for human capacity.

"There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." -Nelson Mandela

2011-02-11T22:16:00.000-08:00

It’s been four months. Four months since my third adventure in Ghana ended and I set foot back on American soil. For four months I have been avoiding this blog, allowing the words and the drafts and the stories to well up inside my computer. I allowed myself to be overwhelmed by how much I had to tell although knowing I would have to revisit it and post at some point, because regardless of whether or not anybody reads it, the trip can’t really be done with until this blog is posted. The three-month trip that was the craziest, most challenging, most physically and emotionally exhausting, and the greatest yet. Life after Ghana 3.0 was not like life after the first trip where I was immediately bombarded with questions about ‘how was Africa?’ ‘what did I do there?’ and ‘what was it like?’. Unfortunately people have just become used to the idea that I take off to Africa sometimes…that I love it. That it’s “my thing.” Which kind of totally sucks because this trip was so inherently different than the previous. Before, the lack of questions or even content of questions wouldn’t have mattered to me…I would bring up Ghana at any chance that I could. But upon coming home this time I was shocked to realize that some of my best friends didn’t even know that I was working with an orphanage to build a dormitory, and I thought to myself ‘how much are people even really listening to me when I talk?’ So in essence, I stopped talking about it (as much). And in doing so I feel like I’m harboring all of this information, as if I’m carrying around this massive weight of stories that can’t be said out loud. And saying them out loud makes them feel real, and important. It makes it seem as if I didn’t just dream up this far away place and all of these people that become my surrogate family. It makes me feel as if both worlds can exist interchangeably, rather than separately and between big distances of space and time. So I have to write them down no matter how much time passes, not so much for you, but for my sanity. So I’ll start from where I left off, climbing Mount Afadjato.

One of my larger goals for this trip was to climb the tallest mountain in West Africa – Mount Afadjato. The mountain, notorious for torturing volunteers up its vertical climb, is situated just a mere 45 minutes away from Hohoe. I had yet to take the time to do it but was convinced I'd scale to the top before leaving. So a few other friends and I set aside a Saturday for what we thought would be a brisk, albeit challenging fun hike. My climbing mates, Clare and Carl, are both very fit and energetic. But I’m sure as many of you would point out I am fit too...Or a more appropriate term, skinny. I’d gained weight in Ghana, noticeably enough (a heaping pile of rice and oily tomato sauce diet will do that to you). Hilda thought it was appropriate to continuously mention how I was “becoming a woman” and “filling out” but I generally laughed it off and was never too worried about it. I figured I’d be okay on a climb that most tourists seemed to be able to do. Sure, I wasn’t in the best shape of my life but good enough. I will note though that Clare and Carl (although I’m sure they’d discredit this) are extremely athletic. They’re both avid bicyclists and Clare is essentially a professional skier. Me? Well, the only workout I’d had in the last two or so years was picking up babies at my job or walking from class to my car, which up to this point I’d figured had been sufficient…I was wrong. So very very wrong.

The three of us arrived at the small, seemingly abandoned village at the bottom of the mountain. We ended up finding the “tourist center”; an empty cement house with no floor, windows, or signs – just a bare table in the corner with a guest book on it. We paid a fee and were given a guide. From there we began walking toward the base of the mountain. We took a couple pictures of the three of us – happy, naïve, clean. We would only be this way for so long. From there we trekked to the bottom of the mountain, and began our way up it. The wide path shrunk to a thin and rocky vertical trail that cut through the dense forest. The hike didn't start out easy and only became progressively steeper. And I am a little person, my legs can only bend and stretch to vertical angles so many times. Soon I realized that this was not a hike, but a climb, as we were forced to pull ourselves over boulders and terrain by swinging on tree branches. I struggled to hinge my leg onto the next boulder above me and push myself off of it and forward. Every now and then we would come across notes on rocks “Keep going,” “you can do it,” that only seemed to remind me that I wasn't crazy – this was freaking hard. Half way up we came across another volunteer, she said she couldn’t do it and was waiting for her friends to come back down. I wanted to join her. Badly. This wasn’t like a normal trail that had been zigzagged into the side of a mountain – this was a vertical climb. There were no areas of rest or leveling out, it just got steeper and steeper. And I was in so much pain, forcing myself to push off of each leg one after the other. I just couldn’t get enough air in my lungs. I literally felt as if my heart was going to beat out my chest. I kept having to demand breaks or try to pretend I was taking a picture of the gorgeous view in order to buy me a few seconds to breathe, although no break was ever enough and the pain didn’t subside. Of course Clare and Carl were literally DANCING up the mountain, swooshing from side to side to the Glee Soundtrack as I slowly died on the inside. The guide told me that he was impressed, that most people who struggle this much end up giving up. And I wanted to stop and give up, really. I knew it would totally suck to tell people I hadn’t made it to the top – but this is Ghana, you check your ego at airport security. I figured there was no way this level of pain could be worth it. But Clare and Carl kept me going, being kind enough to put me in the middle so I wouldn’t feel like I was holding us back and motivating me on with their dancing and optimism and jokes. Those two – they're the kind of people that everyone wants to be around, as if their happiness, optimism and determination is contagious. I was continuously shocked at how my legs and arms managed to keep propelling me up that mountain until finally, and I can’t say ‘finally’ enough, we managed to reach the top. The top was a small, leveled platform with a sign that said, “Welcome to Afadjato.” I sat down to breathe and marveled at the view – we could see the village where we’d come from, far off in the distance, and the flat green cascade of trees leading all the way into neighboring Togo. We took pictures and then more locals reached the top and started having a party drinking palm wine out of gasoline containers. I was proud of myself, genuinely proud of what I had accomplished – literally climbing a mountain despite every part of my body telling me not to. And it was worth it, so very very worth it. We hung out for a while, listening to “circle of life” on Carl’s music player until it was time to make our way down. Going down seemed to be almost intimidating as going up – we had to slide down on our butts a lot of the time and go down on all fours. I was entirely covered in dirt but I managed to do okay going down. When we got back to the bottom we said goodbye to our guide and found the “tourist center” to sign the guest book. Under the last entry before us someone had written, “That was the most painful experience of my life.” So under our spot Clare wrote “We almost lost our friend up there, but it was worth it.”

I woke up the next day after Afadjato and every muscle in my body was sore. It hurt to lay sideways, or on my back, or to stand or to walk. I could only walk slowly and bowlegged. This continued for days, and warranted quite a few jokes from my fellow volunteers, who, might I mention – were not sore at all. But I needed my energy and to be productive. That second to last week was meant to paint the inside of the Happy Kids dormitory. It was crunch time now. The electricity had been wired through the building (including light bulbs on the insides and outside surrounding the exterior porch of the building and ceiling fans in each room). The painters had finished with the base and secondary coats and finished all the trim and doors. The windows had bars, wire and a mesh overlay to block out mosquitoes and bugs. It looked like a house now.

Clare, Carl and I planned to spend one or two afternoons painting the inside of both rooms. Clare and Carl, artistic as they are, drew the outlines in pencil of what we would paint. We started with the girls room. I bought the paint, which had to be put in old, empty Nescafe and Milo cans and brought it and the few brushes to the orphanage. The girls room would have butterflies, trees, a unicorn, and flowers on the wall. Above the window when you walked in would be “Welcome” and above the other window would be two bumblebees sitting on each side of “Home Sweet Home.” Carl brought his music player and we spent the afternoon dancing and singing to The Spice Girls and Britney Spears and anything that we could move to. In order to thin it out enough to use, the oil paint had to be mixed with gasoline and so with each brush stroke we would pour a little gasoline into the tops of the Milo cans. By the end of the day we were delirious, dizzy and light headed.

The kids were all so excited that we were painting, and all day Wisdom and Moda and a few others stayed with us, passing us the container of gas when we needed it and covering up our mistakes with the original color of the walls. As it turned out, I’m not a very great painter and would send red paint splashing down the side of the walls, making it look like the butterfly had been massacred. Luckily we were able to fix this, and I got better as the days went on. The boys room was jungle themed; it had a large lion, frog, monkey and trees in it. Both rooms had a vine around the doors that said “Happy Kids.” The day we started painting the boys room Wisdom walked up to me seriously and asked, “Can you please paint ‘home sweet home’ in our room too?” which of course we did. Above the window was also “Welcome,” this seemed to take me years to finish. Whenever we would arrive to work on it the children would rush in, their eyes and mouths wide, and they would begin shouting “This is for boys! This is for boys! This is for girls! This is for girls!” jumping up and down and arguing over which room was better and why. It was Clare and Carl’s last week and they had a lot of other things to do, so I really appreciated their dedication to getting it done even though it took SO much longer than expected. And both rooms really, seriously, turned out so beautiful. They look like real murals, like real cartoon characters. They brought such life to those blank walls. We all knew that so long as that building stands those murals would too. At the end of each day the only way to get the ever-permanent oil paint off our skin was to douse it in gasoline and so for weeks it seemed that gas grew out from my pores. Some of my most fun memories of this trip are of the three of us dancing within those walls that I’d spent the last 2 months watch being built, breathing in those toxic fumes and turning the walls into a canvas with our paint brushes.

In the mornings when we weren’t painting I was always doing a myriad of things. I’d received a couple of extremely generous donations to build the children bunk beds and had to go about getting them built in time. I knew I couldn’t use the same carpenter that I’d hired for the dormitory, he was lazy and I’d been warned that he was horrible with furniture. I was worried and clueless as to who to hire; Hohoe seems to have some version of a carpentry shop on every corner. As I was walking home from the Internet café after hearing that the donations had been made I walked up to a bare shack that I’d seen every day. The only sign it had of being a carpentry shop was the surprisingly well-made dresser sitting beneath the few pieces of tin roof and the words “Call Harrison 233..78…” on it’s door written in chalk. I asked Harrison what it would cost to make 10 bunk beds. He looked at me and laughed as if I must be joking, but I assured him I was very serious. There was something about Harrison that seemed trusting and genuine. We negotiated far below his asking price for 10 redwood beds to be made, each bed being about 120 Ghana cedis. Harrison didn’t seem very convinced that the beds would be finished by my deadline; 14 days. He told me I must be crazy, that just one bed would take 5 days. But I reinforced the fact that I wouldn’t handle this being done on ‘Ghana Time’. I had a day I was leaving the country and the children would be sleeping in these beds before that day. I took down his information and shook his hand. I was worried I’d made a mistake, trusting this stranger to finish this seemingly impossible task. I didn’t really have any other options though. The next day I met Harrison and gave him a payment to buy materials and begin the work and every morning I would check on him, making sure the beds were being worked on and keeping a weary eye as the time seemed to pass faster and faster. I’ll be honest in saying that I doubted Harrison and was sure he was lying to me when he claimed one thing was done but I wouldn’t be able to see it. It always seemed to make more sense to hope for the best but expect the worst. When I wasn’t checking on the bunk beds or painting that week I was teaching at Divine Star and Christ Orphanage as usual.

My last week was by far my busiest and most exhausting week. On Monday I met with yet another carpenter to have him build 2 bookshelves and one large cupboard. I was already worried that Harrison wouldn’t finish the beds and didn’t want to add to his already impossible workload. Over the weekend my friends Clare and Carl had left, as many others had throughout the summer, but some other friends still remained. My good friends Mark and Patti were also coincidentally flying out on Sunday and so we planned to go to Accra (the capital city) on Saturday to celebrate and eat a few real meals before heading back to the Western world. But with the amount of things I was doing, losing one day (Saturday) could be too much. I wanted to go to Accra with them. I would be sad to leave, obviously, but I was ready. I had exhausted every potential resource and knew I could walk away (albeit temporarily) knowing I had done every single thing that I could. But throughout that last week I was never sure if I would be able to leave with them on Saturday or even if I would be able to fly out on Sunday. I had always said that I wouldn’t leave unless absolutely everything was finished, and we were cutting it close.

Because it was the end of term (in Ghana children have 3, 3 month terms a year with a month break in between) all of the kids had been let out for break. This didn’t make a huge difference for much of the Happy Kids because so many of them lived there, but it for the Divine Star kids it meant saying goodbye early. The last day of term is always a giant party, where the kids dress up in their fanciest clothes and bring fantas and dance around while the teachers stuff their term grades into fat, browning envelopes. I was more than happy to say goodbye to my kiddos at Divine Star this way, dancing and laughing and not having to worry about a lesson. They danced around to “Single Ladies” (no, seriously), I danced with them, and I distributed the hundreds of pictures I had brought for them. Most of them never have and will never actually own pictures of themselves. The only time they see themselves is when volunteers turn cameras around to show them (this is why pulling a camera out creates instant chaos). I had become wary of my goodbyes here anyways, always grappling with the guilt of their tears and feelings of abandonment. I knew though that I would see Juliet, Grace, Esther, Ophila and Dennis before actually leaving…they always popped up at my hotel so we could read books. Unfortunately, I was really sad because I had planned to go to Christ Orphanage the afternoon of their last day to say goodbye (as I was buying supplies in the morning) but I found out they got out early and actually didn’t get to say goodbye…Luckily, it’s not like before where goodbyes were permanent, I always know that I’ll be back.

The break enabled some of the children at Happy Kids to visit any living parents or relatives and they were soooo excited for this. I know I’ve mentioned Wisdom in this blog before but I’ll relay his story again. Wisdom is the unfortunate result of bad circumstance. For me, his story exemplifies the unfairness of this world; something I’m still trying to come to terms with. Wisdom has never known his father and the only “family” he has ever known resides at Happy Kids. When Wisdom was 4 years old his mother decided she was unable to care for all of her 3 children. She had an older daughter, Wisdom, and a younger son. Her solution was to choose to give up one of her children. She chose to keep her older daughter and younger son and handed Wisdom, then 4 years old, to the orphanage. Wisdom is kind and so smart. His name could not be more fitting. He takes care of the younger children at Happy Kids without hesitation and he is a happy boy, although it is obvious he still questions why he must live this life while his family lives 10 minutes away without him. It’s no secret that Wisdom, now 11, and I developed a really strong bond. There’s something about this kid, I promise you…something that breaks your heart and pieces it back together all at the same time. It’s his dream to become a soccer player when he gets older, and he’s talented. Whenever he would make a goal on that mangy field he would hold his arms out at his sides and run, his skinny legs stretched over the long, tall grass, and he would fly. For the break Wisdom was allowed to visit his mother, who coincidentally lived just a few minutes from me. I didn’t meet this woman and whenever I asked about her Wisdom would say he had no idea where she was. So in those days that Wisdom stayed at his mom’s he would come see me, sometimes right after I would return from Happy Kids, and we would watch movies or drink glass bottled Fantas and Sprites or just hang out. On Tuesday I was driving around with Godwin running a million errands: buying mattresses, sheets, organizers, going to the bank and the wood shop to check on the beds back and forth. As we were heading down the road towards the shack that sold sheets I saw Wisdom walking on the side of the road: pushing a piece of bamboo that he’d fastened to old bottle caps on the bottom to roll like wheels. I asked Godwin to pull over and called over to Wisdom to get in the car. I asked him to run and tell his mother that he was coming with me but he said that he didn’t know where she was. He looked confused as to why I was telling him to get in the car. When he closed the rusty door I asked Godwin to take us somewhere where we could buy soccer shoes.

We went to the market and found a stall that had pairs of shoes hanging from the metal roofing sheet. The period of time where we were looking Wisdom was in a complete state of shock; he barely spoke and only had this giant smile plastered on his face. Godwin and I went about questioning the shop owner. At this point Godwin was fully into my plan and was probably just as excited as Wisdom was. We found a yellow and green pair of soccer cleats that seemed to be just his size, with some room to grow. They were perfect. They were brand new and had thin, long bleach white laces. We picked out a pair of green soccer socks and a new ball too, to finish out the package. I handed Wisdom the bag, although he hesitated taking it. It was as if he was afraid if he moved or spoke he would wake up from the dream he was in. His face was pure and unadulterated joy. I have never seen a smile so big or so constant. I don’t doubt that this is one of the best days he’s ever had and in that he is not alone, it was one of mine too. All of this cost just around $20 dollars.

As wonderful as this moment was, I was also filled with guilt. I made sure to explain to Wisdom several times NOT to tell the other boys at Happy Kids that he’d gotten the shoes from me but instead from a distant relative. As much as I wished I could do this with every child at Happy Kids, I knew that I couldn’t. My personal funds were dwindling quickly and I’d only accounted for building materials and labor in the dormitory project estimate; something we had surpassed long ago. The opportunity to do this for Wisdom had presented itself and I’d decided to take it. As much as I wish I could do a whole Oprah scene, “you get a pair of shoes! And you get a pair of shoes! And you get a pair of shoes!” I just couldn’t. Of course, the next day Wisdom’s brother visited me at the hotel begging me to also buy him a pair of shoes. It was heartbreaking…but as tough as it was I had to stick to my guns and explain to him that I just couldn’t, and that as much as I was sure he deserved a pair of shoes just as much, that this was a special thing for Wisdom and I couldn’t buy him shoes. This was similar to when I used to give water out to my Divine Star kids when they’d come to read with me, and one time Ophilia’s sister came with and decided to tell her friends that I gave out water. Soon, I became known as the white girl that gives out water to passing children, and the hotel was flooded daily with strange children I didn’t know demanding water. As a volunteer you quickly realize that you can’t change the world and you can’t help every kid. You have to come to terms with the fact that you can only help who you can within your own means, and sometimes this means picking and choosing who needs or could benefit from it most. I don’t have this hugely naïve assumption that I can change the world, but I do know that I can change things for one group of people, or one orphanage, or one village. And if that number is even as small as one child, that’s certainly better than nothing.

On Wednesday I went and taught at Christ Orphanage and did a phonics lesson and worked on addition. After, rather than getting lunch I went straight meet Harrison to check on the beds. After much pushing and prodding, Harrison had said that they would be finished on this day. When I got there, his little shack was bursting with the parts of the beds; which were dismantled and would be put together at the orphanage. It took over an hour but we were able to flag down a truck from the main road and direct him to Harrison’s. At that point we went about loading each part of the beds into the truck. When we got to Happy Kids we unloaded the parts and Harrison went about putting them together, which was much faster and easier than I’d expected. All of the kids kept asking me “teacha teacha what is this?” They were beyond disbelief at the idea of having their own beds. I left Harrison to continue constructing the beds and from there myself and Godsway (Elizabeth, happy kids owner’s son) hopped in a passing trotro and went to the market to buy the mattresses. We filled up two taxis with the 4-inch foam mattresses. They stuck awkwardly out of 3 of the 4 windows and bobbed up and down from the trunk. I was really excited though because this was one of the final steps to finishing the dormitory. We also bought the children a month supply of food. I tried to pick out heavier, denser foods like beans, rice, tomatoes and rice. I wish these kids got more protein rich foods and vegetables than they do rice, which is much of the reason so many of them are malnourished.

When Godsway and I got back all of the beds were built and in their proper places. They were absolutely beautiful; made of redwood, tall and wide and durable in their construction. I personally jumped up and down on each of the beds and shook them to insure their durability. I took the bag of sheets I’d bought the day prior and made every one of the 20 beds. The girls had mostly lavender and patterned white sheets, the boys orange and blue. I set out the multi-colored pop-up hampers that I’d found at the market on both sides of every bed and hung the organizers I’d also found over the doors. Elizabeth found some curtains and hung them over the windows. Letting the children into the completed dormitory could not have been more amazing. Both girls and boys paced the rooms and began claiming their beds. They chanted, “This is my bed! This is my bed!” for close to 20 minutes. They sang and danced and marveled at the hampers, careful not to move anything from its original place. Most of the older kids picked top bunks and sat on their mattresses triumphantly.

Wednesday was also Juliet’s 8th birthday. I’d brought a pink Santa Barbara shirt, her favorite book (The Hungry Caterpillar) and a blow up globe knowing I’d be here for her August 10th birthday. She came to the Geduld in the late afternoon when I’d just returned. I couldn’t believe that she was 8, although she acts much older. It seemed like only yesterday that she was 6 and teaching me (rather than me teaching her) how to count from one to ten in Ewe when I’d walk into class every morning. Juliet was old enough to recognize the corruption of the owner of Divine Star but was still very confused as to why I couldn’t spend all of my time with them. Even though I still visited and taught there every day, our afternoon reading sessions had become much less frequent and I knew it wasn’t enough. Before she took her birthday presents from me she handed me an envelope with a faded 5 X 7 picture of her in it. I knew how much this meant, as pictures are such a luxury and hard to come by. On the back she’d etched “Juliet,” as if I’d needed to know in order to not forget her. Obviously that would never happen. This girl is only 8 and she is very often the teacher (through her own choice) of her 40 classmates. She can read and write, completely self-taught. She could be the president of Ghana if she wanted to. I’m sure of it.

Thursday was a big day – the day I would go to Accra to pick up the pallet of donated supplies. I know I haven’t mentioned it in the blog before because it was such a source of frustration. When I had come in March I brought a suitcase of books and school supplies. These supplies were revolutionary and unheard of in Ghana, so when I was gearing up for the big 3 month trip I figured it’d be useful to collect more donated books and school supplies. I started small – just asking friends I knew and parents at my work. I wasn’t sure how successful that would be though so I started scavenging Santa Barbara – visiting every used books store I could find and old public libraries. I visited elementary schools and even got a HUGE box donated from Barnes and Noble. It seemed that it all accumulated at once and before I knew it I was terrified as to how I would get all of this to Ghana. Luckily my dad’s company has experience shipping freight to and from China, and so offered to do it, figuring it would be simple (oops). With the go ahead from my dad and the knowledge that I would have an entire pallet full of books to send – I went that much more crazy. I asked my dad to send out a company wide email asking for donations and so hundreds more poured in there. I couldn’t help but buy as many as I possibly could myself. I was so beyond excited at the idea that they would actually have books and pencils and erasers. When I left I’d brought a suitcase full again but left the rest behind, which I was told would follow me weeks later. Obviously that didn’t happen, as it was now 3 days before I was leaving the country and customs was still holding the packages. For the month that the pallet had been in the country I’d been dealing with a customs broker named Emmanuel. He told me he “thought” the pallet might be cleared Wednesday before I left, and knowing I had no more time to waste I told him I was coming on Thursday and picking it up regardless.

Going to Accra sounds simpler than it is. The drive alone is 4 hours each way and I had to hire my own trotro to take me – due to the fact that all 15 boxes couldn’t fit in a regular taxi. My schedule was non-negotiable, I only had Thursday to pick up all the supplies and Friday was going to be my last day in Hohoe to get it all set up and say my goodbyes before Mark, Patti and I went back to Accra Saturday. I woke up at 5:30am Thursday morning, met the trotro driver at 6:30 and waved goodbye to my other volunteer friends just waking up – they wished me the best of luck and hoped that when I returned it’d actually be with the supplies. None of us knew if this would actually happen. As we drove through the familiar, bumpy, pot holed roads I envisioned all of the books set up in a library and the kid’s faces. I told myself I wouldn’t be leaving without everything. There was a possibility though that I would have to change my flight because of this pallet. When we got to Accra we waited and then met Emmanuel at the airport – where we then followed him to the warehouse where customs was. Everyone was just standing around in the parking lot waiting, and it looked like they’d been waiting for a while…not a good sign. Emmanuel told me he was still working on it and to wait. So the trotro driver, Prosper, and myself waited in the stiflingly hot parking lot, baking for hours. I hated sitting. I asked Emmanuel to let me talk to someone and he said it would probably make it worse – that they would slow down the process because I was white. This was possible, or they could speed it up. You never really know which way it will go in Ghana, but race always plays a part. For the mean time we decided not to risk it, and so we waited and listened to the symphony of clanking metal and trucks pulling in and out of the warehouse.

Eventually Emmanuel offered to take me to lunch, and I figured what the hell. I would never pass up a chance to visit the Accra mall – which had actual linoleum floors, a pizza place, a chicken sandwich place, and an ice cream shop. We had lunch at the “Chicken Inn.” When we got back Emmanuel left and again we waited, for hours and hours and hours. At 3:30 they said they’d had to change it to a new permit process in hopes of speeding it up. This gave me hope, but at 5 Emmanuel walked up to me and said he had bad news. He said we’d have to wait until tomorrow. I wanted to cry. I didn’t have until tomorrow. I was pissed and told him to take me to talk to someone. We walked into the customs office and I pleaded my case to several people, who looked at me with crooked smirks and amusement. ‘I just wanted to get these books to an orphanage in the Volta Region’, I said, and I would be leaving the country. Finally they told me I would talk to the head of Ghanaian customs. The man at the absolute top. I was nervous but determined to look strong and forceful. Another customs officer knocked on the door and creaked it open, “Boss, I brought you a white woman from America,” he said. “A white woman huh? Send her in.” And so in I went.

On the wall hung an old and tattered poster claiming, “STOP! NO BLOOD DIAMONDS FROM COTE D’VOIR. THOSE WHO ARE CAUGHT WILL BE SEVERELY PROSECUTED.” The boss showed no emotion in his face. He had mean, heavy eyes that stared at me like a mosquito disturbing him at what he thought was the end of his day. But I pleaded, I rationalized, I ran my mouth as much as we would let me. “Please”, I said, “whatever it will take, I need these books to be released today and I’m not leaving until they are.” I paused for his reaction. A smile broke on his seemingly emotionless face. He said he would help me. He said that he would hand-write out the process because the computers were what was taking so long. This paper would have to be hand signed out by every major official at Customs, and he numbered it, starting with him. “Run” he said. “You have 10 minutes before the warehouse closes.” And that is exactly what we did; ran. Fast….weaving through the portables and going back and forth between the suited officials. One of them was a man named “Mr. Stanley,” who agreed to help me only if I promised to come back and visit him the next time I was in Ghana. When I found out that we didn’t have the ONE piece of paper we needed to finalize the process – because the computers had stopped working – I thought we’d ultimately failed. But as we approached the building where Emmanuel’s office was to try for the paper one last time, a woman burst out the door and threw it at us. “Thank your lucky stars,” Emmanuel said to me.

We were given security badges and entered the warehouse. It had no order to it and seemed to be a jumbled mess of boxes lacking labels and purpose and place. I was beyond thrilled to find all of my boxes – tied together in a corner. The customs men began opening the boxes and sorting through them…and there they were, the books I’d packed months ago and left safely in America…The pencils, the baby clothes, the erasers, the map of the world and the thousands of crayons. The warehouse men began picking out their own books to keep, “samples, samples,” they said. And I rolled my eyes – I didn’t have much fight left in me. “They have kids too…” someone said. I was devastated when one of them picked the Big Book of Bedtime Stories with golden-flaked pages that I’d bought specifically myself. But I was happy to get out there with all but about 10 books – considering the circumstances. We loaded them into the trotro at 7 o’clock, a mere 9 hours after we’d arrived. And we left on our way back to Hohoe. We’d somehow succeeded – I was leaving with over 600 pounds of donated supplies for Happy Kids and tomorrow I would build the libraries and assemble everything before saying my goodbyes. When we got back to Hohoe at 11pm we unloaded the boxes and I went to my room. I fell back into my bed and every inch of my body ached.

I woke up at 6am for my last day in Hohoe. I had my typical breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and Nescafe coffee. Godwin picked me up and we drove to the bank so I could give out the last payments to everyone. I bought a bunch of straw mats for the floors and sign to paint “Happy Kids” onto the building. I walked to meet my mason, Prosper, where we picked up the 2 bookshelves I’d had built by a carpenter and a large cabinet to house all of the school supplies. Eventually we loaded everything into a trotro and set on our way to Happy Kids. When I pulled up all of the kids began grabbing boxes and carrying them on their heads into the orphanage.

I spent the next few hours kneeling over those boxes and sorting every book, pencil, etc. One of the large bookshelves was at the actual orphanage and the other bookshelf and cabinet was taken to the school site. I sorted the books based on age, putting the younger books on the bottom shelves and the more in depth novels at the top. I sorted based on if they were educational or stories. I sorted about 3 large boxes to be sent to Christ Orphanage. After I finished that a priest came and blessed the dormitory. It was officially ready to be lived in. From there we took all of the school supplies to the school site and I went about unwrapping every new crayon, pencil, whatever from it’s packaging. I’d bought containers a few days ago and labeled them for every class. This also took hours. When I was done the cabinet was full of about 1,000 pencils, 1,000 crayons, hundreds of erasers, pencil sharpeners, glue, scissors, learning games, almost anything you could think of. I also organized the bookshelf so that there was an entire shelf of teaching books, lesson plans and materials, books about animals and science and math, flash cards and basic stories. When I returned back to the orphanage I taped a world map on the wall of the library, lay a rug down and took a step back…it even looked like library. Atchukwe, the oldest girl, walked in slowly, sat down and carefully pulled a book from the shelf and read silently; the biggest smile on her face. They all eventually went in there and stayed for hours. Just the fact that they will never have to fight over books again is the most incredible thing, and I called the people at my dad’s company who had so tirelessly worked to ship it there and we all left them a message. From there we played, and hung out. All that time Chantal’s chubby little fingers never left mine. I stayed until it was dark and was devastated to say goodbye. I was so sad to know I’d no longer be seeing them every day – and that this wild and crazy adventure was coming to an end, again. When I pulled away with Godwin I did so with a sense of peace – it was easier this time because I knew I’d literally done every thing I was mentally and physically capable of doing. My friends and I had our last meals of fried rice and tomato sauce at the hotel and said our goodnights.

On Saturday morning I woke up early and rode my bike around the village, saying goodbye to all of my friends. I visited my friend Naomi and her new baby, Klenam, and we took pictures together and planned the next time I would be coming. When I got back to the hotel Juliet was waiting for me, standing at the edge of the dirt road wearing the bright prink Santa Barbara I’d given her for her birthday. She was crying really hard though, partly due to my leaving and partly due to the fact that she had malaria. I brought her to my room and gave her water and put on a movie for her while I packed. Wisdom came too and sat in my room with Juliet while I threw my dirty and tattered belongings into my half empty bags. I left a lot of things behind, as always. I wish I could’ve filmed the way the adorable cook, Bright, threw herself onto my small, carry-on suitcase when I said I would be leaving it.

Myself, Patti and Mark packed our suitcases into Godwin’s car and gave big hugs to all of the staff. The Geduld had become my home, and I was so sad to leave it. I hugged Juliet and made her promise me to go to the hospital. Wisdom also handed me a picture of himself with an adorable note on the back calling me “his queen.” Another one of my students, Dennis, showed up. And I asked him to tell my other kids at Divine Star that I said goodbye and as always, would be back. I didn’t have to worry that they’d felt abandoned – at this point they all knew I would be coming back. And just like that we piled into the car and drove off out of Hohoe. I couldn’t wrap my mind around these last few months, or the fact that again I was heading back to the Western world. Crazy how time seems to move both extremely slow and fast at the same time.

On our day in Accra, Patti and I went to the cultural market where I found some beautiful beaded wooden elephants and bowls. For our last dinner we went to meet our friends and fellow volunteers, Eddie and Anne Marie, at their fancy and beautiful beachfront hotel. Walking into it was like walking into an entirely different world, one that I didn’t know existed in Ghana. The restaurant had cloth napkins and even gave us our very own mosquito coil; the definition of class. I tried really hard not to have a panic attack when I saw the menu had an actual cheeseburger on it. My friends caught on to my excitement and reveled in the experience with me. Anne Marie and Eddie had only been there 2 weeks and weren’t quite into withdrawals yet. They had planned to stay another 2 weeks to vacation and travel. Unfortunately Anne Marie had contracted a very horrible case of Malaria and was not well. She was tough and somehow sat through our dinner but spent the following 4 days in the Accra Hospital going through hell. A volunteer getting malaria is not really out of the ordinary, it is an unfortunate fact of life, and we usually don’t worry too much but Anne Marie’s case was especially horrible. Luckily she did get better much later but not in time to salvage her vacation. I still don’t understand how I haven’t gotten Malaria yet but expect that will change soon enough. After dinner me, Mark and Patti retreated with our full and happy stomachs back to our dive hotel. As we drank ridiculous cocktails under the stars in celebration of Mark’s birthday we could feel the mosquitoes literally eating us alive. It’d become a continuous and frustrating game to try to swat them dead before they bit you. We’d left our remaining bug spray canisters in Hohoe for the last 2 volunteers, not expecting the mosquitoes in Accra to be this ruthless. In the morning I counted 54 bites on just my legs alone. I probably had close to 70 including my arms. It was painful, to say the least. I had become a walking, itchy, mess of bumps and was sure I’d get malaria in the following days at home. The 3 of us had breakfast and hung out in the hotel lobby Sunday before our flights left. Mark and Patti were on the same flight and left hours before mine. We said our goodbyes knowing we would see each other again in Ghana soon enough. I was sad to see them go and was slightly dazed when I realized I was again entirely alone.

I must say, you meet the most incredible people volunteering in Africa. The friends I made this summer were amazing: all incredibly intelligent, driven and hilarious. Many were repeaters; people that had volunteered in Ghana before and had caught the Ghana bug and would always come back, like me. During one conversation we were all discussing the types of people you meet. My friend Mark boiled it down to this: “There are people that are dreamers, and there are people that are doers,” –noting that people that come to Africa are doers. It’s interesting because before I’d always considered myself a dreamer – this girl always thinking up these huge ambitions and elaborate plans. I don’t think that I chose to come to Africa because I was a doer. I think it turned me into one…Mostly because there’s no way of being an observer; of sitting idly on the sidelines waiting to be directed. And I don’t mean to make this overly broad, wide-eyed statement, but despite the many failures and challenges that reside there, my experiences in Ghana have instilled in me a belief that anything is possible. Sure, change in Africa typically only happens incrementally in small, bite-sized pieces. But the most wonderful thing about it is that those small, short-term advances can have massive long-term effects. And there are so many warriors out there that will fail time and time again until something positive happens and change is made, and I say warriors because they are battling against the odds, and I know these people. People that continuously sacrifice salaries and time and effort and despite the most heinous and torturous bouts with Malaria will continuously come back never knowing if anything that they do will even stick. I am continuously shocked and honored to be in the company of these people and am so grateful I had the fortune of meeting so many of them this summer.

Once my friends had left I walked to the Internet down the street. I read. I watched the small hand of the ticking clock…until finally it was time catch a cab to the airport and get on my plane back to the real world. I slept, it seems, from the moment my head hit the back of my seat until we were beginning our decent into Atlanta. It was as if I was making up for 2 and ½ months of no sleep. I looked out the window down at highways slithering between giant square plots of land, at tall buildings and perfectly manicured trees all planted in rows; the characteristics of development. It looked like a model world created in the office of an architect, with treetops made of sponges and uniform plastic houses..Far from the world from which I had come. I was back in America. Strange. My plane was late and I still had to go through customs. As I waited in line I wanted to break my own legs off they itched so bad. In seeing that I was coming from Ghana, I was hand picked to go through specialized security where they would personally search all of my luggage. I was going to miss my connection before pleading with the man at the desk to let me through, which he eventually did. And so I ran, from customs to the plane that was supposed to be taking off in 10 minutes. I cursed myself for being so out of shape. I was coming from Africa and still I had the lung capacity of a 400-pound old woman. I ran, tortured, past Starbucks. I had been dreaming of an iced vanilla latte for so long. But I made it to the plane and eventually made it home. When I landed in San Francisco I had 11 dollars in my bank account, but it didn’t matter…I could always make more money.

Adjusting back to American life can be weird. When I’m in Ghana it’s like I’m underwater, fully immersed; time moves slower, all experiences and feelings and memories are dense and thick. I come back and blend back into a crowd, just another college student juggling books and binders and work. I’m getting much better though. I’m getting better at separating the worlds and not letting myself feel so guilty about the people I’ve left behind. I go back to weighing research papers and midterm exams as if they’re the determinants to life and death. These things can bother me but I find it hard to be really upset about my circumstances, I know how lucky I am. I know I still have a lot to learn and am trying to take classes that can in any way be applied to my work overseas.

Among the harder things to get used to being back is the unknown. When I get on the plane, I know that I’m walking into a world of questions. I know that from that point on I will have no idea how any of my kids are doing and how things are actually working out. And for most of them, there’s no changing that. I worry all the time. I worry if the kids have access to the books everyday. I worry if someone has been bandaging up the horrible gaping wounds that Wisdom gets from playing soccer. I worry that one of them walked into the outhouse and got bit by a poisonous snake, like Comfort and Godsway did. I worry that if they get sick who will take them to get medicine. And even still, if they will distribute their medicine properly…which many of them are uneducated about. I worry if the pencils are being used and if teachers are actually teaching them. If their cries go unheard, their strengths; unnoticed. I worry that I don’t know any of this. I worry that I’ll get a call or an email notifying me of something horrible; something easily prevented. I wonder who won’t be there next time, sometimes children and families just disappear. It eats away at you, the unknown. I try to open up lines of communication, handing out my phone number like candy and paying for computer lessons at the local internet café. Even still, all I can do is hope. All I can do until I find my feet placed firmly back on the ground in Ghana is wonder.

And there was something very different about this trip. It wasn’t so much the length of time that I was gone but rather how much I was working, non-stop. I can say honestly that my days would begin at 6:30 and end at 6pm when I would get back from playing on the field with the happy kids, and the sheer exhaustion of it all began to weigh on me while I was there. I was so tired. For the first time, I began to think about what I had left. I began to weigh my sacrifices. And they’d never felt like sacrifices really. Ghana was always the instant choice, the automatic response. Ghana topped anything. I had spent the last year wanting to be there and only there. So without a blink of doubt, I moved out of my apartment. I packed every item I owned into a 10X10 storage unit. I told my friends goodbye. I walked away from the job that I loved, knowing that there was a huge chance it wouldn’t be waiting for me when I got back 3 months later. It was just a part-time job anyways. Just a job at a day-care center; not my career path. But as those days went on, I missed those kids more than anything I could have anticipated. I missed watching them grow up and my friends at work and the comfort ability I felt within those walls. When I was gone some of the kids had learned to talk or learned to walk, and god I hoped I’d get my job back. I missed my friends at home, I hoped things wouldn’t have changed when I got back after so much time. I began to realize that the life that I was always hoping to leave and retreat to Ghana for was actually pretty amazing. And I did get my job back, and I moved into a new apartment, and I see my friends all the time. And I’m forcing myself to go out on weekends. And every time I get to work I still have to hug all of the kids multiple times throughout the day, because I still appreciate it just as much as I did on the first day I was back. And I appreciate both worlds now. I don’t feel the need to escape one for the other. Every time I turn on the faucet and feel warm water, I’m still surprised. Every time I get a paycheck I’m still thankful, in a, “wait, I’m not working for free?” kind of way. It’s a balancing act really. I’m working on the balance.

In retrospect, I’m still so shocked that everything turned out so well. I can really only attribute it all to luck - and the fact that we actually showed up and tried to make things happen. So much of life is just showing up. I think the only reason I was able to handle the pressure of it all was because I only thought of what needed to be done the next day and nothing more. I couldn’t envision the completed building because I just honestly didn’t know what that would look like and how we would get there. All I could focus on was how many 2 by 4’s or bricks we would need and what lesson I was going to teach at Divine or Christ…what books I would bring to happy kids in the afternoon or whether or not I was having rice or noodles for dinner. The little things somehow strung themselves together into this huge, beautiful and amazing thing. And I am so appreciative to Elizabeth, the owner of happy kids. She had faith in me when I didn’t even have faith in myself and I never knew why she trusted me so. A lot of volunteers make promises and close to none of them actually follow through with them, so I’ve gotten used to locals questioning the likelihood of anyone really changing things. It’s a method of self-preservation really, and I understand it. If they got their hopes up every time someone said they would send them pencils or fundraise or said they’d come back, they’d be heartbroken. I hate that it’s come to that, but it makes sense. Elizabeth never treated me this way. She believed me without a shadow of a doubt and never seemed surprised that things were actually happening…it was as if she just knew. Even though I didn’t.

It cost $6,000 dollars to build the Happy Kids Dormitory; and to paint it, and to furnish it and to put electricity in it. In comparison to what people spend $6,000 dollars on in the states it's pretty staggering. That money didn't just build a building either, it built a home. The children are also less likely to be sick and miss school, because they are no longer sleeping on cold, urine-covered cement floors but instead of their own self-contained bunk beds. The ceiling fans increase air circulation and lesson the amount of mosquitoes in the room; substantially lowering the risk of malaria. Not to mention the fact that morale is raised, and they actually have a home that they deserve. I’ve tried to communicate this impact to the people who funded this project. I am just a messenger, just a worker bee. It was their generosity that created this place and this desperately needed change. I hope that even if you are not one of these people and you don’t have interest in financing my projects then you will invest in helping someone else, wherever they may be. I promise you won’t regret it.

So as I’m sure you’re aware my work in Africa is not nearly close to over. I will continue to try my best to help the children in Hohoe, which includes Happy Kids, Christ and Divine Star. They are a part of me just as the bricks are a part of the new building they now call home or the crooked nails that hold their desks together. I will go back to Ghana in the summer and will surely venture to other parts of Africa in the future. I hope that you will join me, and if not, that you will continue to follow and learn with me as I attempt to navigate and help this vast, beautiful, happy and often complex place.

Until next time,
Kels

"I don't want you to be like me, I want you to be more than me." -Mary Afari

2010-08-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

Life in Ghana is strange. It sucks you in, strips you of all that you think you know. There are few certainties here. I think that may also be why it is so weird to go home. So weird to be thrust into modern life, and all you can do is wonder how these two places exist in the same world…as they are so different, but still so much the same. And this trip has been so different for me than the last two. Not more of a mental journey but a physical one. I’ve spent less time trying to figure out what it all means and how it’s affecting me and more time just living it. And my days are so long and entail so many different stories that the thought of writing it down at night is too brutal to even attempt, hence the lack of blogs from this trip. I do still think very much with a writers mentality, often describing moments into narratives that swirl around in my head begging to be written down, until the honk of a speeding taxi or a shout of “ye vu! Ye vu!” brings me back to real life and it’s quickly forgotten. And I know how much I’ll regret writing (at all) during this trip, and it does disappoint me…especially when I remember that there are other people that are curious, other people that are invested in this trip, in this project, in these kids, and I know no matter how hard I try the only way I can get remotely close to sharing my adventures is through the written word…so I’ll keep trying. I’ll try to update you on the last 2 weeks, or the moments that stick out. And it may be staggered and confusing, so bear with me.

The Monday after my last blog Cassie and I had arranged for a woman named Mary to speak to the girls at Christ for girls empowerment. Another volunteer had told us about her and urged us to seek her out, so we did just that weeks before. Mary is a strong, skinny older woman that owns a Batik (a special type of fabric printing) and dress shop in town. Our friend informed us that she was building a girls school; the only person I’d heard of who was campaigning for empowerment and working towards it in the Hohoe community. We went to Mary’s shop and were instantly welcomed and instructed to sit down. Mary is a confident woman, and although sweet, you can feel her strength and determination blasting from her eyes. As her glasses balanced on her nose, she told us her story; of dropping out of school early, marrying and then divorcing, always wishing she had gone back to school to fulfill her dreams of being a lawyer. She says she knows it’s too late for her, but maybe not for others. She formed a women’s group in the community where they meet once a month to talk about abusive husbands or oppressive stereotypes or making change. Mary is every definition of a feminist, and I absolutely loved it. On the first day we met she showed us the site of her girls school. I was very impressed, but sad I couldn’t help her as I knew she’d hoped. Her intentions were clear but she, like many, immediately saw us as a potential step towards finishing her school. I apologized, ‘I just want to hear your story. Wonder if you can talk to our girls.’ She obviously has the experience. It makes me mad to get the recognition I receive for my projects, there are so many modern day heroes here; dedicating not just a summer but their lives. There are so many amazing local people to invest in. One step at a time, I told myself. I had enough on my plate, far too much to take on the role of campaigning for Mary.

So Mary came to the school that Monday. We picked her up, laughed as she insisted on bringing her grandson with her. We arranged the girls in the room like we had before, and gave Mary the freedom to talk to them about whatever she wanted for the hour. With a baby strapped to her back, she began by asking the girls if they wanted to be like her. They all raised their hands excitedly. “I don’t want you to be like me,” she said, “I want you to be more than me.” And from there she told her story, her regrets, and it all boiled down to education. The girls empowerment program became more about insisting on education, staying in school, never letting go of your aspirations. She talked about the gap between men and women in the work force, and she was very good at breaking it down to a level the girls understood. Her honesty and passion was emphasized with every word she spoke, and to hear her say repeatedly, “I want you to be more than me,” was one of the most humbling things I’d ever seen.

And that was just an afternoon. A morning previous to that I had stopped at Happy Kids before going to teach at Christ. It was a couple days after I had bought most of the materials and they were supposed to be starting work. Happy kids is literally a 2 minute walk from Christ, so I usually stop by on my way from one place to the other. I had spent the previous day calling back and forth between the mason – only to have him not answer his phone. A million worries flooded through me – I thought I must have been premature in thinking we’d made progress. I suspected the mason had run off from the job, that I’d have to find a new one…go through the process again. I finally had to tell myself to put down the phone; this is africa. There are some things, a lot of things that I can’t control. I can’t sum it up any better than Peter Godwin as he says,
“Most of us struggle in life to maintain the illusion of control, but in Africa that illusion is almost impossible to maintain. I always have the sense there that there is no equilibrium, that everything perpetually teeters on the brink of some dramatic change, that society constantly stands poised for some spasm, some tsunami in which you can do nothing but hope.”

For me, and I’m sure for others, the illusion of control is easier to maintain in the Western world. It’s easier to feel more secure in that world – as if change can only happen incrementally, in manageable, bite-sized portions. With the anchor of history holding you down and the presence of buildings, institutions and possibilities, you expect familiarity and control. Control over your own life – over your own destiny. But here, no such thing exists. People surrender their lives, their fates, and only wait for their cue. So maybe I am becoming more African in my acknowledging that I just can’t control it all. There are a lot of things that are out of my hands. It was good I came to that conclusion as that morning I would have more to deal with.

We had planned on finishing the current building, which had 4 standing walls of bricks. Most of the materials then would be used for roofing, so we had only accounted for that in the budget. But when I walked up to Happy Kids the next morning to find half of the building collapsed – I knew we had problems. Prosper (my mason) explained to me that the bricks were far too old- that as the workers chipped away at parts to make new doors, it simply began crumbling to dust. He clutched a brick in his hand, it looked solid, but by bending his fingers into it, it crumbled. I knew what he was telling me – this needs to be replaced. The current bricks could never withstand the added pressure of roofing, and it would more than likely fall in later years with children beneath it. There was no way in hell I would build them a building that was unsafe, even if that meant I had to dig into my own pocket. I sighed and agreed as we talked numbers. We tested each wall for it’s durability – luckily the back wall had been made more recently and the bricks for good. As for the rest, it would have to be replaced. We needed 600 more bricks, which is 600 more cedi. I cringed, praying that this wouldn’t keep happening. Hoping with everything in me that we wouldn’t run out of money. If such a thing happened I had always planned on using my own money – but only I could give so little, having spent everything I had to get and live here.

We also came to find that Prosper and I had a miscommunication. About 10 years ago the Ghanaian government decided to change the national currency so that it resembled dollars. Before it was very confusing – 1,000,000 would mean only 100 dollars (without converting). So they erased 4 zeros from the old currency to make it easy – 40 cedi meant 40 cedi, as opposed to 400,000. So we, the volunteers, go by the new Cedi, aptly named “Ghana Cedi” but much of the country still goes by old cedi, even though their currency is printed as Ghana cedi. In short, many of them don’t quite get how to convert it. They don’t understand their own currency. As we plowed through that estimate I said a million times “Ghana cedi! Ghana cedi! What is that in Ghana cedi?” but even still there were confusions. By far the biggest was that I had written down 120 ghana cedis for Prosper’s workmanship (which I knew was low, but at the time his work was minimal in comparison to the carpenter which was 400) but what prosper actually meant was 1,200 ghana cedis. Upon talking to a lot of people and taking into account how much the project had grown with most of the building needing to be replaced, I found out that price was fair. I reluctantly agreed to 1,100 ghana cedis for workmanship and in doing so – our costs just rose almost 900 dollars.

I breathed in, begging for this to be our biggest issues. For our costs to stop rising. Of course, added costs continued to pop up. Things were forgotten, separate workers needed to be hired for painting, sometimes we needed more materials than anticipated. Even still, we scraped by. By definition an estimate is exactly that – an estimate, but we were lucky. Thanks to some last minute donations I even had enough to call the electrician to get an estimate. As we sat on the Happy Kids porch, going over the list of materials for the wiring, etc., I had to negotiate again – for his workmanship. Now any time I’m doing this Prosper sits with his head down and shrugs at whoever I’m negotiating with – as if he’s apologizing with his eyes. Each time he laughs, knowing his fellow ghanaians can’t pull a fast one on me. Each time it’s as if he’s saying “I’m sorry, but not only can you not rip this yevu off, you’ll be doing this for less than you planned.” The same thing happened with the painter. Hilda has started calling me “Construction worker/African woman Kelsey.”

There is a girl at Happy Kids named Comfort, age 13. Any time I would come there in the afternoon she would always be laying in the one room in the same position, with a long scrap of fabric wrapped around her legs. At first I figured she just liked watching the one TV they had, something a previous volunteer had bought them. But then when I started coming in the early morning and mid-afternoon I realized that she stayed there all day, every day. When Comfort was 8 she was bit by a snake. They tried to take her to the local hospital (one I’ve heard horror stories from) but they couldn’t help her there. As the venom crept further and further up her right calf, they took a taxi to another hospital; one an hour away – wasting precious time. As it turned out, they couldn’t help her there either. Then, they took her to the capital city, Accra, an additional 4 hour drive. By the time she got there, she was almost dead and her leg needed to be amputated. They operated and replaced it with an artificial leg from the thigh down. But Comfort didn’t have any parents; they had died when she was young. Her grandfather had been taking care of her – but the added strain of her injury, pain and medical costs were too much to bear, so he surrendered her to the orphanage. Now, Comfort has grown but the leg stayed the same - causing her excruciating pain and an inability to walk without falling sideways. Recently it had gottan worse- which is why Comfort had been out of school for who knows how long. They acted like it was temporary, but I could tell she’d been out of school for years. She is 13 and can hardly name the letters of the alphabet. I asked so many questions. I even began researching alternatives – asking people to ask around for me about a wheelchair, pain medication, some kind of alternative that could at least get her to school. Elizabeth promised Comfort’s grandfather would be contacted to take her back to Accra for another operation (no idea who pays for these operations) but I wasn’t optimistic. Comfort is a beautiful girl, she is tall and skinny, although she rarely stands. And she is painfully embarrassed of her leg. The scrap of fabric is constantly surrounding it down to her toes. I tell her she’s beautiful as often as I can. This is what I mean by having too many goals. I can’t help but think the amazing things I could do if only I had access to more funds and resources. And it infuriates me….that a girl could just lay in a dark cement room all day every day without school or companionship and nobody would think twice about it. It doesn’t make sense. So many things don’t make sense. So I added Comfort to my list; before I leave I would make sure she got help.

Some days in the afternoon I take the kids at Happy Kids to the park – just a field cut out of jungle. They play football and sing or just sit with me. But the older girls – like Comfort and Atchukwe (age 12, orphaned since age 4) are responsible for staying at the orphanage to prepare meals and wash dishes. One day I suggested they go with us to the park – their eyes lit up. They couldn’t believe it. And I knew Elizabeth couldn’t say no if I had asked it. So even though Comfort could hardly walk, she came to the park, as they all sang ,“We are going to Pa-hk!! We are going to Pa-hk!! When we got there the boys took off to play football and all of us girls formed a circle. We played clapping games and then they assembled a “culture line” and began dancing and singing traditional Ewe songs for me. Comfort couldn’t stop smiling. She sat down after some time next to me – her leg had obviously been hurting her. She watched her friends, or sisters, the only family she really has, looked over at me appreciatively and said, “Today is our Happy Day.”

I sat in the grass that afternoon watching them – trying to soak up every ounce of their happiness; begging, as always, to try to find some way to take it home with me. I wished those who donated to this project could feel their smiles as I do – how hard they hug me before they say goodbye every day. I wish people knew. It is addicting; the joy they have. Any foreigner is instantly entranced by it. And that is always my goal – to carry it with me on the plane.

Another morning I was at Divine Star, visiting with them. They were in between lessons (meaning the teacher ran out of things to do) so I sat with them for a while as they played with my hair and we chatted. Even though I see them every day, I make sure to tell them how much I miss them – because I do. I say “Do you know how much I miss you??” and they look down, smile and shyly say, “yessss!” and I say “THIS MUCH!” and together we hold out our arms as far as they’ll reach on both sides. I absolutely love the kids at Happy Kids and at Christ, they are happy and beautiful and each have their own personalities – but I love the kids at Divine Star in a different way. I love them in a way that I have watched them grow, I’ve seen them go from learning letters to reading words, their class picture has been the background on my phone for a year, – they changed who I was. I want them to know that just because I don’t teach them every day doesn’t mean I don’t love them – it doesn’t mean I love other kids more. As I sat there, Grace asked me when I was leaving. “3 weeks” I said. She began naming off the few other volunteers they’ve had in their class this past 2 months, only one of which (a friend of mine) aside from me had come back. “First Madame Lana left, and then Madame Nadia, and you are what we have. You are all we have.” I hugged her a little harder before I left.

Not last weekend but the weekend before we went to Lake Volta. Me, Cassie and the new volunteers Carl and Clare (again, love them) piled into a tro tro and journeyed 2 hours away to the worlds largest man-made lake. Cass and I had been there before, but it was an amazing break – a beautiful sanctuary of green and water so smooth it looks like glass. We ate good food and at night went out to an actual dance club. It had about 3 people in it, but at least it had an actual roof with closed in walls and a DJ. Our last day we hung by the pool (yes, an actual pool) and again we were off, back to Hohoe, back to work.

And I continue to be busy. I’ve worked harder here in Africa in this last summer than I’ve ever worked in my life. Which is why it’s funny to me when people refer to this as a vacation. They say, “Well, you’re enjoying what you’re doing, so it’s sort of a vacation.” I have to say, just because I love what I’m doing doesn’t mean it’s not unbelievably exhausting, doesn’t mean I don’t still have to pull myself away from the air conditioner. It’s hard work, both physically and mentally. One morning I spent 4 hours at Christ orphanage working with a little girl named Peace just on writing her name. I made a melody out of the letters and helped her memorize it as she wrote out each one. I repeated, I sang, I guided her hand to write the “P” properly...over and over and over again. She was very behind in class. At the end of that 4 hours she could finally write her own name, while singing the song, without my help. I felt a huge sense of accomplishment. The next day, she didn’t remember anything. She didn’t even know what a “P” was.

Another afternoon me and the Happy Kids were at the park and I turned to find a little boy Richmond crying hysterically. He’s only 3 and absolutely adorable. He has quiet, sweet eyes and every day he wears the same tattered green “Australia” shirt. I am obviously used to seeing the kids cry a lot here – they beat the crap out of one another, even still, my heart sinks a little every time it happens. I walked up to Richmond and kneeled to meet his eyes. I asked him what was wrong but he couldn’t respond, he doesn’t really speak any English – he only repeats a few things and knows my name. But his tears kept falling, so I picked him up into my arms. As I shook him from side to side, trying to calm him, I looked over to see the deep measure of devastation seemingly permanent on his face. But then I smiled at him and miraculously – he smiled back. He instantly stopped crying, his breathing slowed. And I marveled at how quickly he had forgotten that he was sad – just because I was holding him. And I know that happens all over the world, with all kids, but here – the kids don’t get held or picked up. There are far too bigger problems. They’re simply told “Stop crying ok?” And it was just so amazing to me. It was only a small moment, one of many here, but I thought to myself – this is the definition of why I’m here.

So why happy kids? I know a lot of people who haven't continually read are wondering how I could go from advocating to build a school to building a dormitory building for an orphanage. It is simply this: they needed help, and I knew I (or better, you) could help them. As much as I advocate for education, and want schools like Divine Star to improve, you can’t knock the fact that at least those kids have homes. At least those kids have parents, someone to hug them. At least, for most of them, they have basic life necessities. The kids at Happy Kids, most of them don’t have that. When I got into advocating for Ghana, working to raise money, it was originally fueled by selfish reasons –to help the kids I knew. I suppose that’s where it starts for every aid worker – for every founder of an organization. And as much as I’d like to pretend the disaster that was Sankofa didn’t happen – I must credit it for showing me that change was possible. That experience enabled me to build a bridge to find and help those who truly needed it. Now, I absolutely love the kids at Happy Kids and Christ, as I expected I would. They too hold a place in my heart, will encompass my thoughts at home, my worries. I will take them with me, wherever I go. There is one girl at Happy Kids named Chantel. I call her my little Chunk because she’s the only chubby African toddler I’ve ever seen. She’s only 3 or 4 so she barely speaks English. She’s so young she can only pronounce my name as “Telwsey.” Any time I’m there, she is never more than inches from me. Everyone calls her my daughter. She’s spunky and a trouble maker but more than anything she always just wants to be held. I love that little girl.

And my partner in crime, Cassie, had to leave. There was an emergency at home so she left early. She’s been gone almost 2 weeks. I knew I would miss her, but I didn't expect I would miss her this much. Sometimes I still think she must be out at the market or running errands or in the room, just automatically. It was definitely strange the first couple days without her popping in and out of our conjoined rooms. Luckily I wasn’t left alone and have my other friends who I love and have tonss of fun with. It is very strange to see people coming and going, coming and going, and still I’m here.

And I’m happy to report that Comfort did get help. After much pushing and prodding, her grandfather was contacted and she was taken to the hospital and had the operation. She’s even gone back to school and is no longer captive in that cement room. I’m also happy to report that the Happy Kids dormitory building is finished. Elizabeth even asked me to come back another time and manage the classroom project that’s being funded by another volunteer (although the progress is at a stand still). Obviously I told her I didn’t know when I would be back but it made me feel great – as if the progress of the building and its success wasn’t just due to luck but the fact that I’ve been doing it right. And then more people stepped in (or the same people helped further) and as of now bunkbeds are being constructed. I couldn’t be more shocked and excited. I started this blog about a week and a half ago, and now I have 2 weeks left. The trip should be winding down but now it’s crunch time…and I can’t imagine my life any other way than this. Adjusting will undoubtedly be rough. I literally feel like I live in Africa. More updates coming soon, including how I climbed the tallest mountain in West Africa (and am still walking funny because of it).

Love and miss you all and am SO thankful for your support,

Kelsey

"Don't stand against progress."

2010-07-16T05:31:00.000-07:00

Ah, Progress. This is what I want to start this blog with, because I can’t tell you how relieved I am to be finally making progress. In a world where “in two hours” means tomorrow and “tomorrow” means in a week…this thing called “progress” can be few and far between. It is all that we hope for, search for, reach for. Yet so many of us, volunteers, spend months meticulously teaching children, or making meetings, or finding the prices of cement blocks, and still we find little progress. It’s funny though, as you walk around Ghana you are so often put face to face with the work of other volunteers…flowers or letters of the alphabet on the walls of a classroom, American books, crayons, old clothes, so much of this country is decorated and built up by the strange foreigners who come here hoping to make progress. But the realities of this place make it difficult; cultural norms insisting that children’s wounds should not be bandaged, the inability to find an educated teacher, etc.…what I find in a lot of cases is that people have been living this way for so long that they see no need for books, or crayons, or paper, or mosquito nets, or paint on the walls…they are a luxury…a far away idea. So anyways, in any case however small or large, it is good to find progress in Africa. And finally, my projects are making progress. But before I get into exactly what and why, I will update you on the most important happenings of these last few weeks, as my writing seems to be getting less and less frequent.

In my second week here I was ready and anxious to get everything started. I was determined to not get so caught up in volunteering that I would forget the larger goal, so I set about getting estimates from masons. The first mason is Hilda’s mason and came highly recommended. The moment he was available we piled into his truck and headed to Wegbe to show them Happy Kids and the building we were to finish. I brought them to the back to view the building, which then stood as four small rooms with doors and windows, no roof, no floor. Just brick walls. The mason looked at the old decrepid building like a passerby looks at road kill; with disgust, confusion, and all the instinct of turning around and running in the opposite direction. I didn’t understand this reaction…I, on the other hand, look at it as possibility. I see tall ceilings and big windows and a porch where the kids can do homework. I see 11 year-old Wisdom not having to share a mat on the floor with 8 other boys in a room the size of a closet. As they surveyed the old bricks and the trees growing inside it (when the building was actually built, nobody knows) the mason and his friend began listing off the massive array of things that they thought needed to be done. ‘Yes the building should be raised…And then we can build a fence, and a shower, one for boys and one for girls, and another room…” It was obvious that they saw me as the white person and instantly thought bottomless pockets. I tried to steer them in the direction of what I would and could only do with limited funds but to no surprise, their estimate was way too high.

The next estimate I received from another mason was too low. I was determined to get as many estimates as possible until I found not only the right Mason but the exact right amount and cost of materials. Another volunteer and friend had just finished building 3 classrooms for Divine star and also highly recommended her mason, so I met with him and brought him to the site. I liked Prosper and the fact that he had successfully built 3 large classrooms from scratch in less than a month for my friend. He also didn’t go nuts with what needed to be done to the building. The walls do need to be raised slightly, and the doors need to be wider. We also decided to knock down 2 walls so there will only be 2 large rooms; one for boys and one for girls. I didn’t agree to work with him yet though. I made sure he was aware that I had other estimates and that I needed detail and accuracy in his. The next day I met Prosper and personally walked from store to store and got the price of all the materials, down to every last nail or different size of wood. Those prices are not negotiable. I then took a carpenter to the site with Prosper and a steel bender came later. They measured the perimeter of the building and discussed for an hour as the warm rain slowly soaked us and the bugs feasted on my legs. After we moved to Elizabeth’s porch we listed out every single material needed and they finalized the amount of everything. When the time came to discuss the fees for workmanship I stood tall, telling myself to look mean and serious…This is not the yevu you will try to rip off. And they didn’t. Or couldn’t, really. I had already become aware of the normal prices for a project of this type from my research, so I negotiated far below that. They stood looking at me with pleading eyes, slapping the back of their hands lightly against the palm of the other in a motion Ghanaians commonly do while saying “Please, I beg you.” I only responded with “Nope, there are plenty of other carpenters I can hire that will do this project. This is what I’ll pay you and that’s it. And I want the work done well and fast.” They were pretty shocked by this and would often turn to each other laughing, they just couldn’t believe a ye vu was such a stickler on price. Building here is obviously different than building in the western world. Neither the mason nor the carpenter make any profit from the materials I buy, they only make the workmanship that I pay them. I buy the materials from the store directly, hire a truck and pick it up and bring it to the site myself.

That afternoon the kids from Divine Star came to my hotel and we read books and sang songs. In between the projects I stay unbelievably busy, constantly shuffling around volunteering or spending time with the kids…trying to expand whatever help I can give at whatever moment I can give it. It is a result of the regret that flooded through me after my trip last year that I was lazy and just didn’t do enough. It seems common that I go nearly 3 places every day. Godwin says I am working too hard. Another volunteer noted that I am a ‘little ball of energy.’ And the heat it takes so much out of you. The sun is so strong that it feels as if it’s pulsing directly through you, as if it’s sucking every ounce of energy from every muscle and all you want to do is lay down. But I force myself to do a lot because I know that even though this trip is going by slowly…I know I’ll be back home in no time, reliving the moments that I often have to pull myself away from the air conditioner to experience.

Some mornings I teach at Christ orphanage. I chose to work with the KG2 class while I’m there and focus on working individually with the children. The kids are bright and pretty ahead from what I expected of a kG2 class (ages 5 and 6). One day their teacher was sick so I unexpectedly was teacher for the day. I danced around and made up a new motion to learn the parts of the body for the lesson. It was like the extended version of head/shoulders/knees and toes on crack. They loved it, and it was effective. Another week I took them out one by one and did Phonics with them, sitting on a bench and shielding ourselves from the heat under the roof of leaves and bamboo branches and sticks. Working with them individually is tedious but very needed considering that many of them are struggling but get no help. At recess they find patterns out of my freckles, play with my hair and trace the lines of the tattoo on my wrist. They sing songs and play soccer with a fallen orange and beat the crap out of one another. Their wounds are healing though, thankfully. I like Christ a lot because it is different than any other place I’ve been in the sense that it is very progressive. The teachers are actually pretty good and every child has a pencil. A lot of things have already been well established to enable Christ to grow even further, including almost every child being sponsored. That is why Girls empowerment is good to do there because they have the resources to carry on similar activities if they want and the bigger things; like infrastructure and school resources, have already been improved upon.

The next interesting day was when I bought all of the materials for Happy Kids. Well, not all of the materials, about 1/3 of them…with the rest being bought as needed. I went to the bank early in the morning and waited for the mason and the carpenter to meet me. From there we walked from the wood shop, to the nail shop, to the place to buy wire rods and cement…And not without receiving mass marriage proposals from the workers at each place. They thought it was hilarious, this little white girl buying building materials. I got receipts for everything, meticulously counted each material and felt the sun mercilously burning my sunscreen-free face and shoulders until my wallet was empty of the $1,000 cedis I had filled it with earlier that morning. I hired a truck, which noteably had “Don’t stand against progress” painted above it’s rusty bumper and went back to each store to pick it all up. I waited (and sometimes tried to help, although I’m not good for heavy lifting) as they hand carried each unbelievably heavy item and lunged it into the truck. We piled into the truck’s front seat, the driver, then me, then my mason, and the carpenter dangled on top of the wood in the back and we were on our way.

The truck bounced from side to side, creaking and croaking and squeaking as the driver maneuvered over each pothole. I was sure the wood (which only had the carpenter weighing it down) or the carpenter himself would fall out of the vehicle. I laughed to myself, squished beside two large African men in a squeaky rusty green truck putting down a dirt road with $1,000 cedis worth of building materials hanging over it’s sides. If only they could all see this, I thought. My parents would be so terrified (lol).

Before we turned around a bend, the driver slowly pulled over to the side of the road. He reached for a tattered notebook on the dash and tore out a half piece of paper. He then pulled from his pocket 2 ghana cedis and folded it carefully into the piece of paper. “Police,” he shrugged, as everyone else burst into laughter…laughing at their corrupt legal system, corruption in general, the corruption in which they support. We turned around the bend and sure enough there was a police checkpoint. The driver pulled over as instructed, placed the folded paper into his palm and got out of the car. When he got back in he placed the empty folded paper on the dash. “It’s empty!,” “ahaha, empty…ooh police” exclaimed him and prosper. And again, we were on our way. Now having taken materials in the truck many many times, I’ve become very used to this “procedure” and even still everyone turns to each other, shrugs and laughs while saying “police.”

The next morning I taught at Christ and then walked to Happy Kids to check up on everything. Whenever they see a car pull up they instantly begin screaming “Kelsey Kelsey Kelsey.” After getting hugs from everyone, another car pulled up and it was my carpenter. He had the 2 by 4’s sticking out of the back of the taxi, which we were unable to get the day before because they needed to be cut at the machine shop. He set down the long heavy pieces of wood and I picked one up under my arm and walked into the orphanage. After setting down the wood I turned around and was shocked to see all of the children following behind me, balancing one piece each on their heads. Most of them are around 3 or 4, the few older ones are 10 or 11, and they struggled proudly to hold each 2 by 4 before putting it down. It was the most hilarious and adorable thing I’d ever seen…this string of little babies so desperately wanting to partake in the building of their new home. I tried really hard to get them to stop, that it was too heavy, but they refused and continued to go back and forth until every piece of wood was safe within the orphanage fence of trees.

Another day that sticks out in my head is one where I was teaching at Divine Star. Having taught them last year, it is incredible for me to see how far they’ve come. Last year they struggled to learn the ABC’s, numbers, colors, anything really. So when I came back 3 months ago I was so proud and happy to see them writing their names and learning to read. Even though learning is still based soley on memorizing rather than understanding, it seemed that they were all progressing in some way. For the hell of it, I decided to take them out one day just to work on reading individually. I had phonics flash cards with me and had planned on working on sounding out the words on each card. I started with the first kid, Augustine, who is in the first row. Augustine is smart and hilarious. He is a trouble maker, but I expected him to be somewhat ahead. However, as I put the cards in front of him…I found him struggling to even recognize some of the letters. And then I realized he was still only shortly ahead of where I’d left him last year…he was just joining the crowd in unison while “reading” in class. He was nowhere near what they were doing. He needed to go back to being taught basic letter sounds – rather than reading 4 letter words. I figured this was just Augustine but as I continued onto my next kid, and the next, and the next, I realized…they were all in the same place. A lot of them still couldn’t distinguish between the letters H and K, B and D, S and X. And I was devastated. I sat their knowing that I couldn’t help them as much as they needed to be helped this summer, that I couldn’t dedicate it to teaching when I had bigger projects to fulfill. Every letter that they missed was like a personal shot to the chest, until all of the hope had drained out of me. Until it took everything in me to keep teaching, keep trying to tell them good job, keep trying not to show the traces of disappointment in my face. All the while flies feasted on my legs, and I swatted at them to no avail. When I left I had 15 new bites on my calves that hurt, and I kept telling myself that I needed to care less. I was worried for them, for who they would become. I wondered if change in Africa was more like a rocking chair, moving back and forth, back and forth, and only giving the comforting illusion of progress. Either way, I knew a part of me had to accept the reality that I could only do so much with that school right now. It was a tough, shitty, devastating reality to accept.

We also started girls empowerment at Christ a while ago. The first day Cassie and I took the girls from the P2 and P3 class into a separate classroom and asked them all what they wanted to be when they grew up. We talked about how boys have an unfair advantage, that girls often think they can’t get far enough in the job market. We did an activity where we had all of the girls draw pictures of what they wanted to be when they grew up, a good 80% drew pictures of a teacher, the rest a nurse, and one girl, a bank manager. Then we pulled out a dry erase marker and started listing out all of the things the girls could be…musicians, doctors, lawyers, dress makers, etc…Until all of them were regretting their previous pictures and saying they’d changed their minds…they want to be a doctor. It was an amazing thing to witness, their own realizations. And as cheesy as it was, it felt so incredible to be able to sit there, look them straight in the eye and say, “You can be anything you want, you can be anything in the whole world.” We talked about how the main way to get there was to stay in school, to get to university, to not let anyone tell you different. We explained that the boys would be doing dishes at the school from now on, or at least for the next week…and I would say it started off with a bang (and continues to go well).

Over the weekend Cassie and I decided to take a mini vacation to a place called Kokobrite. It is a very famous beach town, known for it’s reggae vibe and the many volunteers that refer to it as their second home. It is only 5 hours away (feels like nothing here), about 45 mins past the capital city Accra. We trotro’d it there and got a taxi to our hotel ‘”Big Millys.” As we pulled into our hotel we had to do a double take, are we really in Africa…or cancun? The beach stretched out for miles on both ends, with crystal ocean washing up on shore. An actual bar served real (and safe!!) margaritas. We had our own little bungalow (albeit with little electricity and a shower literally on top of the toilet) and it was totally an escape. It was like a secret paradise that we were shocked we had yet to discover it. It had a real restaurant that served actual food…like mashed potatoes, and chicken breast, and garlic bread. We were in heaven. We lounged on the beach and swam in the ocean. I was surprised by how much I missed the ocean, by how at home I felt crashing into the waves. I told myself then when I get home I really will start surfing again, ah I miss it. At night we had dinner, met other volunteers and danced at the bar to a live reggae band. It was exactly what I needed after working myself so hard and getting so caught in the stresses of normal Hohoe life.

There are far too many things I’d like to do that I can’t. I have too many goals, too many ideas. Some new volunteers came, Clare and Carl. It is their first time to Ghana and they are teaching at Christ. They’re hilarious and really fun. They’re so fresh eyed and excited about Ghana. I like to look through their eyes to the africa they see. Because in a way, the novelty of being in Africa has worn off. It no longer feels like this new, fresh experience but more just like daily life. For example, last week I was in the middle of a cold shower and the power went out, but I still stood there, shaving my legs…in pitch black darkness. It felt entirely normal, although funny..just like, you do what you gotta do. That’s why it’s so interesting to see how they’re experiencing the trip, to remind ourselves of how it once was. Because contrary to what most people know, long term volunteers that leave here never leave feeling a sense of accomplishment or resolve. They leave jaded, frustrated at corruption, frustrated at the realities of this place that transcend logic or morality or anything at all. Because no matter what you do and how you do it, you leave knowing that it was not enough, that it can never be enough. And once you find that feeling it never goes away; it lingers and simmers at the bottom of your mind…either while in Ghana or somewhere else, you will always know that there are some things you cannot change…some kids that will go on suffering, and most who never venture to Africa may never know the difference. For many, this feeling is enough to stop them from coming back. Africa becomes a fantasy memory – blurred by distance and time. But for some of us, we fight it. We refuse to believe that the work we did once would be left said and done, that the kids would go on without pencils, that change…even in the most horrific circumstances, couldn’t be made. And many of us, we fail. We set ourselves up with the highest of hopes. Investing our lives, our savings, our waking thoughts; and even still we know we are against the odds. In the end, there is never peace in this tug-a-war of emotions and realities. In the end, getting on a plane, you resolve yourself to one thought and one thought only: what I did was better than nothing.

And it’s easy to become cynical on the bad days. But the majority of the time, we remain in constant state of hope and determination. The building at Happy Kids is progressing faster and more beautifully than I ever could’ve thought. It was only a week ago that I truly realized how amazing it was what was happening…the workers had put in the new window frames and the new bricks and they had crushed the old bricks to level the floors…and then it hit me. I had talked about it and imagined it, but now it was actually happening. I wasn’t just building them a house, I was building them a home. And I understand then that I’m doing far more than I knew was possible, that I’m impacting individual lives. That I am helping, and happen to be helping the ones that need it most. And that’s only made possible by the amazing people that put their faith me and wrote checks and turned a sad story in an email into a reality. And I do believe the girls empowerment program is effective. And I do believe that every kid that smiles or laughs or learns at school from my efforts are well worth any kind of bad day.

More coming soon. I started this blog literally 3 weeks ago. I will admit that aside from my growing stomach (damn you all carb diet!!), the blog is suffering from the most neglect during this trip.

Until next time,

Kels

"If Ghana wins the world cup, we will all go on vacation for one month." -Hilda

2010-06-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

Ah, I’ve been avoiding writing…probably not a good habit for someone that may want to get into writing as a career (conflict journalism anyone??). Anyways, every day is a new story filled with it’s own challenges, frustrations and moments highly resembling Lifetime movies. It can make it pretty overwhelming to try to write it all down. I’ll try my best.

First of all; life in Ghana. Being my third time here I’ve become very adapted to this type of living. My definition of normal is SO far from normal. Our hotel is comfortable enough, although by US standards would probably be close to a 1 star, maybe a .5 star? Maybe no star at all? But I have a big room with a big bed and a porch we sit at and watch the rain on. The electricity goes out about 5 times a day, most times though you don’t need it. The running water was out for the last 3 days…that makes it difficult, because I get so unbelievably dirty from playing with the kids all day. I totally love the hotel owner Hilda, who often surprises you with random acts of African wisdom. I’m pretty sure Hilda is like the godfather of Hohoe. You don’t mess with her. Cassie has the adjoining room next to me and there are a couple other volunteers staying at the hotel. After our long days of volunteering or doing projects we sit out and chat under little huts until it’s time for bed. I’ll try to catch you up on the most interesting stories of my first week, while the next blog will be about the second week.

On Monday I went to Divine Star to visit my kids. I wasn’t planning on teaching a lesson (as I was teacher for the entire class last year and this summer I have other projects on top of teaching). I had intended on helping the current teacher (who is new after Antionette quit) with whatever lesson she had planned. After being bombarded with hugs as they screamed “Madame Kelsey! Madame Kelsey!” on repeat, I sat down waiting for the teacher to arrive. I sat…and sat and sat. I left to find Isaac (headmaster) to ask him to call the teacher, who never showed. When I walked back in the classroom, seven-year-old Juliet was propped up on some books against the blackboard, writing a spelling lesson for the class. She inspected a couple tattered English books in the cabinet, trying to pick out her lesson for the day. Oh that little girl. Isaac came in a told me, “Juliet will teach them, they listen to her,” he said. “Isaac, she’s 7 years old, they need a real teacher.” I opened up an English lesson and tried to pull out their books. I got the class’s attention but only for a little bit. Then we had to go to the new school site to see the new classrooms a fellow volunteer has built for them. When we returned a teacher finally did come, but only because I pushed it. Only because I was there. We worked on multiplication. But that is entirely normal at this school, for a teacher to just not show up and class to sleep for the day…or for a 7 year old to take up the task of being teacher herself. I was so frustrated as I can’t be there every day to teach them this summer and I can’t be there to monitor that the teachers are actually doing their jobs. On Tuesday, knowing the teacher probably wouldn’t show up again I planned a lesson.

On Tuesday I planned a math competition. The teacher did show, even though she slept while I taught. I brought multi colored pencil sharpeners that were donated (which I’d actually packed in my suitcase) to give to the winners of the math competition…even though every kid would eventually get one. I picked up the chalk and wrote out class work on the board first. It felt good to know what I was doing. That familiar feeling of the dryness on my hands as the chalk turns to dust across the board. The way my head feels like it could burst as I have 15 kids shoving workbooks at me to check. The dirt crumbling into my knees from kneeling on the cement floor next to the crooked desks they sit on. Even though I don’t want to spend my whole summer teaching, I felt in my element. I split them into teams of 4 and put a quiz on the board. They loved it and worked together well. After finishing each problem and answering correctly every team was given pencil sharpeners. They were reeling with excitement. They still bring the pencil sharpeners every day to class in their pockets. I can’t explain how good it is to see them NOT using razor blades to sharpen their pencils anymore.

On Wednesday and Thursday morning I went to Christ orphanage, which will be the site of the girls empowerment program. As I take time to talk to locals in Hohoe to set up this program, I will also be visiting Christ twice a week to volunteer and work on teaching phonics with the kids individually. The kids at Christ are adorable, very bright and VERY excited about ye-vus. They are no holds barred. They grab at every inch of you, even more so than the school kids. They are younger too. The main thing I noticed about the kids at Christ and at Happy Kids (which I went to later) is how much smaller the kids are. They are really really small. Not just skinny, they look like babies. The 4 year olds look like 2 year olds, the 7 year olds look like 4 year olds…Clearly an unfortunate symptom of lifetimes of malnutrition. And they have the most intense and infected wounds and scars. The flies embed themselves in the children’s wounds. Another volunteer told me that one of the kids wounds was so bad that they were contemplating amputation. Ringworm is also very common, and most have holes in their teeth. I will say though that it’s hard to notice all of these things when they’re so busy singing songs with you and dancing and smiling. NOTE: If anyone knows someone with access to medical/first-aid supplies (a doctor, nurse, anyone) please consider telling them about the intense need here and seeing if they can donate these specific supplies.

The moment I returned from Christ I went to Divine Star both days to visit my kids. I don’t want them to feel forgotten. I make it a point to see them every day. If I don’t, I miss them too much. But I don’t know how to work around the corruption of the headmaster. I don’t know how to weave myself into the complex problems plagueing that school effectively. And with the only teacher I trusted now gone, I don’t know what or how to help without having it all be wasted or stolen. But I want to figure it out. I so desperately want to figure it out. And being here makes me realize that even more how much I want to take classes on development and learn everything there is to learn about what works and what doesn’t. I want to take classes on non-profits and the UN and grassroots strategies. I have so much to learn. Grad school baby.

On Thursday I was finally able to visit Happy Kids. It was POURING rain and everyone stayed in but I was desperate to go, desperate to tell them that I had fulfilled my promise and sure enough, was back. When I walked in, they all remembered me. The owner Elizabeth said she had just emailed me that day. A boy approached me, “Kelsey, you remember me. We met last time.” Suddenly I was propelled back to our meeting two months ago, I was walking to divine star and this boy was walking by me, he introduced himself and said his name was wisdom and that he went to happy kids. That was it. But he remembered everything about it. It shocks me how they never, ever forget a face. Or a name. Wisdom is 11 and brilliant. His collarbone and shoulder bones protrude out of his skin under holey shirts. He’s never met his father and his mother can’t take care of him, so he’s lived at Happy Kids for 7 years. He sleeps in a room the size of a closet on the floor with about 8 other boys.

One of the most important things for me here is not to make promises I can’t keep. In fact, I try to avoid making promises at all. I will only make a promise that I’m certain can be fulfilled, like coming back. I always know I’ll come back. But the last thing I want to do is enable people and kids to be dependent on me or disappointed. The eventual goal is always that they will be able to sustain themselves. So, Elizabeth had no idea that I had gathered funds to build their dormitory building. I made sure to tell her that it was the generous donations of others, not myself, and that I was simply here as a messenger to turn that money into action. I told her I needed to get several more estimates from masons before we could start, that money is still coming in (as it is). Even still, I told her I only have limited funds. She was unbelievably thankful.

The kids took me to a nearby field about the size of a real regulation size soccer field, cut out in the middle of dense jungle. It felt pretty awesome to be the first one picked for teams, although I couldn’t hold my weight and totally sucked. As I ran trying to keep up with the ball I could feel my heart beating through my chest, as if knocking to get out of my body before it burst. My legs soared and stretched further than they have in years. As I breathed heavy breaths, trying to hide my exhaustion, I just couldn’t get enough air. A crowd gathered to watch the ye vu play futbol. “You teaching them?” they asked, “nah,” I said, “they’re teaching me.” Eventually I hung back. I’ll guard the goal. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll be a very dedicated, albeit somewhat involved, observer, you know…while I attempt to avoid having a heart attack.

It was fun, so much fun. I was surprised at how many kids actually were at Happy Kids after school hours. Probably around 50 kids just hang around all day And so many babies. Happy Kids is mostly 2, 3 and 4 year olds. They walk around barefoot and hit rocks in the dirt as a means of entertainment. There is a swing set that a couple volunteers built last summer while I was here. Other than that there aren’t toys or books, but the kids stay until around 7 o’clock…as their parents or guardians just can’t take care of them. Even the ones that aren’t living there practically live there, although currently they can’t sleep here. I’m hoping that will change by the time I leave.

I didn’t get estimates for happy kids the first week because I was waiting for more staggered donations to come in but I did get two detailed estimates this week and will inevitably start building soon. I’ll write about that and my second week (which is almost over) in the next blog. I also wasn’t able to start girls empowerment at Christ because 1) the founder had malaria and has been gone and 2) I’m meeting with some people in Hohoe to get more information before I begin (probably next week). The first week was really about feeling out the orphanages and settling in for what is going to be a long and challenging summer in Ghana.

Even though my days are busy and it’s only going to get busier, even though after playing soccer I could barely walk, even though I really only eat rice, noodles or French fries…I can’t imagine my summer any other way. I love that checking into my hotel meant getting a big hug from the owner. I love that I wake up to roosters crowing and goats baa’ing and frogs croaking…the walls are so thin that they sound like they’re laying in my bed with me. I love that when it rains it pours…every afternoon…as if all of the worlds clouds have gathered in Ghana’s tall sky right over Hohoe, to cool us off…albeit momentarily. I love that I instantly become sucked into this world, forgetting about so many things outside it. This is the biggest thing. This is what matters.

Until next time,

Kels

" Time changes everything. That's what people say. It's not true. Doing things changes things. Not doing things leaves them exactly as they were."

2010-06-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

So I’m currently laying on my Ghana bed next to my Ghana roomie/partner in crime Cassie, in our Ghana hotel (the geduld) and it feels like I never left. It feels like the last two months didn’t exist, and that I was still here, my skin enveloped in the sticky heat that is this place. In fact, it really feels like the last year didn’t happen and that I never left after that first 7 weeks, in the trip that changed who I was. Maybe it makes sense because I really leave a part of me here every time I get on the plane back to America. So what brought me back? What is this Ghana virus that I’ve caught? Its symptoms being constant thoughts of the wacky African kids I love and sending out massive emails asking people to help me help them. Symptoms also include sitting at a table in public places and begging bystanders to come by and educate themselves, and maybe care a little. Maybe care a lot. And now I’m here. And I’m here for 3 months. I can’t tell you how great it feels to be able to sit back, settle in and know that with so much time I have the opportunity to make serious lasting change.

Deciding to go for 3 months was easy, but then I had to go about preparing and planning exactly what it is I’ll be doing in these 3 months…and that wasn’t easy. I had to tell my work that I was leaving and although they knew it was coming, rightfully so, there is no definite way to forsee whether or not I can work there when I return. And those of you that know me, you know how much I love my job, how much I love the babies I work with. Saying goodbye was tough, but I knew I could continue to babysit them when I get back and I knew I had something stronger pulling me here – to Ghana. Another reason my job is uncertain is because I’m missing transfer orientation at UCSB (that’s right, I’m officially a UCSB student) and can’t sign up for classes until I get back (which inevitably means I’ll be crashing all my classes). I also had to find an apartment to move into when I get back (which luckily my roommate molly is subleasing for summer), move out of my old apartment, and take every one of my belongings and stuff them into a storage unit. My life in America is essentially, entirely up in the air.

One of the other things that consumed my spare time before leaving was gathering donated books and schools supplies. I had brought some with me on my last trip and they were indispensible, so I figured why not get a little more for such a large trip. I didn’t really know what the turn out would be. In hindsight, I didn’t really think much about it at all. All I know is that I started driving around Santa Barbara pleading with used books stores, chain book stores, libraries, elementary schools, anywhere that I thought might have children’s books. After being rejected many times, my luck changed when a kind owner of a used books store offered to put together a box for me. After that, the books wouldn’t stop flowing in. My car was bursting at the seams with huge boxes from Barnes and Noble, the public library, the elementary school next to my house, etc etc. One of the parents at my work generously offered to gather supplies too, and she started campaigning to friends and coworkers to contribute. I ended up getting hundreds of pencils, pencil sharpeners, thousands of crayons, construction paper, anything you can imagine. My dad sent out a company wide email asking to gather books and supplies, and thousands more poured in there. A reporter from the Contra Costa Times even heard about the company’s book/supply drive and called to interview me for a story (it hasn’t been published yet). Soon, my SUV was so full of books and supplies that I couldn’t drive anyone else in my car and could barely fit the clothes I was bringing to Ghana. Eventually, I went from being unbelievably excited to be bringing so many books and desperately needed supplies to Ghana – to absolutely panicking as to how the hell I was going to get it all there. I had originally assumed I would bring some on the plane and ship some, but after finding out that shipping one box would cost about $700, and every bag started at $200 and rose an additional $150 with every additional bag after 2 on Delta Airlines. I was screwed. Luckily, Pandigital saved the day in mentioning that they could air freight a pallet to the airport. This is surprisingly pretty cheap and because my dad usually air freights product from China, it’s relatively easy to set up. The only issues are: 1) they can only get the pallet to the airport, so it’s up to me to set up a van/truck to come back and pick it up in the capital city 4 hours away, 2) Getting the pallet through customs may be kind of a bitch. Either way, every book and every pencil will make it here to Ghana and I am so excited that I can disperse them through Happy Kids Orphanage, Christ Orphanage and Divine Star School. Having so many people become so willingly involved in the process of finding supplies and indirectly helping my kids in Ghana really touched my heart. Sometimes, I tend to get pessimistic about America’s views towards Africa. We’ve all heard the stories. We’ve all seen the TV ads. It’s pretty much been drilled into our heads since birth that there are “children starving in Africa.” In a lot of cases, it makes the problem seem too large, too complex to mitigate. But coming here you learn how untrue that really is and how easy change can come by, if only they’re given the proper push and resources to do so. So having so many unbelievable people offering to campaign to people to gather supplies or sift through hundreds of books to pick out stories on Africa or Ghana, really makes me feel a whole lot less alone in my larger goal. And I can’t thank you enough for that.

I will say though that I am far from alone this time. I have Cassie with me for the entire duration of this adventure. In case you didn’t know we met last year during our first trip, we were both involved in an organization after returning, we both want to do more, and we became unbelievably close.

So what exactly am I doing for 3 months? I have a myriad of goals really. Too many to count. But here are the big ones.
1) I want to put a pilot girls empowerment program into Christ Orphanage. I would like to take a group of girls and match them with a younger group of girls from either Happy Kids or Divine Star and have the older girls act as mentors. I’d also like to bring successful women from the town to talk to the girls about their job opportunities and specific trade skills (like cooking, fabric dying, seamstress, etc.). But all of this is relative. It depends on the girls at the orphanage, the resources and time available, and the orphanage itself. All things I will find out once I go back to Christ.
2) I want to build Happy Kids a small dormitory building. As you might have read in my last trip, Happy Kids is easily the most struggling orphanage in this area. Currently, only 15 of the orphans can sleep at the orphanage while the rest must cycle through homes in the village. I opened a separate bank account and so far have the funds from some donations from family and will soon have funds from selling some personal items on ebay. Donations are also still being mailed and my mom will put them in the account. As soon as I have enough, I will hire contractors to begin construction.
3) I also want to help Happy Kids become a NGO (non-profit).
4) After school reading with kids at Divine Star once or twice a week.
5) Basic volunteering. This means teaching in the morning at the various 3 places. I will most likely be teaching more at Divine and Christ but this will only be when I have time available as the other projects are more needed.
6) I want to go around to other organizations and see how and why they are working to create sustainable projects. I want to talk to a lot of people.
7) Distribute the books/supplies and help jump start children’s libraries in the various 3 places.
8) Make sure that all of my projects are sustainable and can be maintained by Ghanaians on the ground after I leave.
9) Film/photograph everything!
10) Have the best summer ever.

So there we go. Sure, I’m ambitious but with 3 months there is absolutely no way that I can’t do any of this. Priority lies with girls empowerment, happy kids dormitory building, and spending time with my kids at Divine Star. It’s going to be a lot of work and I’m sure I’ll hit a lot of speed bumps, but I won’t stop until it works.

I left for Ghana with a total of 3 bags full of what I’d hope would last me through to the end of summer (and no more than 27 cliff bars, risky, I know). Leaving all of the books and supplies sucked, as I so wished I could just bring them with me now, but I’ve already started arranging for a van and everything should be here in the next week or so. I’ve already realized that I forgot some crucial things but luckily my mom can add a box for me to the pallet. Cassie almost missed our plane to Accra (we met up in Atlanta) but she made it, crisis averted. And now we’re here, home. The place where contracts only exist with a hand shake and reservations are memorized by the strong women that hold them. Where sweating constantly is a way of life and being white plummits you into instant celebrity. A place where you’re tired all the time, you read 3 books in a week and anything is possible. Ah, it’s good to be back.

Since I know I may have some new readers (in addition to the three other people that probably actually read this novel of a blog) I decided it’d be good to do a who’s who and what’s what. This will be a list of who/what I most commonly talk about in here and can be used as a reference point if you get confused (just click the little June 2010 button on the right to return to this entry). If you already know all of this, you can skip it.

CCS: (or Cross Cultural Solutions) is the organization that I came through last summer for 7 weeks. They are a volunteer organization that places volunteers in the orphanages/schools and provides housing and meals for volunteers. CCS is the only volunteer organization in Hohoe and so the local people are very used to seeing white people and the house (very close by) is white people central. Volunteers come in groups and typically come about 10 people at a time. Besides some volunteers that come back and stay at the hotel we’re at, these are the only other white people in town.

Cassie: I met Cassie last year when I came with CCS for the first time. She was the only other volunteer here for 7 weeks and we are really close. She is 21 and just graduated from college. This is her second time back to Ghana.

Godwin: Godwin was a taxi driver hired by CCS. Last summer he became our friend and would drive us around and give us Ewe lessons. He’s wacky, hilarious, and trusting. He no longer works for CCS full time but is always the favorite of returning volunteers. Godwin picked me up from the airport on my last trip and was my fierce protector while I was here alone. He is one of few people in Ghana that I really trust, and it helps that he’s one of the few Ghanaian men that doesn’t ever ask us to marry him.

Naomi: Naomi was the teacher that I worked with last summer at Divine Star. She was a pretty horrible teacher and beat the kids a lot, but as a person she is pretty hilarious and we became friends. Naomi no longer works as a teacher. She also watched out for me during my last trip alone. She’s 23, makes fun of me a lot, and is expecting her first child this August (who I’ve brought a lot of presents for).

Divine Star School: This is the school where I worked last summer. Divine star has a lot of crucial problems, like inadequate staffing, lack of space, lack of resources. Its owner is also very corrupt and can’t be trusted. Progress here is therefore tough to come by and slow, but that doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying.

Isaac: Isaac is the owner and headmaster of Divine Star. Known for his continuous need to propose/hit on volunteers.

Juliet: Juliet is 7 years old. She was my star student last year and is essentially the love of my life. She is the source of my dedication and one of the most brilliant little girls I’ve ever met. She often gets up and teaches the class herself. Her other classmates call her “Auntie Juliet.”

Grace: Grace is also 7 years old. She is Juliet’s best friend and is wacky, smart and loving. She is much smaller than her other classmates and has big curly eyelashes. Also one of the main sources of my dedication. Both her and Juliet often come by my hotel to read books and play and visit.

Antionette: Antionette is now the teacher of my class, who are now in P1 (or first grade). She is an excellent teacher (rare) and very smart, motivated and happy to be teaching. She may be leaving Divine Star due to the horrible salary (just $30 a month) soon though.

Christ Orphanage: At only 3 years old, Christ Orphanage is the most innovative orphanage I’ve seen. It has almost every child sponsored (around 150 kids) and is preparing to move to the newly constructed site with a large dormitory building, cafeteria, and 6 classrooms. It started out as a one roomed shack and grows everyday. It’s supported and strengthened by a few volunteers that continue to come back and help. CCS does not work with Christ Orphanage any more because these volunteers intervened and they didn’t like that. Christ orphanage is a registered NGO and highly supports woman’s development/empowerment.

Raymond: The owner/founder of Christ. Very smart, dedicated and has the right intentions for the kids.

Happy Kids Orphanage: As previously mentioned, one of the most struggling places I’ve seen. With 120 kids, only 15 can be supported at the orphanage. It was founded in 1995 and only receives staggered donations/school fees from a few parents in the community. Despite supporting so many kids, happy kids is not even a NGO.

Elizabeth: Founder/owner of Happy Kids. Speaks limited English, but is a sweet, appreciate woman with the right intentions for the kids.

Geduld Hotel: The Geduld is one of few proper hotels in Hohoe. It does not have hot water and like the rest of Ghana, has frequent power outages, but it is comfortable and perfectly located just steps from Divine Star School and the CCS house.

Hilda: Hilda is the owner of the Geduld. A strong, hilarious and powerful woman, she has been referred to as the “African Whoopie Goldberg” which is totally true.

Abbie: Abbie is Hilda’s 11-year-old daughter. Often stops by my room to read books/hang out.

Hohoe: Prouncouned “Ho-hoy” (I know, I wish it was pronounced Ho-hoe too). Hohoe is the village where I live/volunteer, It’s hard to describe it – pretty well populated but very much the “Africa” you would picture. The people are very friendly. The electricity and water goes out often everywhere. There are two internet places in town but they run on dial up and can be closed at any random time for no reason. It is four hours from the capital Accra.

Accra: The capital city of Ghana. The location of the airport, the only shopping mall/grocery store/movie theatre, and the only place with some modern effects. Just an easy 4 hour trotro ride away.

Wegbe: The village just over from Hohoe. Wegbe is where Christ and Happy Kids are located.

TroTro: A trotro is Ghana’s version of public transportation. They are beat up vans gutted out to squeeze more seats and often break down. There are some designated “trotro” stations where all of the vans going in a certain direction (most common one: to accra) and you pay about 4 dollars and wait for every seat to be taken before leaving…this can mean hours of waiting. They also accommodate goats, chickens, anything that can squeeze into the van. It is by far a cultural experience.

That’s all I can think of for now. Still a bit jet lagged but working on it. Can’t wait for Monday to see my kids.

Until next time,
Kels

"You will fight for us...but I hope you will not have to fight alone." -Godwin

2010-04-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

On Tuesday, I was absolutely thrilled to be going back to school. The long weekend without seeing my kids was painful, so I was so happy to see their running, jumping, “madame Kelsey madame Kelsey!!” faces. We played, sang songs, danced, and I helped them get through exams as usual. I couldn’t come back in the afternoon because I was leaving to go to the bead factory. The bead factory is about 2 hours away and sells hand made, one of a kind, recycled glass bead bracelets. I was going to buy some of these bracelets to sell at home to raise money. Although I knew I wasn’t going to be back until late, I was so desperate to spend more time with my kids that I obliged their offer to come see me in the afternoon but told them to come when the sun was down in the trees – about 5:30. After eating lunch, Godwin and I left for the bead factory at about noon. I brought my ipod along for the ride but it was quickly stolen and held captive for the remainder of the drive by Godwin. It’s ok though, I listened to the bustling sound of the market and passersby and let the wind and dust hit my face, no music required. There are a lot of “police” checkpoints here, on the one road that goes from the volta region to the capital city. I’ve become very used to them and am no longer intimidated – as white people can often be held there for questioning, etc, no reason really. We came to the main checkpoint or “immigration.” All of the other cars were being waved through, but when a tall, tough looking African police man waved us over I knew it had to be trouble. “Great, how long could this take?” I thought. We parked and the police man walked over to the car, he stuck his head in my window, put on a huge genuine smile and said “Hey! Where ya from??” “America,” I said, laughing. “How do you find Ghana??” “-I love Ghana!” “Really, where else have you been? How long you staying?” He just genuinely wanted to talk to me. “I’ve been all over the world, but Ghana is my favorite place,” I answered. “Is Ghana really your favorite place? Or you saying that because you’re in Ghana?” We laughed. “It is really my favorite place!!” ‘You’re only staying for two weeks!? Not long enough!” He said, I agreed. Way too short. “Ok well, safe journey Kelsey!” he said as we sped off, literally bustling with laughter. Oh the African misconceptions and stereotypes we foreigners harbor, they are so often shattered by the kindness of the local people. Few true stereotypes and ideas remain afloat after a trip here. Only an opening of the eyes and a, “what the hell was I thinking?” remains.

I bought about 150 bracelets quickly, which set me back about 200 dollars. I could feel my savings dwindling away with the heavyness of each glass bracelet. The journey there took much longer than expected (about 3 hours), as most Ghanaian road trips do. On the drive back Godwin and I talked about everything. He had a lot of questions. Many of them started with, “In your country…” We talked about everything from my family, to my job, to education in America, to “what is a prostitute?” (he’d heard the word). He asked if I would ever adopt from Ghana in the future. I told him how I thought it was a huge misconception that all African children need to be rescued, and how yes some need to be adopted. Some need to be adopted to survive. But children with families or alternatives should grow up in their home country. In fact, if they’re able to have access to a good education and food and medicine (these things are possible here), I can’t think of a better place to grow up. He agreed, very much so. Our conversation was heated with frustration with the outside world. Those who come in thinking they can solve everything. Throwing money at things. We talked about homosexuality, a very touchy subject (it is illegal to be gay in Ghana). We agreed, politely, to disagree. We talked about how there was no difference between white and black people (as so many Ghanaians grow up being taught the opposite principle). “It’s just a skin color,” he said. Not yevu yevu. Not better or worse. Not smarter or happier or wealthier. It was a breath of fresh air to hear this from him…as the majority of Ghanaian people are taught that we’re different. Hallelujah brotha! I found out Godwin grew up farming and has his own small farm with cassava. I found out he wants to go to University to study science. I found out that my good friend is driving this taxi 7 days a week because he wants to be a doctor.

When we finally got back to Hohoe, I cringed at the time. It was 6 o’clock. It was dark. I hoped my kids were still there or, hadn’t come at all. We pulled into the Geduld and Hilda immediately approached me, “your kids were here, waiting for you.” She said they’d come at about 5 and waited for an hour. She said they sat sad, disappointed, thinking I didn’t want to see them. She said they’d just left. I was wrecked with guilt. And again I’m confronted with this tug-a-war between my personal obligation as a volunteer to spend time with my kids and my need to find out more information about potential projects. I thought back to the 8 months I had spent missing them and that was it: I told myself that I needed to stop thinking about the future and concrete plans and start doing what was important now – in this moment – and that was not to disappoint them. I tossed and turned all night…my mind racing about how to strike a balance between my attachment and obligation to spend time with them and read with them and help them each personally – and my broader want to help the kids and facilities here in general.

The next day I expected to walk up to the school to a crowd of sad and angry faces. I had my whole speech prepared about how the car took longer than it was supposed to and how I was so so so so so so so sorry. But when I turned the corner, I wasn’t met with angry faces. They rushed to me, even more excited to see me than usual and hugged me..just genuinely happy to see me, not mad at all, just happy that I was finally there. I apologized anyways and they said that it was ok, they would come today.

They did come. We sang and drew and read and played all day until it was dark and then Abbie and I walked each of them home. I was glad I had 11 year old Abbie (hotel owner, Hildas’ daughter) to guide me through the winding roads under the dark African night sky….I know a lot of the roads but so many of them are almost impossible to distinguish….they are all just winding red, narrow roads with nothing but the tall, thick green bush on both sides. Road signs absolutely do not exist here. Although I don’t really know if I could really call them roads- more like pathways. When we got back we ate dinner, yam chips and chicken together under the stars. The electricity went out mid way through eating, which everyone just calls “lights out” and we sat, laughing, barely being able to find the plate by candlelight.

On Thursday I woke up early. Today was the big field trip. We were going to Akosombo, the very famous dam that supplies electricity for all of Ghana and the surrounding countries. It is one of the most famous landmarks and is even on the national currency. Most of them would never have the opportunity to go here, being 2 hours away, so of course I jumped at the opportunity to do that for them. I had to pay for the bus, which ended up being much more than I thought it would be as I was sufficiently ripped off due to my being white and female. After waiting for some time at the school, all of the kids carrying their own food and literally bursting at the seams with excitement, we piled onto the old, crookedy blue bus. As soon as the wheels started rolling they erupted in song. And as we bounced up and down and I listened to them excitedly sing “baby beluga” I knew that it was all worth it. Every ounce of frustration. Every dollar of every paycheck I’d spent painstakingly saving for this trip and for them. Every argument or tear shed with Sankofa…It was so worth it. None of it mattered now. What mattered was that it led me back to here, to this huge, overly crowded bus with 50 thrilled kids on it. I guarantee no matter where I go or what happens, I will always be led back to here.

To no surprise, the bus got a flat tire 3 times throughout the journey. Need I mention that it was the same tire going flat every time? Of all the places in the world to get a flat tire – I’m pretty sure Ghana is one of the worst…the heat was pulsing through the humid bus as we would sit and watch someone run to the next village to get something to prop up the tire. This turned what should have been no more than 2 hours there and back into about 3 1/2 hours there and back. At the end of the day we were exhausted, dirty, and happy to get home. I rested up for what would be my last full day in Ghana.

I’ve been thinking a lot about corruption, and I’ve obviously mentioned it in the blog. As Americans, we think of Africa and we immediately think corruption, evil, etc. Throughout my experience overseas though I’m beginning to find that may be varying degrees of corruption. Walking around being the only white person in town you’re bound to get a lot of attention. This is something that you become quickly accustomed too but wary of. Unlike traveling in other countries that are filled with tourists or even foreigners living there, in rural Africa it’s impossible not to be noticed. And although I hated to say this, because most Africans are genuine good people just living their lives, for some, my skin can make me an easy target. They know I want to help. They know I have the willingness and resources to do so. This can mean anything from finding a way to profit from it themselves to attempting to deceive me. With the small things, like taking a cab…you swallow it and shrug it off…with the small things it really isn’t very much money for us. But with the big things it matters…It matters a lot.

So with the big things you tend to associate with the word corruption. Because it gets to a point where you can’t help but think…really? I’m trying to help kids here – your kids – and you’re screwing me to help yourself. But then I realize that it’s not just certain people…it’s a LOT of people. So then I start thinking that maybe it’s really this deep seeded need to get money when they can, how they can. So I’m not condoning it…because it’s wrong, but what if something we assume is corruption is really just a means of survival or even more so – a way of life. Most foreigners scare easily at the hint of corruption - corrupt people - corrupt facilities. But beneath every corrupt facility is still a group of innocent kids being subjected to the harsh realities of this society, walking away doesn’t help them. And it is at times overwhelming and I am by no means naïve about the harshness of this world, but I refuse to cower beneath it. Under the circumstances – it’s essentially impossible to have every facility be entirely corruption free. Everyone has their own agenda. The trick is to trust few, or no one, and to work around these people…not in junction with them.

Traveling around the world you are bound to come across bad people. And yes, there are some places in Africa that are wrecked with them…but believe me in saying that I’ve found people in America just as misguided and ruthless as those here in Africa peddling donated school supplies and harboring funds meant to care for a sick child. The hardest lesson I’ve learned?...and this may be particularly useful for any of you ever intending to work in philanthropy…Just because people have good intentions does not mean that they’re good people.

(Wrote on Friday)

I woke up early this morning, my last full day in Ghana. It was going to be a busy day. I got ready and packed my bag full of half the books I’d brought (giving the other half to an orphanage) and the rest of the flashcards, paint and crayons I had yet to bring to school. I sat under the same hut I sit under every day and ate my typical bowl of fresh mango and pineapple and watched the lizards around me doing push ups. I was wondering how today would go…another goodbye. But I kept telling myself that this goodbye was only temporary – as is what became the theme of this trip: “In June, in June” when I return for the summer with my partner in crime, Cassie. So maybe today’s goodbye wouldn’t be as bad. It’s only temporary-temporary-temporary I thought, listening to the bugs buzz around me.

When I got to school –my arms hurting and weighed down from the multiple bags and soccer ball I carried in each hand- I was surprised to see none of the kids in their uniforms. It is the last day of their 2nd term, so after today they have a month break and then resume school, but they were all dressed in their nicest clothes…dresses and kahki pants. Also, only about half of my class had showed up (luckily the ones I am closest with). I gave Antionette the supplies – we’d already talked about how she would keep them in her house and although she’s quitting Divine Star, she’ll bring them to the next teacher of the class. Otherwise, the supplies will be sold and/or held captive in a locked box where no child will ever see it. I had some supplies for the other classes: some multiplication and division flash cards and some special lined writing paper for KG2. Antionette walked me to Class 3 where I handed the teacher the supplies. Next to her sat a serious and angry looking man. I’d seen him around and just barely spoken to him around school – he walks around telling the teachers what to do and essentially never smiles…but I really have no idea what his position is within the school. The teacher thanked me. The man turned to Antionette, “Did she give you supplies too?” “Yes, plenty,” Antionette responded. He snapped at her, “You need to enter these things in the log!! You must not keep them in your classroom! Why would you do that? Why would you not keep them in the office? These are the school’s property, not yours! What were you thinking? Put them in the office.” Antionette and I glanced at one another and walked out of class…’ah, fresh supplies to sell. Stupid yevu,’ I’m sure the man thought. Who the hell is this guy? Stupid yevu my ass.

“I guess I have to put the supplies in the office,” she said regretfully. “But they’ll be sold. I don’t want that to happen. You can still take them to your house like we discussed. Don’t mind that man. I’ll go tell him right now” I said as I walked out and into the classroom we’d just been, my steps heated with frustration. The man was fingering through the division cards.

“I just wanted to tell you that I brought those supplies for Antionette. I do not want them to go in the office. I brought them for her to take to give to the class so she will not be logging it in the book or keeping it in Isaac’s office. I brought them and I want her to take them home. So I just thought you should know that.” I said matter-of-factly.

“What? But why did you come back in here? Why did you not say that just now earlier? She has obviously fed you information,” he answered angrily.

“She has fed me no information. I came back here because I wanted to come back and tell you that – not because she sent me – I am giving her the supplies. That’s it.”

“But she is working for the school. Would you have met her if you didn’t come to this school? No! So anything that is given to her is the school’s property. So it should stay with the school. Why did you give it to her now then and not at her house? You gave it to her at the school so it belongs to the school!!“ He yelled, and I yelled back.

“It’s my property and I can choose who I give it too. Should I take it all back? Because I will do that if necessary and take it to her house later. They will not go in the office. That’s that.”

“But what if she is gone tomorrow?” he asked trying to weaken me down with his corrupt logic.

“Then she’s gone.” I said. “Then what kids will you help?” he asked, not aware of Antionette and I’s arrangement. “They’ll help some kids somewhere. She’s keeping the supplies.” And I walked out of the room.

I spent the rest of the morning playing with my kids and helping Antionette stuff envelopes with their report cards. I handed out the remaining pictures I had yet to give to some of the kids from my previous summer with them…I was so regretful I didn’t print enough pictures for every one of them. I handed one to Emefa, the wacky little 7 year old dawning an adorable little African sun dress. “Hey! It’s you and me,” she said happily…In perfect English. And then I was sad.

I spoke only a little bit to Isaac – I’m sure that man told him of our conversation. He knows I know something. But it doesn’t matter because Antionette is leaving the school anyways and Naomi is long gone. I’m mostly just glad he finally stopped seriously proposing to me and now only says that I must “bring him a wife from America.”

When the time finally came to say goodbye, I was surprisingly in good spirits. My kids were laughing and dancing around and I thought – hey, this won’t be so bad. I said goodbye to Antionette, who had curlers in her hair and couldn’t believe I was really leaving tomorrow. She genuinely thanked me and said god would bless me, that there was a closeness between us and she was sad I was leaving. We exchanged contact information and promises to soon talk on the phone and I continued walking with my pack of about 15 students that insisted on “escorting me.” About 5 of them were holding my right arm and Ophilia was sitting under my left. “Hey move! That’s my place!” Juliet told Ophilia (who followed her orders) and then took her place under my arm. Both the kids and I were totally fine until we reached the gate to my hotel. There I said this was where we had to say goodbye. Then all hell broke loose. They all started bawling, burying their faces in their arms and leaning against the shaky gate and hotel wall. And then it hit me…that familiar feeling that I’d gotten to know so well the last time…The type of sadness that grows up from your toes and into the back of your throat. The type of sadness that weighs down your chest and pulls at your breath and shows no possibility of ever letting you go. I pleaded with them that I was coming back, to please stop crying, as I took turns lifting them from the gate and hugging them until I was entirely drenched in their tears. Hilda appeared from inside the gate and started talking to them in ewe and english…Asking them to stop crying and to be happy. To be happy because they were making me sad. “She left…but she came back right?” she asked, “yess” they answered. “So she’ll come back again.”

All of them quieted except Juliet, who stood with her back turned to us and refused to budge. Hilda ordered them to sing. After quite a long time we were able to move away from the gate and quiet their tears. I scraped Juliet off the hotel wall and picked her up. Temporary. Temporary. Temporary. Pull it together Kelsey. They needed to leave before I started bawling. And I was telling myself that it didn’t make sense to be so upset. I was coming back in two months to do something better for them. And although I will always be going back to America, as California is my home, the leaving just feels unnatural. Every bone in your body is telling you it’s a mistake. Every inch of your gut is telling you that the logic would be to stay, find out more, help more. How can you walk away when you’re still so desperately needed on the ground? I begged them to go, told them I loved them again with promises to come back, and they walked away.

“So now you are sad,” remarked Hilda. “That’s why I was trying to stop them…because sadness is bad. The sadness…it will eat inside you,” She said wisely. “So go upstairs and refresh yourself and come back and eat lunch. And don’t be sad! Because if they’re sad then you’re sad and then I’m sad and me sad is a scary scary thing…So stop crying!” she ordered. I laughed. When I stumbled into my room I held myself against the air conditioning box, pleading for the tears to stop. Pleading for the cool to blow away the heavyness in my chest.

I ate lunch and waited for Godwin to pick me up to start the other half of my day. When Godwin arrived he asked me about the field trip…he was angry that I’d that I had been overcharged. That people were taking advantage. “You come to help and they…they do that. You come to help all of us. I’m angry.” I explained that I knew of the bad in those people, but that despite it all I would find a way to help the rest of them. That I wasn’t going to stop until I did. “You will fight for us,” remarked Godwin. “But I hope…I hope you will not have to fight alone. I will pray that your friends will hold you up,” he said, making a platform out of his hands and raising it to the roof of the car.

We drove to the next village over to visit two orphanages: Happy Kids and Christ Orphanage. I’d heard a lot about Happy Kids in my last trip, it’s essentially the most struggling facility I’ve heard of. I was to meet with both directors at each orphanage. We went to happy kids first. I opened the cricked metal gate and walked under a roof of thatched sticks and leaves. I met the owner, Elizabeth, who looked tired and worn. She was incredibly kind and attentive. Godwin followed, which ended up being extremely useful because he worked as translator between Elizabeth and I. I began asking a lot of questions, about the facility, why it started, when it started, what they struggled most with, etc. I asked her what would help, could help, could work. I told her that I wanted to put programs into their school..just a little bit at first. I told her that I didn’t have money to give but that I could try to find ways to help them get money and improve on the long term. She said that would be great, that that is exactly what they need. From there we drove to the site of their school, which supports about 65 children…most seem to be under the age of 3. We pulled up to the building; one building. There was a class of about 10 sitting under the trees and some desks assembled outside the building where about 10 more students were just sitting. Inside the empty, small cement building about 40 kids were sleeping, huddled together on the cold hard ground. Yeah, they need help. By far the worst facility I’ve seen. And keep in mind where I’m at…it was pretty bad. When it rains (which is a lot) they have to just huddle in the one room and not learn. I asked more questions. Where do they get their funding? (almost nowhere, some parents). Are they registered as an NGO? She looked at me like she’d never thought of it before. Seriously? An orphanage supporting 65 kids isn’t even an NGO? I told her I could try (key word: try) to help them register and look into local NGOs this summer. Something so simple and it hasn’t been done. This point – this is where it isn’t just about education. This is where you’re at just basic survival. Whatever way I can help – I will. I've recently found out that a previous CCS volunteer made Happy Kids a website - a welcome sign of progress.

She thanked me so much for the books and said she looked forward to seeing me in June. We exchanged contact information and she promised to send me the answers to the many questions she could not answer (ex: what was a rough number for all of their monthly expenses?). The situation really made we wonder about the program I did last summer. The school obviously needs educated and motivated teachers (which goes back to my teacher sponsorship idea) and that is what CCS does, but this facility in particular needs SO much more than that. They need infrastructure, access to funding, ideas, manpower, organization, etc. But the program restricts volunteers from doing more and it really disappointed me. How could volunteers be coming here for so long and this is still the state that it’s in? I know teaching in itself is all consuming, stressful, unbelievably exhausting. But I know the individuals that worked at Happy Kids and they were incredible and I’m certain, if given the freedom, could entirely turn this place around. It’s really unfortunate that CCS doesn’t allow them to do that. What’s even more unfortunate is that many can’t afford it and will never make it back, and so you have a pattern of consistency, and “change” as we would call it, is almost at a stand still.

From there, we left to meet Raymond...the director of Christ Orphanage. Raymond carried himself very professionally but friendly. He was articulate, passionate and focused. Raymond opened the orphanage just 3 years ago as an attempt to get the kids off the street and invest in the future of Ghana’s children. In 3 years, the orphanage’s growth is tremendous. Much of this is obviously due to Raymond and his refreshingly good intentions and also old CCS volunteers that continued to work with Christ orphanage to improve the infrastructure – something that resulting in CCS no longer sending volunteers there. The fact that volunteers (some I’ve talked to) so deeply trust Raymond and continue to work with him is an amazing sign. I told Raymond of my previous experience working for Ghana, in Ghana, and my ideas to help. I came to find out that Raymond actually named Christ Orphanage (which is a registered NGO) “Christ Orphanage & Rural Development of Women.” This was hilarious as I was explaining that I actually intend to put a Girls Empowerment program into his orphanage. We had a powerful conversation about the oppression and discrimination of women in Ghana and how empowering and educating a women empowers and educates the nation. From there Raymond took me to the new site, an impressive 10 acre plot of land with a large beautiful dormitory building, classrooms building being constructed and cafeteria. They wish to move to the new site in August. The old site is an old, small, dirt floored building. Christ is still facing a lot of problems and challenges, but the amount of growth they’ve seen in 3 years is a tremendous sign of things to come. “I want Christ orphanage to become a working model that can be duplicated – a model of education and empowerment and sustainability,” said Raymond. Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve found the main facility I will be focusing on this summer with the programs. I will also be working with Divine Star and Happy Kids, but I have a feeling that the programs will stick most at Christ, whereas Happy Kids will need more help with just improving basic infrastructure and funding. After about 2 hours, Raymond and I talked about my plans for summer, exchanged contact information and said we genuinely looked forward to working together. I was so excited. Christ orphanage was like a breath of fresh air – a sincere meeting with a Ghanaian creating innovation and change in his community. It was the perfect ending punctuation on an incredible 2 weeks.

A lot of people told me before leaving that they hoped this trip would “be what I wanted it to be,” aiming at some possibility that it could be bad or even more so, disappointing. Well, anyone who has been here would understand that no trip to Ghana could be anything less than absolutely amazing. It could never be a waste of time or money or energy. So what has this trip been for me? Really – it was a glipse through the keyhole of future possibilities, a reminder of the ease that change can be made, a moment of coming home. Really – it was a split second of peace, although surrounded by utter chaos. I found myself far more immersed in the culture not traveling in a pack of white people and much more able to talk to people and get their insight – a lot of insight. I was able to find out the perspectives of the individuals living in and with the problems. I was able to physically seek out the facilities that need the most help. I was able to discuss with them how I may be able to uniquely improve the infrastructure of their schools and orphanages, and how to create long-term sustainability. Really, this trip started me on what I’m sure will be a long path to understanding. And I am certain that I can’t even begin to try to fix an issue without having a deep, multifaceted understanding of it…and that comes not from reading books or making assumptions from thousands of miles away of what might work – should work – that comes from talking to people – from making the relationships that matter. Another HUGE thing I learned in this trip? Working internationally in particular– it is just as important to make relationships as it is to make plans.

Something else I learned from this trip? Well – if not exactly learned but was reminded of…I understand now, even more so, that no matter where I go, no matter how many countries I visit or how many kids I fall in love with (I’m sure there will be many more). No matter how many cement, barren classrooms I will stand in front of trying to teach songs and reading. No matter how many days or months or years pass. Those kids, these kids, that class of 55 students that I spent my first summer in Africa teaching – they will always be my class. They will always be the kids that changed who I was. They’re the kids that stripped me of my materialistic tendencies and literally yanked me out from under the umbrella of ignorance I hid myself beneath. They’re the kids that enabled me to stop being so consumed with my own life and what I thought was ‘hard’ and truly, honestly, showed me what it means to be happy. And going back to America is rough. Being immediately dropped back into a world of insignificant actions and busyness and time constraints and unfortunately – many people plagued with ignorance about the world outside their own – it can make you feel like you’re drowning. And all you’re trying to do is get back to the surface where life was simple and change and happiness and the calm of the lightning bugs leading your way through the dirt paths at night can come just as easily as the 2 cents it costs to buy a brand new pencil. The only moments I didn’t feel like I was just treading water until I got back to Ghana – I was working for Ghana, talking to people, raising money and awareness and climbing inch by inch towards creating the change so desperately needed by those kids and that community that I so fell in love with.

And I know it seems small. I know it seems like there are millions of people more qualified, more appropriate. People with more access to money and governments and NGOs that are there constantly working to help. I’m sad to say that’s a misconception. There’s this huge assumption about the relief and funding that foreigners are supplying to Africa. We constantly hear about billions and billions of dollars in international aide and non-profits and “sponsor a child.” But then you go to Africa and you hear of some high ranking government officials and NGO’s and aide groups in the big and capital cities, but then you travel to the more rural areas of the countries, those that need Western help the most…and there’s nothing and no one. Your first thought is, ‘where the hell is all of this international aide I’m hearing about?’ These people can barely afford to buy rice to feed themselves or their malnourished children; their minds bright but their bodies weak. The buildings/shacks are falling apart, leaving them at mercy to the elements. The kids are fighting in class over a rusty razor blade to sharpen the remaining stub of a pencil. If this is where the need is, why is no one here? The answer is complex yet simple: a lack of resources in these areas, lack of educated individuals (education in general), the not so easy way of getting there, and maybe just a general misknowledge or assumption that the problem is again, just too large. And in America we rely far too much on government. We assume they’ll do the dirty work. But really - you can’t rely on government. Studies and even high-ranking officials have noted that larger organizations are less effective and governmental aide only barely chips away at the massive iceberg that is global poverty. Surprisingly, it’s been found that smaller, grassroots organizations and projects (like mine!) are more effective in actually mitigating the issues.

So here’s what I know – I’m probably going to fail a LOT. I’m going to make mistakes. I’ll probably waste thousands and thousands of my hard earned dollars on airfare and bottled water and hotels. I’ll probably spend useless afternoons watching horrible Ghanaian TV making the relationships that matter, and dance around making outrageous hand gestures trying to teach a class how to read. I’ll probably be horribly ripped off and taken advantage of, my skin making me an easy target. I’ll probably put myself in some sketchy situations, but I’ll make it out ok. I’ll probably cry and scream and shout and want to give up and just go back to living a normal life within the bounds of country lines. But despite everything, no matter how or what or when, I WILL help these kids, this community, this continent. I will make change that matters. Because I’ve seen it – I’ve seen their faces light up at the sight of a new pencil. I’ve felt the warm embrace of a Ghanaian stranger turned friend. I’ve seen the people in America become inspired – desperate to be a part, however small or large, of something good. I’ve become familiarized with fundraising and strategy and donor relations. I’ve listened to the stories of the immeasurable problems they face and the answers that couldn’t be more simple. And my mind is constantly racing with ideas. So now, it is just a matter of turning my words into actions in both the US and in Ghana. And that will happen, it may take a while..but I promise you..It'll happen.

Until next time,
Kels

"This is Africa"...

2010-04-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

Up until today this weekend was not very newsworthy. With the holidays everything was essentially shut down. Any moment I could I was walking in town, buying things and taking pictures and despite the lack of volunteering at school I was still entirely exhausted at the end of each day. Today was the most eventful and exciting.

I woke up at about 9 (very late here) to my alarm and the pounding drums and singing of the church next door. I wasn’t very happy to see about 5 bugs inside my mosquito net…that seems very counterproductive. I don’t think I’ve been tucking the net into every inch of the mattress very well lately, a symptom of lazyness and exhaustion. I got ready for what I was sure would be a very interesting Easter Sunday with Naomi. I haven’t been conditioning my hair lately, as the 4 droplets of water that trickle down from the shower head (that I must hold up myself) isn’t enough pressure to even wash out shampoo, but I tried today..considering the occasion. I pulled my hair half up half down, loaded it with gel (but it’s still umanigeable) and put on the nicest African clothing I have…one of my scrunch dresses I had made here last summer. I walked into town and towards Naomi’s house. The town was seemingly abandoned, but when you would pass a church you would see hundreds of people singing and dancing. I turned onto the dirt road toward Naomi’s and called to tell her I was on my way. On the walk through the windy dirt road I happened to run into some of my students and was being approached, (as always) for “friends.” “Va! Va!” they say, which means “come.” “White lady, how are you? Where are you from?” they would ask me. “Do you like friends? I would like us to be friends.” I knew I’d better find Naomi fast before I had about 20 new "friends" showing up at my hotel. Finally she found me and we made our way, winding around huts and many “ye vu! Ye vu!”s until getting to her sister’s dress making shop where I was instructed to sit down. Her sister was perched on the floor of the cement shop holding the entire dead body of a chicken, only its head was cut off and not cleanly. Naomi helped her light a small canister below it and she began turning and holding the chicken over one small, candle sized flame. I wondered...there is no way you can actually cook an entire chicken thoroughly this way? The flame was so small, the chicken large, and she just sat there holding an inch of flesh over the blue flame before switching to another spot. Naomi grabbed 2 drinks for us and we walked back to her house.

When we got to her house she placed two drinks on the table (a fanta and pineapple drink). She pointed to an unopened bag of crackers she’d also bought for me and instructed me to “relax and be free.” “I’ll be back soon,” she said. I knew this meant she was going to oversee the making of the food…and that she could be gone a long time. I sat back and began watching TV. In Ghana they only get one channel nationwide. It’s called GTV, and it’s absolutely hilarious. I watched what I think is a Ghanaian movie that only consisted of 2 scenes: a man and a woman in each scene, one couple in front of a large bouquet of fake flowers and the other in front of patio furniture. They would go back and forth between these two scenes, argue and then break into dance and song…and none of it was in English. I meticulously watched the clock until I had been waiting 2 hours. Oh Ghana..Ghana Ghana Ghana.

When she finally got back she was holding a giant platter of food. There were 3 plates: one entirely filled with Ghanaian spaghetti, another entirely filled with boiled yam, and another with chicken in a spicy red sauce (the same chicken her sister had cooked over one tiny flame). “You must eat alllll!” Naomi said. She was laughing, but she was totally serious. I was terrified. “You are going to eat it all and I am going to help you get fat.” I slowly tried to eat at it, as she sat there watching both me and what was now Ghanaian music videos on the small television. While I ate (she said her rice was coming later) we talked about ideas. We talked about how she thought there was a need for the uneducated youth in the community to learn English and trade skills (like dress making and cooking). She also told me there was some fishing villages nearby that had many children that didn’t even attend school and only worked all day. “What if we could help them?” she asked. I said that was a fantastic idea. That I just needed to learn more about it. More about the issues, the infrastructure. Everything. Something that takes time, something I no longer have. June, I said, in june.

I attempted to tell her I couldn’t eat anymore; what was left was half the yam and some of the chicken. “The meat! You must eat the meat!” I replayed the image in my head of her sister holding the chicken over a tiny flame with her bare hands…oh man I hope I don’t get sick after this. I know all of you are thinking “Why the hell would you agree to eat that?” Well, seriously, when someone in Africa puts this elaborate of a meal in front of you…it’s a huge gift. It’s unbelievably rude to deny it. So I picked up the chicken bone, pryed the chewy (probably not fully cooked) meat off the bone as best I could with my fork and I put it in my mouth. “Yummmm” I said, while really thinking that I would need a heavy dose of antibiotics when I got back to my hotel.

She inspected my food again and said “I have to finish it,” as she pulled the chicken leg off the plate and sucked the bone dry. We then continued to talk and watch TV and pretty much just sit….ghanaians do a LOT of sitting. She said she would take me to meet her grandmother who “is very very old.” I said that would be great. “When the sun goes down more, we’ll go meet gramama…she’s old.”

Finally at about 4 we left to go to grandma’s. When we finally got there, we walked into a little gate and came upon a very old and very African looking shack (most are, but you know what I mean). Suddenly the gate nudged behind me to open again, and I realized it was a goat using his nose to come in. “Is that her goat?” I asked. “Yeah,” said Naomi, “It knows this is its house. It’s coming home for dinner.”

I met the family, about 7 of them and they were very very nice. Coincidentally, grandma is very very very old. She talks quiet and low, and only in ewe. I shock them with the little ewe I know, but two sentences into the conversation they stump me…and we all burst into hysterical laughter. We step into the house and I’m instructed to sit down, they shift and wipe the seat down for me.

The uncle instructs me to take his picture. “when will I get my picture?" he asks. I take more pictures of them. One with the grandma, who continues to look at me suspiciously..I think she likes me though. I’m sure she likes me. They continue talking and I know they’re talking about me when I hear “yevo yevo” and again, I am disappointed I don’t understand the complicated language.

We are about to leave and the rain starts coming, so we shuffle back inside and suddenly it pours…overtaking the house and pounding like a million heavy fists on the slanted tin roof above us. You can’t hear anything but the rain, the window slams open and shut, open and shut. The little boy who is only in his underwear tries to close it…again, and again and again, sneaking smiles at me every time he passes. Finally they must shut the window entirely to stop the downpour from flooding the house, they close the door, stick the only rags on hand underneath it and we are left in darkness. Quiet beneath the heavy pounding of the rain. Ah. So Ghana. And like that we wait, in complete darkness, only waiting for the pounding of the fists to lighten enough so Naomi and I can go. “I didn’t shut my window,” she says, regretfully. We wait for probably 30 minutes, so many of us crammed into that little African room. It seems to stop all at once, as it usually does and we say our goodbyes. “Miadogo” which means “we will meet again” I say to the grandma, shaking her frail hand, and she smiles. They all laugh…again shocked and impressed at the very little ewe I speak. From there we walk to the hospital, a cascade of brown and cream dirt buildings. It’s bigger than I imagined. “Do you know where we are going?” Naomi asks. No. I thought we were just going to see it, as it was so close to Gramama. She leads me into a door and says something in ewe to the two tired nurses in the doorway. “The children’s ward,” she says.

I walk into the room. It’s filled with cribs and sleeping relatives hanging on each side, pouring hope into the sleeping sick kids like a tidal wave on each end, a symphony of sadness. I don’t know how they’ll react to me. I’m not a doctor or a nurse. I have no agenda. In fact I was just led here. I don't know why Naomi has done this. I expect them to be angry, that I’ve intruded on such a delicate issue. ‘This is not a tourist attraction’, I expect them to think. ‘This is real life.’ But instead they all smile and say hello. I’m guessing they hope that I can somehow brighten the day for their kids. I walk by each crib, mostly filled with small young children..some heavily emaciated, some sleeping, some staring at me blankly…their eyes deep inside their heads. I ask one of them how he is doing…it is, actually the only real conversation starter I know in Ewe. The little boy, his arms no wider than an inch, answers back to me “ehhh” which essentially means “fine.” His mother smiles. I instantly want to talk to each of them. I want to know why they are sick. What has brought them here? Was it a preventable disease? Malaria? Just basic malnutrition? Something so easily prevented but caused by just a lack of basic knowledge? I want to ask. I want to know their stories. All their stories. But I don’t ask. It seems far too invasive. Not another tourist attraction, I think. Not another place to shove a camera and show the people in America, “this, this is poverty. This is africa.” No, no. It’s not just Africa. It’s half of the world. It’s not just 'poverty'...It’s real life. It’s not far away. It’s not unsolvable. It’s right here. I’m here. Doesn’t that show you something?

We walk away from the hospital, surprisingly hopeful. They seemed hopeful, waiting and wishing beneath the hospital walls adorned with old, dirty paintings of rainbows and smiley faces and the alphabet…something I’m sure another volunteer has done.

When we get back to Naomi’s sister’s house she instructs me to sit down again. I tried to tell her I needed to get back, that it was getting dark. But Naomi was sure I had to eat…again. I watched her sister and a man pound fufu in the back of the house. Fufu is a traditional Ghanaian meal made of pounded cassava and plantain. They pound it with a giant 6 foot mallet until it becomes a dough, then they pick it up in their fingers and dip it in stew. When my fufu is ready, Naomi instructs me to sit down at the one chair she has brought for me and brings me water and a bowl to wash my hands. She pulls a box up in front of me to make a table. “This is africa” she says laughing. Naomi places the bowl of fufu in front of me next to a bowl of hot soup with floating parts of a chicken in it. I take the sticky dough like substance into two of my fingers, dip it into the stew and then to my mouth and pretend to like it. I’ve had fufu before and the taste is hard to describe. Mostly I don’t taste anything. I can only feel the texture. It’s like a mixture of playdough and glue and sand. Not good. Not good at all. I don’t know why they spend hours in the hot sun pounding plantain to make it, but they LOVE IT. I am again instructed to eat “all the meat.” This time I do, although not easily, and Naomi later inspects the bones to make sure they’re clean.

While Naomi is also eating her sister walks up to her and hands her an entire leg of a chicken, foot and all. “Do you eat this?” Naomi asks, 'nonono' I say. “Ah, I love it” she says. Accidentally, Naomi drops the chicken leg in the dirt. The ground is still wet from the rain and is covered in garbage. She picks it back up. “This is Africa,” she says, as she pats it off with her hand, pours some water over it and begins eating at the foot. “In America, we call that 5 second rule,” I say.

She walked me back to my hotel and after standing in my air conditioning corner for a minute, I immediately fell back into the bed and fell asleep.

A successful Easter Sunday? I think yes.

-Kels

"All things splendid have been achieved by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance."

2010-04-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been able to make it to the internet the past couple days because I have had some very busy days and the electricity has been out more. The electricity typically goes out about 3 times a day but mostly it is while it is still light outside so it doesn’t matter. Sometimes though, when it does go out at night, the entire town is quiet and dark…sitting and waiting. Oh, it’s out again.

On Wednesday I went to school and taught as usual. I taught the kids how to use my camera at recess and they walked around posing each other and making funny faces. Isaac said he wanted to take me to Naomi’s after school but I tried to tell him Antionette would take me. “No, I want to take you. I should take you.” I knew if he came he would sit and listen closely to Naomi and I’s coversation, so when the bell rang for lunch I crept quietly out of the school to avoid him and made plans to meet Antionette. At 2 o’clock Antionette came to my hotel (about 30 seconds from school) and we began walking to Naomi’s. She patted my sunburned shoulders (which I’ve neglected to put suscreen on). “You are becoming more like us,” she said. I told her I was trying. The walk was far, deep into the eastern part of hohoe that I had never been. Clearly no ye vu’s ever went over there as they looked at myself and even more so, Antionette curiously. We weaved through the mud huts and shacks for what must’ve been 30 minutes. Finally we reached a small shop and Antionette said Naomi usually hung out there. I waited behind a large bush until Antionette signaled me that she was there. I walked out from the bush and saw Naomi inside, sitting sideways on a chair and not even looking in my direction. “Naomi!” I shouted, and she turned to see me and immediately screamed and ran to hug me. I think one of my favorite parts of this trip has been surprising my Ghanaian friends. She kept hugging me over and over again and instructed us to go to her house. We walked into a small, blue room and sat down. We talked and talked, just catching up. I found out Naomi is pregnant!! I reminded her of the promise she made me to name her first born Kelsey. She laughed and agreed, “I did promise that! But what if it’s a boy?...Casey!” The three of us began talking seriously about Divine Star, about what had brought me back, and how I wanted to help. At first, they were very quiet and I could tell there was a lot they weren’t saying. However, once I began telling them the things I knew of Isaac’s corruption, there was an absolute outpouring of stories. They told me everything, some things I knew and some I didn’t…stories of lies and waining teacher’s salaries and the selling of desperately needed donated school supplies. Most importantly, they told me stories of the children who suffered the consequences, and the men “suffering from symptoms of wickedness” that were behind it. As they told me these things I could hear the doubt in their voices, see the fear in their eyes…I was sure they had never told another yevu this, and they made sure I knew it. They were so fearful that I would say something, that I would slip and somehow hint at the fact that I knew...That they had chosen the wrong yevu to trust. I promised them that nothing would happen. I’m sure that the fact that Naomi no longer worked at the school helped, as Antionette was catching up both of us.

“In Ghana, a teaching job is a sacrifice,” Naomi explained. They get paid 35 cedis a month to teach full time. Three hours of my working at Growing Babies is what they get paid in an entire month. I was furious. I had Antionette’s entire months salary and more in the bag sitting on my lap alone. I was beyond tempted to hand it over to her, but I knew she would take this as disrespectful so I thought…I have to think of some official, orderly way in the future to pay teacher’s salaries. Here I was, sitting on a couch sitting between two regular women, an old friend and a new one and I couldn’t help thinking... Antionette is not covered in beads or lacking of intelligence or ambition. She is not a lost and impoverished “village woman” on the other side of the earth. She’s just a normal woman trying to be a teacher, and she is getting paid 30 dollars a month. One of the main things that needs to happen in the private school system in Ghana is that the teachers need to be paid properly, so that it is a job that people aspire to…not a job that is a sacrifice and only a temporary means of getting through school. Almost none of the teachers in the private schools are educated, trained teachers because the trained teachers go to the public schools where there is an actual curriculum to be followed in the classroom and a better salary. Therefore, one of the most crucial and best ways to help struggling educational systems is not to sponsor a child’s school fees, it is to sponsor a teachers’ salary. This way, you are helping the entire class of children because without a teacher (or an educated teacher) how will they learn? I’m not aware of non-profits that do this, as most American’s I know would better react to the sad eyes of an impoverished child than the tired ones of a Ghanaian teacher. I’m certain though that the first step to improving the Ghanaian educational system should be this.

They also spoke of the volunteers that had come through Divine Star School and Hohoe in general. They talked of hearing constant broken promises to return to Hohoe, to send money, to help in some way, to send pictures…all things that never happened. “I remember Kelsey, when we were having a teacher meeting last summer. Isaac asked you if you could help us, and I remember you said ‘I don’t know. I don’t think that I know how to help you. I can try, but I can’t promise to send money I don’t have,’” exclaimed Antionette. I was surprised that she remembered that, as I did indeed, honestly tell them I didn’t know if I could help. “That was good. That was so good,” agreed them both, “because most people do promise and never see it through, but you were honest. That was good.” Little did they know once returning I did work every day to help them…the image of my tiny classroom nearly bursting at the seams with children and my students’ desperate need for erasers and learning materials keeping me going. But now I had a new task, and with this unbelievably unique and honest perspective I sat dumbfounded, again reminded of the overwhelming feeling that the problem is just too great. Antionette was supposed to go to her second job but a massive storm suddenly hit outside and she sat, barely flinching at the thought that she would be late…”the rain” she shrugged as she continued talking. From time to time they would talk between each other, switching from ewe to English, their voices heated and angry. I so desperately want to learn this complicated, undocumented language (find me a book on it and I’ll pay you 100 dollars), so rich with changing tones and pitches. I’m trying and progressing, very very slowly.

They asked me what Ghanaian food I liked and I told them I liked yam chips, plantain, Ghanaian spaghetti. “Ok, then we will prepare it for Easter on Sunday,” they said smiling. There, instant easter plans. The rain finally stopped and so Antionette left. Naomi and I continued talking about the school, and she gave me whatever tips or advice she had. “You see, I just couldn’t tell you when you were here…you had to figure it out yourself.” I told her I did figure it out but I asked, desperate for a positive answer: “is it like this everywhere? Are there any good intentions by anyone for the children?” she answered, empathetically, “some, they are bad…just looking for money…a lot of them are. But there are some, some that are good. You just have to find them. You have to find people in Ghana you can trust.” I was thankful I have some already, but it would be a constant and long process…as the few that I have took months to distinguish. I am not fearful of corruption in the system, as I’m sure now that there will be almost no way to find a place that isn’t tainted by it in some way…it’s just a matter of finding out how to work around it or in opposition to it, to help in the best way possible.

Despite my telling her I was fine, Naomi insisted on getting me something to drink. She brought me a Malt (a sweet, non-alcoholic beverage) and a packet of crackers. I happily accepted, although knowledgeable of the money she had spent on it. Despite whatever their level of poverty, you will find that Ghanaian hospitality is the same everywhere you go. It is welcoming, unwavering, genuine and constant. I was unbelievably excited to find that I will most likely be in Ghana when her child is born (in August). She told me that a lot of pregnant women drink alcohol, that it is “good for the baby.” I explained that in America it is the absolute opposite, trying my best not to discredit her knowledge. “But in America, everything is in big quantities..if you drink too much and get drunk, it’s bad but a little is good,” she said. Her certainty almost made me doubt all American doctors, almost.

Naomi insisted on walking me all the way back to the hotel, which was very far. I convinced her that I was fine once we got to the main road, but she claimed that she “needed exercise” although I’m certain it was because she wanted to make sure I was safe. Being so late, I obviously had no time to go to the orphanage I had planned on going to. The conversation and insight was alone well worth the time and I decided next week I will spend as much time as I can visiting the various orphanages and schools.

On Thursday I got to school and was again met by crowd of screaming smiling faces. Antionette quickly yelled at them to calm down and get to their desks where they were instructed to “lay heads down and sleep.” Where were there exams? Antionette explained that they had not been printed and so they had nothing to do all day. Thankful that I had returned to Ghana this time prepared with supplies and lessons, I told her I would go back to my hotel and come back with supplies for the days lesson. Isaac walked me to the hotel, curiously asking about my meeting with Naomi. I ran to my room and gathered all of the flash cards I brought for Phonics. About 12 packs of cards. I walked back, this time noticing the hot sun burning my sunscreen free arms and shoulders…I have a very distinct tank top tan. When I got to class I took out the flashcards and they all cheered. We gave each child a flash card and told them to try to learn the words on the card. This worked well except many of them were too excited and needed help figuring out the sounds on the cards, but there was only one of me to help all of them…Antionette sat tiredly at the front of the class. “CH…what is ch? Ccchhh. Chhh for Chhhair” I said pointing to the picture of the chair on the flashcard. I loved watching them trying to help each other but knew they’d had enough of the activity when they started fanning themselves with the cards. Another thing that would greatly increase attention and efficiency in the schools are ceiling fans, as the heat so rapidly drains their energy and ability to learn.

After school I rested, ran errands in town with Godwin (went to the bank and picked up phone cards) and then walked to the CCS house to visit the staff members I hadn’t seen. They too enveloped me in hugs and gave me a couple bottles of water to take with me (ah how I miss the free water). Before I could leave a downpour of rain came and so I sat in the office and played with the project manager, Christine’s new baby Hansel. I left once the rain stopped and once reaching my hotel heard screams of “MADAME KELSEY! MADAME KELSEY!” and was met by running hugs by 7 of my students that had come and had been waiting for me. We went into my room and onto my porch where Juliet claimed “her chair and book” and read and danced and wrote all day. I would say to them “what would you like to do?” and they would answer “Learn! We want to read and learn.” They stayed for hours until finally it was about to get dark and I could tell it was about to rain (myself again becoming the Ghana weather forecaster that all who live here must be, just by looking at the sky). Myself and 10 year old Abigail (Hilda’s daughter) walked each of them home until all that remained was myself, Abigail and Juliet (who lived the furthest). But the rain pounded us again and we just barely made it back to the hotel. I wondered how I would get Juliet home. I don’t know how Ghanaian parents are but I was certain she could not walk alone and that they would wonder where their 7 year old was after dark, or so I would hope. After the rain didn’t stop I called Godwin to pick us up to take her, having to ask the very important question of “can a car drive there?” Very slowly the car wove through the narrow, dirt, uneven roads. Godwin exclaiming that if the car was stuck “you will all get out and walk!” When we finally reached her house, her parents looked at us awestruck…who was that yevu bringing Juliet home? And she held my hand and said goodbye, “etcho miadogo” which means “we will meet again tomorrow” as the car drove away. When I got back the electricity went out, this time at night. I only had the light of my iphone to guide me and I sat in my room waiting, the darkness making me even more tired. I called Godwin to tell him we could not go to the internet, laid back and fell asleep at 8 o’clock.

It’s been interesting to me how quickly and easily I was able to just dive directly back into Ghanaian culture. It seems as if I started off at exactly where I left at the end of that 7 weeks, if you measure by level of comfort. Once getting here I quickly forgot about any and all responsibilities of the US, immediately being sucked into the simplicity and busyness of teaching and talking to people about my plans. The stack of books I have for homework sit on my table untouched. It’s hard to measure the importance of finding a way to establish programs to help the kids and writing a research paper, or a homework assignment, or just a class in general. That is one of the hardest things about adjusting to life back in America, is to go from teaching kids to read and finding ways to improve the system on the long term, to people scaling the importance of a paper or a grade like it’s life or death. At the end of the days, I’m so exhausted that the thought of writing out the journalistic article I have due on Tuesday just seems insane. This weekend with the time off from school I’m hoping to get the bare minimum done.

I feel like this blog is a mess. Regardless, you should all know that I’m making very good progress and NEVER WANT TO LEAVE. Every day Godwin visits me at night to make sure I am “strong” and asks “Kelsey, are you lonely?” Nonononononononononononono I answer. Too busy. Too happy. To consumed. It seems that my future project will center around putting programs into the schools this summer and then making it so that CCS volunteers can continue to do them year round, and in the future…a business to sell a Ghanaian product and non-profit to sponsor teacher’s salaries….as well as much more.

Until next time,

Crazy sunburned yevo

Oh Africa...you silly continent

2010-03-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

I woke up at around 7 this morning after finally being able to sleep a whole night through (thanks to Tylenol PM). However, I was still exhausted. I got ready and walked out for breakfast where I sat in the next hut over from two Ghanaian men. “Hello, you are invited” they said, which I knew was the Ghanaian equivalent to “come sit with us” and it’s not done in a creepy way, everyoneee does it. I thought, hey what the hell, so I sat at their table and introduced myself. This is the great thing about traveling alone, because otherwise I would have probably not done this. Their names were Cusho and Daniele, and we got to talking. Cusho thanked me for sitting with them and asked me what I was doing in Ghana. I told him I was volunteering and researching some new projects and that I had been here before. He asked if I was a trained teacher and I said no, I was just trying to help in whatever way I can.“You see, that is great. That is what we know of Americans. All Americans we meet come here to help, and we love it,” he said. That plunged us into a great and very interesting conversation. “American peace core volunteers taught me mathematics and science when I was a boy. Without them, I would not be who I am today. I still remember their names, and mention them often” said Cusho, as he began naming some Americans in hopes I would hear a name I recognized. “You see I hope that if I keep talking about it, maybe one day in the air they will hear it, and they will know what they did for me.” I said that was great and told him how surprised I was when my kids remembered me so vividly after 8 months. “You see, the only problem in America is that they belittle their actions. They do this great thing and they think it is very small, but it is not. You see, you are helping these kids and they will remember you for the rests of their lives, and they will tell their children...and their children’s children of your kindness. You don’t know but you are affecting thousands of lives.” He asked me to bring my friends from America to Ghana. I told him I was trying. “Some people in America they just don’t know. That’s why they must come here. They have to see it. There is such a need. If only more could come and they would understand how welcome they are, and how there is nothing to fear.” I agreed with him, and we talked more, resulting in my being very glad that I “accepted the invitation.” Just a genuine conversation with a very intelligent Ghanaian business man, no agenda involved.

Even though my stomach was pretty upset I left for school. Because really, my stomach has pretty much been in a constant state of uneasyness. This pissed me off because last summer I couldn’t stop bragging that I had a “stomach of steal.” It is nothing unbearable though. In Ghana, you are pretty much always uncomfortable in some way…heat, exhaustion, sickness. But it doesn’t matter, as the uncomfortable quickly becomes comfortable and there is really in the big scheme of things, absolutely nothing to complain about. When I got to school I was immediately bombarded and surrounded by about 100 children hugging me, it’s become quite the accomplishment not to fall down. They began their math exams which I helped with, but I was feeling more sick than before and weak. I couldn’t imagine making it through the tugging and dancing and crazyness that would be recess, so I reluctantly told Antionette that I had to go rest but that I would be back. I walked back worried I was getting sick. I was annoyed at my body for reacting to the food this way, as it had done the one thing I did not want to do…take me momentarily away from my kids. When I got back to the hotel I stood in front of my air conditioning corner (haha) for about 5 minutes and then fell asleep for a much needed 2 hour nap. I woke up feeling 100% better, had lunched and rushed back to school. We did exams again, I handed out pictures I brought for the teachers (made them insanely excited and appreciative) and played with the younger kids (about 1 ½-2). Juliet said she would come see me in the afternoon. I’m certain the other kids would come too, but a lot of them are sure I am still at the CCS house (white people central) and not at the Geduld. “The rain is coming” said my student Ophilia as we walked away from school, looking up into the dense and billowing gray clouds above us. When I got back to the hotel (literally a 2 minute walk) I was finally able to unbudge the door to my porch and sat out and watched the rain. That similar pounding of rain on the tin roof brought me to an even deeper sense of comfort, and I read and again thought to myself….seriously?

Soon after the rain stopped I saw Juliet running towards the hotel. She stayed for hours. We read, I read to her and she read to me (she’s learning), she practiced writing (“My name is Juliet. My best friend is Kelsey. I am seven years old”) and we painted a little bit. Once it was close to getting dark I walked her home, which inevitably took me directly past the CCS house, so on my way back I stopped to say hello.

The security guard Joe saw me first, “hey!” he shouted from his car. I asked if he remembered me, which I did with all the staff members. They each looked at me like “are you serious? Of course we remember you.” I had met a CCS volunteer at the internet and she actually talked to me (was honest about her thoughts of ‘who is that girl and why is she not with ccs?’). She was very nice and introduced me to the other volunteers, about 5 of them. I asked what other staff members were around. They told me Jane and John were in the kitchen, who were CONSTANTLY around last summer so we were obviously very close. Those in CCS will understand. I crept into the house (which btw CCS people: exactly the same, and the quote posters are still up including “If you say it I’ll believe it, if you text it I’ll delete it”). I walked up towards the kitchen and stood in the doorway, Jane and John had their backs to me. Jane glanced back and looked forward, then did an immediate double take and SCREAMED with excitement. “KELSEY!! OH MY GOD! KELSEYYYY!!!!!!” she was unbelievably happy and excited. She immediately picked me up in her arms and spun me around while still screaming “KELSEY KELSEY KELSEY I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!” John gave me a hug too. I was laughing hysterically, so happy to see them, so happy to be so loved and so welcomed on the other side of the world again. They asked me all about how I was doing, where I was staying, how long I had been there. They both said they would come to the Geduld so they could “talk my ear off.”

I talked more with the volunteers, who I think were still very curious/weirded out as to why I was there. “Is that a Ghanaian symbol tattooed on your wrist” they asked. “Um, yes, I love Ghana…I’m all about it…don’t judge me.” I laughed. You’ll understand when you leave, I said. When I was leaving Dela (old driver/staff member) was driving up in a van (which btw CCS people, does apparently actually exist now) and he shouted at me and shook my hand. He was also very excited and told me he would be coming to see me as well. I said goodbye, despite almost being force fed by Jane, but I had already told Hilda I would have dinner there. I walked away laughing, happy to have seen my old friends again and had dinner at the hotel. There were still some staff members I didn’t see (Alpha, Christine, Rebecca & Berta) so I will be going back to the house again and it is possible I will see the volunteers again. If I was staying for longer than two weeks I’m sure I would make more of an effort to make yevu friends but for now it doesn’t feel very necessary.

Right as I was walking up to the house Godwin was pulling up. I said hello and asked him what he was doing. “I came to see you. I haven’t talked to you all day so I wanted to make sure you are strong and good.” Those of you worried about my safety, don’t be…I am being very carefully watched and guarded by so many amazing people here.

One thing I neglected to tell you yesterday was that I had a very long talk with Isaac about my plans for the summer. I immediately told him that he would be seeing no money from me, that what I wanted to do would not take money but only time. He was very excited and interested in all of my ideas. I asked him to investigate the proper resources needed to start a garden for the school, including seeds, soil, etc. He said he would. He also said I could use whatever classrooms I wanted after school hours to hold an after school reading program and that “no matter what, the kids will come.” He kept saying “you see, this is why we should do business together” insinuating that I should become a money collector in America for his “charity.” I told him of American people’s doubts and mistrust in international charities, rightfully so, and told him that if he wanted to work internationally he needed to truly establish himself and actually put the money toward the cause..that he would be required to show tax receipts, ect. I told him I would not be getting money for him, but that I would try my best to help the students and the school more efficiently, and possibly be able to sustain itself better. “You see, this is why I like you…because whatever is in your heart, you speak it,” he said.

I also neglected to mention the fact that when I came back to the school for the second time yesterday, the kids all just had their heads on their desks sleeping. I also mentioned in my original blog how by the time I was leaving Naomi (the old teacher) would split the class into groups and Juliet (then age 6) would be teacher for the other class. Juliet has now officially become the substitute teacher. Anytime Antionette walks out of class Juliet stands up and yells at them to be quiet, and those who talk she will say “you! Get out!” And they listen to her!! They are literally afraid of this adorable, brilliant little now 7 year old girl. It is absolutely hilarious. Antionette is an entirely different kind of teacher than Naomi…The times when Naomi was in the classroom (rare) the cane never left her hand. Antionette does not even keep a cane in the classroom and although she threatens them, she doesn’t use it. “Ello children” “elloo madamee” she says to get their attention, similar to how I would say “STAND UP! SIT DOWN! STAAAANNND----SIT DOWN. HANDS OVER YOUR EYES. HANDS OVER YOUR EARS. FINGERS UP…fingers to your lipsss..shhh” when I taught last summer. It worked as a type of game that would almost always work to get everyone of them to listen. I’m certain if I had worked with Antionette that my experience last summer would have been entirely different, but I am glad I had that experience because it really opened my eyes to the shortcomings of this very very strange and struggling educational system. Tomorrow Antionette is taking me to Naomi’s house where I will surprise her, because although she was a horrible teacher, she was one of my closest Ghanaian friends while I was here.

On Thursday I am going to visit an orphanage to talk to them about my ideas for summer, and on Friday I am hoping to visit the village where the bead factory is so I can buy hundreds and hundreds of cedi beads to sell back in US. It’s about 9:30 here so time for bed.

"Madame Kelsey!!? Look! It's Madame Kelsey!!"

2010-03-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

I landed in Accra, Ghana at midnight, almost 3 hours later than I was supposed to. The delay had worried me that poor Godwin would be waiting too long and/or would think my flight was canceled. I wasn’t able to get a hold of him but texted my friend Rachel (also a previous volunteer) and told her that if he called worried to please give him the information. Luckily he did just that and he stood waiting anxiously for me to arrive outside the airport for 4 hours! As I walked off the plane I was met with that familiar feeling; the smoldering and sticky heat surrounding me. Godwin was thrilled. “I have heard your voice, but now I see your face again and it makes me happy.” And we drove through the darkness and everything was still so much the same. The air still smelled of burning garbage. The same hilarious gospel music blasted from the radio. The sound of the shuffling in the bush and the glow of the lightning bugs, all still the same. Godwin swerved familiarly around potholes and chickens and goats. We talked about what had brought me back, my ideas, and Godwin tried to convince me that I did happen to be a fluent ewe speaker. Meanwhile I tried to convince Godwin that knowing only 10 words/phrases of ewe, the most commonly spoken being “I love goats”, did not qualify me as a fluent speaker.

After over 30 hours of straight traveling, I arrived in Hohoe at 4am Sunday. The guard at my hotel pulled open the gate and Godwin helped me carry my two very heavy bags (one was only books and school supplies) up to the room. The room is decently sized, with a really big bed (typical of Ghana), my own porch (the door is actually jammed to get out there…but it looks nice haha) and bathroom. It’s decorated with tacky curtains, fake flowers, a TV that doesn’t work, and of course: the holy bible. Supposedly I have an air conditioner, but I’m pretty sure it is just a metal box in the wall that just blows lukewarm air into one corner of the room….and that’s if the electricity isn’t out. A regular fan would be more effective. And I absolutely love it. It is so Ghana. Once Godwin left, promising to see me the next day, I sat back in my very big bed and I was not scared, but very aware of my vulnerability as a lone, child-sized little yevu (white person) woman in Africa. I half assed set up my mosquito net and tucked it around the bed. It was now 5am so I tried to sleep. I forgot it is nearly impossible to sleep in in Ghana, as I quickly woke to the loud singing and drumming of the church next door. I didn’t want to waste my first day in Ghana sleeping, so I finally got up at noon and got ready. Well shit…I’m in Ghana, what now? I walked outside and a large, enthusiastic Ghanaian woman came to me, “hellooo!!! You are welcome!” as she gave me a big bear hug. “You arrive so late last night, so we didn’t want to wake you. You want breakfast? Watchyu want?” This woman was Hilda, the hotel owner and I was overjoyed by her kindness. I sat under a little hut with a grass roof and ate an omelet, banana, and pineapple and I watched the lizards around me dance. I couldn’t stop smiling. This is my spring break? Seriously?

I walked into town, which seemed quieter than usual. It wasn’t lonely though, just very peaceful. I was greeted constantly, “you arrive today” they would ask, knowing they had not seen me around. “Can I get your information so we can be friends?” Oh Ghana and it’s overly outgoing men (who are most likely just trying to marry me so they can get a visa). The children waved at me “ye vu! Ye vu!” ah, it was good to hear that again. I was walking towards the center of town and suddenly I heard “Madame Kelsey?!! Madame Kelsey!!!” I looked across the road and thought, ‘no fucking way.’ I immediately ran across the road and approached the group calling my name. One of them was one of my students, Ophilia, the other 4 were older Divine Star students. I couldn’t believe it…The fact that they could recognize me from across the road and just the fact that they remembered me in general. It was literally as if they had been looking for me this past 8 months and I just appeared. Ophilia called over to a boy on a bike “Winfred! Come look! It’s Madame Kelsey!” and over came Winfred, another one of my students. He smiled and hid shyly behind his friend. I told them I would see them tomorrow and said goodbye, and I just couldn’t believe it. It was like I had only been gone for a weekend and…I just couldn’t believe it.

This brought me to an interesting realization. When I left the first time, I was haunted by guilt and sadness. As I hugged them each one last time and listened to their symphony of tears and cries, it felt like…ok guys, thanks for the great pictures. I’m sorry but I have to go back to America now so I’ll probably see you…never again? It wasn’t fair. Why did I get to go back to America and they didn’t. Why did I have to leave them all behind? It was just wrong, in so many ways. And I know I shouldn’t have but I promised Juliet and Grace I would be back. I couldn’t imagine my life not coming back. But still, how would I come back? I had no money, college and a job. You see, to ease the guilt as a volunteer, you tell yourself that they will move on and forget you, that they will see more passing volunteers and that you helped them as best you could while you could. You tell yourself that they will grow up and that although they would always be permanent fixtures in your mind, you would be just another blurr of white skin and silly songs. In reality though, as far as I can tell, no matter how many volunteers pass through or how much time, they are always waiting, hoping that somehow you will find your way back like you promised. So maybe it is not as we thought. Maybe we are just as important parts of their lives as they were to us. And even though the distance and the odds would continue to grow, maybe we would always be connected. It is both sad and amazing at the same time. Because life happens, and so many volunteers can never and will never make it back, but keep it in mind that although sad, that memory proves something…we were a part of their lives, and that means we did something important…something very very important.

I came back to the hotel (The Geduld) and could finally feel my 30 hours of traveling and weird time change catching up with me. I took a nap and woke up for dinner, chicken and fried rice made by Hilda. I sat and ate beneath the same hut with only one small candle, virtually in the dark..again, so Ghana. I had Godwin pick me up and he took me to the internet café in town. I ended up having to sit next to the only other white person I had seen since my being here, obviously a volunteer with CCS (the organization I came with last summer). I’ll admit it was pretty awkward…she looked at me like, ‘who the hell are you and why are you not with ccs?’ and I looked at her like ‘hey you’re white, we should be friends?’ haha, Oh well, maybe better luck next time. That’s when I posted the blog I wrote in the airport. Once returning I scrubbed my dirty dirty feet, tucked my mosquito net around the bed and fell asleep.

I woke up at 3am entirely covered in sweat and needing to drink about a gallon of water. My good friend Hilary would call this “sweating the bed”…it happens a lot here. I'm basically in a constant state of shine. Unable to quiet my mind, imagining what the morning would entail (the first time seeing my kids again), I tossed and turned until I got up to get ready at 7.

I walked to Divine Star school slowly, a frenzied ball of nerves. I just didn’t know what would happen. Isaac (the headmaster) knew I was coming, but it had been 8 months…8 long months without even being able to talk to any of my kids. Isaac approached me “heyyyy!” he said with his creepy grin. I was thankful he didn’t try to hug me (read last summer’s blog to understand) but he did flick my cheek, his old weird creepy way of saying hello. He led me behind the building and walked me into a classroom I was familiar with but was different than my old one. This classroom is really a long, thin hallway functioning as a classroom. My kids were now in the next grade up (they graduated kindergarten right when I left).

“Here is your class” I walked in the room and passed the widest smiles I’ve ever seen. They were shocked, thrilled. I walked up to the front of the class where Juliet and Grace were sitting. And I was overwhelmed. Absolutely overwhelmed. I could feel my body shaking. It took everything in me not to burst into hysterical tears. I had to touch my chest to make sure I was still breathing. To see all of them in one room, just like that. They all stood at once and said "You are weelcome to ourr cwlass" the same words I had heard on that first day I came to divine star 10 months ago. “Do you know this girl?” Isaac asked. “YES!!!” they screamed, “what is her name?” he asked, “MADAME KELSEY! MADAME KELSEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” He pointed to different children, asking if I knew their names. Many of them I did, I knew all their faces…but I couldn’t manage to name all 40 kids in the classroom that I had spent the previous summer painstakingly memorizing. I looked around the room, landing on each of their beaming smiles, and I was so unbelievably happy. This moment, in itself, was alone worth the $1,500 dollar plane ticket.

They were having exams and this morning was reading. I was absolutely thrilled to see them attempting to read 3 letter words, when the last I saw them many of them did not know more than two letters of the alphabet. Their teacher, who I also knew from before, Antionette, is clearly a much better and dedicated teacher than Naomi (who has quit teaching). She passed out workbooks and called on many of them asking to read certain words and spell certain words. Then she told them to read by themselves as she entered their grades. I worked with them on reading all day, they swarmed me with their workbooks asking what a picture was, what a word was. “What is that?” “-a ball” ok, spell ball, sound it out baa—aaaaall. It was exactly what I wanted to be doing, more than anything in the world. “Madame Kelsey, I love you” said Grace midway through the day. Ah. Paradise.

When the bell rang for recess I was immediately tackled by all of them at once, every inch of my arms had a hand on it as we walked out of the classroom. We played and danced and sang “shakee shakee shake yo body” (shout out @CCS’ers). I didn’t need anyone else. I didn’t need any other volunteers. I was so far from lonely. This was enough. So much more than enough.

I left at lunch to come back to eat at the hotel, but Hilda had just left for the market to buy me food, thinking I wouldn’t be back for some time. I waited a bit but had promised the kids and Antionette (the teacher) I would come back. I quieted my growling stomach with some granola bars, practically fighting off the returned Hilda to get out the door “no! you must eat! This is why you are so slim! You must eat!!!” and I headed back. I asked Isaac to take me to the site of the new school, where there are now 3 functioning classrooms. He gave me his same old speech, crediting my students’ misknowledge to “the public schools” and stated that he just “wanted to help the children grow up and not be in famine like their parents.” I listened to his lies and shook them off like a grain of salt, now knowledgeable of his continual corruption in the school. When I got back we sang some more and then school was out. Some of my kids wanted to come to my house after with me but I was sad to tell them I had to go to the market. I want to spend every second of available time with them, but I knew it would have to wait until tomorrow. Plus I was running on 4 ½ hours of sleep and teaching for 5 hours in the blistering heat takes that much more out of you, so I was seriously seriously exhausted.

After walking back, I sat down and rested my already aching body for only a couple minutes. Godwin picked me up to go to the market. He is entirely like an old friend, making fun of my attempts to speak ewe but constantly telling me that he is here for me, if anyone causes trouble, he will stop them he says. “You are not here to be proposed marriage. You are here to help us, so you tell me if you are bothered.” Preach it brotha. I’ll admit that as I weaved through the thatched stalls at the market, the only yevu in a massive crowd, I felt pretty bad ass. I didn’t buy much, just one yard of fabric for a bag.

I really need to start writing these things like twice a day, it’s just too much. I’m obviously not going to be giving THIS much detail in all blogs, it just felt necessary having just got here. Anyways, loving it here. I may never come back…no seriously.

Kels

LAX-->LONDON-->ACCRA--> (home)

2010-03-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

I’m currently sitting in the London airport, half way between California and Accra and needing some means of killing time, so I decided I should write the first blog of this trip. I intended to write this before leaving for my 2 week trip to Ghana, but of course the time flew and before I knew it I was on a plane. It’s hard for me to read the last blog and try and think of some means of filling in the empty spaces of the last 8 months since that last entry…and how those 8 months have led me here: flying to Ghana, by myself, again.

Whenever I would tell people I was spending my spring break and an extra week in Ghana, West Africa they were mostly shocked. They looked at me like I must be THAT girl; that girl that takes off and goes around the world on a whim, an adrenaline junky. I am fully aware that the majority of my family and friends think I’m entirely crazy…like I caught this Ghana virus and no matter what happens it just won’t seem to go away. Like I’ve become this person so blinded by my ambition to help my kids that I’m making choices that are impulsive and “driven by my emotions.” I will try my best to show you that in this situation, that is not, by any means the case. Everything that I do is very very calculated. I do not by any means want to put myself in a situation where I’m in danger or can be hurt. I have thought this trip through thoroughly and have been waiting 8 months to do it, and of course there is risk involved…as is with anything that you do in life, but I am aware of the precautions to take and of the area. And I will tell you without a shadow of doubt that I will be much safer than you assume. As I stood waiting for my first flight and continue to wait for my second, I kept waiting for the nerves or the fear to set in. They never came. All I feel is this unbelievably quiet sense of calm. Upon my leaving I wasn’t running through my mind with what I might have forgotten or worrying about flying so far alone, or even being there alone….because none of that mattered, I’m going home.

The response to this blog during my trip last summer was incredible. It shocked me how many individuals, often almost strangers, would read and follow it and email me. I applaud you for that…for trying to understand a world so entirely different than our own. But I will admit that although I wrote to update and share my life changing adventure with you all, I mostly wrote for myself. And in the days that my heart ached for Ghana since I returned I turned to this blog and it became a safe haven for me, a means of escape. And so I will say again that I will write this blog in the most detailed and honest way that I can…often times that means long long entries and my rambling about sharpening pencils or cold showers or the heat…but hey, you take what you can get. I’m going to attempt to fill you in on what has led me here.

These past 8 months, I missed my kids and Ghana more than anything I had ever missed before. It was an aching that I could feel deep down into my bones. As the time passed and the days of normalcy in America forged on and on, it began to feel like I had dreamed it all…like none of it actually happened. Even as the days turned into weeks and eventually into months and before I knew it, 8 months had passed and my life had returned to just as normal as it was before…However, If I closed my eyes tight enough I could still feel the stiffness of the mattress on my bunk bed, the sun’s bright rays tingling my face and the tediousness of tucking my mosquito net inch by inch around the mattress. I could still feel the sense of urgency as the kids fought to hold my hand, the way the blisters hurt on my hands from sharpening too many pencils, the way the sweat and humidity covered every inch of my body. If I tried hard enough, really really hard…I could still hear the crunch of the rocky dirt road under my flipflops, the echoes of my students’ songs in my mind, their words and smiles swallowing me whole.

And throughout that time I was involved in an organization. And I know that a lot of you are wondering what happened with Sankofa. I know that many of you have sought out this blog with hopes of getting answers, I wish I could give them to you. But in many ways, I was still trying to figure it out myself up until just recently. It was like those moments…where you get in your car to drive to work and suddenly you blink and you’re already there. You don’t remember taking the turns or stopping at the red lights. Suddenly you’re just at this destination and you’re trying to figure out how the hell you got there. It was like that. I was just going through the motions, and suddenly I realized I was in a place I didn’t want to be. And then it was about rerouting myself. That starts with this trip.

As challenging as it was to go through the experience I had with Sankofa, I certainly learned A LOT. I dedicated myself entirely to the project, any spare moment I had spent reading textbooks on fundraising, non-profit management, and strategic planning…meetings with individuals, organizations, writing fundraising letters…essentially, I would talk to anyone that was willing to listen. This turned out to be a lot of people. In doing so, I was able to meet some incredible people that were truly invested in being a part of something good. I learned about creating a website, working in a board, and even more so…how I would do it differently. I was kept up late at night writing down ideas and programs and projects in what became several new business plans throughout that time…never being able to quiet my racing mind. Because throughout the time I spent telling people about the school we would build for about 100 kids in Hohoe, I couldn’t shake this nagging thought in my mind…what about the rest of the kids? What about the kids at Divine Star that are fighting for pencils and getting caught on rusty nails sticking out of their desks…if they have desks. How would this school help them? I knew from the beginning that a new school was not the project I wanted to do…And although it is a noble cause and a project that can obviously be needed and welcomed in the Hohoe community…I saw a greater need, a more specific project, one that could help more on the long term and reach more kids. This is what I am going to research now. I want to help the pre-existing schools, the ones that are falling apart, the ones that function more as daycares than educational facilities. I want to help them by putting innovative programs into the curriculum. Things like gardening (make a garden and teach the kids how to grow vegetables and then sell them in town for a profit), after school reading, girls empowerment, aids/hiv/preventable disease awareness…all things virtually unheard of in this community. Programs like these also take almost no funding and only require the time and willingness by the schools themselves. The only real time I would have would be in the summer but there is virtually no communication and so it was necessary to come back and talk to the school directors, as well as visit my kids, before I start planning these pilot programs and then come back in summer to actually put them into some schools. My trusted friend Godwin is picking me up from the airport when I arrive and taking me to my hotel in Hohoe, a four-hour drive from the capital. And I know it looks like I’m doing this reckless thing, going on a trip to Ghana by myself. Because well, in all honesty I am going by myself. There is no organization waiting for me, no fellow volunteers to share my tumultuous teaching days with. But that is OK. I will say it again, that is OK. I came last summer looking for a life changing experience and that is exactly what I found. I left for Ghana in May comforted by the fact that I would be surrounded by other volunteers and an organization that would be forced to guide me in some way. This trip, I am not in need of a life changing experience (already had it) or guidance within the community. I came this time comforted by the fact that I had Ghanaian friends that would have my back, children that I loved and a mission, a purpose for this 2 week adventure. But I will say it again, I know you think I’m crazy…but I feel more sane than ever before. I’ve found something that I’m so passionate about that I’m ok with it defining me. Even if that passion takes me half way across the world by myself.

Until next time,

Kels

"The greater part of happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances."

2009-08-09T15:34:00.000-07:00

I’ve avoided writing this for some time…this final blog entry. I guess because I know it’s because this is the moment where I’m supposed to summarize what was undoubtedly the greatest two months of my life. I’m supposed to come up with some final thought right? I’ll be honest though – I can’t do that. In fact I’m so far from doing that, that I’ve kept a safe and comfortable distance from the daunting letters on my keyboard since two weeks before I even left. I will say one thing- it was not easy to leave. I was in no way ready. I don’t know how anyone could ever be ready to leave a place like that. I know it seems just like it was a trip….just like a different type of vacation and I was supposed to be ready and excited to come home after being gone for two months. I was supposed to be dying for hot showers and air conditioning and civilization…I was supposed to come home and let it become exactly what it was – an amazing experience, a part of my past. But then I realize that I’m not quite ready to let go and let it become that- to let it be over…and then I realize that I go to bed every night still hoping, still desperately believing that there’s some way that I’ll wake up the next morning enclosed safely inside my mosquito net, next to the sky blue walls of my bedroom in Ghana. And I’ll get up and I’ll pull one corner of the mosquito net out from the mattress and squeeze my body through it and jump down from the top bunk, landing perfectly onto my flip flops because the floor is so so dirty…and I’ll brush my teeth and throw my hair back and bobby pin it and eat pouragde and pineapple and nascafe, and then I’ll pack my northface backpack full of the usual things…crayons and pencils and paper and the nursery book of rhymes and I’ll head out the door and walk to school, careful not to step in to the deep puddles that cover the newly rained on red road…and still pulling my feet out of the damp dirt road, step my step, as it sticks and sends mud splashing up with my every move…and then I’ll walk up to school…and I’ll see my kids, hanging on the metal bars of the window from inside the classroom…and they’ll chant my name “KELSEY KELSEY KELSEY” like they always do as they run towards me—full speed and ambush me with hugs. So many hugs and so many big smiles that I almost fall over countless times because of the weight and lack of balance. And I am so needed and loved. And every day has a purpose that much more significant than the one before. And I am happy and things are simple and none of the other bullshit matters. Things like reality tv and appearance or status or clothes or makeup or so many things that really don’t matter…they just don’t matter. There are so many things so much bigger than that.

But then I wake up and I’m here. I’m here and I feel like I should be excited and appreciative and move on…but really I feel like I’m trapped—kidnapped. Like I was taken from this magical place to...well…hell. And I know that’s dramatic and I hate to sound dramatic or ungrateful and it’s not that I’m not happy to see my friends and family because I am…it’s just that I wasn’t finished…but I know that it was my time to leave…my kids were graduating kindergarten this week anyways and all of my friends would be gone too and it was the right time to leave—I just miss it. The sadness comes in waves. And I’ll be perfectly fine and happy, and I’ll start to think to myself “wow I can go back to normal” and then someone will say “well, I’m sure you had a great experience” using all of those past tense verbs which I hate, or I’ll glance at my leg and realize that most of my mosquito bites are healing and don’t itch anymore…and then it hits me again like a ton of bricks, and I’m clenching my teeth and I’m trying to think of other things because come on, Kelsey...you can’t cry for no reason in a public place…but I’m good at hiding it. I’m good at pretending I’m back to normal. Although I have realized that I’m an emotional cutter. In saying this I mean that I seem to enjoy torturing myself emotionally and I do this by going through my pictures, one by one. But I guess I can and should explain to you my last couple of weeks in Ghana.

School went on as usual, crazy and stressful and amazing. After missing a day of placement, I was unbelievably happy to be back and be greeted by their running and smiling faces. I had only missed a day and I was so missed and so needed. I was certain that Naomi had taught them absolutely nothing that day I was gone. Because it was nearing the end of their term, I helped Naomi write their exams (exams for kindergarteners, yes) and brought them home to type. Because it was nearing the end, Naomi basically assumed they were done learning and barely even needed to review for tests. I spent time doing the normal lessons, but also some review for the next weeks’ exams. And before I knew it the weekend was here again, and I was packing my backpack full of a couple pairs of shorts, some tank tops and water bottles, and getting ready for our last trip to Accra. Our amazing Hilary was leaving us and so we could hitch a free ride too Accra with her. It was really strange when our friends would leave. Especially the close friends whom had become such a huge part of my daily life in Ghana, especially like Hilary had. But I suppose that even though so many had come and gone in my time there, their ghosts were still there in a way. It could always seem like they were just out at the market buying fabric or going into town. It never seemed like they were gone forever, even though they were.

The main reason we had decided to go to Accra was because Obama was coming. How random and lucky was that? The fact that the president of America just up and decided that his first visit as president to Africa would be to Ghana and it would happen to be when I was there volunteering. We didn’t know how or if we would see him, we just went. There was five us, all veteran “old” volunteers who went. We planned on all crashing in the same hotel room somehow, and since we had been squishing four in a bed every weekend anyways, we figured it’d be fine. Oops. The room and bed ended up being too small and we had to split into two different rooms. Out of pure luck one of the other volunteers’ fathers worked for the justice department and had a connection in the white house, and our friend ended up getting us tickets to see Obama at his farewell ceremony!! This was not open to the public so we were insanely lucky. We had to go and pick them up from the man who was staying at the same hotel as the president and would you like to know what hotel President Obama stayed at in Ghana? The holiday Inn. I’m fully serious. I guess there aren’t many options when it comes to Ghana, but I will say that it was definitely the nicest holiday inn I’d ever seen.

Ghana was Obama CRAZY. The entire country was reeling over it. They all had “Obama in Ghana” shirts and big billboards lined the streets of Accra with Obama’s face on it, welcoming him. We waited in line for hours and were finally let through the intense security along with all of the Peace Core volunteers that had been given tickets to be there. We were incredibly close to the stage. Unbelievably close, about 70 feet I’d say. And we stood there for a couple hours, waiting. I befriended the ghanain police man standing in front of me (his name was Kubo). But anyways, I befriended him so he would let me step on the divider to see over the crowd. Being short sucks in situations like this, but he actually did end up letting me stand on it. And we stood there and watched as Obama walked onto the stage with the president of Ghana. We watched a moment in history. He spoke about the progression of Africa, about inspiring change and making change happen and stopping preventable diseases like polio and typhoid. He talked about how this future was dependent on the Africans themselves, but how America would be there with them every step of the way. It was surreal, but then again so was much of the last two months of my life. His speech was short, and he walked onto the ground and shook the peace core volunteers hands (we were so close, but not close enough!) and we watched him walk up the steps of Air Force One, hand in hand with Michelle Obama, and we watched them fly away into the dark African night sky. I will say though that the president of Ghana did get about 4 feet from me when he was leaving. Oh hell yeah. We went to dinner and then went to sleep soon after, being the exhausted grandma like volunteers that we were.

The next day we slept in (so nice), had lunch and packed our bags. We said our goodbyes and dropped Hilary off at the airport, certain this would not be the last time we would see her. And then it was just cassie and I. We were the last two left from our May 30^th starting group. We took our last tro tro from accra to hohoe, always happy to come home to our little village. An entirely new group of volunteers had moved into the house, except into our room of course. And then it was my last week, and I could see the time passing. I could feel my life in Ghana slipping out from under my feet. But I could do nothing to change it. The days were still so long, the empty space filled with those quiet, comfortable afternoons spent reading or sleeping on bamboo couches. And there were so many things I wanted to do with my school. I wanted to paint the walls and hang up posters. I wanted to leave something as evidence that I had been there. I wanted the school to be beautiful. I didn’t have enough time. But I realized quickly that there were miles of evidence that I had been there, in my kids. I can’t tell you how much they learned or how well I taught them. I can’t tell you that I walked in that school and left it a new and better place, but I can tell you that Rosaline, the little girl from togo who spoke not one word of English, could not hold a pencil, had virtually no education and was so shy she would never speak or smile at me or the other children…I can tell you that by the time I left she would never stop smiling, that she could write A and B and S and W and could draw a sun and was no longer afraid to hold a pencil, and she could say “My name is Rosaline” and laugh and make funny faces and count from one to ten with her fingers. I can tell you that Naomi was now splitting the class into groups, even though Juliet (who is 6) would be teacher for the other group, but that’s ok because she was a better teacher than Naomi anyways. And I did change that place, which was what was so amazing, even though it was in the smallest of matters. But my kids were happy, they were so happy. And I made them smile and laugh and I wiped their tears away and I was someone over there. Someone doing something important.

I wish that I could tell you that I spent my last couple days teaching them anything and everything. I wish I could tell you that I spent every moment, every breath I had shoving the desperately needed information into their minds. I wish I could. And it’s not that I didn’t want to and it’s not that I didn’t care. Because they did need it. They needed to know so much, so so much more. I just couldn’t do it anymore. My body was sick and tired and worn, my mind was busy trying to accept that it was over, and I was emotionally broken. Broken and curious and full of all of the love that they had given me. I knew coming in to this that I would fall in love with them, but I don’t think that I knew or expected how much love I would get in return. They loved me more than I could ever explain, more love than I have ever known. I looked into their eyes and hoped one day, somehow I would become the person they saw me as. It is something I will work towards every moment, and maybe some day.

Another reason that I did not spend my last couple days specifically teaching lessons was because they were supposed to be having exams. We were supposed to walk them through their exams, one by one (because they couldn’t read obviously) but Isaac, the headmaster, aka my future husband, kept failing to print them out. So mostly in those last days I spent time playing with them, hugging them, singing with them. They loved it when I sang to them. They’d all crowd around me and tell me to sing again, again, again.

A couple days before leaving I brought a couple of friends after lunch to see divine star. They had heard so much about it and wanted to have babies wrapped on their backs before leaving, and I knew of course they would do it at divine star. Because it was what I was used to, I thought it was normal. I thought my class size was normal and my kids singing and jumping all over the desks and the magic that was that place was normal, but upon walking up to my school and into my class, as my students burst into song and dance I looked over at my friends faces and they were shocked. Silent. Cameras in hand, filming in awe. Wait, maybe this isn’t normal? Maybe this is so so much better than normal, even in Ghana. They strapped babies on their back and we laughed and thanked them and as we walked away my friend Cassie turned to me and said to me “yeah, you have to help them.”

We were leaving on Friday. Luckily cassie and I had the same flight straight to new york and we were going to leave the home base at 3am to catch our flight at 10am. The Wednesday before, my second to last day in Ghana, after teaching we had our friend Godwin, who had become our normal taxi driver when we were too lazy to walk around every where, who had become a good friend there, drove us around town where we bought juice boxes for our classes and lollipops. We picked up the last stuff we were having made at Beatrice’s, our usual seamstress. I had just had a lot of small bags made out of extra fabric I had. In total I had 2 large bags, about 10 smaller bags, and two dresses made. Godwin dropped us off and I still had some errands to run, so I walked back in to town on my own. It was a beautiful day. And I stopped and took pictures and made friends with a man selling paintings, not even minding the hot African sun beating down on me. I wanted to take everything in; the sounds, the smells, the world that I had come to know so well in the past two months. I went to the jewelry shop where we went frequently. This man would hand make pendants for necklaces of ghanain symbols. He would also make bracelets, earings, etc. All hand made in silver. I had already bought many necklace pendants. I wore the two I bought for myself around a black rubber string I had found. One of the symbols means “strength and humility” and another means “wisdom and creativity in the complexity of life.” I love them. I was having him make me a bracelet. It has 4 symbols on it and is very delicate and small. The four symbols I chose are the two I just described, another symbol which means “there is a need for humility and service” and the last being africa. I love that bracelet and my necklace more than any diamond or gold I’ve ever owned. It is by far my favorite souveniere. I took my time walking home, admiring one of my last African sunsets and stopping to buy a can of coke on the way. And I woke up Thursday morning just like any other morning, to the sound of the oscillating fan, enclosed safely within my mosquito net next to the sky blue walls of my bedroom. I took my last cold shower. I ate my last breakfast of egg and pineapple and instant coffee. I packed my bag full of the usual things, crayons and pencils and paper and my book of nursery rhymes and songs for the last time. And I left to teach, for the last time. The only difference about today is that because I had such a big box of stuff to carry (so many juice boxes, lollipops and chocolate) I couldn’t walk there and had to be driven.

And for the last time they chanted my name as I approached and swarmed me and hugged me. I spent the day just playing with them. Juliet and grace were crying the entire day, don’t leave don’t leave, they begged me. I didn’t know what to tell them. I didn’t want to leave. They rotated between the two of them sitting on my lap as their tears fell slowly, this being the first time I had ever seen the two of them so quiet. I pulled out the bag of about 200 pencils that I had bought them from the market, and they cheered and smiled and thanked me so, so much. And I wanted to cry. It’s pencils. Freaking pencils. We spent the day drawing and coloring, drinking juice boxes, eating candy and lollipops and laughing. Aside from the lack of a lesson plan, it was not too different from any other day. I exchanged contact information with Naomi and Isaac. They gave me a bright pink kente cloth, which is a type of hand woven fabric that is very significant and expensive in Ghana. It says “Proud I toured Ghana” which was a little awkward because I guess I toured Ghana? Isaac (future husband, keep up people) told me how much he would miss me, his wife, and that I needed to send him a large portrait of myself so he could hang it in his office to show people his wife. We took pictures with my class. I took pictures of the other teachers, the school. And then the time had come, to say goodbye. I was impressed at how well I was doing. All of my class lined up single file, a symphony of tears and cries. And I bent down onto my knees and I hugged every one of them, one after the other, and said goodbye. I hugged Juliet and told her I loved her, her eyes distant, quiet and glazed. I leaned down and told her she could be anything, anything in the world. I told her to never let anyone think different. I don’t know if she understood me, but something tells me she did. Rosaline was last. I told her I loved her in ewe, and she hugged me a long, long time. And it was time to walk away. I had to stop to breathe, but I was doing pretty good, no tears. I was impressed with myself. Naomi, Isaac and Juliet and grace decided to walk me home. Isaac told me we would continue our romance online, Naomi told me I was her best friend. I will say that despite her lacking teaching ability, Naomi and I had become good friends. They said they would miss me. They thanked me for my contribution to the school, for my work. Juliet and grace were quiet. We got to the house and I hugged them all one last time. They turned back and as they walked away, I told them that I loved them and grace turned, nodded her head at me and smiled. We love you too, they said. I had held it together until that point. But then it hit me…an overwhelming type of sadnes. It was the type of sadness that swallows you whole, that shows no possibility of ever letting you go…The type of sadness that grows up from your knees and into the back of your throat. I stumbled into our room, thankful nobody was around. The tears came fast and hard. I lowered myself onto the lower bunk, hilary’s old bed. I can’t believe it’s over. I can’t believe I might never see them again. I can’t believe it’s over. Breathe. Just breathe.

I recooporated quickly, but only upon the basis that I maintain a steady sense of denial. I just had to push it out of my mind. This day, this moment, saying goodbye, was easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I ate lunch, I packed. I donated a lot of my clothes to an orphanage, my bag being significantly emptier leaving than when I came. The day passed like any other, the emptiness being filled by those comfortable hours reading or sleeping on those bamboo couches. We ate dinner. We were going to stay up until we left, so it’d be easier to sleep on the 4 hour drive to Accra and on the flight. I was unbelievably grateful that Cassie and I were leaving together. To pass the time after all of the other volunteers had went to bed, we watched movies for the first time on my lap top. And then our taxi was here and we drove out and away from our little town of hohoe. And it was over.

Cassie and I arrived in New York and typical JFK, got stuck there for the night. Her dad booked us a hotel and after sorting out the drama that was the airport fiasco and rebooking flights for the morning, we got to the hotel and fell back into the large, comfy down queen beds. America. Weird. We ordered a pizza, watched tv and at 5 am I said goodbye to Cassie, again certain that it would not be the last time I would see her, and I flew home.

I met with my mom waiting for me at the airport and she started crying, “you look like you just got back from africa!” haha, typical mom behavior. But I wasn’t happy and relieved and rejoicing in my return like I should have been. I was sad, angry, bitter, frustrated…Angry that it was over. Angry that I’d had to leave. Angry that nobody would understand, could understand. Frustrated because I felt like I was supposed to just forget about it and move on and go back to normal life and I didn’t know how to do that. I turned on the tv, flipping through channels of desperate housewives and bitching reality shows. I didn’t want to hear their stories. I was embarrassed for them. I was embarrassed for myself, for the things that I used to think were important. I just wanted to go back. All I wanted to do was go back.

The next day my mom took me to a spa to get a massage and facial. I warned the masseuse that the probably over 20 bumps that covered my legs and feet were not a strange rash, but mosquito bites. My mom gushed to them that I had just returned from africa. The facialist said to me “I bet you’ve seen a lot of things” with a sad undertone in her voice. I wanted to tell her she was wrong. I wanted to tell her that her entire perception of africa was wrong. That africa was not this desperate, sad and dangerous place that she’d assumed it was. That it was happy, beautiful, amazing. That she is wrong, that they were all wrong. I think that’s what makes africa different from other places in the world, that it becomes a part of your soul…forever ingrained within you. And I am hooked, stuck forever wondering and dreaming of when and how I will get back there.

And I have to help divine star school. Change is far too easy not to. As demonstrated in this blog, the school is clearly not even functioning in its current state. Luckily I am not alone in knowing this. There are several other volunteers, a few that worked at divine star and a few that didn’t, who want to help as well. And we are going to do big things. We are going to either help them build the new school or (the better but more complicated alternative) buy out Isaac and build an entirely new school of our own. We cannot just throw money at Isaac and expect it to be great. It has to be changed from the ground up. And I hope we can do it, and I know we can do it. And I am so unbelievably excited and I have so many big big ideas…a library and a soccer field and actual desks and pencils and workbooks and educated teachers and a better future for my students; a different one from the dismal one they’re now approaching. Obviously, if you are willing to help in any way possible we will need it. We need every dollar we can find. And we are going to have a government registered non profit, so it’s legiteamate. And you will see where your money is going. You can know if you bought a brick or a pack of pencils or a child’s tuition for a year. I will keep you all updated as we put everything together.

49 days doesn’t sound like a long time. Upon looking back, I know it will seem as if a small moment in my life, like the blink of an eye...That summer I spent in Africa. But in 49 days you can climb African mountains and be a teacher when you have no idea how to teach and push yourself to the limit and fall in love with your students. In 49 days you can meet the most incredible people…people that can and probably will change the world. It was pretty amazing actually, how we had all come so randomly from so many different areas of the country and world and were all somehow miraculously put together in this little house to share this crazy adventure, our lives now permanently intertwined. In 49 days your life can change. In 49 days, you can change. I miss everything about it. I miss always having a child holding my hand. I miss smiling and saying hello to random strangers on the street. I miss the simplicity of my life there; not being plagued by insecurities and doubts about the future, grades, etc. I miss sitting around with my friends and talking about how we wanted to see change, about all of the things that we wanted to do. I miss my friends, so so desperately. I miss waking up to the sounds of the beating drums from the church next door. I swear that sometimes it seemed as if even the air was filled with music. Sometimes, I even miss the cold showers. And now I’m back in Santa Barbara and busy and life seems to be back to normal as much as possible. I am thankful for my job though, for the moments of chaos that grant my mind a break from my constant thoughts of Ghana.

Ghana taught me an endless amount of things. It showed me that I was comfortable and happy (so so happy) living that kind of lifestyle, which is good because I know I am going back, and will hopefully be taking similar trips in the future to other countries in Africa. It introduced me to some absolutely amazing friends and experiences. It changed me and I don’t know specifically how to tell you it changed me, but I can tell you that now I’m more comfortable when I’m taking my makeup off, when before it was the opposite. I am also certain that I feel far stronger and more capable and grown up than I did before I left, as well as so many other things to which I am eternally grateful for to Ghana. And so, to close out this endlessly endless blog, I am happy to say that this is not the end of my experiences with africa, and I am so anxious to get the wheels rolling on building the new school. Thank you all so much for your support and everything and finally, thank you so so much for reading my story.

Until next time,

Kels

"If you go, we will follow you" -my students

2009-07-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

July 7, 2009

Hi everyone,

Wow it’s been a long time since I wrote one of these. I’m sorry I’m not very good at this whole keeping you all updated thing. As previously stated, by the time I actually sit down to write there’s far too many stories and too many words and I get overwhelmed and lazy and decide it’d be best written at another time-another day-another week? Oops.

The first three weeks seemed to pass relatively slow, but before we knew it we were saying goodbye to so many friends and saying hello to 19 new faces. Most volunteers that come only stay for 3 weeks, and suddenly our friends, the monumental pieces that made up this crazy adventure were being driven off in a rusty old white van, wiping away tears and heading back into the real world. It was strange to think of them back at home sipping iced lattes and going back to work and us still being here, but more than anything I was glad I wasn’t being driven away…I couldn’t imagine myself leaving at 3 weeks. I can’t imagine myself leaving at 7…but we’ll deal with that later.

The new volunteers came piling out of a van on that saturday, eager and exhausted and the few of us (6 to be exact) now designated as “old volunteers” stared and laughed and watched them. In the creepiest way possible. I’m serious. I was excited and anxious to answer their questions…mostly because I was the one with the answers this time around. The new volunteers were extremely nice but their group was extremely different from ours. They had a range of ages…many around college age (like our entire group was) but a lot are also between late 30s and 40s and we even have a 68 year old! The 68 year old talks a lot and insists on not killing the giant spiders that we find in the house and yells about how we shouldn’t have bug spray on the dinner table because IT’S EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND WE WILL DIE. Hahaha. But either way it has been fun getting to know everyone and we really like all of them. Every weekend is a new goodbye. And now our previously solid group of “old volunteers” has trickled down to just myself and two other good friends from our starting date..and two other volunteers from the date before ours. When I saw everyone leave at 3 weeks I realized how little time I had left, and ever since then I’ve been watching the minutes and days and weekends go by even faster than before and begging, pleading time to slow down. How will I leave and let this trip become just another aspect of my past? Another good story I’ll tell and another sentence I’ll add to my once barren resume. I don’t know. I don’t know what I expected but what I got is so much more-so so much more. But I can’t imagine how I’ll answer, “how was Africa?”

School has continued to be crazy. But now I am comfortable and knowledgable as to what works and what doesn’t with such a large class size- a reality that’s hard to face. At first we thought that all of the volunteer’s experiences were the same, all of us teaching and what not. But this is not true. Some volunteers get guidance as to what to teach, some are even told how to teach, some have only 6 or 10 or 20 students, few have more than 30. Some have access to stories and workbooks and pencils and willing, happy teachers. By comparison I’m pretty sure I have the largest (60 students) amount of students and the smallest classroom…go figure. My kids have no workbooks, and no pencils. I can’t even begin to explain how excited they were when I pulled out the stack of brand new pencils I’d bought them at the market and spent hours sharpening the night before. I’ve started separating them into smaller groups and doing learning activities..for example one day we did bowling with empty water bottles to learn subtraction (how many did we have to begin with? How many are left standing) and another day I had them use eachother as parts of a math equation…”pick up a random number” (there were pieces of paper with the numbers 1 through 10 written on them) “Ok you picked up 3, now count three of your friends and move them over there…now how many of your friends are left standing?” These techniques work, but can only be used occasionally because the remaining part of the class that’s not doing the activity is left with Naomi and so are learning absolutely nothing…Every morning when they see me walking up to the school they all scream and chant ‘Kelsey Kelsey Kelsey’ from inside the class, on the other side of the small barred window and all of them run at me full force, almost tackling me as they grab every inch of spare me that they can reach from their height. They tell me they love me and sometimes they stop by my house in the afternoon to see me and run at me again and wrap their arms around my waste and lift their legs and swing from side to side as I walk.

Up until recently I thought I had accepted this system of education. I thought I had come to terms with some succeeding and some not and sleeping teachers and rusty nails in desks. I thought I had. Until last Thursday. Throughout my time I have obviously realized the massive range of levels that each child is on. Unfortunately there is only so much individual time I can spend with each of them. So I told Naomi on Wednesday that I wanted her to make a list of all of the students that are severely behind…like the ones that can’t write at all, etc. I told her I would work with these students specifically for my last two weeks. I envisioned about 7 students, and seeing solid results. I got to school Thursday and Naomi called out student by student, one by one, to stand up…she got way past 7 students…soon 25 were standing there. This was not the small study group I had envisioned. Those who stood up were told to sit on the one half of the room. I told Naomi she should teach those children while I work with mine. But they were cramped for space and she was lazy and before I knew it she had shouted something in ewe and all of those children who were not going to work with me were rushing out of the class. I knew what this meant-they would play ALL day. I tried to argue with her-‘naomi you have to teach them something? Give them workbook…here I have worksheets give them these…” but nothing worked. “They’ll disturb” she said matter of factly. I could do nothing. Clearly this arrangement wouldn’t work for two weeks but I did have to teach the students left standing at least for today. I had drawn each letter on a piece of paper with a drawing underneath it a long time ago (A, with apple on the bottom) so I brought those out to use. Let me remind you that most of these children are 6 or 7, some are 8 and 9. The way classes work here is there are three, three month terms for each grade. KG1 is one term, this is when they should learn the alphabet, writin, etc. KG2 works kind of like first grade. They should be practicing more writing and be practicing spelling and writing 3 letter words and doing math, such as knowing that 8 apples is greater than 5 apples. This is where they should be. My kids are at the end of their third term of KG2. I have been with them almost their entire 3^rd term. They will get out of school in a couple weeks and then resume school again in September in the first grade class…well, they’re supposed to. As I held up the letters, asking what each was and receiving only dead silence or flat out wrong guesses in return I realized the magnitude of the situation. These kids knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. They didn’t know one letter of the alphabet…they could sing the alphabet song by memory, but they had no idea what they were saying. They didn’t know numbers. They didn’t know words. They didn’t know concepts. Every single thing Naomi had taught them (“taught” them), every single thing I’d taught them, or tried too…had flown straight over their heads. Throughout their years in school their wrong answers had blended into the crowd of right, and they were being passed up, grade by grade, into a system that both didn’t teach them and then punished them with brutal beatings from their misknowledge. I was furious. I was frustrated. I felt like my time had been wasted. How had I not known? Now I had two weeks. Two weeks to teach them everything? It’s a terrible feeling – feeling useless. I tried my best to keep an expression of indifference on my face as I worked through each letter. They retain almost no information. I would spend 30 minutes on the letter D. Just D. What letter is this? To each child. Work on pronounciation. D. D. D. This is the letter D. Not be. Trace it on the paper. D. D. Write it in the air with your finger. D. D. Come up and write it one by one on the board. D. D. D. D. Ok, I think they know D. One letter down, 25 to go. I’d set it down, pick up another letter and start working through that…5 minutes letter I’d pick up D again..What letter is this? “S!” Unbelievable.

Naomi walked in and held up the letter R. None of them had the answer. They all sat quiet, scared. Oh crap we’re caught. Maybe if we shout out random letters one will be right? Wrong. She caned every single one of them. THWACK THWACK THWACK. She was anger and embarrassed for herself. Even still, I’m certain she didn’t blame herself…she would blame the numbers, the odds…she would blame their parents, their own stupidity…It is all circumstance. They are all victims of circumstance. One that can be avoided, changed. When will they catch up? At what grade will they finally learn how to write or how to spell their name? At what point will someone sit down with them and hold their hands as they trace the letters? As they grow up? As they try to get jobs? Where is this point? It doesn’t exist.

We went over four letters that day. Four in an entire day. The rest of the class spent the day playing. I come home and wonder if I’ve done more harm than good. If it’s good enough. It’s not. It’s never enough. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough love. It’s an unsettling feeling. They are just kids. Kids like any other kid. They are desperate for attention and fun and love. They’re so hungry for love and to learn. They grab at an old, short, broken pencil as if it were the final meal at the end of a 15 day fast. So then I start thinking. Change is possible. It’s not like in America where change is only possible in the smallest of increments. And then Isaac the headmaster starts talking to me about the money problems they’re having, about the new school they have to build.

I knew I would be asked for money and I knew that I would desperately want to give it. But this is different. This isn’t just another africa cause with no end in sight. They have the property to build the school. I’ve seen it. Right now it’s just the frame of 3 class rooms. 3 big class rooms. They have some bricks and some soil and all of the insight and readiness to build. But they don’t have the money. They have no money. The teachers aren’t getting paid their salaries for the next two months…the salary that they receive now is a measly 35 cedi a month. That amounts to about 23 american dollars a month. 23 dollars? And they don’t even get it. All of them have their sights on the new school. Isaac looked at me and said, “our classrooms are very small, especially yours Kelsey..we need bigger class rooms.” Um, no shit. And then I envision my class…only they are in three or four different class rooms….and there are actually desks without nails sticking out of them and the teachers and students can walk through the rows to help each child. And they have books and their answers are actually heard and there is space. Oh how we so desperately need space. And then they can actually be educated. And then they can actually grow up to be more than a seamstress or the woman that sells corn on the side of the road. That’s where this community is stuck…they think they have no other options. But they do. If only someone could help them see them. If only someone could hang up a map and show them how big the world is outside of Hohoe. And change is possible. A thousand dollars could buy the bricks to build almost the entire school. A hundred could buy paint and plants and pencils and books and maybe they could have a library. Such drastic change is right there, right at the tips of my fingers. And then I think that maybe I can’t change the world but I can help one student…one class…one school…one community.

So where will I get this money…and should I really give this money? I don’t know. I don’t know so many things. But now I’m thinking about it. I told Isaac I would try, but I couldn’t promise anything. I couldn’t promise to give money I didn’t have…I couldn’t supply them with false hope. But I am doing something else. I’m going to start a pen-pal system. A small little foundation (thing?) that I’m going to call Letter’s to an African Child and I’m going to find all of the children who can write at my school pen pals in America. I thought of this a long time ago after the older students wouldn’t stop handing me letters about themselves and only requesting a friend in return. There are a lot of loose ends and questions that are still unanswered. I know I need to buy them envelopes and stamps before I leave and I know that more than likely finding children in America whose parents won’t mind them receiving letters with massive religious affiliation would be tough. But I figure it would be easy to find college kids willing to write them. There would be a lot of rules, and a lot of work attached…but it would be a small and meaningful contribution to the school. Maybe through that we can set up a charity. Something like sponsoring one child’s school fee (8 cedi a month) or the cost of a book or a pencil…I don’t know. I may be getting in way over my head. But it’s worth thinking about. Or trying. Who knows. I only have 6 days left teaching at my school. 6 days. I’m going to be gone this Friday because we are going to see Obama in Accra (the capital) and next Friday I leave. Crazy.

Volunteering is a huge aspect of this trip (obviously) but is also so many other things. A huge part of it is traveling on the weekends. We have so much fun traveling and each weekend is it’s own separate adventure. I will admit it is dangerous sometimes, especially once we started traveling with only three of us (myself and two other friends) and using Ghana’s public transportation. But there are always kind, genuine strangers who come up to help us. Like the man who got off the trotro on our way to ada foah (a beach spot) in Tema to make sure we got to the next trotro safely. Or the woman who told us not to take a taxi because they will rob us. Or the taxi driver who drove us to the next tro tro station only to help us, not to get paid. Or the woman last weekend in Kumasi at our friend’s hotel who rushed out and wrote down the taxi driver’s ID and license number and argued with him for 20 minutes and told us to call her when we got home, just to make sure we were safe. It amazes me how helpful people are and how they expect nothing in return. A man off of the street will physically get into our taxi and drive with us just to give directions and then be dropped off at a random, distant spot.

The third weekend we spent at home in Hohoe (again pronounced Ho-hway) where we went out to Malaysia (a hot dance spot in town) where if you were hungry you could buy a full dead, cooking chicken right outside from the top of a garbage can! The next weekend we went to ada foah, which was supposed to be a beach weekend filled with lots of tanning but turned out to be 8 hours traveling each way (it was supposed to be 5) and hiding from the torrential down pour of rain. But we laughed and played the question game and ate lots of French fries. And then that Sunday we went to Accra and ate at an actual nice restaurant and I had a cheeseburger and it was amazinggg. The next weekend (this last weekend) we went to Kumasi, which is Ghana’s second biggest city. Kumasi is more modern than Accra (the capital city) and we went to the largest market in the world (too overwhelming) and the cultural center where we learned about the Ashanti culture and then we layed by the pool and ate more French fries…we eat soo much French fries on the weekend.

Let me describe a tro tro to you, which has become our main means of transportation. A tro tro looks like a big van, some look more like buses…There are designated tro tro stations but many pick people up while it’s driving (you have to jump in it while it’s still moving). The tro tro doesn’t leave until every seat is taken. This usually means waiting hours if you get there when it’s empty (which happens to us almost every time). Don’t worry about opening up the windows on a tro tro either…you’re likely to get a generous flow of air coming from random holes in the car. They’re accustomed to break downs. We’ve been on a tro tro that breaks down. They just move everyone off and onto another tro tro. This isn’t as simple as it sounds. Sometimes tro tros are funny. Sometimes they’re obnoxious. It’s give or take. Either way you’re experiencing a major part of Ghanaian culture, and it’s hilarious. At every stop the tro tro is swarmed by hasty women selling anything and everything in big bowls being balanced on their heads.

I don’t think I ever described to you the smells of Ghana….ohhh the wonderful smells of Ghana. Here they are:

1) Urine

2) Body odor

3) Shit

That’s it. Haha. That is definitely one thing I am NOT going to miss about Ghana. It’s mostly urine. Everywhere. This is probably because everyone pees everywhere. The only public “bath rooms” are flat areas of cement…I have used these…I don’t want to talk about it. Lol.

Oh and I will clarify – yes I know Michael Jackson is dead. Ghana was mourning him for a couple days. I also know jon and kate are getting divorced. No surprise there. Other than that I have absolutely no idea what else is going on in America. I am excited to come back. Ok, that’s a lie. But I do miss every one at home. And I wonder how everyone is doing. I can’t believe I’ve been here almost 6 weeks already. I hope I’ll talk to you all soon. If not I will be seeing you soon.

Love and miss you all,

Until next time,

Kels

3 weeks already? Oh ghana, how will I ever leave you.

2009-06-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

June 17, 2009

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all doing well. You all feel so far away, with your air conditioning and coffee and actual concept of time…but at the same time so close. I think that’s what stops people from coming to places like Ghana, because they feel that it is so far and unattached from us, and that they can only do little and therefore should do nothing at all, when really it’s not a different world but rather a couple plane rides away. This last week was crazy. Every day is crazy. Every day is completely different than the one before. And the days are so long that they seem to pass so slowly but then out of nowhere the weekend is here again. The rain is starting to come more and more, it being a welcome relief from the heat. There is no such thing as a weather forecast here, only the dense gray clouds in the sky. It will start to drizzle and then out of nowhere, a torrential downpour comes and the rain comes down heavier and faster than anything I’ve ever seen. It lightning’s and thunders constantly. When inside, the rain on the tin roof sounds as if a wave is crashing over the house. You can’t even hear yourself think. The only problem with the rain is that everything shuts down when it rains, which is often. All of the world hides and the town is quiet beneath their tin roofed shacks and mud huts. This is unfortunate when we want to go to the internet. The electricity goes out a lot too, luckily we have a generator though. But I’m pretty sure the entire town of Hohoe (pronounced ho-hway) doesn’t have power most of the time.

Last Thursday was a good day. I taught the entire day and prepared a lesson plan about water; where it comes from, it’s use, and the importance of clean water. I had them draw either rain, a well or a river for the sources after we went over it, and then used a water bottle of clean water compared to a water bottle of dirty muddy water to teach about clean water. “Do you want to drink this?” I would hold out the dirty bottle, YES they would scream, their happy little faces chiming back at me.. NOO, NO DON”T DRINK IT. They went crazy towards the end. I had to play games with them in between to get their attention back, and Naomi came in and threatened them with the cane several times, but she was mostly gone the entire day. Towards the end of the day I had finished the lesson and they knew it well, but I needed something else for them to do. A little girl named Justine filled the empty time when she projectile vomited all over the classroom, testing my reflexes as the vomit came right at me while I jumped back lightning speed and just avoided it spattering all over me. The class was quiet and she walked out, calmly but fast with her hand over her mouth. I wanted to chase after her but I couldn’t, the health risks an eminent and constant threat. It’s strange though, because all of the dangers and health risks are not easily seen and easily forgotten. We usually don’t see the mosquitoes and things like aids and disease are far too stigmatized to be spoken about. Justine went home, and Naomi told me that they couldn’t give her or any of the other children medicine because many of them have diseases they don’t know about and the medicine will kill them. I wondered what strange and most likely preventable disease Justine had. Naomi told me that someone was coming to “clean” the vomit. Here, the children do all of the cleaning and chores. They sweep the dirt and act like little servants for the older, lazy adults. A 10 year old girl walked in carrying a piece of flat metal with a pile of dirt on it and a broom (their brooms are dried pieces of grass held together). She threw the dirt on it and swept it up. I so desperately wished for a bleach bottle from my work and a pair of latex gloves. I dreamed about that bleach bottle. Then at recess I walked out to find a little boy up against a cement block hysterically crying. His friends said he fell on the block. I didn’t see any open wounds so I assumed he would be ok, and then he started coughing up blood and drooling blood all over the ground…he probably had a serious concussion. Naomi told him something in Ewe and he stumbled to his feet and walked wearily back towards the school with the help of his friends. Another little boy kicked dirt over the blood. It’s no wonder disease runs rampant in this country.

Friday was not good. Because it was workbook day, I brought some extra writing exercises for the many children who didn’t have workbooks. Before I could pull them out, a few older children walked in carrying stacks of big heavy textbooks. They handed them out to the children. They can’t read I thought…so I was angry when Naomi told me they would just look at the pictures. They were so excited to have the books, I thought of how much children at home dread books…I wished that they would know. If only everyone would know. They looked at the pictures for 2 hours. I cringed at the wasted time. I told myself that the images would result in culturalization (they were American books) and visual stimulation. Bull shit. After break Naomi said I should just hand them all out the exercises. I did. Within the first five minutes half the brand new pencils I’d spent hours hand sharpening the night before were broken, and the children didn’t understand the concept of following the dots to trace the letters, so they all swarmed me at once…60 children. Surrounding me. Shoving their papers and pencils in my face. “Madame Kelsey, my penceel..my penceel.” I would reach for another pencil as they shoved all of their papers at me. I felt overwhelmed. I could feel the anger and frustration building inside me as my voice grew less patient and I found myself screaming at them to back up, back up. There were too many to help one. The entire day was like that.

After placement 11 of us piled into the van for our much anticipated trip to Cape Coast. I watched the country fly by outside my window on the 8 hour drive. We all talked and laughed, and took mini breaks stopping to buy ice cream or “Fan choco” as it’s called. Which really isn’t ice cream but is more like frozen chocolate milk that you suck out of the corner of a bag. It was good though. We got there and snuck two people into our room so we wouldn’t have to pay more (with 4 people being in a 2 person room) and went to dinner and had French fries and chicken and cokes…quite the treat for us volunteers. We get a discount at hotels for being volunteers which is good. We woke up early and went to Kakum national park, which has the longest and tallest canopy bridge in west Africa. Basically it’s 200 feet high and is a long, skinny bridge that is made only of one plank of wood and a net around it. It wobbles and shakes as you walk and it looks very possible that you will fall out, so high above the trees. It was really pretty and really fun. We saw more white people! That’s always shocking, since we never see white people so we always wonder why their there. We saw a ton of white people in cape coast. After the canopy walk we went to Elmina castle, which is the oldest and most significant slave castle that still stands today. It was the main trading port for slaves coming from the African continent to America and all over the world. The castle was white and tall, located right on the water. It is over 500 years old. A guide walked us through the castle and told us it’s history, as we held our breath from the indescribable stench in the dungeons and cells where they kept the slaves. It was incredibly sad and strange to be standing in an area where such torture and pain and happened. On the wall as you leave the castle is a plaque that reads, “Of the anguish of our ancestors, May those who died rest in peace. May those who return to find their roots. May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity, We the living vow to uphold this."

After the slave castle we got back and tanned by the pool located on the beach lined with tall skinny palm trees and old wooden fishing boats. That night we had dinner at the hotel and the four of us sharing a room, my good friends Cassie, Rachel and Hilary, cozied up into our one bed and fell asleep watching crappy movies. I took the first hot shower I’d had in two weeks and it was absolutely amazing. Before the cold showers were ok and even at times refreshing, but now that it’s been raining it’s not as unbearably hot and the showers (or bucket) have been particularly brutal lately. Sunday we woke up early, had breakfast and tanned by the pool. It was cloudy but I still managed to get unbelievably sunburned…go me. But it’s turning tan already. With the rain the mosquitoes and likelihood of malaria are getting higher, (a couple volunteers went to the hospital to be tested for it last week, luckily they ddn’t have it). I got my first mosquito bite today, which is amazing considering how long I’ve been here. My friend got 25 bug bites just on her legs within one hour!

We drove all Sunday and were happy to be back in our small, cozy little town hohoe. The people in cape coast were not as friendly or excited to see us, so it made coming home even better.

I began writing this blog a couple days ago, and literally while I was in the middle of it, we had a serious situation. For a few days my friend had developed a rash from an allergic reaction. Although at this point, at around 7:30 the rash had spread over her entire body and her eyes were swelling shut and her tongue and face were swelling and she could barely breathe or speak. And soon Makafui, our program director who is pretty clueless about everything told us she should go to the hospital. We agreed. He asked who wouldn’t mind taking the hour drive and spending the night there with her, and myself and two of my other friends all said yes in unison. And so the four of us were going along with makafui and george, another CCS staff member. I didn’t think about missing placement the next morning or how dangerous and scary the actual hospital would be. I realized that later. But as we drove rachel’s breathing was shallow and loud, it scared us.

We walked up to the emergency section of the hospital, where a couple of nurses were sitting around a desk and beds full of sick, listless people all around. The one male “doctor” or nurse was wearing jeans and a blue t-shirt. On the wall above the few files they had was a black board where someone had written “Console yourself in life with the lord, for it is not our fight to fight.” A sick man in his bed sat watching us the entire time. Suddenly a man carrying a woman in a pink dress barged in, the woman stiff and unbended in his arms, gasping for breath. “Emergency! Emergency!” The nurses didn’t move or respond. “Is this emergency?” he asked, “yes, where is her folder?” he sat her against a chair, her body stiff and rigid, her legs unable to bend as if locked, her head cocked back as far as possible and her neck extended, gasping breath after breath seemingly without getting air the time before. “She’s dieing! She’s dieing!” The nurses still did nothing. I thought we were about to see her die right in front of us. We all looked at eachother, scared, shocked, there was no way Rachel could stay here. But thankfully Rachel was already better, and they took the woman away where she was suddenly quiet and later injected an IV into rachel’s arm and she was fine. Makafui and george said they’d take us to a hotel and we’d leave in the morning. He pulled into a random ally and drove into what looked like the parking lot for a sketchy insurance company, then we went through a big metal gate and were in front of our hotel. Nicer than the insurance company we thought we’d be staying at but not nice at all. The lobby had blue lighting and the hallways had green lighting, like a club. Our room was bare except for a big bed and a small TV attached to a bathroom. Makafui was shocked that we’d all share the bed together. It’s fun, our little sleep over’s..and it saves money. Makafui and george left and said they’d get us in the morning. Soon we found urine stain, pubic hairs, and bugs on the sheet of the bed. But there was no other sheet and a small, even more stained light pink blanket over that. We put on the only other clothes we had that we weren’t wearing on top of the bed and pillow where we’d be laying and slept. We got back to the homebase at around 12:30 thursday where they had saved plates of lunch for us and were eager with questions about our sudden adventure. Jane, our cook, made fufu, which is traditional ghanian meal we had asked her to make. It looks like one of those dough balls you get from Chevy’s except it doesn’t really have a taste and has the consistency and texture of play dough combined with glue…not very good. You’re supposed to dip it in soup, which we did, but it was still strange. We try to eat a lot of food that’s different here, and pretty much everything we eat is described as “interesting.” Then it was back to placement as usual today. They were excited and ran to me and begged me why, why I was not there yesterday. Was I sick? Am I ok? I said I would come yesterday why wasn’t I there? I love them. We did workbook, and Naomi sent the part of the class that doesn’t have workbooks out to do…whatever they wanted all day? I cringed again at the wasted time. But I had nothing else for them to do, and so they went. I decided I’d use this weekend, our first weekend at home to make workbooks for the children at the copy store. A couple hours ago about 10 of my students came to the house to visit me! So adorable. I wanted to play with them but apparently they would get in trouble if they didn’t go home to change, so I sent them home after giving hugs and some songs and told them they could come back tomorrow as long as they tell their parents.

Tonight is our last night with our group of volunteers. It is strange and scary that already 3 weeks has passed. It makes me want to pause time so that no more will pass. I can’t imagine leaving now. I can’t imagine saying goodbye and going back to the real world, even though I know I will. I’m sad to see so many amazing people leave, and it doesn’t make it any better than virtually every one of us are in separate states, some separated by oceans and continents. There are four of us from our group that are staying. Luckily the other three are three girls who I’ve become really close with. They’re moving into my room so we’ll all be in the same room. The new volunteers are coming tomorrow. A group of 10 of them is showing up at 12:30! Supposedly there is a 68 year old woman, as well as a 50 year old, 38 year old and 40 year old…way more varied ages. Our group was all college students or just above graduate school, so it will be interesting.

Because I wrote this blog earlier, I really only talked about last week…and already it is Friday and an entire other week has passed of teaching and activities. I don’t have the energy to write out a description of each day as I’ve been doing…but I’ll give some highlights. On Monday I brought empty water bottles and a ball and used it to play bowling. This taught the children subtraction. I would make them count the pins before, and then count how many they knocked down…leaving the remaining number. They loved it and I brought them out 10 at time which made it manageable. These are the teaching methods we have to use, which is fun but incredibly hard to think of new ideas. And hard to find the resources.

A lot of people have asked about the cane. The cane is a long, slim piece of wood that doubles as both a whip and a cane, some canes more thick than others. Naomi is not gentle, loving or patient, and so she uses it often. Only some times, as I feel the frustration and anger building inside me and my patience wearing do I tell Naomi to help me. This usually results in them being caned very badly. So I stopped doing that. Most of the time she just smacks their hands or heads with it. It is worse when she pulls them out of class, screaming at them as they cry, as she thwacks the cane back and forth over and over their bodies and they sit silent, crying in my class for a while. I was seriously angry on Tuesday, when we were doing more writing exercises and Rosaline was sitting there, yet again, clutching the pencil and staring at an empty paper of traceable letters. She can’t speak English but I know what she was saying. I can’t write, I won’t write, I don’t know how. Over and over as she shakes her head. I try to hold guide her hand over the letters, but I can only hold her hand for so long. And then Naomi sees her and pulls her out of class and starts yelling in ewe. And soon Rosaline is screaming, crying, no no, I can’t write I don’t know how. Naomi reaches for the cane and screams angrily at her, I’m sure saying that she has to write, that she is stupid. She beats Rosaline with the cane. The hardest I’ve seen. Pulling her arm back over and over and sending the flying, thin cane onto rosaline’s thin legs and body. She does this as she screams at her, and Rosaline whails. Her screams send chills down my spine. Rosaline’s tears fall over her face, down her clothes, onto the dust covered cement ground, and still Naomi throws the cane. I fight the instinct to pick up the cane myself and beat the crap out of Naomi, to tell her that she should be blaming herself rather than Rosaline, that it is not her fault that she can’t write or read or speak English. But I turn away. Focus on the other children. Usually the cane is not as bad as it sounds, and we understand that it is not savage but rather a part of their culture…but then moments like this happen and you wonder how this is effective. Rosaline did write that day, and made progress faster than I’ve seen, which is an unfortunate result of her fear. The students are taught not to respect their teachers but rather to fear them. To fear their parents. So I smile at every one of them and make a point to tell each of them good job and have an equally shocked and proud expression on my face when they come up to have me check their work. I do strange and embarrassing dances and facial expressions and I am the silly ye vu who hugs them when I should probably be teaching them. You realize the small things are more important here. You can’t change the world, but you can make a child happy..even for just a moment. Rosaline is usually very sad. But she smiles and laughs when I tickle her or play hand games with her and speak the very little ewe I know to her.

I read this over and it sounds pretty depressing, but trust me,…this is not a sad place. I think that’s what makes the poverty so easy to see, they are so happy. They don’t know what they don’t have. I hope this one wasn’t too long for all of you to get through. As always please keep emailing. Tell me the gossip and everything going on in America, since we’re in our own little Ghana bubble here. Hopefully I’ll talk to you all soon! Love and miss you guys.

Until next time,

Kels

"I am going to marry you ok? I will be your african husband." -Isaac, the headmaster of my school.

2009-06-10T12:23:00.001-07:00

June 9, 2009

Hi everyone,

I’ll admit I’ve been pretty bad at the whole keeping you updated thing, it’s because I am constantly busy during the day and often times the power goes out at night so we can’t get to the internet. I love getting your emails though so please keep sending them! It’s just hard for me to respond sometimes. Now that I have an official Ghana phone though it will be easier. I feel so legit with my Ghana contacts. Anyways, so much has happened since I last updated you. My class is still out of control and crazy, and some days are better than others. To say that it is hard is an understatement, but I am slowly figuring out the system and what I need to do to be able to have the most positive impact. Wednesday was my most successful day. I brought construction paper (everyone was shocked that I brought “color”) and folded the 7 colors into seven hats. I would hold up a hat, but not before saying “shh fingers to your lips” (and they all put their fngers to their lips) and say “ok what color is this?” They went NUTS. YELLOW GRAY PINK BLACK…it was blue. After several wrong answered a small quiet girl raised her hand and answered blue..I walked up and placed the hat on her head, she looked up at it, amazed..the biggest smile ever…and they went even more nuts! They all laughed and jumped up and down. WHAT COLOR IS HER HAT? ..blue…BLUE..blue..They absolutely loved it, and it definitely worked..because now they know colors. Wednesday morning they also had worship. Worship was a whole other thing. They all gathered into only a few classrooms. My class went with the other kindergarten class. All of a sudden someone in another class started banging a drum and the entire school burst into song. They were jumping on top of the desks, and my favorite student, the smart and adorable 6 year old Juliet, grabbed one of the canes that the teachers use to beat them and started hitting it against the blackboard to make her own drum beat. They all screamed, jumped, and danced as they sang “hallelujahhhh..” and other songs for the next two hours! Exhausting! It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, I’ll have to film it. After an eventful recess, spent teaching a crowd of about a hundred children “if you’re happy and you know it…” One girl from my class silently walked up and placed a little pink flower behind my ear. It was adorable. This started the routine of all of the children bringing me handfuls of flowers every day, until my head is covered in flowers. Naomi was conveniently gone that entire day. “I left on you…ha..ha.ha..” so funny. Normal rules do not apply here. Normal rules such as actually being present to teach your class. Even if I was not here, the teachers just leave…They leave for hours to run errands, and their kids just go wild and play and entertain themselves.

Thursday was extremely hard. I was less prepared because Naomi had told me they’d be learning vegetables and I didn’t know the specific ghanian vegetables they used. It is strange that she would be trying to teach them about vegetables when they can’t even write the alphabet. I tried but I could find nothing, so I assumed Naomi had prepared something for vegetables, and since I didn’t have the time to do the name tags before I figured I could use that, as well as the letters I had drawn out. These plans were less solid than yesterdays. Naomi did the lesson on vegetables, but not before caning almost the entire class for not bringing vegetables to class as assigned. “Hold out yo hands!” and they would, the fear and pain in their eyes almost unimaginable. Then she left. I said we could go over the alphabet. This didn’t go as well. They were very unbehaved, jumping, dancing, playing, sleeping, beating each other, just completely out of control. None of them would listen. When I passed out their paper and crayons to write the alphabet, some boys would hide their paper and crayons, pretending they had not gottan one yet. I’m sure they have stolen some crayons. They are old enough to mess with me, make fun of me. At first I found this hilarious, now, as I’m trying to teach a lesson, it is obnoxious. I smacked their papers on the edge of a desk where a group of girls would not stop talking and laughing, the class was instantly silent…as it closely imitated the sound of a cane. This only lasted a few minutes. Sista shine came in and told them to be quiet, but only for a moment and again she was gone. I ran out of things to do. I was out of paper, and they already knew how to read the letters but could not write them. Some children can write the entire alphabet by memory, some children do not know how to write at all. It seems that few children are able to succeed through this system of education, and I’m trying to think of ways to get around it, especially with over 50 students. I taught them the parts of the body, the itsy bitsy spider again and heads shoulders knees and toes, to reference back to the body. But no one exercise was as effective and fun as yesterdays.

There is a new girl in my class, her name is Rosaline. She is the only girl that doesn’t have a shaved head, her long braided hair put back in a neat pony tail, and her quiet, fearful eyes always looking down. Because she just moved her from togo, the neighboring country, she doesn’t speak a word of English. Naomi and myself (obviously) teach mostly in English, and so she is lost. The desks, or more like benches, are rugged and splintered, with large rusty nails sticking out of them in all directions. As she was walking in from break, she cut her leg on one of these nails. I saw her tears, and leaned down to see the giant gaping wound that sat just above her ankle. It was at least an inch long, and deep enough to reveal the bone. She cried silently, hard, and stared up at me, as if begging for some type of help. I leaned down to her, realizing that I could do nothing. In any other case she would have been taken to a hospital to have it stitched up, but here, she sat silently crying, her face buried within her arms. I tried to console her, but my only means was by looking at her, trying to convey the words that both her and I could not speak. That sucked. But she stopped crying soon, and later looked up at me and smiled, her first smile. Now she smiles all the time, fights to hold my hand. I’m determined to find some way to help her individually, as she can’t even write and is often lost and frustrated during class.

Friday the children did homework from their workbooks. Sounds effective right? Well it would be, if most of the children actually had work books. Only about 12 children in my class actually had the workbooks, and so the rest of the class just sat there…the entire day. This is the way the system works here. “Their parents can’t buy them the books, they have no money to,” Naomi told me. Then I wrote out 50 homework assignments by hand on a piece of paper, each with 5 questions each..for them to do at night. A human copy machine…that’s me! I’m going to hand write some writing exercises and take them to be copied at the internet place tonight…which sounds easy but it’s about a 20 minute walk to town and each page costs 10 pesuas to get copied (about 8 cents). Having about 60 students, this means a lot of money…an unfortunate and disappointing side affect of the circumstances. I bought them all brand new pencils yesterday, which I’m excited about.

Ohhh and then there was the weekend. Oh the weekend. How do I even put into words our adventure at Lake Volta. There’s about 20 volunteers all together, 10 from our house, 10 from house B (on the other side of town so we hardly ever see them), usually we wouldn’t travel together but they knew we were going to lake volta and just booked at our hotel too. After work Friday we piled into our van to drive the two hour drive there. Only in Ghana does your hired driver pull over on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and says “I want to piss” as he walks out and pees next to the van. Oh Ghana, how I love you. So we drove, often swerving to avoid goats, chickens (here, chickens really do cross the road), children, and massive amounts of pot holes. It was a relief to get to our hotel, called the Afrikiko. It was a large piece of land positioned right on the lake. The water was so calm and smooth, like glass. It’s strange to find such vast, beautiful places still untouched by the horrors of mass marketing, tourism and rising real estate. This lake was only home to the few quiet hotels that scattered it’s massive border and the grass roofed mud huts that housed few bulky fisher men. We rested and watched one of the two channels available in Ghana. We watched “fake pregnancy,” which was basically ghana’s version of a soap opera and included bad music, no production value, and a mother beating and chasing her daughter with a cane while the daughter screamed “mama I can’t be pregnant!” Oh Ghana…We went to dinner at the hotel. We realized almost everything tastes the same here. Lots of rice with the same spicy sauce that we eat here at the homebase, a stew like sauce with meat and spices. I had noodles with the same sauce. I stayed away from any beef products, as I haven’t seen one cow here and am not about to eat goat or whatever the hell it could be. We ate basically in the dark and laughed and talked. The waiter messed up the bill and tried to overcharge us by over 300 dollars! But they fixed it. Also, a typical ghanian meal usually takes about 3 hours. I’d say it takes about 20 minutes to get drinks, about an hour and a half to get food, and about another hour to get the bill and actually leave. I am familiar with the concept of ‘Ghana time’ by now though. Tomorrow means in about four days and about any time they tell you to it’s going to be, expect it to be at least 2 hours later…literally. After dinner we decided to go to a ghanian club, but when we got there they said the club was closed and the chef told us to go to a bar and when we got to the bar, the chef was there! Our taxi driver, Eric, proposed marriage to my friend Rachel, had her talk to his sister on the phone, and throughout the entire night would ONLY play the song “nobody want to see us togetherrrr but it don’t matterrr nooo, cuz I got you” by Akon. We jammed anyway. It was hilarious. We also feared for our lives as he drove in circles to the beat of the song. Maya (a French Canadian volunteer) reluctantly (I still don’t know why) gave him her phone number (not in a flirty way) but he still calls her…every day. Just to say hello. Hahaha. We danced with in our giant group of Ye Vus (white person) and then went back to the hotel and jumped in the pool…Only in Ghana do your taxi drivers jump in the hotel pool to go swimming! We all ran away…What is going on right now? Lol. Every now we take a look back and laugh, sort of like…are we really in Ghana right now? Is that man really peeing in front of us in mid daylight, in the middle of the street, while waving and smiling and saying “hello ye vu!” Oh, Ghana.

Saturday we woke up and had breakfast out on the boat as they drove us around the completely silent lake. Then we went to a bead factory to see how beads were made and bought tons of bracelets and necklaces. When we came back we relaxed by the pool, and I got a little burned for the first time in Ghana! It’s surprising that I haven’t been more burnt, as I’m always walking to work and to town, but I definitely have a tank top tan line. That night we went to dinner at the restaurant where the disco (club) was, because Robert the chef had invited us. It was pretty fancy for us, and by fancy I mean they actually had menus and cloth napkins. We went to the disco after. I felt like I had traveled back to middle school as we danced to “peaches and cream” and destinys child. Sunday we slept in, ate and lounged by the pool and left to come home at around 2:30. A lot of people got sick that morning. Almost our entire group was either nauseous or throwing up. Luckily, I didn’t get sick, but this helped us realize that even eating at nice hotels and restaurants was risky, and how lucky we are to have safe food that isn’t too intense for our bodies to handle provided to us by the home base.

We got home and rested, sooo happy to be at the home base. We had hoped the shower would be working, as the shower at the hotel was more like a couple droplets of water. As always with our luck, the water was still out…as it often is. So I took a bucket shower, which really shouldn’t even be referred to as a type of “shower.” In my opinion, holding a bucket and pouring it one by one over the parts of your body hardly constitutes a shower. Today we had the day off of work because we went on the hike of death, also known as the Lipke caves. We left at 6:45 and this was not a hike, mind you, this was climbing a mountain. We were literally rock climbing, scaling vertical sharp rocks to climb into the dark caves. Lol…I was really surprised that they were letting us do it, as it was so incredibly dangerous. It was exhausting and challenging but really fun. A lot of people fell and by the end we were all COVERED in dirt. I think I inherited my dad’s rock climbing skills because I was climbing really well, but we were literally vertical…with only our hands and my shitty running shoes to prevent my fall. When we got back, at around 1:30 we showered and slept. Then we went and ran errands in town. Long, tiring day. We just had dinner. White rice with the usual sauce, yam chips (yams shaped like fries with no taste), same old chicken leg and some fresh pinapple. The power just went out.

(written the next day->)

Let me take a moment to describe the kids to you…many of them are bruised and have giant scars. Many have black holes in their teeth (which you easily forget about with their big smiles), they are covered in ring worm, open wounds all over their bodies…but these are not the sad, defenseless faces you so often see as flickering lights on your television screens, they are happy. They jump and play and put their arms around each other and laugh hysterically, particularly at me. Haha. They are incredibly self sufficient and smart, a one year old walks around alone and takes care of himself, but still they watch out for each other. I have some children in my class that I can describe to you…there’s Juliet, my star student. She has big big eyes and always lead the class in songs, and makes sure to give me an impromptu EWE lesson every day before class. “ontay….is two…” she holds up her hands. She always pushes my hair behind my ears and says “beautiful…your hair is niceee.” She’s 6, and is far ahead of all of her classmates. Then there’s grace. Grace is shorter and quorky. She laughs constantly and screams random happy thoughts. She has big curly eye lashes and a round face. One night I was walking in town (on my way to the internet) and she screamed KELSEY!!! And ran up and hugged me. This was the first time I had seen one of my students outside of class. The next morning, she ran at me full speed and screamed “I saw you TOMORROW!”….’yesterday grace, you saw me yesterday, last night…” Adorable. Rosaline is the little girl that doesn’t speak English, and is left alone and lost in the class. Naomi says she isn’t very smart, but I know she is..I can see it in her eyes. Today was the first time she spoke to me, she said “efwaa?” which means “how are you?” in ewe, and I responded “ehh, mefo. Wo ha efwa?” Which means “I’m good, how are you.” There are so many students. Today at recess a little boy named Gotindolf hugged me throughout the entire recess, never moving. Naomi said they missed me yesterday when I went to the caves instead of working. It feels good to be useful and missed. I missed them too.

I will say that surprisingly, it is easy to forget about many things from home. I’ve found that things that you never thought would be possible or that you would’ve ever considered doing are possible and frequent here. Things like sweating through all your clothes, no air conditioning, no iced coffee, walking hours and hours in the African sun, eating dinner in the dark, scaling African mountains, showering with only a few water droplets, and so many things. You just don’t complain about things here. I love it. Ok well I’ll talk to you all soon. I miss you guys! Please keep emailing! Until next time-

Love,

Kels

"Me loh a boh...." = I love goats.

2009-06-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone (this was written yesterday),

Sorry I haven’t updated yet, I know many of you have been wondering how I’ve been surviving in Ghana. Well, it is amazing. I hesitated to write because it is so hard to describe everything, but I’ll try my best. The traveling here was not bad, and I actually didn’t care or notice that I was traveling so far alone. In my layover in Amsterdam, I met up with 8 other volunteers who were on my plane. We all basically talked about how we had no idea what we were doing. In accra we were met by the CCS driver and split into two vans. Saying I overpacked was an understatement. Much of the heavy supplies I brought were materials for my class, which was good because there is absolutely nothing here. As we drove further from the capital and into the middle of nowhere, the roads became worse and worse, the people more distant from one another, and soon we were in the middle of nowhere. Tall grass on each side of the road that reaches as high as six feet and lush, dense forest. The town of hohoe, (pronounced hoe-way) where we live, is small and very rural. It is all dirt roads, shacks with roofs of tin and goats EVERYWHERE. I could go on and on about the goats. They are everywhere. They just roam the streets. Apparently everyone knows which goat is theirs and they go home at 6 to be fed along with the chickens and sheep. Yesterday we saw a man walking his goat on a leash, which was pretty exciting. It is the type of Africa you would picture, not like South Africa, and the people walk around with giant buckets and stacks of things on their heads and babies tied to their backs. Although it is very rural, I feel very very safe. When we got to the homebase we were split into two groups. Half of the volunteers went to house B, which is all the way across town, so I was lucky enough to be placed in the main home base, which is larger and closer to town. There are 16 volunteers in the main home base. You walk into a large, open room with a linoleum floor and an assortment of wooden couches and chairs, as well as a large dinner table. It’s not fancy, or clean. I share my room with two other girls who are from Australia, they’re really nice. I sleep in a rickety old bunk bed, encased within my mosquito net which is tucked under and around my mattress. We’re not allowed to flush the toilet and can’t put toilet paper in it..it’s a “if it’s yellow let it mellow” kind of situation. We have a lot of down time. Often times, we just hang around talking and reading or basically bathing in our own sweat. There’s no television or anything, and I think at first it was hard adjusting to so much down time because we are so used to multitasking and doing something every moment of every day, but now I am more used to it. There are not as many mosquitoes as you would think. You actually don’t see them, mostly only at night. But I still load up on bug spray, which burns my skin and makes it seem hotter than it actually is…but I take it. And I take my malaria pills after dinner so I never forget. Oh and the heat. You think you have been hot, you have no idea. I feel like I can’t remember what it feels like to be cold. It is so hot and humid, that you sweat constantly and through everything that you wear, it’s inevitable and you get used to it. Sunday and Monday we had orientation, where our program director Makawfui talked about safety (like carrying a flashlight and shining it where we walk at night to avoid scorpions and snakes) and our placements. He described the different types of placements and basically told us we would be thrown into a class room and told to teach by ourselves and not to panic. He described how unlike in America, private schools are actually much worse than public schools…because the government makes sure that a curriculum is followed, whereas private schools are privately owned and are often unstructured and chaotic. I’m working at a private school.

Later in the day yesterday a group performed traditional drumming and dancing for us. At the end they made us dance with them, which was hilarious. Then last night we went to the internet café where the children just sat and stared at my computer screen, they were so mesmerized by it. And one of the little boys read a story. They all run up to you and scream “ye vu! Ye vu!” and stare as if you’re a celebrity. It is strange to be a minority but not in a bad way. Ye Vu means white person by the way, and is in no way a derogatory term. The children love to have their picture taken. We also went to the market yesterday where we bought fabric to be sewn into custom dresses for around 4 dollars. HA! I love how cheap everything is. At the market you could find anything….dead fish heads, vegetables, rice, clothes, fabric, and tons of underwear and bras…random. There are people everywhere, and the amount of things they can carry on their heads is insane! I saw a man balancing an entire cage full of chickens on his head! I’m going to learn how to do that…and also train a goat. These are my goals. Hahaha. The food is good. Very spicy and lots of carbs. We usually have some type of chicken, rice, and warm salad with no dressing. Last night we had yam chips which were deceivingly shaped like French fries and tasted like..um..absolutely nothing?

So today was by far the most important and amazing day. Today was the first day I started work. Myself and just one other girl named Janay are working at Divine Star School, and unlike all of the other volunteers, there are no current volunteers working there. Because it is within walking distance, Atchu (one of the guys that works for CCS) walked us there as the first ones at 7:30pm. As we approached the small, dirty, cement building I knew that it was the right place for me to be. The children rushed towards us, screaming and chanting and stroking our arms “YE VO! YE VO! YE VO!” they clapped, and it was the most amazing feeling. I wasn’t even overwhelmed by the hundreds of children pulling at my arms, fighting to hold my hand, and dragging on me as I walked, but only excited. We were introduced to some of the teachers, one woman named Abigail, who looked at me suspiciously and said “how old are you?” and I said I knew I looked young, but I was 19, and then the other teacher who was a man smiled and said “oh great! So that means I can marry you!”…um….right? hahaha. The children lined up and sang a few songs before marching into their classes, but many of them were distracted by us and I feared they would be beaten because of me. Luckily this didn’t happen. “I will cane you all!!” the headmaster said, oops…avoid eye contact with the children. But it was impossible. Every face my eyes would land on would smile the biggest smile, and those that could speak English would say “Please! What is your name??” Kelsey, I said, “Kewwwllseyyyy” they would all repeat. Amazing. The headmaster then told us about the school. Divine star is obviously one of the poorest schools. He said that half of the children are orphans, and some pay tuition (about 6 dollars a year) and some don’t.

He walked us into each classroom where the children would say “You are Welcome” and I would say “thank you, how are you today?” and they would reply, all in unison “I am fine, thank you, how…are..you?” So cute. He said we could choose our class. There are children ages 1 ½-3 and then 3-5 and 4-6, there are a variety of ages in each class. I chose the kindergarten two class, which is children ages 4-6. I chose them because they speak some English, and I can actually teach them something. The class teacher is Naomi, and she left the class room while I had them repeat my name, and then showed them the pictures I had brought from home. “Father” they said, “school” and they pointed at a picture I brought of my cousin katelyn and said “baby!!” ‘Cousin” I said, “oooh, cousinnnn.” All in unison. They seemed so well behaved and so excited to have me there….decieving. Then we sang the hokie pokie and they all danced, and heads shoulders knees and toes a couple times. Then the teacher returned and said I could watch her for a little bit because she wasn’t prepared for me to come today. Let me describe how the class looks…it is an extremely small, small room…with wooden, broken down benches almost piled on top of another and almost no way for the children to walk from the front of the class to the back. There is a detoriated chalk board, which seems more like a plank of wood than a chalk board, and that is it. Naomi handed me the chalk, “africaaa..” she said, “this is what we have.” I watched her talk to them about plants, and often times she would swing her cane at the children, hit them in the head with it, slap their bodies with it. “I know you don’t like the cane,” she said, “but this is the only way we can get them to listen…they don’t like to listen, it is very hard to teach them, because all they want to do is play.” After a little while I began to think this wasn’t nearly as impossible as everyone had made it seem….and then Naomi left. “You can teach them now.” I decided to read them a story I had brought. They went crazy. Hitting eachother, talking to one another, some were sleeping! I thought for sure Naomi would rescue me, but she was nowhere to be found. I told them to repeat after me and memorize some poems….”Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle…” They were better, but still crazy and Naomi came back and screamed at them “I WILL CANE YOU ALL, ONE BY ONE, WHAT WAS THE STORY ABOUT?” nobody knew. Oh god, she was going to cane every child just because I’m a shitty teacher? Fuck. “should I cane them>?” she asked me..um? I don’t know? She left again. We memorized the itsy bitsy spider…”The itsy….” “-itsy” “Bitsy…” “-bitsy”…I don’t even know how many times I said that. They loved the part where you say “WASHED THE SPIDER OUT.” Thank god I had their attention, well, some of them. Then we learned colors. Naomi brought me a board with some figures on it, I asked them to name some colors…they raised their hands “yellow,” “green” “red” “blue” “black”. The problem with the educational system here is that the children are taught only to memorize, not understand information. So although they knew these things were “colors”, they had no idea what they really were. I held my shirt up, screaming at the top of my lungs “who knows what color this is??” they raised their hands…”red!” no…”green!”..no…”blue!” No. It’s gray! REPEAT AFTER ME! GRAYYY…gray…GRAY…gray….My shirt is gray! “your shirt is gray” “GRAY..” “-grayy”. Ok, what color is my shirt? They raised their hands, “red!!” hahaha. Oh god. This continued, but they got more crazy.

I pulled a little boy out of his seat who was not wearing his uniform, ‘Vah!’ I said, which means come, he looked embarrassed and scared. “what color is his shirt?” I held him up…IT IS BLUE! REPEAT AFTER ME! IT IS BLUEE…blue…BLUE…blue…What color is emannuel’s shirt.???? “yellow?” AH! Haha. They started getting it, the blue, mainly because I used his shirt. They thought that was hilarious. Naomi came in and said I was doing a really good job. Really? It was time to go back home for lunch. “I’ll see you tomorrow!” “nooo don’t go!” they said “goodbye teachaa” “goodbye madamee.” So adorable. Naomi gave me a book that is the curriculum for their grade, and I’m going to try to make a lesson plan for tomorrow about clean water. Not sure how I’m going to do this yet. We went into town and dropped off our fabric with the seamstress, Divine, and now we are back at the homebase, a lot of people are sleeping and a couple reading. I’m so sorry this is so long. Most of you probably didn’t even get to the end, so in the future I will break it up into pieces more often…there is just so much to tell and it’s so hard to describe it. I am already settling in and am fully excited and glad I will be here for the next seven weeks. This weekend me and nine other volunteers are traveling to Lake Volta, the largest man made lake in the world, we’ll also visit a local bead factory and lounge by the pool after what I’m sure will be an exhausting week. I’m excited. Ok, until next time.

Love, Kels

3 days!

2009-05-26T23:46:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone,

So I've never had a blog before. Honestly, I've never really been good at diary type things but I'm determined to write down as many details as possible from this trip. I had intended on writing on this much earlier on, in order to help explain the massive amount of preparation that has gone into this trip. Such preparation including getting a massive amount of shots, where the doctor looked at me as if I was crazy in saying "you're at risk for EVERYTHING in Ghana." Thanks? Also trying to find creative ways to fund this insanely expensive trip, getting a visa, and searching desperately for shorts and skirts that fall below the knee...much easier said than done. Anyways, I was so consumed with school and work that I didn't seem to notice the time falling away, and now the trip is here and I'm in a state of shock. Details about the trip and it's origin...I have wanted to volunteer in Africa since I was in middle school, and in september I started thinking about it more and more and started researching it, and realized how possible the trip was. After a lot of research I decided to go to Ghana, which is a country in west africa only a mere 2 degrees from the equator. Ghana is politically stable, full of rain forests, natural waterfalls, mountains, desert and coast, and the people are supposed to be unbelievably friendly. After choosing Ghana, I decided to go with a non-profit organization called Cross Cultural Solutions, which I will refer to in this blog as CCS. CCS uses a detailed skills and interests survey to determine where they will place us to work (we don't have a choice, only a preference) based on the needs of the community. This can either be in an orphanage, school, hospital, etc. I'll be living in a big house (known as the home base) with all of the other volunteers (probably around 40 people). We'll be in rooms with bunk beds, about four people to a room and communal bathrooms. While the accommodations provided at CCS are decent and fair, we will have nowhere near the luxury of having many of the comforts of home...things like air conditioning, television, internet, washing machine (hand washing our own clothes in a bucket), no warm water, no big fluffy down blankets, and not even a big 20 pound cat to wake you up in the morning. So what prompted me to do this? What exactly made me decide to get up and fly halfway across the world by myself. Honestly, I figured my time could be better spent there. I think the motives for the trip are self-explanatory. I love kids, and I think everyone wants to make a difference somehow.

So about a week ago I received my volunteer placement. I am going to be working in a school. I read it and was immediately excited, and then rushed off to take my final and had the opportunity to think about it more and felt like I could have a panic attack. Me? Teach a class? They say to go with an open mind and open heart. They say this often. They say placement will be really frustrating, chaotic, and challenging. I am SO SOOO excited though. I'm hoping to volunteer in an orphanage in the afternoons as well, something that I can do on top of my job at school. I feel like maybe if I keep saying that it's going to be really frustrating and challenging, then maybe it won't be, or maybe I won't be as shocked? Doubtful. Here is what it says about my school:

General Information

Mission and Needs of the Partner Program

Divine Star International School was established in the year 2003 to provide education to children between the ages of six (6) months to twelve (12) years leading them to the initial stages of their primary education. The school has about two hundred (200) children currently. They run a crèche, kindergarten, Primary school system. The school was initially funded by the founder and sustained to date by the school fees paid by the parents of the children. The children are taught rhymes, poems, simple arithmetic, alphabets, common identifications, number games, writing, basic English etc. at the kindergarten and lower primary level. At the upper primary, the subjects taught include English language, Mathematics, Integrated Science, Religious & Moral Education, Social Studies, Cultural Studies, Conversational English, Ghanaian language (Ewe) etc.

Volunteer Activities / Duties

Teaching conversational English
Teaching simple arithmetic
Teaching rhymes and action songs
Playing games and other outdoor activities
Teaching basic hygiene
Taking the kids to places of interest and events.
Grading papers and organizing learning activities.
Organize projects and activities for the children.

My program director said that my school was one of the more unstructured and chaotic schools, as far as she's heard. She said I will probably be able to choose the age group/class I work with. I can't really prepare before I assess the needs of my class and their age group. As far as I'm told, the children have no books, desks, markers, crayons, toys....NOTHING to help teach them. I'm bringing some things with me, but we're not allowed to actually give these items to the children because they don't want the community to become dependent on volunteers. CCS believes in enriching the community through hands on help, not through charity. I understand this, but I know it's going to be hard to do.

I got home on saturday night to start preparing. My dad is gone on business and my mom flew off on sunday to meet my dad for a vacation in France, so I'm on my own as far as packing and preparation is concerned. I've been buying so many things but I still feel like I'm nowhere near prepared and have no idea how I'm going to fit it all in one suitcase. A lot of people have been asking if I'm scared. There have been waves of me being really nervous and waves of me being really excited. I'm not really scared about things like health risks, etc., I got over that a long long time ago. I'm mostly scared that I won't be prepared enough and won't know how to work with the children. I'm scared my time will be wasted and I will not have the knowledge or resources to help as much as I want to. Only 3 days...well, actually a little over 2 now that this day is practically over. I leave friday and arrive in Accra (the capital) saturday night where I will be met by CCS staff and many other volunteers (a lot of which are on my flight). Maybe I'll update again before I leave.

Oh and lastly, (yeah, sorry) I will have limited access to internet while I'm there. There's no internet

in the homebase but there is an internet cafe and apparently some wireless in town (about an hour walk

away) so I am going to try and update this as much as possible, since this is easier to update and for

friends/relatives to keep tabs on me than individual email. However, that being said I would love your

emails with any details/questions, but I ask that you read this first. It's amazing how kind everyone has

been to me, and really makes me feel so lucky to have so many amazing people in my life...everyone at

my work through me a little african themed party, complete with a zebra cake, survival kit and card. I

really love my job, and I'm going to miss everyone there. For those of you who don't know I work at a

daycare center for infants. And even though I don't really hear crying anymore and change an obscene

amount of diapers everyday, I realized one day I went to work in a bad mood and instantly had a better

mood. I'm sad that the babies will all be so grown up by the time I get back. But anyways, Mo gave me

supplies for my class, and kelsey, alana, alicia and john just left from bringing me chocolate cake

and a card. Lauren spent about 4 hours with me at the mall today, jill spent about 2 hours at target with

me sunday. Not to mention everyone painfully and intently listening to me talk on and on and on and on

about this trip. I love you guys. I'll try to update before I leave, hopefully I can get all my shit together

in the next two days.