The final hours, and a wrap up

We're in our final hours in Ghana, and it's still not real. It hasn't settled partly due to the fact that our flights don't leave til 11pm, so we've had the whole day to relax around Accra, see some old friends, and ride our final trotros, eat our final street food.

We spent yesterday meeting with Marilyn and Joanna at OCLF, which was fantastic. We're so glad we got to meet Marilyn and chat with her about our experience at Jordan Nu and Ghana in general. Disappointing though, was the narrowly missed opportunity to meet Kathy Knowles of OCLF fame, as she is in Accra but very busy coordinating the opening of a new library in Madina.

We promise to post photos as soon as Lauren recovers in the US (maybe next week?). This has been an incredible experience (that's not even really a word to do it justice, but whatever), ups and downs, all of it. Laura will hopefully continue to post about her travels in Spain and Italy on this site, so keep coming back! And, finally, we would appeal to you to check out the FAVL website and possibly make a donation. We've seen the great work they do over here first hand, and they need our support, however big or small.

MUCH LOVE!!!

And then we fell off the face of the earth...

..but before that happened, we had a very nice and heartwarming send-off from Sumbrungu. We are going to miss everyone very very VERY much, and we hope the librarians and Lucas keep up their good work.

After all our hard work, we deservered a break...a highlight reel of the two weeks' vacation that followed: First, let me say that in our whirl-wind tour of the Southern parts of Ghana, we realized what a small and unique part we got to experience in Sumbrungu. The Upper East Regions (the rest of Northern Ghana for that matter) are drastically different from the remainder of the country. This vaca was an eye-opening adventure to the rest of this deeply diverse country.

So, the highlights!
-Ferry ride from Yeji to Akosombo. Talk about epic adventure! 36+ hours on a boat traveling the length of the largest man-made lake in the world. Lots of yams loaded on to the boat along the way, and lots of cool heat lightning to watch at night. A nice way to wind-down our brains after a really hectic final week in Sumbrungu.

-Chillaxing on the Volta River at a great little hotel. Got to watch the British Royal wedding on a HUGE TV and spent the afternoon swimming in the river, jumping off a rope swing. Also visited a bead market in Agomanya with an overwhelming selection of beads...and the market wasn't even in full swing by then!

-Trotro to Kumasi through beautiful hills. No one told us the Eastern region was so dang gorgeous! Got lost in Kumasi's Kejetia Market (allegedly the largest in West Africa....12ha) and failed (twice) to find kente cloth for sale. Also got stumped by a public holiday (again), and the football match we wanted to see was cancelled. We walked a LOT in Kumasi.

-Cape Coast: somehow we made a ton of friends here, including a former pilot for Ghana Airways and a very ebullient British-Ghanaian woman named Adriana. Trekked up to Kakum National Park's canopy walkway, saw a lot of interesting trees (yay plants). Visited the beautiful slave castles, but the dungeons were a chilling reminder of the atrocities commited there. Also had some great street red red in Elmina.

Butre gets a special paragraph. This was the village where we hung out at the beach for 4 nights. We a lot of friends here as well! We got to hike up to Fort Batenstein, a now severly overgrown but charming fort built by the Dutch in 1640. Another day we hiked to Busua, a neighboring village, and took surf lessons. And of course, there was lots of relaxing on the beach. The coolest part of this amazing 4 days was at the very end, when we had the chance to visit Butre's brand spankin' new (4 weeks old!) community library. It was opening by a Swedish volunteer, apparently all on her own dollar she saved for years. We were thrilled to impart some of our new library knowledge on the librarian, a very dedicated young man named Moses who is teaching in Butre for his National Service year. Disappointingly, there were no children around as they are not really in the habit of coming to the library yet, and at the time most were running around fetching water for their families. But, we taught Moses a few fun word games to play with the kids and took his email to continue to stay in touch with him. The library has sadly lost one of it's big supporters, the chief of Butre, who was said to be very progressive and keen on developing Butre; he unfortunately passed away 2 weeks after the library opening. Despite the challenges, the library is off to great start with a good (if small) selection of books and a beautiful space with lots of great maps. This was a great way to end our vacation...we just can't get enough of Ghana libraries!

We're running low on time, but we're off to meet Marilyn Deer (patron of Jordan Nu library) and visit the Osu children's library one more time. We still hate Accra, but it's great to be able to chat with Marilyn. Later!

It's Electric!

This will be the first non-epic blog post in a while, hopefully.  Though I am unable to post pictures, due to the fact that technology hates me (right, Dad?), I want to write about the electricity project that was just completed.  One of the three libraries that we are working with, Sherigu, did not have electricity when we arrived; and as per usual, funds were tight and unlikely to improve in the near future. My mom had the wonderful idea of asking our church community to raise the necessary funds, and God was truly present as they responded to the challenge.  Thanks to a generous local electrician who volunteered his services, the library now has light and ceiling fans, which trust me are a necessity in this climate! The gratitude from the community is endless, which can feel overwhelming at times. My gratitude to all who helped me with this project, especially our Church treasurer (thanks Mom!)

Laura’s Schisto-Swim, or, the Bath of Bilharzia…yet another epic blog post

More on the title later… but to re-emphasize …the time is going way too fast! We are officially at the one-month-to-go mark for Ghana and the 2-week mark for Sumbrungu. We are going to miss WAAAYYYY too many people around here. I think we’re going to be in for a shock once we leave the awesome Upper East Region…we’ve been pretty spoiled. Things we will miss dearly in Upper East (besides friends): our favorite Ghanaian dish, TZ with leaf stew, is sadly only a Northern thing; the relaxed pace of nearly hassle-free Bolgatanga; making people smile when we can greet them in the local language (FraFra); being dry and hot (ok, won’t really miss the heat part) instead of humid and hot, as it appears the rainy season has begun down south where we will be traveling during our final 2 weeks in Ghana…glad I have my $0.99 Walmart poncho!

This week has been full of “it’s the last time we do fill-in-the-blank". One of those was our final monthly librarian meeting. Frustratingly, we were never able to have a meeting where all 3 librarians were present…either due to sickness or other commitments or who knows what. However, this last meeting was definitely our most productive yet and for me, one of the most exciting. After postponing it twice, we FINALLY got to have our book club discussion about Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey!

The book is written by a Ghanaian author and takes place in the Volta Region of Ghana. It’s a detective novel, a mystery about two similar murders in a village, separated by 20 years or so. The title comes from the references to the “trokosi” system in some parts of Ghana, where a traditional priest takes several wives, often immediately after puberty. I was SO excited to hear how much Jennifer, Bernard, and Lucas (he loves a good debate/argument) had to say about the book. There’s too much to detail it all here, but one thing both Laura and I learned is that the book is a lot more Western or American than meets the eye. The Ghanaians thought the book jumped around too much because it used the “cliff-hanger” chapter endings common in Western novels and would switch to a different plot line for the next chapter. Lucas and Jennifer were frustrated by this writing style and preferred the straightforward style of classic African novels like The Gods are Not to Blame (ok actually a play) and Things Fall Apart. In contrast, I really struggled with Things Fall Apart when I read it because of this “tell it like it is” style; to me it was a little bland, which was a big disappointment since it’s THE premier novel of classic African literature. But hey, the Ghanaians love it that way. Another interesting part of our discussion was when Bernard described how he used one of the Reading Strategies (!! J) to think about what would happen if a murder like that happened in his community. We ended with a lesson on traditional marriage practices and rites in Ghana, and learned that in some places, even if a Christian ceremony has taken place, the families won’t consider a marriage valid until the traditional rites have also been performed. This involves the bride jumping over a cow into the new husband’s home, and sometimes a large bride-price of many domestic animals. All in all, it was a great discussion, everyone had something to contribute, they seemed to enjoy the book despite the foreign writing style, and we hope the book club continues. And, if Quartey writes a sequel, they said they’d definitely read it.

Another one of our “lasts” was our last week of Phonics Mini-Camp at Gowrie. There was one student in particular, Awinbila, a good reader from the start who really stretched himself to take on harder books at the end of the week. This was really exciting to see. And, during our final review day almost everyone had “Bossy E” down pat. We are doing quite a few revisions for our next rounds at Sherigu and Sumbrungu, and it’s difficult to tell how much will stick with them given the short time we had, but overall I think it was a success. Our final day in Gowrie in particular was a blast, beginning with Laura finally taking the plunge into the reservoir nearby. She wanted to do this since we first went to Gowrie, and after I made her take the necessary precautions to avoid contracting potential parasites, she embarked on what I call her Schistomiasis Swim, or Bath of Bilharzia. She was very happy, and I was very happy she was alive after she ALSO jumped off a 20ft tall concrete piling into the lake…Unfortunately after this great start we were displaced from the library by screaming-baby-weighing for the morning (just like during inventory) and were forced to camp out under a tree, entertaining a horde of 4 year olds and attempting to keep them from beating on each other too much. We grew weary of this and headed into the main part of town to get some lunch and have a well-deserved drink at a spot to celebrate the last day of camp. Little did we know some members of the community would surprise us with more drinks and a traditional TZ meal at the end of our class! It really touched us to see that they appreciated our efforts and was a nice ending to a great two weeks at Gowrie.

Last but not least, we went back to Navrongo to visit our friend Roland and his family yesterday. I’m sort of speechless about how generous and welcoming they were. And they were SO delighted to entertain Roland’s new “fella” (word for white person #7?) friends. We spent the first part of the day relaxing inside, watching a very confusing Nigerian movie and one of hundreds of “prophets” on TV. That was when the copious amounts of food began to roll out…Roland’s trio of sisters-in-law, Esther, Beatrice, and Rebecca, made us popcorn and fresh cut mango and melon. Then they began the preparations for TZ with leaf stew. We tried to “help” and they let us pound some groundnuts and stir the TZ once or twice…but mostly we hung around the extended family compound and chatted with these really cool women and their children. They’re all fairly young, late-20s-ish, and are really modern, stylish, and rather progressive, Esther in particular. Her husband (Roland’s brother Benjamin) is currently in the Western Region at the University of Development Studies campus there, and Esther stays in Navrongo raising their children, Pearl (6) and Ludovic (2, called “Lu” for short). She only speaks English to her children because she wants them to have a head start when they get to school. Everyone else in the compound, however, speaks Kassem (the local language) to them, so they are growing up bi-lingual. I thought this was pretty neat, and I wonder if other young Ghanaian couples are starting to do the same thing…

The kids were a hoot to play with. Lu, one of the youngest of the cousins present, was terrified when we first showed up, but soon got his confidence and started treating Laura and I like his own personal jungle gym. He was clearly going through some “terrible two’s” moments and threw a few fits, but each time we briefly left the compound, he and his little cousins would come running out to give us a big “welcome back” hug…even if we were only gone for 2 minutes. So. Cute. Once we did leave for a longer stretch to go sit with Roland’s friends at a spot across the street to have a few drinks, and to discuss something they could not wrap their heads around: polygamy is illegal in the US. Roland loves to ask us questions about what things are like in the US and usually accepts the answer, but this one in particular he couldn’t understand. “You can’t even have just 2?”. We brought up how some sects of Mormons practice polygamy, but they were still a bit confused. Ah, cultural differences.

After we chowed down on the TZ and a delicious “fruit salad” (more like fruit puree), we took our gluttonous selves for a stroll to visit the famous cathedral and mission site in Navrongo. The cathedral (over a hundred years old!) was beautifully decorated with the traditional, red-black-white Northern-style paintings inside, as well as a marble copy of the Pieta we were told was sent to them by the Pope! Navrongo is the epicenter of all things Catholic in the Upper East and I think was the site of the first Catholic mission to Ghana so it’s a very important place. We ended the night with a trip to the nearby Teaching College campus to meet Roland’s mother, a super sweet woman who cooks for the dining hall there. We made sure to tell her she raised a very nice young man and tell her how generous her family had been all day. It was an AWESOME day, and we would love to take them up on their invite to come back if we have the time…so much to do, so little time, stay tuned for more exciting final-week adventures!

Hiking around the Bongo Hills.  One of these rocks makes a cool sound like a drum when you hit it, but we never did determine which one it was...

Us with an 87-year-old crocodile.  That's our friend Roland on the right, with one of his friends.  This picture was followed by the realization that both our motorbikes had flat tires, followed by a 90-minute wait at the Inefficient Mechanic Shop.

Us with the children from our first 'Phonics Camp' at the Gowrie Community Library.  Sorry Lauren - I didn't realize your face was blocked in this one!

Camps, Crocodiles, and 'Cycles

Well, as expected, time has started to fly by as we busy ourselves with all the programs we’ve been planning for the past month.  Combine that with all the fun touristy things we want to cram into our final three weeks in Sumbrungu, and we have barely had time to breathe. 

Every morning around 7:30am, we embark on an 80-minute bike ride to the library at Gowrie.  Though our Phonics Camp that we are running there doesn’t begin until 3:00pm, this is the only time when we can bicycle without frying to a crisp, becoming dehydrated, or suffering from heat exhaustion.  That’s Ghana’s ‘dry season’ for you.  We spend the day preparing for the camp, or for our other evening activity sessions (more later), doing logistical stuff for FAV L, or resting.  Around 2:15 (shockingly punctual, especially for Ghanaians!) our group of 15 fourth-graders starts to arrive.  We help them read and decorate leaves for the Reading Tree – each child adds a leaf with his or her name and the title and author of the book they read.  We’re having mixed feelings about the Reading Tree; on the one hand, it’s a great way to motivate students to read, but it also encourages them to read the shortest and easiest books possible, which is frustrating when we’re trying to increase their reading level.  We then spend the first half of class introducing and practicing a simple phonics concept – for example, the past week we reviewed consonant sounds, short vowels, and long vowels as indicated by a silent ‘Boss E’ at the end of a word (hat à hate, etc).  With much patience and repetition, we think they are getting the hang of it.  They seem to have trouble applying what they have learned, but after we sit down and point out that they can figure out how to say each word, they usually get it.  We just hope we’re not trying to do too much in too short a time.

On Tuesday and Wednesday nights at our home in Sumbrungu, we have ‘Reading Activity Sessions’ with fifth and sixth graders.  We cancelled the Tuesday session last week due to the Ghana-England football match (which Ghana tied with 2 minutes to spare!  You should have seen the reaction here, you’d think it was the World Cup!), but had 12 show up for Wednesday.  We played some fun word games with them, such as hangman and word scramblers, then had them make bookmarks with construction paper and colored pencils, which we laminated and look amazing!  We’re also hoping to start a pen pal program with students in the US, but this is proving more complicated than expected – in the overly-legalized USA, you cannot simply give a child’s name to a complete stranger on the other half of the world, apparently. We are also hoping to do more reading-based activities with this group, but the library is still closed due to the construction.  Rumor has it that it will open any day now, but I’ll need to see it to believe it. 

Friday night was our first attempt at running an activity session without an interpreter, and I’ll go ahead and say it was a success!  We had 12 JHS Form 1 (7^th grade) students come to the first of four sessions focused on the newspaper.  The premier newspaper in Ghana is the Daily Graphic, and it publishes a weekly children’s edition called the Junior Graphic, which we rightfully suspected is not very well-read within the community.  We spent the first part of the class going through the different sections of the newspaper, to familiarize the students with content, etc.  We also had them read a letter to the editor about the political unrest in Cote d’Ivoire right now, then discussed the article, the situation, and the potential impact on Ghana.  One or two students seemed familiar with the situation (to recap: Former president Laurent Gbagbo refuses to step down from the presidency after losing the election, claiming it was unfair.  Military had supported Gbagbo, and essentially locked President-elect Outtara in a hotel room in the capitol for a few months, put has since withdrawn their support.  Situation looks hopeful), but I think their understanding improved tremendously after reading the article, which stated the situation very clearly.  Next week, we plan to have them write their own letters to the editor about a topic of their choice, which will not only actively engage them with the newspaper, but will get them invested in reading it for weeks to come.

Ok, now for the fun stuff.  Fridays are our free day for traveling and exploring, since all the libraries are closed.  This week, we went to Bongo, a small village with a couple small hills and hiking paths.  The highlight is a rock which makes a cool sound when you strike it, the fine print being that you need to hire a local guide to find it, something we did not feel like doing.  DIY tourism doesn’t really seem to be a thing here, evidenced by the total lack of signposts.  Frustrating.  We had fun walking around, an experience highlighted by our discovery of a dam, and evidence of the existence of a reservoir during rainy season.  We unfortunately couldn’t walk for very long due to extreme heat and lack of water, but what we did was very enjoyable. 

Yesterday we finally made it to the premier tourist destination of the Upper East Region: the crocodile ponds at Paga.  Over-hyped and over-priced? Yes, but still fun.  We went with a Ghanaian friend of ours who’s from the area, Roland, which was fortunate because he was able to barter down the price to only mildly exorbitant.  Then we watched as the men stood on the side of a large muddy pond with a ‘fowl’ and ‘called’ the crocodiles with noises that seemed to mimic the distressed fowl they were holding.  Eventually, we saw a pair of eyes surface across the lake and meander toward us, eyes that ended up belonging to one of the largest crocodiles present – I don’t know the exact size, but they told us it was 87 years old!  It took a few steps out of the water, then submissively lay down and waited.  It was at this time that I became aware of how truly huge it was, since the three other crocodiles that followed it out of the water in search of fowl were about half its size.  We posed around it, lifted up its tail, placed a small gnome on its back, etc, and then after all that they gave the fowl to a different crocodile, because ours had already eaten 6 that day.  I was impressed that it came and posed for us when it wasn’t even hungry! This experience was then followed by a 90-minute wait as an easily-distracted mechanic repaired the two flat tires that we realized our motorbikes had gotten simultaneously.  How many tourists can say they’ve had that experience?  By then it was late, so we returned home, but we hope to go back before we leave to meet Roland’s family and see some other tourist attractions in the area.

Happy 2 Month Ghana-versary To Us!

Yes folks, we've officially been in-country 2 months! Where did the time go...but ironically this post happens to be about Burkina Faso?

Confession: I <3 Burkina Faso. As much as I have also come to love Ghana, I’ve always had a soft spot for baguettes and Francophone countries (we’ll see this get me into an interesting conversation later)… so this was a special treat for me. It was also a chance to visit the “vowel-tastic” capital Ouagadougou. Any Stowe High French graduates out there surely remember Madame Austin’s love of this word!

Unfortunately my high school French was pretty darn rusty, but I’d like to think it improved dramatically throughout the week given all the talking I had to do. I was the de facto spokeswoman in Burkina, a role which culminated in a visit to the mayor, education inspector, police station, and the “prefecture”, or President’s representative to the district on our final day in Bereba. I got into a long drawn-out conversation attempting to tell the prefecture that, no his position did not exist in the US, no the president did not dictate the actions of governors or individual states (up for debate right now? Maybe), and yes the individual states were far more autonomous than Burkina provinces. The result of these 7 days of complete immersion is that I was still extracting my brain from “French mode” two days after we returned to Ghana … and now I’ve forgotten 80% of my FraFra…”tant pis” as they say.

A few exciting things for AFTER our amazing village stay in Bereba:

We got stuck in an African-style traffic jam no more than 30 minutes into our 3+ hour journey back to Ouaga. Most people were alternately peeing in the bush or chasing after their bus/car/truck which had begun to roll up farther in the queue. We spent the time hiding in the shade of larger vehicles, worrying about the poor chicken trapped in our hot trunk, and embracing this facet of West African travel. Thankfully the accident that caused this delay wasn’t gruesome; it just took up 2/3 of the road.

Once rested, showered, and rehydrated in Ouaga, we went with Charley to visit the Village Artisanal. This was a huge craft “village” next to the grounds for SIAO. Expansive concrete stalls where you can see artisans practicing their craft and displaying their products are set up around a central fixed-price store. The main wares are bronze statues, embroidered tablecloths and napkins, hand-woven clothing and bags, batik prints, and leatherworks. I unsuccessfully haggled and apparently grossly overpaid for some REALLY nifty things; our chauffeur Francois said he could have gotten a certain item I bought for 1/3 the price I paid…AFTER I had already bought it. Sigh. At least I’m in love with my purchases. Laura made up for my lack of thrift with superior bargaining skillz.

We also got our Western food fixes by eating pizza, a club sandwich, and fries at a nice restaurant called Paradisio. Afterwards, the power miraculously turned back on just in time for my favorite activity of the entire week: catching a Burkinabe flick at an outdoor cinema (see Charley’s FAVL blog post about the movie). Nothing could beat this quirky ambience. In the parking lot, people were selling bananas and mangoes presumably for movie snacks. The comfortingly familiar Big Dipper was clearly visible, hanging upside down directly above the screen. Occasionally, a HUGE airplane from the very very nearby international airport would pass right behind the screen. The evening temperature was enjoyably cool while the metal chairs were unbearably hard and uncomfortable. All this for the low low price of about $1! Bonus: I think I understood most of the French/the movie.

If you are still reading this, you are a trooper. I’m about to launch into some long-winded stuff on cultural differences, so go grab some snacks.

To provide some background (or at least my basic understanding of it) on the aforementioned “interesting conversation”: there were some…um…”interesting” things going on at the national level for Burkina while we were there. First, there had been student demonstrations that turned a bit violent in the weeks leading up to our visit. The students were upset about another senior high student who died in jail, allegedly due to mistreatment. We actually headed to Bereba village really early Saturday morning to avoid a planned student demonstration near the FAVL office in Ouaga (but this one was pretty subdued). Second, military personnel in Ouaga were unhappy about a comrade being jailed, so they decided to riot (meaning, shoot guns in the air and loot stores) the night before we returned from Bereba. Third, the following day merchants were demonstrating in protest of the looting from the previous night. *NOTE: we ourselves never actually witnessed these things, but were given great updates from FAVL/Peace Corps and felt very safe our entire trip.* Fourth, set this against the backdrop of the uprisings in North Africa this past month. President du Faso Blaise Compaoré has been in power for the last 30 years via a combination of coups and elections…sound a bit familiar? Throw in the fact that historically Burkina has close ties with Libya. Compaoré and Colonel Gaddafi are close friends.

While hanging with a few Burkinabes who will remain nameless, I stated that I enjoyed speaking French and visiting Francophone countries. One became a bit ruffled by this statement, and the two started discussing in rapid French. When I finally heard “Two Frenchmen died, that’s good,” I decided to interject myself into the discourse. “Ce n’est jamais bon quand on est mort! Francais, Burkinabe, Americain…jamais bon!” I said.

It’s difficult to retell the whole thing in detail since I only understood about half of what was said to me, but an extremely simplified version of what followed: “No, no, France sucks, they abandoned their West African colonies who now suffer. But France sometimes still keeps its armies there, why are they meddling now in Cote d’Ivoire and Libya?? Libya is great. Everyone gets free water, health care, and electricity. The world needs more people like Gaddhafi. French is much more difficult to learn than English. Do you think Ghana is a bit more stable than Burkina? But really, we should just destroy all arms and let there be peace. Libraries and increased education can help create peaceful societies.”

This was a lot to absorb, and I definitely don’t claim to have understood all pieces of the arguments. Mostly I’m just throwing it out there as an interesting interaction for those who like these things. For me, I took it as yet another point of view. I’ve gotten so used to the American perspective, it was somewhat refreshing to hear a different one, regardless of my feelings about it. We've had a lot of chats with Ghanaians about education issues and their perspectives, but less so on international politics so this was a big change from our usual discussions. Food for thought…

Ok and if you made it THIS far…you are a saint! Look forward to upcoming blog posts about our first week of phonics camp, watching Ghana play England on TV, and visits to Navrongo, Paga, and Bongo Hills. :-)

La vie burkinabe!

We promised ourselves we would never become those people who neglected our blog for extended periods of time...oops.  But we have lots of fun exciting stuff to share now!  We just returned from a week in Burkina Faso, the French speaking country about 15 minutes due north from where we are.  Our trip was motivated by two factors: one, our visas expire after 60 days, so we had to get them renewed; and two, FAVL is actually based out of Burkina Faso, so we wanted to visit some of the more well-established libraries to get some ideas for their younger Ghanaian counterparts.

After a relatively hassle-free trip (minus needing to backtrack 15 km to withdraw more money for the absurdly expensive Burkina visas) we were met at the bus station by the Burkina Faso FAVL coordinator, Elisee.  This is where the trip started to get surreal - we were picked up in a private vehicle by Elisee and FAVL's chauffeur, Francois, who would accompany us for the remainder of the week and drive us everywhere we wanted to go. So long, public transportation!  We were taken to the FAVL office, a well-decorated space (lots of cool African masks) with couches, a kitchen, and high-speed internet! Attached to the office were the guest rooms, complete with running water and air-conditioning!  A veritable palace!  Made even nicer by the security of a night watchman, and the presence of two goats and chickens living in the patio area.  For those interested, there is a video on the FAVL website of Lucas talking on the patio, while one of the goats mauls a chicken very loudly in the background - priceless!

We left at the crack of dawn for Bereba, a village about four hours away that is home to the 'mothership' of the FAVL libraries.  There is a guesthouse there where we stayed, along with Francois, and had all our meals prepared for us by a wonderful woman Avara - tough life, right?  Our itinerary for the week basically consisted of visiting two libraries every morning, sometimes staying to do activities with the children, resting until about 4:00, then going off to have cultural experiences with Dounko, the regional activities coordinator for the libraries.  I'll start with the libraries - there are seven total, all very well-stocked with French books.  We were surprised to find that there were a lot more adult books - a contrast to the Ghanaian libraries, which are very much oriented toward children.  The libraries were very organized, with each librarian taking the time to show us their bulletin boards and various notebooks used to record everything.  Their schedules were also drastically different from what we're used to - they are only open for about 20 hours a week, whereas in Ghana they are open for about 40, and often until 10:00 at night.  The decorations in the libraries were also very cool, ranging from local masks to children's artwork to murals done by local artists.  And Dounko was great fun to watch - he has an exuberant and energetic personality that allows him to excel at entertaining children with books, stories, songs, and dances.  I just wish my French were a little better so I could understand what was going on...

The cultural experiences were another unexpected surprise.  Dounko is used to playing tour guide because of the Reading West Africa program run through Santa Clara University, which has students spend six weeks in the villages assisting FAVL, and we greatly benefited from his expertise.  Our first visit was to a potter, who produced beautiful large pots ('African refrigerators', as Dounko called them) in a matter of minutes on a manual potter's wheel.  We learned how to play the balefon, an African xylophone in which different notes are produced according to the size of the gourd suspended underneath each key.  We watched and participated in a dance to the music of the balefon and snare drum, though our 'dancing' was little more than rhythmic shuffling.  We had 'arts and crafts hour', in which produced animal masks and elaborate 3D flowers.  The biggest surprise was when we heard music one night, went to see what it was, and discovered a generator-powered discotheque!  That was probably the last thing I expected to find in the middle of that village.

It was interesting that we spent a lot of time focusing on the differences between Burkina Faso and Ghana, yet when we came back, the first thing one of our Ghanaian friends asked us was, 'what are the similarities?'  A different perspective from ours, that's for sure.  To start with, Burkina Faso is visibly less developed - roofs are thatched instead of made of corrugated metal, and even walls are made of woven mats in some places.  We saw a lot more 'stereotypical African' scenes, such as trucks loaded with people and buses with luggage strapped on up to twice it's height.  The people are also very friendly, but they love to shake hands a lot more - I lost track of the number of hands I shook that week! 

You want photos? I'll give you photos...

Laura, Bernard, Lauren, and Lucas at wedding in Sherigu.

Drinkin' pito out of a calabash with some German friends at Mole.

We came, we saw...only elephant footprints and poo.

Local dancing at (belated) harvest festival in Sumbrungu.

He's on your shirt, your biscuits, your notebook...even your underwear (sorry no photos, but believe us it's true!).

Gowrie Kunkua Library Patrons.... lots of them!

Drumming with our new friend Rasheed

Sumbrungu Library inventory in progress.

Warning: Epically long blog post ahead....

The last few days have been extremely busy and exciting, so here’s all the details.

First, as Laura mentioned, we got to attend a Frafra literacy class with Uncle Benedict, our new BFF. Uncle Benedict is a nonformal education supervisor, and this is a class he checks up on. The class is held at night at someone’s home not far from our library, outside in their courtyard. It’s mostly women who attend. It sounds stereotypical, but to describe the scene: dim light comes from a kerosene lamp, the facilitator writes on a blackboard painted onto a courtyard wall, about 20 women sit on mats on the ground surrounded by their children and babies. I thought about how awesome it is that after all their hard work they do farming or weaving or just taking care of the house (still a huge task), these women find the energy to come learn to read and write the language they’ve only spoken their whole lives. And they are super enthusiastic about learning. Lots of people volunteer to write phrases on the board or go over the pronunciations. For Laura and I, the class was a big step towards Frafra and we finally know what sound some of the funny vowels make (ex. backwards “c” = “aw” sound). We also learned some new important phrases like “I do not want meat”. This was a special experience and we’re hoping to go to another class soon!

You also know we were invited to a wedding on Saturday! Turned out that Bernard, the Sherigu librarian, was coordinating this event for Francis, his friend/coworker/secretary of Sherigu library committee and groom-to-be. We arrived on our bicycles just before noon when the service was supposed to start (haha…), in our dresses, already dripping in sweat from the heat of the mid-morning. It was going to be a Ghanaian-style Catholic wedding, and Bernard showed us to some nice seats in the rear of the church. And so we waited, until around 1pm (an hour after Bernard announced to the congregation that “The bride will be arriving very soon”), when the singing started up and in came the bride.

What followed was unlike any other Catholic wedding mass I’ve attended; the words spoken by the priest/bride/groom were the same (and, to our surprise and delight, in English not Frafra), and the bride wore white, but the feeling and the singing (and dancing!) was completely different. Much more jubilant! The heat in the fan-less church also made me think that this is what it must have felt like on July 22, 1978 (ok, now it's right!) when my parents got married…which I’m told was also in a fan-less brick building in dead heat. To top it off, the church was PACKED. We estimated there were about 300 or more people crammed into and spilling out of the church.

The service was very long (about 2.5 hrs, start to finish), which was par for the course here in Ghana. There’s a lot of extra singing in Ghanaian Catholic masses (most things we speak in church at home are sung here), so they take longer and the wedding was no exception. This time there was a huge choir (dressed in caps and gowns…we’re not sure why), a full drumming/percussion band, a lot of extra dancing (we danced too!), hooting and hollering for the bride and groom after they exchanged vows, and the entire homily was repeated in English and in Frafra. I think most people (ourselves included), went outside at some point during the offertory to quickly rehydrate mid-mass with a bag of nice cold pure water.

After the service, there was a presentation of gifts to the new couple, photo time, and then the entire congregation piled into the Catholic Social Center next door to take part in the reception. This was no invitation-only, write-down-if-you-want-meat-or-fish affair. No, they started handing out tons of food cartons (jollof rice) and sodas and bags of water, to all the people in attendance. The important ones were served first, but they were trying to get at least something to everyone. We were told that not all weddings are that open, but it serves as yet another example of the importance of community that permeates Ghanaian culture.

The bride and groom had a first dance (shorter and not a song they picked), fed each other cake (cleanly and politely), and had a champagne toast. There were also speeches we couldn’t hear, but there was plenty of people-watching and chatting with the bride’s sister to keep us occupied. We were told the dance floor would open up soon and the party would go all night, but we had to exit at 5:30pm to get back home before dark. A tiring, but absolutely amazing experience. We were very grateful to have the opportunity to peek in on this slice of Ghanaian life. Oh, and we happened to sit next to Darius’ mother, Agnes, who invited us to dinner at her home sometime. Score!

The next day was 6^th of March, or Independence Day. We woke up super early to go to the English mass in Sumbrungu, and to get to Bolga in time for their 6^th March celebrations and parade. As soon as we arrived in Bolga, we were befriended by Millicent and Clara, two sisters who were nice enough to show us to the parade grounds (sadly we only caught the end of it) and tried to help us find a Ghanaian flag for purchase. This was actually really hard to do, which seemed strange to us. Turned out Independence Day in Ghana is not as big of an affair as 4^th of July at home, which was kind of a disappointment. But, maybe that’s just here in Bolga, who knows what happens in Accra.

In Bolga, students from surrounding schools marched in a circle around the grounds to “God Bless Our Homeland Ghana” (national anthem) played by a sharp military band. After the marching was over, there were speeches by local and regional officials, which were drowned out by the noise of hundreds of children milling about and trying to get their photo snapped with the “white ladies” wandering through the crowd (who could that be…). The one thing that did live up to my expectations was the abundance of street food and snacks! I want to try everything here (exception: dog meat), so I had the chance to try a few new snacks like a peanut butter brittle-type delicious morsel.

After the parade, we came home and rested until the “jams” started. This was the same “middle school dance” that happened before, but this time there were a lot more people (and older ones too). We went to the bar for some liquid courage, took a deep breath, and entered the jams by ourselves. Soon we were surrounded by a crowd of little children encouraging us, “Solmia Dance! Solmia Dance!” This morphed into an intimidating crowd of young men trying to show us their dance moves. We finally ended up with a great group of teenage girls who kept the boys at bay and were eventually escorted by the girls and the children to the library when we decided we were too hot, sweaty, and tired to go on.

Last but not least, we biked to Gowrie-Kunkua Library on Monday to finish inventory….success! We’re very excited to have completed our first library inventory, and celebrated with a Sangria toast with Lucas last night. We’re also very excited to know that we can bike to Gowrie in far less than 2 hours, which was our original estimate. Now we’re beginning the inventory here at Sumbrungu Library, and we can’t wait to revamp this thing. It was kind of a mess, particularly in the back storeroom. The library continues to be closed due to the construction (which is looking more complete by the day!), so it’s a good time for us to lock ourselves in the room and count some 2000 books.

Pictures!

Parade commemorating Ghana's Independence Day

Second-graders dancing with Ghanaian colors

Our 5th graders!

More Tales from Sumbrungu

Well it looks like I've got a lot of ground to cover in this post!  I'll start with our library projects.  We're having a couple of setbacks, the biggest one being the construction project underway at the Sumbrungu Women's Center, the building that currently houses the library.  It has become unsafe for children to be near the area, so the library has been closed until the project is completed.  Fortunately, we have access to the adjacent women's community center, so we were able to complete our two-week Reading Session with our 5th-grade students.  We think the class went really well, and that the children enjoyed the class and learned new strategies to improve their reading comprehension.  And, perhaps most importantly, we taught them how to play WAH!  It will become an international phenomenon someday, I just know it.

We've been thinking about a lot of new ideas for activities to do with various age groups that will be different from the reading strategies taught in the summer camps.  We're looking to organize two-week after school mini-camps with 4th-graders that will focus on the mechanics of reading words (phonics, pronunciation, syllables, etc) so that they will have a solid foundation for learning the comprehension skills that come later.  We do have a lot of constraints that we need to work around in organizing these camps though - for example, our number one priority right now is doing inventory at all three libraries, a process which takes 2-3 days per library.  We also need to renew our visas before the end of the month, so we are planning a trip to Burkina Faso for the 3rd week in March to visit some of the libraries there.  So right now, we are looking to start up three evening programs with 5th graders, 6th graders, and 7th graders, respectively.  We hope to combine reading activities, word games and puzzles, arts and crafts, phonics, creative thinking activities, and writing in these classes.  We have so many ideas and not nearly enough time to do them all!  We also need to figure out a way to recruit students for these activities - we were originally planning to visit the schools and talk to the headmasters and teachers, but it seems the teachers will be staging a protest on Tuesday, and it remains to be seen whether they will commit to a long-term strike over wages, benefits, etc.  I'm having flashbacks to my time volunteering in Santiago, when I showed up for three weeks to volunteer at a high school, only to find the students and/or teachers on strike.

So this past weekend was our trip to Mole National Park, a sanctuary renowned for its elephant population.  We had an amazingly easy trip, by Ghanaian standards - even when we found all the seats sold out on our bus to the park, we hitched a ride in an air-conditioned pickup truck from an entrepreneurial local and arrived 5 hours ahead of schedule, without having to stand the whole way.  We met a lot of volunteers from different parts of Ghana, mostly German and British, which was fun.  Despite our best efforts, we did not see any elephants.  We planned our trip for the dry season, since this is when elephants come to the watering hole near the hotel, but the rain came early this year, and the elephants had already scattered.  But that's okay - we had a lot of fun lounging by the pool with a vista of the watering hole and warthogs wandering around, drinking 'pito' (a local alcoholic brew somewhere between a wine and a beer) from a calabash, and getting caught in a freak rainstorm.

The bad part of the weekend was that Elena and Trisha, who were traveling from Spain and Takoradi respectively to meet us, had horrendous travel luck (bus broke down at 1AM and stranded them until about 10:00) so they didn't arrive at the park until after we had left.  But that was okay, because we were able to give them insider tips, and then they came and spent a couple of nights in Sumbrungu with us.  They helped out with our class, which was great, especially since Elena has a lot of experience with ESL kids.  They got to witness 'Rasta Coco', a friendly local with a guitar-like instrument and pito on his breath, serenade Lauren with a song that featured the words 'Lauren', 'United States', and 'Barack Obama'.  (Have we mentioned how Obama-crazy this place is? We ate 'Obama biscuits' a few nights ago, passed several 'Obama hotels' in Accra, see children taking with notebooks bearing his face, and routinely see shirts with his face (boys) or 'Obama's girl' written on them.)

Well, that might be it for now.  Some things we're looking forward to are: attending a Frafra class tonight (the local dialect), attending a wedding tomorrow, and celebrating Ghana's Independence Day this weekend.  The celebrations started this morning with a marching demonstration by all the school children of the area, complete with drumming and streamers with the Ghanaian colors.

Solmias in Sumbrungu

First, some bad news…my camera memory card got a virus (thanks, internet cafes), so I can’t upload any photos from it until I get back to the US and get it fixed…and we’d taken most of our photos on that one. But, that just means you get even more detailed blog posts from us :-)

Now the awesome good news! We’ve been here in Sumbrungu for almost 2 weeks, and have been in Ghana for almost a month. It’s incredible how the time has flown. We’re really settling in now and have a lot on our to-do list for the libraries in the coming months, including full inventory of books, follow-up on this summer’s reading camp research, a new evening program for upper primary students, and much more. To be honest, if we get at least half of our list done, I will be ecstatic.

As Laura said last time, we’re holding evening classes with the equivalent of 5th grade students 3 times a week. After the first week, the classes seem to be working well. We’ve been focusing on some of the reading strategies Francesca and Nico (previous FAVL volunteers) used this summer in their reading camps. For example, one strategy is “Look at the cover and try to predict the story”. The strategies are meant to help improve reading comprehension and make reading more fun. Laura and I are both extremely impressed by all the amazing work Francesca, Nico, and the Ghana FAVL team put into creating the camp materials. We can only hope we’re doing their work justice as we share their great strategies with other students.

To be expected, there has been some confusion across the language barrier even with our trusty translator Darius always on hand. But, many of the students have been faithfully coming in to the library during their school breaks to continue reading and working on the small assignments we’ve given them, which is a great sign! It’s also a great chance for us to spend more time working with individual students since we tend to be very time-limited at night (we don’t want to keep them out really late and get in trouble with their parents or be tired for school in the morning). For any Colby College readers out there, we also taught the students how to play WAH! They LOVED IT. And they now show up to class randomly shouting “WAH!” We’re going to have to get a video of this in action sometime (after the Macarena, of course).

During the day around the Sumbrungu Women’s Center (where we live and work at the library), we’ve become quite the attraction. Almost like zoo animals, if you will. The children never cease to be amazed by the “solmias” (our new Frafra word for “foreigner”). Sometimes students will show up before 8am, peering in through the windows to see if we’re up yet, ready to play a game or hang out with us reading in the library. As excited as we are for them to want to come to the library…some seem to have started cutting class to do so…we’re on the look out for it now and make sure they’re in class when they should be!

Speaking of school…we’ve had some very thought-provoking and enlightening conversations with a few people (mostly teachers) about their thoughts on the state of education in Ghana. Some of the issues discussed: teacher’s low salaries, extremely high student to teacher ratios, attempting to teach computer skills courses when your school has zero computers to practice on, school food program supplies being diverted to other parts of the world for disaster relief but never being transferred back to Ghana afterwards and leaving many students without food and unable to focus, and the high cost of attending school in Ghana. When we hear Ghanaians talk about these issues so passionately, by the end most start to look very sad and disappointed, almost dejected, in a way that says “We try so hard, but what is really changing? Nothing”. My thoughts: while it may take a very very long time to change these systemic problems with formal education, non-formal education (like community library activities!) can help fill in some of the gaps and continue to support students and teachers during the waitin’ on the world to change. At least that’s what I hope is happening… just some thoughts.