Home Away from Home

So we're finally settled in at our home away from home in Sumbrungu.  We LOVE it here!  It's only a short shared-taxi drive to Bolgatanga (read: to internet access), which is an adorable small 'city' with none of the hassles and annoyances of Accra.  I suppose I need to clarify that; despite my initial praises of this country for not staring at us and shouting, a few more days in the city, especially when we were by ourselves, brought out the negative.  Some people just can't resist stretching out their arms to touch us as we pass, and will sometimes go out of their way to do this, resembling sea anemones or some other type of tentacled animal lying in wait.

Our rooms are part of a square compound with a central courtyard - well, a central expanse of cement at least.  It looks like drab concrete from the outside, but the inside is painted in a cool geometric design.  We're sharing a room so the other one will be available for other guests, and we're right next to the library and Lucas' office.  Our hopes were raised when we saw a bathroom with a sink, showerhead, and flush toilet; but alas, there is no water hookup yet, so we depend on a nice man named Fredo to bring us water every day.  The library is very different from the one in Jordan Nu - it is more geared toward children, so there aren't as many adult novels, which is unfortunate for us.  It is actual a favorite study spot in the evening for students from the Polytechnic across the street.  Readers can choose from one of four tables to read quietly at, which is a marked contrast from the madhouse of children sprawled across the floor that we're used to dealing with.

We hope to have a clearer idea of our agenda after a meeting tomorrow with the librarians from the three libraries with which we'll be working.  For now, we're working with Darius, the Sumbrungu librarian, to organize a 90-minute evening reading session with 5th graders, combining teaching reading strategies with games and fun activities that make them learn without realizing it.  We're looking forward to teaching them the basics, such as how to sound out words.  And again we find ourselves facing a language barrier, which hopefully will improve as they get used to our accent.  Our favorite moment with the kids so far was last night, after the demonstrated some fast-paced dances that they do, and they asked us to share an American dance with them.  After racking our brains, we presented the Macarena, which was greeted with peals of laughter.  We think they liked it though - we saw a few of them continuing to do it as they walked away.

We're slowly trying to pick up some key phrases in Frafra, the local dialect, though Lauren has much more aptitude than I do - my phonetic approximations of what I hear them say never seem to come out of my mouth quite the right way. Oh well.