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.