HOME! Recap of Last Days in Ghana

I am writing this final post for my blog from my house, back in Chappaqua. It feels very good to be home. But first things first, let me update you on my trip to Kumasi: I took a nice bus from Tema to Kumasi on Saturday morning and arrived in Kumasi around 5:30pm. As I said, I didn't really have a set plan of what I wanted to do, and I had even less idea about where I was going to be staying. So with no map and very limited information about this new city, I got off the bus and was instantly in the grasp of a friendly but insistent taxi driver. He said he knew of a hotel not far away that was nice and not expensive. So within minutes I was in the lobby of the Ashfood Court Hotel, which turned out to be a very good place to stay. If you're ever in Kumasi, I would recommend it. That evening I was pretty tired from the travel and totally disoriented. I had a brief walk around the hotel's neighborhood before it got dark, ate dinner, and then went to bed early.

Waking up Sunday morning, I wanted to get an early start to see as much of the city as I could. For future reference: if you want to spend one day somewhere in Ghana, Sunday is not a very good choice. I wanted to start my day at the nearby tourist office. Of course it was closed. I had read in a guidebook about the nearby Owabi Wildlife Preserve, so I found the tro-tro station and got a tro-tro that took me right to Owabi. I had a great time there. I had a private, guided tour through the rainforest preserve which surrounds a large reservoir that is quite beautiful. We saw lots of colorful butterflies, birds, and even spotted some Mona monkeys as they dashed through the trees.

On the way back from Owabi, I got off at Asenemaso, where I had read about a traditional shrine that was worth seeing. With the help of some local people, I found a shrine (probably not the one I had heard about). It was nice, but not very inspiring as it was enclosed inside a locked building that didn't look like it saw much use. But the people who helped me were very nice and I spent a couple hours hanging out with them. They even had a ping-pong table and I took on some of the neighborhood kids, much to the amusement of everyone. I won, of course.

Finally, I caught a tro-tro back to Kumasi and found I was right next to the Kejetia Market, which I had read is a must-see. It is the largest outdoor market in West Africa. It reminded me of the souk in Fes, where I spent my abroad term last spring, although this was on a much, much bigger scale. They have basically everything you could need, from clothes, to metalware, to foods - including a meats section that I would have rather avoided. I walked around happily for about an hour, and then managed to get myself a bit turned around on my way back to the hotel. But I did make it. All said, though, I did pretty well seeing a city in a day, especially given my total lack of planning.

On Monday (wow, that's yesterday!), I went to take a bus from Kumasi back to Tema so I could collect my luggage and go to the airport for my late night flight. I turned down an offer of a taxi ride to the bus station, which ended up being a mistake. Forty-five minutes later, I arrived, sweaty and and legs aching, at the bus station to find that the Tema bus had just left and the next one wouldn't be for several hours. So I jumped aboard the next bus leaving for Accra and then from the Accra station, took a tro-tro to Tema. The trip actually ended up being faster than my ride up to Kumasi and cheaper as well.

So I collected by bags, which had stayed with Ben - WPE's country director. And I got in a taxi and headed for the airport. The Accra airport was a bit ridiculous, with multiple security screenings, immigration control on the way out, and lines that seemed to never end. Two and half hours after I got on line to check in, I made it to the gate and the plane was ready to board. We took off a little after midnight (local time) and landed at JFK before 6:30am (EST). I got my bags and met up with our friend Dave, who was waiting there despite the early morning arrival, and got a ride home. The jet lag has not been too bad, so far. We'll see how long I last. So far today, I've just been relaxing and enjoying American foods that I've missed (so far a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich for breakfast and pizza for lunch). It's really good to be home and I look forward to spending time with family and friends.

So that will be all for my Ghana blog. If something brilliant occurs to me, I guess I can make another post, but I think a final note of reflection can go here: I had an incredible time in Ghana. Working with the kids at Manye has left a permanent impression on me and I learned a huge amount about other cultures, education, and myself through my experience there. I will always remember that place and I hope to return to visit them at some point after I graduate, maybe with some WPE alumni (! anyone interested??).

Thank you for following my thoughts and travels in this very different part of the world. It is a place with great people and great potential. It is a beautiful and hospitable country that I would recommend to tourists and potential volunteers. Let me know if you have any questions specifically, because I selfishly only discussed the issues that were on my mind. I am sure I will talk to you all soon. For now, this is David, signing off.

"Our Day" + My Last Days in Ghana

I fly home Monday night, so I only have a few days left in Ghana. The academic term has ended and yesterday was a celebration they call “Our Day.” It is the way Ghanaians mark the end of the school year. Parents come to the school and the students put on performances all day and there is lots of food that the kids bring to share. I got kind of picture-crazy all day – by closing time I had taken over 250 photos. Here are three to give you a sense of the day:

The first is from a play by the Kindergarten kids. It was kind of hard to follow exactly but I’m pretty sure it was about a wicked step-mother. She went to the “juju-man” (a kind of evil spirit sorcerer, I think) who put a curse on one of her blankets so she could kill her step-son. But she mixed up the blankets and killed her daughter instead. That realization is the event in the photo.

The second picture is from the singing group, made up of girls in fourth and fifth grade. They were very good and also had very nice choreography. Their songs were all Christian about Jesus, etc. I think the line they are singing here is: “Here I come to worship, here I come to bow down…”

And the final photo is from the Manye dance group, made up of six boys and six girls from the upper primary and junior high students. It was an elaborate, lively performance. Here is a snapshot I thought I would share that captured the energy and costumes in the performance. You can also see some of the parents seated in the background.

So that’s the end of school here. My work at Manye is finished and my commitment to World Partners ends tomorrow. We built a couple buffer days into my travel plans so I could do something after the program ended. So tomorrow I will be going to Kumasi, which is the second largest city in Ghana. It’s about six hours north of Accra and was the interior capital for the Ashanti empire. I will be there by tomorrow afternoon and will have Sunday and Monday morning to explore the city and the surrounding area before heading back to Accra to catch my plane late on Monday night. It worked out well so I will be able to see a new part of the country before heading home. The other two volunteers are flying home tomorrow, so I will be traveling by myself. It’s not such a bad thing – I don’t know exactly what I will do in Kumasi, so I can make my own plans and see as much of the area as I can before I have to go.

I may have time to use the internet briefly when I return on Monday to collect my luggage, which will stay in Tema while I travel. If I get online, I will write up a brief post to update you. But the timing might not allow it, so the next you hear from me may be back in the US on Tuesday morning! So I hope you all are well and I will talk to you soon!

Week 7 (Final Week) Update

With one week left in Ghana, I actually don’t have very much to report. I had a relaxing weekend. I read a good deal and spent time with some kids on Saturday. On Sunday, I went for a nice walk around Community 25, which covers a much larger piece of land than I first thought. I could be a small town in itself. I was surprised to see dozens of really large houses and two enormous schools popping up on the other side of the community. It’s a big contrast with the area around Manye. Technically, we are located in “Community 25 Annex,” although the houses built in the Annex were here first. But it seems Tema’s development plan is kicking into gear and Community 25 will mostly be home to wealthy families in the future. That seems a bit sad, but hopefully that will come as children attending schools like Manye are able to get good jobs and have a better standard of living than their parents’ generation.

Also of note, Dana Charles (Dartmouth’06, currently in graduate school at NYU and a friend of Ben Schwartz - WPE’s founder) is here in Ghana doing research about what motivates people to send their children to school. We hosted a survey here at Manye yesterday so that Dana could collect data for her research. Turnout was unimpressive, but Dana was encouraged by the data she’s been collecting at NAP, the other WPE partner school. So it’s nice to help contribute in some way to the work she’s doing and hopefully she will be successful.

That’s about all I know. Exam week has finished for the kids, but they still have to come to school while the teachers finish their assessments. They basically get to do whatever they like during the day, and I’ve enjoyed hanging out with them. I will miss them a lot when I leave. 

I fly home one week from today, on a late night flight that arrives in NY on the morning of Tuesday 8/9. I will definitely miss this place and everyone here, but I am also looking forward to coming home. So I hope you all are well. I’ll probably send one more blog update later in the week. Talk to you all soon.

Exam Week

To really bring home the fact that my time in Ghana is coming to an end, this week all the kids had their year-end exams. The academic year is just about over here at Manye – they all had their last exams yesterday so there is no more work for them. Although, they still have to come to school today and Monday through Thursday of next week, for reasons I can't quite understand. The teachers are all marking the exams and writing reports for each student to bring home. And then I guess decisions have to be made about whether students have to be held back. I think all those reports have to be completed by next Thursday and that’s when the school year officially ends.

Exam week was pretty low-key for me. I spent time with the kids during before and after school and during their breaks between exams. But there wasn’t a whole lot for me to do, so I’ve been reading a lot. I’m not complaining.

One thing that really struck me and I think is worth noting is the marking system here in Ghana. I got this directly from the syllabus for First and Second Grade English classes, distributed directly from the Ghanaian government. Otherwise I wouldn’t have believed it. I'm not sure if expectations rise in the upper primary or junior high years, but this is what I found about the marking for the lower grades:

            A:   80-100%            Excellent

            B:   70-79%              Very good

            C:   60-69%              Good

            D:   45-59%              Satisfactory

            E:   35-44%              Pass

            F:   34% or below     Fail

So that was pretty striking. If a child knows only 35% of the material on their exam, they pass and go on to the next grade. After I got over the shock, I sort of went ‘Ohhhh’ because this explains how kids who struggle to read end up in Class 3 and 4. I’m still not sure how Daniel got to Class 2 without being able to recognize the letter ‘L,’ but at least we’ve been working on that issue. But the education system here is certainly not setting the bar very high, and that goes for both the students and the teachers.

So I thought that was timely for me and worth noting. I hope everything is well with you. I will be home in just 11 days (!). I’ll keep you posted on more events in my last week and a half here, but I’m also looking forward to talking to you all stateside. Stay well.

Cape Coast Excursion

This past weekend, we went on a trip to Cape Coast, which is about three hours to the west of Accra. Jon, Kiki, and I, along with Catherine (one of the consultants at Manye) and our driver and friend Emanuel, left Saturday morning and arrived in Cape Coast around 2pm.

We parked right by the ocean and had lunch at a nice restaurant and got to go down and stick our feet in the water while waiting for our food. After lunch, we went to the Cape Coast castle, which was one of the major centers for the slave trade until the mid-19^th century. The site was originally a small fort built by the Portuguese (the first Europeans to arrive in West Africa, in the mid-1400s). The fort changed hands several times as Portugal lost its footing in West Africa in the mid-1600s. First it was taken by the Swedes, and then the Danes (who knew!) and then the British took the spot around 1660. It was then expanded into the moderate sized castle it is today. Here is a picture of Jon, Kiki, and I on the castle’s fortifications, overlooking the ocean.

It was certainly worth seeing. We had a good guide and got to walk through the slave chambers, hearing about how 200 people would be crammed inside for 2-3 months, with little ventilation or food, and with waste piling up around them. We certainly learned about the horrors of the slave trade during elementary school, and this added a new and important layer to understand the horrors of that time. It was also interesting to hear it from the African perspective. The cruelties of the colonialists still anger Ghanaians today, although there is very little resentment against contemporary Europeans.

And I was also able to ask our guide about the African side of the slave trade. The Ashanti Kingdom (which controlled most of what is Ghana today) became richer and more powerful through alliances with the Europeans. Networks of slave traders brought people from all over West Africa through this port, but most slaves were prisoners of war taken in battles against enemies of the Ashantis. And even Ashanti people who committed crimes would be sold into slavery into the New World. Only a small percentage would actually end up in America, I was interested to learn. One-third of all slaves sent across the Atlantic went to Brazil. A second third went to the Caribbean. They said that there were 1.2 million slaves sent to the United States during the slave trade era – which is a large number of people, but small in comparison to the overall slave population, which I think was over 33 million.

We stayed in Cape Coast over night and then on Sunday we went to Kakum National Park, which is nearby. It is one of the few surviving rainforests in West Africa. These incredible ecosystems used to dominate this region, but expanding populations and logging has reduced the rainforests to tiny islands dotting the various countries in the region.

The highlight was the canopy walk – a series of seven suspension bridges made of rope, wood planks, and maybe a little steel. It was completed by just 8 people in 1995. It takes you high up in the trees, around 30-40 meters (roughly 100 feet) over the forest floor. It was a beautiful way to see this incredible place, that is still home to bush elephants (smaller than their savannah cousins), monkeys, antelope, and a multitude of bird, butterfly, and tree species. We didn’t see any wildlife, but the trip was well worth it. The bridge shakes a lot as you walk on it, so many of my pictures came out blurry. Here is one I took that I think best captures the sense of being up there.

So after that, we left the park and drove home to Tema. It was a really great trip and I’m glad I got to explore a new part of Ghana, especially as my remaining time here is running short. So I hope everything is going well with you and I will talk to you soon.

Week Five Update

Not too much of note as I am coming to the end of my fifth week here. The end is coming into sight, just over the horizon. I am getting into a good routine during the school day. I am reading a lot. I’m currently making my way through my sixth book of the trip. I finished the three I put on my Kindle, which I really enjoyed using. Wish I had put more on there. But the people over at NAP have a sizable collection of books, which I am now tapping in to. So that has been good.

The only major excitement to report since the Boti Falls trip was this past Monday we went to Accra Mall and saw the new Harry Potter movie. It seemed like every other ‘obruni’ in Ghana was there as well. There were also a good number of Ghanaians. I enjoyed the movie – although it can never live up to the books – and it was nice to go to the food court and be in air conditioning for a while. So that was fun.

And the only other thing of note has been the weather. We actually got a lot of rain today, so much so that it disrupted school. We woke up to find several classrooms flooded. And the roads get very muddy so the children and teachers can’t get to the school. But by the middle of the day kids and teachers were trickling in and there was a semblance of a school day. We had a day like this two weeks ago and it rained basically every day for my first two or three weeks here.

But what I actually wanted to note was that it hadn’t rained at all for the two weeks before today. The weather turned sunny and hot(ter – the consultants remind me that this is nothing compared to the dry season heat). I like it better when it rains because the temperature really cools down and becomes quite pleasant. But most of the people here complain about the cold if it dips below 80 degrees. It’s all relative I guess. Maybe today’s rain will bring back the return of some cooler weather, or maybe it is just an outlier as we come out of a short rainy season. But I’ve gotten to see both the wet and the dry sides of Ghana in the time I’ve been here, so that has definitely been interesting.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Everything is going well. We will be going on an excursion to Cape Coast (on the Atlantic, to the west of Accra) this weekend, which I’m looking forward to. Hope all is well with you and I will talk to you soon. 

Boti Falls Adventure

This past Saturday, I went with Jon and Kiki (the NAP volunteers) on an adventure to Boti Falls, which is about 3 hours to the northwest of Tema. I set out around 10:30 in the morning from Manye to meet up with Jon and Kiki in Ashaiman, which is a market district on the outskirts of Tema. It also has a large station that serves as a transportation hub for buses, or ‘tro-tros’ as they’re called here.

I should say now, tro-tros are really just large vans. To call it a bus is an overstatement. There is a ‘mate’ who sits by the door and tells you where the tro-tro is going and collects the fare, which is usually very cheap. It was 50 peswes (~ 33 cents) to get from Hitension (closest tro-tro stop to Manye) to Ashaiman. Then it was 4 cedis (~ $2.70) to go the much longer distance from Ashaiman to Kofuridua, a large town near Boti Falls.

Unsurprisingly, given their low rates, tro-tros are very uncomfortable. They squeeze one person into every seat for the ride (so minimum of 12 people in the van) and then there are often parents with young (and not so young) children on their laps. So with knees squeezed into the seat in front of me, I rode for about 45 minutes to get to Ashaiman (mostly because of bad traffic, because it’s really not that far). And then we waited an hour and a half for the next tro-tro to Kofuridua to leave. I thought it was interesting that tro-tros won’t leave on long distance trips until they are at full capacity. So there is no set schedule, or if there is one, it is more of a guideline. It's an interesting way to operate because it ensures that all vehicles run at full capacity, which is good for the operators as well as those last people to buy their tickets to fill the tro-tro. It’s really not that fun for the first people who buy their tickets (which was us) or if you’re trying to get somewhere in a hurry or by a certain time (which, luckily, we weren’t).

The ride to Kofuridua was a little under 2.5 hours. It alternated from paved roads to some serious stretches of cratered potholes. It was a long journey. But the landscape was incredible. The trip took us to the northwest from Tema, out of the coastal plains, into some small mountains. The green in Ghana's flag represents its rich forests and we definitely noticed that change in vegetation as we kept driving. When we got there, we were able to take a tro-tro from Kofuridua that would take us to Boti Falls.

The place was pretty empty, which was nice. We paid 4 cedis entrance fee and then were able to go right down to the falls and had the place to ourselves. The falls were breathtaking. This picture of Jon and Kiki doesn’t do justice to the height of the whole thing. If you stand next to it, not so close to the camera, it makes you look like a tiny speck. I would guess the falls are around 150 feet high. And turning away from the falls, it feels like you've entered a real African jungle. It was a great experience to get out of Tema and explore a rainforest environment with spectacular sights.

After hanging out at the falls for a while we caught a tro-tro on its way back to Kofuridua and luckily got the last three tickets on a tro-tro back to Tema. It was pretty late by the time we got back and I was exhausted from all the traveling. But it was a great adventure that I’m really glad we took.