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!
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