so cliche

the chaco tan.

the kiddos

pulling out a camera in front of kids in ghana is just asking for trouble. the kids swarm and appear out of nowhere to have their pictures taken. they don't understand needing to stand back from the camera, so they all rush it at once. but they love looking at their own pictures afterward.

so the other day, i let the kids play with some puzzles for a while. these are pictures of that adventure.

i only took pictures in one of my classes, because that camera is such an interruption to anything organized or calm, but here is a picture of some of my p2 kids.

ok, and i know i probably shouldn't have a favorite student already, but i do. his name is john, and he is in p1, and he loves learning about anything, and he has the hugest dimples in the whole world (which you can't see in this picture...). adorable.

guests.

the other day, i returned to my house after class, only to find i had a few visitors.

religious and moral education

the students at my school take a class called religious and moral education. when i arrived at my p3 class last week to teach, they were just finishing up a lesson, and i thought the notes were really funny.
this is what the teacher had the students copy into their notebooks, errors included.

Man, woman, children (girl, boy) are human beings. Human being make
a. pen
b. book
c. phone
d. fan
e. table
f. shoe
g. dress
h. etc
God make
a. human being
b. sun
c. moon
d. stars
e. animals
f. soil
g. tree
h. fish
i. etc

unpleasant

downwind from the classroom building of my school is the urinals, which are cinderblock stalls for urinating, without water or pipes. the smell frequently wafts up to the classes.
in the roof of the classroom building live many, many bats. they bump and clomp around there all day and night, and of course have filled it with their excrement. so the classrooms smell like bat shit too.
well, and the other day, a student puked in the stairwell, so we had that aroma as well.
it was awful.

taking suggestions

next week i think i will have a chance to have GOOD access to the internet, and i will try to post pictures and give some better updates.
but i haven't taken ANY pictures in the last month, so i need requests. are there any things that you are dying to see pictures of? i'll try to take some of my kids and classes, but what else?
you have one week. i'll do my best.

fashion statements

for classes, my students wear uniforms. the girls wear yellow dresses; the boys wear yellow shirts and khaki shorts. when classes end, the students change into their "play" clothes, blue checkered dresses or shirts.
on the weekend, the students are allowed to wear whatever clothes they want. and they, like most of the people in ghana, wear some funny things.
you know those clothes that you give to goodwill? and then from those, the ones that goodwill can't sell? and then the ones that the goodwill clearance whatever can't sell? well, those come to africa. they are called dead white man clothes, because ghanaians can't understand why someone would give away perfectly good clothes, so they assume the person must have died.
anyway. so my little students this weekend modeled some wonderful selections.
a little boy wearing a pink aeropostale shirt
a little boy wearing a "DYNAMAITE SISTERS" shirt
a big boy wearing a lady skins basketball shirt
a little boy wearing a shirt that said "hockey pro" with a picture of a football helmet
then there was also a little boy wearing a massive down ski jacket, despite the heat, i guess just because he owned it and thought it was cool.

what i'm actually teaching

i realized i have never actually mentioned what classes i am teaching or what the classes are like. so i'll do that now, for you super curious readers out there.
i am teaching p1 through p6, pre-jhs, jhs1-jhs3. it's a total of ten different grades ranging from the american equivalent of first grade through 10th grade.
the students are sometimes the correct age for their class, but they are sometimes much older, depending on how long they had to wait to go to school. so p1 might have some six-year-olds, but it might also have 14-year-olds. it's a broad range.
the class sizes also vary quite a bit. my p1 class is monstrous: 20 or so hyper deaf kids who REFUSE to stay seated. but the older classes get smaller and much more manageable. p5 has about 8 students, jhs3 about 10.
the classrooms are all in one building, but the school is currently being renovated, so the girls dorm is also in the same building, and a few teachers also live in the same building. so several classrooms have been converted to housing, and the classrooms are partitioned off so two fit in one room.
this is fine; the kids can't hear to be distracted by another class. but it means that there is not a DOOR that can be CLOSED when class is in session, so all the kids who don't have class swarm the class that i am teaching and drive me NUTS.
the kids sit one or two to a wooden desk/bench combination. many are broken. the windows are broken/screens torn. the blackboards are black painted on the wall. it's little things that i've already stopped noticing, but just dramatically different than american classrooms. the walls are mostly bare; the only posters are hand-drawn diagrams of science topics, usually drawn by the best artist in that class.
the kids absolutely love using the pencil sharpeners that i have. typically, they use razor blades to sharpen their pencils, so the real sharpeners are still a novelty to them.
it's simple things like that which keep them entertained.

and we're off!

classes (for me) began yesterday.
i taught two classes yesterday, two today.
two went well, two went not so well.
i am satisfied with that.
for the older kids, i had them write their names in the middle of the paper, then in the four corners, draw different pictures.
1. their sign name. they hated me for this, because it is REALLY HARD to draw a body and a hand in a certain shape! but it was good, because i got to know them AND their names.
2. a map of ghana and the village they come from.
3. their family and names.
4. their favorite food.
it was a really good project because we could talk and get to know each other, using their drawings to fill in the language gaps.
however, the jhs1 class is one that had trouble with it.
when i asked them to draw their families, a few drew cars. one drew an airplane. when i asked them to draw their favorite food, one drew the sun. another drew a police car.
ah, ghana.
ah, deaf teenagers in ghana.

sweat

so many different varieties of sweat:
the backpack sweat, when you've been wearing a backpack and take it off. your back is drenched, and you have lovely wet shoulder stripes.
a similar kind is the purse sweat, when you simply have one long strip of soaked clothing from the strap of your bag.
then there's the wet back/wet butt sweat if you were just sitting in your own sweat.
or the is-it-water-or-is-it-sweat sweat, when you've just bathed and can't even tell if it is from the bath or fresh new sweat.
oh ghana.
(and this is not even the hot season...)