traveling (and why i avoid it)

i'll just be honest.  i hate having to travel in ghana.  many volunteers love it, or at least endure it, to see all the things and people they want to see, but i have become a real homebody since i arrived here.  

traveling is complicated, dirty, uncomfortable, and exhausting.

for instance, i was just in kumasi this week for a meeting.  i traveled with my friend elyse.  

on our trip south, we were thrilled that we managed to get on a metro bus at 7am that left within minutes of our arrival.  this never happens.  let me repeat:  this NEVER happens.  usually, to travel on a metro bus (among the safest and most reliable bus lines, though last month a metro bus accident killed 19 people), you have to buy your ticket a day in advance.  then the day you are traveling, you show up at the reporting time or within an hour or so after it, and you sit a while.  then they start loading the goats and suitcases under the bus.  eventually you get on board, sit a while more in the insulated miserable heat of a parked bus, and eventually get going at some point.  

for us here in wa, the metro trip averages seven hours to kumasi.  metro buses are created to be efficient.  instead of american-style four seats across, they have five seats across, so the seats are narrow enough that not all passengers can sit back in their seats at the same time; they have to sort of alternate leaning forward and back.  and in ghana all of the seats are sold on all buses.  there's no stretching out across multiple seats.  in fact, on some journeys, they sell tickets for standing in the aisle, even for an 8 hour dirt road journey.  

anyway.  so our trip was so simple and smooth.  the only two minor complaints we had were that it was raining and started leaking in a window, but we managed with that.  and then there was the minor accident we were involved in.  i'm not sure whether we hit the taxi that was tipped into the gutter or whether we hit a curb trying to avoid that taxi, but we swerved and thudded a couple times.  when we stopped, we all stuck our heads out the windows to see the damage.  the driver got out, looked around, urinated off the side of the road, and got back on and started the bus again.  so it must not have been too bad.

now.  coming back, we tried the only other option available to those traveling from kumasi to wa.  other than the metro bus, you can go to a station called racecourse and test your luck there.  any connotations that "racecourse" might have, such as speed or efficiency, or even paved roads are WRONG.  racecourse is a muddy maze of old buses and vans.  i think we have now identified at least three separate wa "stations" within this one station.  none of them work together.  basically you walk up to one, some pushy men insist you buy their ticket, you weigh your other options (none), and buy.  today we got a fast car.  again, the term "fast car" was somewhat misleading.  don't get me wrong: the car (mini-bus) did drive FAST (frighteningly so at times), but that only started after we waited the four hours for all 14 tickets to sell.  because, again, you DO NOT ever leave a station with a seat unsold, even if it means a whole busload of people waiting an additional two hours to sell one ticket, you just don't.  

another point worth mentioning about travel in ghana is children's fares.  if your child can sit in your lap, you don't need a separate ticket.  so today, a ten year old girl sat on her dad's lap for the entire six hour trip.  on the way down, i was seated next to a lady with two big toddlers.  needless to say, there is no such thing as personal space.

on the wa-kumasi trip, we usually make several stops.  we of course stop every couple hours for people to urinate (just line up in the grass on the side of the bus), and there is one long rest stop halfway in a town called bomboi.  this is my favorite; it is our ghanaian equivalent of a truckstop.  all wa-kumasi buses stop here, so the entire town's economy seems to be built upon the eggs, bread, and pure water sold from women and children's heads.  we can also get many delicious ghanaian snack foods, such as fried yams, fanice, biscuits, egg sandwiches, bananas, or whatever else.  but after our snack and stretch break, its time to cram ourselves back into our bus for the next few hours.  

so for the return journey, we left for the station at 6am; i finally got home at 4:30pm.  

i immediately took a shower and crawled into bed.

Fountain Square Art Fair

The earrings and note cards that my students have been making will be available for purchase at the Fountain Square Art Fair in Indianapolis on Saturday the 18th of September.  Information about the fair is at http://www.discoverfountainsquare.com.  They will be available at the Info Tent, near the Entertainment Stage.  

For those of you in the area, stop by and check it out!

"i will capsize your name."

in ghana, names are written backward to how americans write them.  the surname comes first; the given name comes second.  

at the post office, the workers are often confused by this and usually call me by my last name.  

however, today, one lady noticed that i go by "joy." as she was writing my name out on a form, she explained to me that she would write it correctly, since i am called joy.  

"i will capsize your name."

animal life

some volunteers have trouble with mice.  some have cockroaches.  some have bats.  some have too many mosquitoes.  

for me?  if anything, i have trouble with geckos.  baby geckos to be more precise.  they come in through the cracks under my door.  those little guys are fast too.  and they are good at leaving their tails behind as souvenirs of the visits.

but there's no denying that geckos are way better than the other options!

what i've been working on

it was really frustrating for me to watch an entire school year go by with some teachers not teaching an entire class. our vocational department has not had the money for supplies for this whole year. the teachers of those classes just don't teach; the students of those classes just sit around bored.

i got to thinking about things, and i have a lot of art supplies available for my students. i was able to teach my classes. but once my supplies run out, unless others donate more, that will be the end there too.

but we have so many students sitting around bored, why not use the supplies i have available to make things, sell them, raise money, buy supplies, make more things, sell more things, raise more money, etc?

so that's what we are doing. this last term i started my students on two main projects: earrings and stationery. the earrings are bottlecap earrings (like pictured above) and beaded earrings. stationery is notecards with drawings by the younger children.

for the first round, to get some good start-up supplies, i've mailed all of our products to america, where my family is helping me to sell them. when they have been sold, my mom is going to use all those profits toward new supplies and shipping to get them back to me. they should arrive with enough time left in this term for us to make a good amount of new stuff, which we will also sell and get more money for more supplies! eventually i want to find places in ghana where we can sell these items as well, so the school can continue this project past 2011 if they want.

for now, my focus is the jewelry and notecards, but if i can keep this going enough and get other teachers excited and involved, i want to branch out into batik cloth dyeing, leatherworks, tailoring, and maybe other things too!

but first things first: if you are interested in supporting this project or would like to purchase some beautiful earrings or notecards, please contact me and i will get you in touch with the right people!

thank you!

the passing of time

the passing of seasons, the changing weather, the different seasonal displays at the store:  it's amazing how much they influence your view of time, your memories of the seasons, and your awareness of dates.

being in africa, where it's always hot, where there are no "back to school" or halloween or easter bunny displays, it is so hard to keep track of the dates.  

in america, if i remembered an event, i'd think, oh, yes, there was snow then, it was last winter.  but now, i have to really think about it.  was it raining?  what other events happened near that same time?  and even then it is usually surprising to me how much time has passed.

after my first 3-6 months here, even when i knew that it was winter in america, i often joked that i still felt like it was summer break, simply because of the heat.  but now that i've been here fifteen months, i clearly understand that time has passed.  it is just really hard for me to figure out how much time.  i think that is one of the reasons that peace corps' 27 months tend to pass quickly.  even though we are aware of days passing, they run together so quickly, and without a break or change in the calendar, they just form this clump that we americans cannot understand.

i didn't think i would miss those tacky, consumeristic displays at stores, but i guess i kind of do.  and i DEFINITELY miss the changing seasons, and winter especially.