goats in the garden

i have this garden.  it is really wonderful.  

or rather, i had this garden.  it was really wonderful.  

my garden was great until some unidentified neighbors refused to tie up their very hungry goats.  those goats came, and they ate.  and they ate.  and they ate.  i used to have huge vines of green beans overtaking the whole plot, but now i just have some dried withered stems.  

well, we arrested the goats.  the goats remained tied up for two days outside my house, but no one claimed them.  at last we had to release them, because we weren't up to the task of adopting strangers' goats, and it seemed a little bold just to kill them and eat them without even finding the owners.

so they went free.  

and came back and ate some more.

ugh.

but, before my beans were destroyed, i picked FIVE green beans.  and they were delicious.

long vac

the students have now all left for their long vacation.
peace and quiet in wa.

calabash art

this term i did calabash art with my jhs classes.

they loved it. here are pictures of our final products.

jhs2

dongwiir
dorothy
jhs1
abdul-rauf, demonstrating how to "use" a calabash
hissan
jhs3
moses
nafisah
pagae
adatie
nice work, huh?

campus tour

here is a photo tour of my school's campus. it's fairly random, so bear with me.

this is the girls dorm room. all the younger girls sleep in this room, probably 30 or so 5-9 year-olds.

this is the other corner of the same room. piled against the wall are the mats that the girls sleep on.
this is the p5 classroom. there is no p5 teacher this term, so this has become a student lounge, where they all go to hide and sleep when they don't want to go to their own class.

this is daballah teaching social studies to jhs1. in my opinion, he's the best teacher at the school. he knows sign language and actually cares about his students...
this is how teachers get to school. on the left is a wheelchair. on the right is a bike. some teachers ride motobikes. some walk. one teacher has a car.
i don't know why this picture suddenly flipped, but this is a picture of a typical lesson by the technical skills teacher. the kids don't have a lot of textbooks, so teachers draw a lot of pictures on the board.

this will be the new classroom block. they're finally making progress on it, which is so exciting.

football field.
carpentry class.
the urinals/another reason classrooms smell so bad...
a student teaching the other students. sometimes teachers just give the kids lessons to write on the board and teach themselves...
general view of campus.
jhs3 class, hard at work.
jhs2.
hope you enjoyed the tour!

bats

i think i have mentioned in the past the problem with bat infestation in the classroom block of my school.  i would estimate the building to be 20 or 30 years old, and i think there is approximately 20 or 30 years' worth of bat excrement in the ceiling of the building.  between the corrugated metal roof and the thin plywood ceiling must be piles and piles.  and, as you can imagine, when it's hot, that metal roof...well, anyway.  it's gross.  

so the other day, in one of my jhs classes there was a large dead something on the floor in the middle of the classroom.  at first i thought it was a huge cockroach, then as i got closer, it looked like a mouse.  with wings?  EWW A BAT.  i, of course, was disgusted, but my students had just been ignoring it for several hours already.  

when i couldn't handle it anymore, i asked one of the boys to sweep it away.  

instead, he reached down, picked it up WITH HIS BARE HANDS and tossed it onto the grass outside.  

he walked in, brushed his hands off on his shorts, and continued with his work.

EWW.

braces

i was recently showing my students some pictures of students in their penpal class in america.  several of the american students had braces, and this was bewildering to my students.  

what is that on their teeth?  

are their teeth rotten?

how do they eat?

is it like nail polish?

and really, explaining braces and explaining why so many american children wear braces to children in ghana IN SIGN LANGUAGE is very difficult.

garden!

i am really looking forward to fresh green beans, zucchini, squash, and corn in the next few months!

pictures!

i mentioned earlier that i would try to post some pictures of my kids with their fertility dolls, the latest and greatest art project success. so, here you go!

this is class p4.

this is class p2.

these are some of those beautiful children.
here is tang, a really shy girl, but very proud of her creation.
this is dafaar, showing off his doll.
i will try to edit more pictures to post again soon. as soon as i pull out a camera in class, the kids go nuts and all order is lost, but i got some good pictures the other day!

world cup mania

the world cup begins on friday.  this is the first world cup to be held in africa (south africa), and ghana is one of only five african nations to qualify.  

everything right now is world cup mania.  

so, since america doesn't really care about football (soccer), don't support america.  support ghana.

go black stars!

life is normal.

several of you have been commenting lately that i need to post more often.  i know i do.  i just don't have a whole lot to say.  to me, life here is normal.  at this point, it is hard to me to remember the things about ghana that would seem exotic to you in america.  i just sat here for several minutes and could not even come up with a good topic to write about.  

so, if you can come up with some ideas of things you would like to know about, please tell me.  sometimes my internet connection is difficult (especially now starting the rainy season...), but i'll do my best to keep up with my blog.  

i'll try sometime to upload pictures and post some of my most recent art project with my lower primary kids (first to fourth grades).  

we took empty toilet paper rolls, pieces of cardboard, scraps of cloth, yarn, and markers and made fertility dolls.  it was really fun, because i felt like this was a rare project that actually allowed them to be creative.  so often the children here are afraid to be creative.  if i show them an example of the project we are working on, they all want to copy that example exactly.  if i don't show an example, it is often difficult for me to communicate to them what it is we are working on.  so it's a tricky situation.  but this time, i did show two examples.  one, an actual fertility doll (a wood carving that is traditional here), and the other, a simple one i made.  and then i just let the kids make a mess.  and they made some really fun dolls!  

so, i will work on taking some pictures with the kids and their dolls and let you see them.  

until then, let me know what i should be writing about!