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.

music

in ghana, when people play music, they play it loudly.  

at one peace corps training event, we had a cross-cultural session where ghanaians could ask us about some of our cultural quirks, and vice versa.  one of our questions was why the music is always so loud.  their answer was that each individual tries to share his music with all his neighbors, because he recognizes he is fortunate to have the technology and means to play it, so he tries to let all around him enjoy it.  

that's a nice thought, i guess.

but a new drinking spot just opened about a hundred feet from my house, just on the other side of the wall surrounding my school.  they have the technology and means to play music.  loud loud music.  anything ranging from local dagaare chants to gospel songs by a choir to a song whose only words i catch are SEX MACHINE to of course, bob marley and celine dion.

and they are so generous that they play the music from 6am to at least midnight or 1am every day.

i am eagerly awaiting the day they pay their first power bill and realize they cannot or should not continue.

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!