Ernest in Ghana

My colleges and I have been in Ghana for just over a year. By this time, pretty much all of us volunteers have adjusted to this foreign environment. Perhaps adjusted is not the most appropriate word. We find out what we can tolerate and what we cannot live without. We come to realization what annoys us and formed our different strategies ranging from avoidance to confrontation. We have a better understanding of our roles at our workplaces and finally have an inkling whether the remaining 13 months will consist of using our creativity to work through community issues or hiding in our bungalows to get through the complete works of Shakespeare. The word adjusted almost implies that we live harmoniously with our surrounding but that is certainly not always the case.

It’s easy to spot unhappy volunteers. Those folks show up to all the parties and can be found in sub offices every weekend. There is no better temporary remedy to being miserable at site than to go to volunteer gatherings. The reprieves include the complete empathy from fellow volunteers who face similar frustrations everyday, ample supply of alcohol, and often some innovative culinary concoction that sometimes resembles American food. Fortunately for them there is not a shortage of meetings, house parties, gathering at the beach, and unwarranted visits to the medical unit in Accra. But it also means missing opportunities to form friendships and observe community needs at ones site which perpetuates the discontent. At some point of that downward spiral, some choose to terminate their service early to end the misery.

When we were applying to join Peace Corps, we knew we could be placed in harsh living environment. What we did not expect was that a volunteer could feel unneeded in the community. Unfortunately, more than a few of us feel this way during our service. In theory, volunteers are here to fill in gaps that Peace Corps and host country nationals have identified. The reality is that the authenticity and extent of these gaps are quite difficult to assess by Peace Corps staff. The process is such that requests for volunteers by NGOs and schools are done way in advance of the volunteers’ arrival. Some of the requests are really nothing more than an excuse to get the trophy “white man” to the village. What adds to the frustration is when locals whom we work with are not motivated or when the goals of the NGOs are in conflict of the actual community needs. These volunteers are placed in doomed projects and they do not know the truth until they get to their sites. This is also why it takes a certain type of personality to endure the 27 months of service. Skills like being persistent, not easily discouraged, being resourceful, able to stare at a wall for an extended period of time are all part of the mix required of a volunteer.

Conversations over development work is quite different from conversations over corporate America. It is quite a daunting task having to get to the bottom of the complex issues concerning the livelihoods of 20 million struggling people. And there is a realization that we can only play our tiny parts in the whole web of thousands of development organizations and governmental agencies in this country. The shadow of doubt regarding our effectiveness always looms around the corner since the results of our work are often impossible to measure. Then comes the inevitable question of whether a developing country like Ghana can ever pull out of poverty and into prosperity. Some cite the political stability, the free press, the emphasis on education, the new found stability in currency strength, and the strong survival instinct as indicators that Ghana will do just fine. However we cannot help vocalizing our observations of the lack of planning skills, the widespread laziness and complacency, the expectation of handouts, the outdated education methods, the hidden dishonesty and corruptions, and the tendency to place blame upon failures onto others (often the western world) as telltale signs of the ill-fated fate that this country is sure to be heading.

There are thousands of reasonable excuses a Peace Corps volunteer may use to attribute to failure. No matter the outcome, I know I can get the brotherly pat on the shoulder and hear something like, “You have really tried,” when I am back in the States. For that reason, a few of us get complacent. But for the most part we stay relatively resilient. We know we were all given 821 days to chip at our primary project. If we feel ambitious, we have a lot of freedom to start any secondary projects that we see fit. It is virtually guaranteed that every step mapped out in every project is not going to go strictly according to plan. But that is sort of the excitement as long as the frustration does not get to you. In an environment where positive results are so elusive, all it takes is a few small victories to get us re energized. All things considered, I have to say I am happy. And really, that’s all anybody can ask for.

We received a pretty big raise. Cedi is the name of the local currency in Ghana. Each volunteer went from getting 1.5 million cedis to 1.8 million cedis per month. At the current conversion rate of around 9200 cedis to a dollar, we went from getting roughly 5 dollars a day to 6 dollars a day, a whooping 20 percent increase. The big raise got me to think more about money here in Ghana.

Who wouldn’t gladly take a 20% pay increase? Okay, a dollar raise may not sound like a whole lot but the buying power of a dollar is pretty amazing here in Ghana. But before I quantify the increase I want to first talk about my feelings towards it (see what Peace Corps is doing to me, talking about my feelings, geeze). I’ve always felt that surviving on five dollars a day has a nice ring to it. I realize it is still five times the earning of those living right on the poverty line (World Bank classifies those living under one dollar a day as living in extreme poverty) so by comparison we volunteers are relatively well off. Nevertheless, I still feel I am roughing it pretty good. Looking around, 28.5% of Ghanaian live below this poverty line. In fact Ghana has done a terrific job in poverty eradication. Poverty was at 51.7% in 1992 and 39.5% in 1998. Ghana is the only participating country in Africa on pace to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of those in extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015. Ayeeko! Much of the remaining work lies in the three northern regions where citizens rely on subsistence agriculture in this savannah area. Around 40% of poor people in Ghana live in these three sparsely-populated regions.

By comparison, 12.6% of American share this same label. Of course the poverty line is drawn quite differently in the US where single person families earning less than $9,800 or four person families making less than $20,000 are included in the statistics. There is much talk these days about the poverty crisis in the US. It is true that the rate has increased for four consecutive years (from 11.3%) but the truth is that the poverty rate has been between the range of 11 to 15 percent the last 40 years. I can hardly classify the current state as a crisis, but that would not sell any newspaper. Critics point out that the way poverty is measured by the Census Bureau is flawed, which I do not disagree. However, I am not hopeful that we will ever reach a consensus on how it could be “accurately” measured.

What does a dollar get you in the US? Maybe one bottled water, a weekday newspaper, 2 domestic stamps, not really a whole lot. But for 9,200 cedis one can get 3 full meals at a restaurant, 30L of filtered water, rent a room for a week, pay for one month of electricity, or use the internet cafe for an hour and a half. In fact, the amount we were getting before the raise (50,000 cedis per day) was more than sufficient to make a modest living. Not that I am accumulating a lot of wealth like some volunteers are since all the extra money goes into my luxury items that I can barely afford in Accra (latte, Indian food, pizza, etc.). I suppose that is the perk or the curse for living so close to the capital city. To further place this into perspective, at 1.8 million cedis per month, we are making more than most of the high school teachers in the country and the amount is not too far from a headmaster’s salary. So one can justifiably say we volunteers get paid fairly well since we earn as much as a professional or perhaps education workers are not being properly compensated for their efforts. I think both those statements are probably true but the latter is more pronounced. Therefore I don’t necessarily disagree with the teachers’ strike that happened last year. In any case, the average earning in Ghana is $421 per year so the regular folks are more concerned with basic needs like not being hungry and staying healthy.

Another thing that is neat about money here are, you must have noticed, all those zeros at the end of all the amounts stated. After massive inflation during the 70s and 80s, the cedi has devalued quite a bit. It was interesting going to the National Museum recently to see the 1 cedi bills that were printed and used fifty years ago. The inconvenient thing here is that the largest bill available is the 20,000 cedis bill. Furthermore, since electronic money like debit cards or credit cards or even checks are not widely available here, all monetary transactions are done in cash. Imagine going to a store to buy a computer costing around $500. That means one has to carry with him 250 bills in his pocket. It is not uncommon going to the bank and see people carrying a duffle bag of money to deposit. It is fun seeing someone handing to the bank teller countless bricks of 5,000 cedis and realize at the end it all amounts to less than a thousand bucks. The government is recognizing the problem and the inconvenience and at the same time observed the macroeconomic stability enjoying by the country. It has therefore decided to put in place a redenomination program to slash four zeros from the currency. In order to emphasize to the public that making the numbers smaller has no affect on the actual value of the currency, the slogan for the campaign is, “the value is the same.” It is funny to us here since no matter where you go you hear the slogan sang to this cheesy Ghanaian tune. Alright, you’ll just have to be here to appreciate it. Personally, I am very excited to be in the midst of a national currency redenomination effort, I can’t imagine experiencing anything like it without joining the Peace Corps.

In the Ghana school system, the year is divided into three terms. It is basically identical to the US system if you make summer school a mandatory semester. My first school term in Ghana was met with the teachers going on strike. As you can imagine, the strike puts us teacher volunteers in an interesting predicament. To explain further, I will have to get into some details which I cannot promise to be so exciting so I apologize in advance.

The strike caused great disruption in students’ learning. Near the end of their third year, high school students are to take standardized tests in all the subjects that they have studied. Their placement in tertiary educational institution (university, polytechnics, etc.) is based largely on their results on these final exams while their grades in school are of marginal consideration. In this system, Form 3 students are in this crucial phase where they have only seven months to prepare for the final exams. With the teachers not coming to the classrooms, few students learned except in rich schools where the PTA paid extra money to break the strike. Already being disadvantaged in terms of resources and quality of teachers, the poorer students now have to overcome one less semester of teaching to compete for the very limited seats of higher education.

The story with the teachers is not any cheerier. In Ghana, education and health workers are all employed by the government. Not long ago, the health workers went on strike demanding higher salary and threatened to pursue opportunities outside the country. The government gave in and agreed to their demands. The result was that an unskilled driver working in the hospital would make more money than would a headmaster of a school. Seeing the unfairness of the situation, the teachers went on strike. The short story was that the strike was declared illegal. That with the combination of stoppage in salary forced the teachers to come back to school after the three month ordeal in exchange for only a verbal promise of salary increase of an unspecified amount in the near future. What is more insulting is the fact that the government all this while is pumping out rhetoric of seeing education as their primary priority.

Governments of all nations are faced with the difficulty of utilizing limited resources to best serve their people. The only difference is that developing countries have less resources and much more critical needs. Ghana relies heavily on foreign aids to supplement its budget (around 50%). The latest buzz in terms of foreign aid are the Millennium Development Goals which focus more on the availability and access of basic education than quality of the teaching, which does not necessary seem unreasonable for a developing country. So it is difficult to fault the government opting to use its resources to make basic education free in poor areas over paying teachers better, especially when hundreds of million dollars are at stake.

With all this said, the point I am trying to make is that operating in a developing country is difficult. I witnessed a lot of finger pointing during the strike. Why does the government not value education more? Why are teachers so selfish, only thinking of their personal gain and leaving the students high and dry? Why are the students not self motivated enough to study on their own? Reality is that it is impossible to make everyone happy when you are so lacking in resources. Okay, I know, reporting from the department of duh, it sucks when your country ain’t got enough money. But experiencing it first hand has really made an impact on me. Moreover, problems like this make some of our “challenges” in the US seem trivial. I still remember the debate over whether to incorporate intelligent design into science classes taking up more than a month of air time.

Enough with my self reflections. So during the strike the students who did show up at school asked me to hold some classes. I figured why not. How hard can it be teaching high school classes… I started teaching core math, elective math, integrated science, physics, biology, and chemistry to the Form 3 students. Man, how many of you still remember solubility rules, permutations, Golgi apparatus, magnetic fields, etc. I have never done so much textbook reading in my life! It does not help that the students do not come to my classes regularly so I do not know when to repeat my lectures. I have a new found respect for all the school teachers out there. Thank goodness the strike ended finally. Now I finally get to teach computers which requires no reading :> More about teaching computer classes on my next blog.

By the way, here is a good article I found concerning Ghana: Ghana could mark turning point in foreign aid program

Leaving training and going to site is both exciting and a bit scary. On one hand, we were tired of being unproductive and were itching to do something, anything. On the other hand, leaving behind our only supporting systems that are the other volunteers and heading to our sites on our own can be a bit daunting. Fortunately all trainees were given several days to visit our respective sites before swearing in so we did have some idea of what we were getting into. The ample amount of alcohol the night before departure did not hurt either.

So the school of thought is that regardless of their assignments, most volunteers fall in love with their assigned sites sooner or later. I have to admit I belong to that statistic already. I am tasked with teaching computers at Adukrom Secondary Technical School in a village called (you guessed it) Adukrom. The village sits towards the eastern part of the Eastern Region. Some may immediately think that I am close to our neighbor country Togo (who am I kidding, how many of my friends actually are familiar with Africa geography!), but the Eastern Region is actually west of the eastern most Volta Region. My site sits up in the mountains in this relatively flat country. It is easy to understand why my favorite hobby these days is just to look out to the horizon. The vegetation at the foot of the mountain is lush and undisturbed and it stretches out for miles, a sight rarely attainable in developed countries. But aside from the breathtaking views, the altitude provides a rare gem here in Ghana which is the cooler weather. There are even nights when it becomes a bit chilly, especially with that strong breeze coming through ever once in a while. Okay, let’s not get carried away, it is not fur coat cold but definitely long sleeve t-shirt/fleece sweater cold. Since I really dislike the heat (you wouldn’t have guessed it knowing that I have lived in Hong Kong, Houston, and San Antonio almost all my life), I cannot hope for a better site. The colder weather also means less mosquitoes and less chance of getting malaria, which is definitely a plus. Here is a view from my school:

It is no secret that I am a bit culinary challenged. I think I might have cooked less than 10 meals my whole life (I am proud to say that I am an expert in reheating food, it is however a skill less valued here as refrigerators are somewhat scarce). I was a bit worried before coming to Ghana that there is a good chance that I would be hungry for two full years. As it turns out I live in a sizable village where food is quite readily available. There is an egg sandwich lady who works all night. There is a kebab stand and a fried rice stand not too much further away. Decent quality bread is always available everywhere. There is a bar close by that serves good Ghanaian food. Moreover, while school is in session, the school kitchen cooks me breakfast and lunch on week days. The only days when I am hungry are when I am too lazy to leave my living quarters (which scarily happens more often than you think). Speaking of food, I am happy to announce that I have lost some weight. I am basing this on the fact that none of my pants are fitting me any more. As for exactly how many pounds I have lost I would not know until I have my mid-service medical where a scale is available. So at least this is one goal that I was able to accomplish right away!

So I knew that since I was going to be teaching computers that there would be electricity at my site. I am also lucky enough that there is a water faucet just 5 steps outside my door so I don’t have to fetch clean water from far away. It is a strange feeling when I visit some volunteers finding out that some are lacking many of the amenities that are available to me. What seems like an eternity ago when I was applying to become a volunteer, I certainly imagined that I would be roughing it living in some remote village inside a mud hut with thatch roof. So in some sense I feel that I was robbed of the real Peace Corps experience being given such “luxuries”. On the other hand, now I do appreciate so much more the extent of manual labor and time that is saved by running water, washing machine, microwave, refrigerator, and such technologies.

While the cultural and language training was informative and effective, the technical training was to an equal degree disappointedly tedious and unproductive. Let me take one second to discuss where technical training fits in within the whole Pre-Service Training roadmap. Education volunteers are brought here to teach math, science, visual art, and computers in Junior Secondary School (JSS) and Senior Secondary School (SSS), our equivalent of middle and high school, respectively. The average education volunteer has had the appropriate education in their respective subject areas but are equipped with little experience in teaching inside a classroom. As expected, much time in the three month training is devoted to getting us to be effective teachers.

The approach taken by Peace Corps Ghana was to throw inexperienced teachers into classrooms filled with Ghanaian students. This was a 3 week activity we call practicum. On paper this is a great way to practice teaching methods and techniques to control the classroom. However, little was discussed before practicum so few of us understood any teaching principles and lesson planning. We were not given tools to help us evaluate our students to adjust our teaching to a level appropriate for the students. It did not help that the whole practicum exercise was poorly organized and objectives loosely defined. The feedback that we received rarely went beyond asking us to speak louder in class. We then spent many hours sitting through sessions where although the subject matters were appropriate, the material was often too elementary for the audience and the presenters were often ill prepared. We started calling these painful ordeals suck-sions… What was equally disturbing was the lack of resources Peace Corps was able to provide to volunteers to help us teach. I was expecting a repository of lesson plans on every subject. In addition, since the main goal for all students is to score well in the final standardized exams given for each of the subjects that the students studied, I was expecting plenty of past questions and testing strategy. I was again disappointed. Lastly, as the majority of the students in the rural schools in which PC volunteers teach in will not enter universities or polytechnics, they need practical skills so they can operate effectively in agriculture and in the informal economy so as to not fall into poverty. Again, not much was there.

I certainly appreciate the difficulty of getting a large group of recent college graduates with little work experience to be ready to do development work in three short months. But with 45 years of experience of holding Pre-Service Training, I was frankly expecting more from Peace Corps. I am hoping my two years here will allow me to contribute towards enriching the training experience as it is an essential element to help volunteers to be productive and motivated operating in this difficult and unfamiliar environment.

On a positive note, we did get to go on a few interesting excursions during the seemingly never ending training. We visited two waterfalls, hiked into bat caves, stopped over in the Ashanti palace, observed monks in a monastery, and played with monkeys in the monkey sanctuary. It was an experience to stand inside the bat cave not able to see anything due to the darkness but feeling the little creatures flying next to my head. The cave had this damp stale smell which was mildly disgusting. But the highlight has to be climbing out of the cave on this wooden ladder covered in bat doo-doo. I felt really one with nature trying get the souvenir faecal matter my nocturnal friends had left me off my shirt. Here is a picture I took inside the cave. Since it was large and dark, all you can see are the reflections of bat eyes. But if you look closely, you can make out a few bats in mid flight, kind of creepy if you ask me:

And here is a picture of me. I know it has been some time. I don’t want you to forget how I look:

We had a really good time at the monkey sanctuary as well. My heart missed a few beats when the monkeys rushed towards me to grab the banana off my hand. This is him eating my banana:

On August 18th, I was officially sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer. I felt invigorated and anxious to go to my site to begin work. So I will talk more about my site on my next post.

Sorry, it did not take me long to start slacking on my reports from Ghana. So for the last month or so I have been in Techiman (Western part of the country) completing a 9 week training program. The goals for the training program are for each of the Peace Corps Trainees to become familiar with Ghanaian culture, to have some command over the local language spoken at our individual sites, and to become apt teachers.

To help accelerate our integration in Ghanaian culture, we were all assigned to stay with host families in the nearby villages for two months. This proved to be challenging for some trainees as it has been a long time since many of us had to live with a family. Ghanaians tend to go to sleep early at night (around 8PM) and are at times liberal with the volume dials on the boom boxes during the day. In addition, they do not subscribe to same concept of privacy as we do in the States whereby we are asked to report our whereabouts on a regular basis. All of these are stark contrasts to the dorm or apartment lives that us trainees have enjoyed before coming to this country.

I was fortunate with my home stay assignment as my family was very considerate of my American particularities. My host brother speaks very good English so communication also was not a problem. Still that is not to say it did not require some adjustments. During my stay, I experienced the amazing punctuality of rooster calls 5:30AM every morning (as many of you may know, I generally subscribe to the 3AM to 9AM sleeping schedule in the US), the food that was prepared for me was lacking a bit in variety, and it gets a little redundant to have to greet everyone you walk by in the village (which is the social norm here in Ghana). In addition, taking cold bucket baths and pooping into the hole in the ground required some practice and getting used to. I did enjoy the interactions I had with my family. I carried water from the borehole to my home. I carried wood on my head and helped my host sister make bread to sell at the market. I also learned how to make brooms using long grass and a razor blade. But the best part was when I cooked ramen noodles and corned beef for my family on a coal pot. If only I had a pair of chopsticks…

Language training was a major component of our training. It is Peace Corps’ belief, which I am also convinced, that to be effective at ones community, one has to have at least some basic means of communication with all groups within the demographics at ones site. We learned shortly after we have arrived in the country where our volunteer sites would be so that we may attend training in the appropriate local dialects (there are more than 75 dialects/languages that are spoken in Ghana). Fortunately for me, the locals at my site speak Twi, the most widely spoken and arguably the easiest of all the languages here in Ghana. Despite this fact, it still required great efforts on my part to become moderately proficient in the language. According to Peace Corps policy, we are required to attain Intermediate-Mid on the ACTFL Proficiency Scale by the end of training in order to be allowed to swear in to become volunteers. Needless to say, we were quite motivated to practice regularly to have better command of our languages. The irony for us teacher volunteers is that we are asked to teach in English in the classrooms so many of us make little progress in our languages during the two years of service. Anyhow, to spare you the suspense, I, as usual, attained the minimum score needed to move on to become a volunteer.

On my next post I will talk about the technical training and excursions that we partook during our training.

The big event after the scavenger hunt in Accra is an activity called Vision Quest. Basically, each of the volunteer trainees visits an existing volunteer at his/her site. Since the volunteer sites are spread throughout Ghana and are generally located in small villages, this activity usually involves multiple forms of transportation and just getting to the site can take up to 2 full days for those heading to the northern part of Ghana. So I suppose this is Peace Corps’ way of quickly getting us familiar with the country. We are equipped with several lines of Twi (the predominant language in the south), some directions, and a little bit of cash and off we go!

Since I will be teaching ICT, I was matched with a volunteer currently teaching computing in a school two hours outside of Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana. And instead of going to a site on my own, two of us visited the same site due to lack of available ICT locations. Since a few of us were heading in the general direction of Kumasi, we all got tickets for the STC bus. STC is the most luxurious bus in Ghana. The buses look very much like the chartered buses in the States. We even got to watch movies on the way there, although I did not understand one of the two movies because it was in Twi (it did have some physical humor) and the other one was a really bad Nigerian detective story. The story line matches the quality of a soft porn and it was missing the nudity…

In true Ghanaian fashion, the STC bus was almost three hours late picking us up from the station which put us in Kumasi around 4:30. Given that the sun comes down around 5:30, it was very dark by the time we got to our destination village. Fortunately, two teachers saw us (I am sure we were quite easy to spot as my companion is so white that she practically glows in the dark) and led us to the volunteer’s apartment. At that point, it was just nice to see floor mats that we could pass out on.

There are many things that I learned in the trip but I will talk about bucket baths, Ghanaian sleeping patterns, fufu and other Ghanaian food at a later time as each topic deserves its own entry and hopefully that would help with your continue interest in reading my postings.

So there were a few current volunteers who were trainers so we got to hear about their experience before leaving Accra, but it was still eye opening to see a volunteer’s site and his day-to-day life first hand. Furthermore, three other volunteers came to visit us during our stay so we got to hear all of their stories. The theme in common is that the inconvenience that comes with being in a developing country is easy to overcome: not having any running water just means having to get some from a bore hole and taking a bucket bath, not having washer or dryer just means having to do laundry by hand. The challenge in Peace Corps is really the mental part. Boredom will kick in inevitably when you are alone in a village that speaks a language that you are just learning. On the other hand, you will be bothered every step that you take outside of your home just because you look different and that can get old very fast. I am lucky to be a teacher as my primary duty (teaching ICT) is predetermined and that they will match me to a school. However, other volunteers in Ghana who are assigned to health, environment, and business development assignments often have to work hard in getting their projects off the ground. Two years is a long time to continuously experience discouragement if things do not go right. Of course I was aware of the issues when I was at the States but they feel more real now that I am here in Ghana. I am sure you will get to hear all about my coping strategies in my later emails as I face these challenges first hand.

I had a really good time during Vision Quest. The volunteer whom I visited is an easy guy to talk to and is quite funny. You have to understand that all the volunteers we have had exposure to at the time were trainers and they were pretty much model volunteers. My Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) was more like a normal person and we got to hear some of the things that are not on the official volunteer trainee guide. We found out that the Peace Corps rumor mill is an essential tool to cure boredom. We found out that a teacher can easily get approval from the headmaster to be absent if he wishes to tend to other business. We found out 2 years is a long time to not have a double cheeseburger and fries at Whataburger/In and Out/Longhorns. We got to see the Kumasi sub office, which is equipped with A/C, stove top, spices, and an oven. We went to Funkies at Kumasi and had a double cheeseburger and fries (everything tasted a bit off but I will most likely forget how a real burger tastes like in a couple of months). We got on a tro-tro which had its axle broken off as we were heading home in the rain. We were stuck for a short time at Kente, the town which originated Kente cloth, but we eventually got home safely.

I will talk more about my PCV’s school and the start of our 10 week training at Techiman in my next post.

Hi everyone!

I can’t believe I have only been in Ghana for two weeks! It feels like I have lived here forever. A lot has happened so I will try to give you guys a quick summary before I run out of minutes at the internet cafe.

I left for Philadelphia on 6/6/06 and met my fellow volunteer trainees at the Holiday Inn near the historic district. It was not the best date to be traveling (I was reminded of the 666 reference a few times before leaving) but we all made it there okay. Our group had 33 to-be volunteers, around 50/50 male female. The majority of the people are recent college graduates. We have two older volunteers and the rest of the people are between 20 to 30 years of age. It was at that time that I found out we were all going to be teachers. We will be teaching math, science, art, and ICT (Information and Communication Technology). Another group of volunteers will be arriving in Ghana in September. They will be helping with health, agriculture, and the environment. After going through some ice breaker activities, filling out some paperwork, and getting our first round of shots, we went to the JFK airport via an air-conditioned bus (oh how I miss air-condition) and got on the plane.

We flew Lufthansa and therefore stopped at Frankfurt, Germany for the connecting flight. It was at the airport that I had my last fancy meal, a chocolate croissant and coffee. Due to multiple delays, we finally arrived in Accra, Ghana after 22 hours of traveling.

I found out very quickly that the travel guide was quite accurate in regards to the hot weather. We are in the middle of the rainy season (May to September) and it is raining around every other day, so the humidity is quite high. Fortunately, the rain also has some cooling affect so the temperature is more bearable on the days when it rains.

At the Accra airport, we were greeted by the country director and other administrative staff at the gate. But it was when we came out of the airport that we realized more than 50 volunteers had traveled to Accra from all over Ghana to welcome us and to cheer us on. I found out later that many of them had been waiting in the rain for 3 hours. It felt so nice to know that we have such a strong supporting system in Peace Corps Ghana.

Peace Corps did a great job in pacing our integration into the country. We were brought to a university where we would stay for one week. We called it “the compound” since it is totally fenced off from the city. After two days of classes and exposure to Ghanaian instructors, we went on a walk in the immediate community. We saw a typical market and witnessed methods to bargain on the street. Two days later, we went on a scavenger hunt in Accra. We were divided into groups of two and had to visit different sites in the city with very minimal instructions and language training and just a little money from the trainers. We became quite experienced in a very chaotic public transportation system and became very good at asking for directions and walking long distances. Ghanaians are so friendly so we felt quite safe walking around town. We felt very accomplished when everyone made it back safely to the compound and many of us had interesting stories to tell (including a taxi driver being arrested for having an expired license and wheel falling off of a van, called tro-tro here in Ghana).

The accommodations at the compound was quite nice for Ghana standards. We had running water at a common bathroom. We had electricity in the buildings and a fan in each room. We lived in dorm rooms so we had two people in each room. Despite the amenities, I still found myself doing a quick gut check asking myself whether I could stay in the country for the next 27 months. I felt some apprehension when thinking about all the challenges ahead. Those apprehension faded very quickly but I cannot help but wonder how often this sense of insecurity would crop up in my stay here in Ghana. Well, at least so far so good!

More to follow…