Ernest in Ghana

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.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 9th, 2006 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.