Ernest in Ghana

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.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 3:03 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.