February 28, 2010—Letter 13

Dear Family and Friends,

Ok, so we can’t count.  We have two letters number eleven and no number twelve.  We will try to do better in the future.  Two and a half weeks left!

On Monday we stopped at the Internet Café on our way home from school to send our last update.  We also read a few messages but did not do much in terms of answering them.  Monday was an exceptionally hot day and our fingers stick to the keys from our sweat—lots of fun!

On Tuesday Harry spent the day going to Accra.  Akuffo Tom hired a taxi for the day to take Vera and him to the city.  The school wanted him to talk to the people at the HFC Bank in Lagon where the school has their account.  HFC is a subsidiary of HSBC where “Friends of Akuffo Tom” has our account in the U.S.  We tried to have a direct bank transfer once as it took almost a month for the money to get here.  For some reason HSBC used Citybank to transfer the funds and they are the ones who messed up.  Anyway, HFC encouraged us to try again.  They gave me a copy of all the routing numbers and other things that we need for the direct transfer.  Depending upon how much we send we may try again at some point in the future.

The bank is located on the grounds of the University of Ghana.  The campus is very big with several dormitories as well as classroom buildings.  We do not know the student population but will try to find out.  Our taxi was not allowed onto the campus so we had to take another taxi which had a special permit to go to the bank.  It seems like a crazy system but it must work for them.

One of the things we learned was that the father of Naomi, the woman who lives down the hall, teaches in the African Studies Department at the University.  This surprised us because Naomi does not appear to be well educated.  She is very bright and her children are also but we don’t think Naomi has had much higher level schooling.  Her husband, Sammy, is a clerk at the local court and has a very good job.  Their two eldest children, Michel and Tracy, attend a local Primary School.  They also have a baby boy, Derek, who is just under one.  The kids are very well behaved and the baby rarely cries.  Naomi makes FooFoo every day.  This is a mixture of cassava and plantain which is pounded in a huge mortar and pestle.  Sammy has said that if Naomi has not had FooFoo she has not eaten that day.  The sauce on top will vary from day to day.

Harry visited a Toyota Dealership to price a new school bus.  This is for a possible Rotary International Grant proposal.  He did get a quote but feels that it is very high.  The school should look into another second hand bus.  Hopefully, we can get a quote on something like that also.

Harry also went to a science supply warehouse where he purchased some equipment for the science teacher.  He would never have found this warehouse by himself as there was so much road construction around it that the taxi had to park on the edge of a main highway and Vera and Harry walked to the store.  We still have no idea how you would drive there.  There are no exits on the main highway near where we were.

The traffic in Accra is awful!!!  It appears that every road is under construction and has detours.  The tro-tros, taxis, and regular passenger cars are on dirt roads and vying for the same space.  I would be scared to death to drive there!  Vehicles are coming at you from every direction.  We were cut off by a new BMW and I thought the guy was crazy to risk crashing his car to gain a few feet of road space.

Vera stayed in the city to take her Tuesday class and the driver and Harry returned to Akropong.  The traffic out of the city was much better than going in.  He got home about 2:30 and took a nap.  Accra is very hot and tiring.

While Harry was in the city, Joan was at school, of course working much harder than the man of the house—fitting right in!  The twenty chairs and five tables which “Friends” had ordered and paid for when we first arrived were delivered.  Most of the chairs were put into the Form 2 room with desks being moved from Form 3.  They are the students who got the new desks.  Forms 3 students are the highest class at the school and in April they take their big exams for admission into High School.  How well they do will determine the quality of the school which will accept them.

On Wednesday we arranged for Meri Jaine, the woman selling her home, to deliver some things to the school that she was throwing out.  We gave her a tour and she appeared to like it.  She could see the progress that has been made in the past six years.  She was a teacher so she had teaching material, textbooks, plan books, colored paper plus a variety of other items.

On Thursday Harry went to a Rotary meeting in Koforidua.  He went with Richard, one of the school administrators.  He would have liked to take Maxwell Boafo, the school proprietor.  However, Maxwell is very involved in his “brother’s” funeral this Saturday.  We will attend that also.  We were told that the meeting would be at noon at the Summit Lodge.  We took the tro-tro and then a taxi and arrived at 11:55.  However, the woman at the desk informed us that the meetings are held at 6:30 in the evening.  It was a long trip for  a good try!  Joan did not go today because she was covering all our classes.  If we go next week she will be able to come.  Hopefully, Maxwell will be able to come next week.  I am willing to pay for the gas if he is willing to use his car.  The tro-tro ride going was very good and the driver was very safe.  The return home was another matter.  Harry was seated in the very rear seat and could feel that it was not secure.  As we started up the very long steep hill the seat broke and sent the three passengers backwards against the rear door.  Thankfully it did not open!  Harry was moved forward to keep the middle seat anchored, but Richard and the woman sitting next to him continued to sit on the broken seat—always an adventure!

In the morning at school they had the “carpenters” who built the chairs and desks come to repair broken furniture.  Kids carried items on their heads to bring them up to the carpenters.  It was quite a sight!  The students marched both in the morning and the afternoon so Joan missed a couple more of her classes.  Harry did see at least three schools practicing the marching on his way to Koforidua.

Meri Jaine showed up at the school again with five soccer balls and some rope to make jump ropes.  She wants at least two of the balls to be for the girls.  She invited us to her home for Friday afternoon tea.

Friday morning we walked to school and saw a very large column of Army Ants crossing the path.  We have seen some in the past but this was by far the biggest one yet. 

In the afternoon Meri Jaine picked us up at school and took us to her home.  The view is beautiful with hills stretching out before us.  We did watch a little TV to see what happened with Obama and the Health Care issue yesterday. We haven’t missed a thing, have we? We also saw that the East coast was being hit by another major snow storm this weekend.  Hope the power stays on for everyone.

Speaking of power—we have had electricity for most of the time.  However, the water has been off for more than a week.  Our big drum is getting low.  We keep expecting it to be turned on again.  They usually do that in the middle of the night and we get up to fill the drums as we are never sure how long it will stay on.  It was on for a few hours yesterday but we think that it is the landlady putting on the water from her poly tank.  She usually does this while we are in school and other people are away from the house.  Ummmmm.  Veronica squeezed in a shower today when it was on—but she didn’t fill the drums—it is a bit of work.  Water was off when we got home.

The students were marching when we left the school.  Only one week to go before the big day next Saturday.  Some day next week they will go to the Presbyterian Teacher Training College where the Independence Day celebration and competition will take place.  My guess is that it will be Thursday as that is the day we have most of our classes.

Harry has stopped presenting new material in his classes as what he has been teaching is not listed in the curriculum for this term.  He is going to review the notes which the kids have which are in the curriculum and will be tested at the end of March.

We only have three weekends left in Ghana.  This weekend is the funeral, next weekend is Independence Day, and the following weekend is the excursion to Cape Coast.  It looks like our lives get booked up here just as much as they do in the States. 

The kids at school are much more lively than before and more fun—they don’t seem as scared of the teachers like they were before.  Joan has been working with a boy named Clinton who can’t read.  We don’t know how he made it this far—“social promotion”??  He is in Form 1—listens and can verbalize pretty well. He can tell that the words are there but he can’t read them and he scrambles his written work.  A few weeks ago Joan started him on letter identification and letter sounds.  Yesterday was his first time reading a sentence by himself—he was so happy.  You could see that the reading had meaning.  His level is barely first grade.  He is tutored during lunch break, which he doesn’t want to have because he really wants to read-we make him eat.  The books that "Friends" has sent over have been really helpful!!  The teachers here are not equipped to handle kids who need individual attention—they just don’t know what to do.  Joan’s hoping to work with the English teacher to help Clinton when we go or he will be reading the first grade reader for a very very long time!!

Brave Harry removed a great big millipede(sp) from our room.  Joan nearly stepped on it—all curled up like a snake on the floor near the closet. Thank goodness she had her flip-flops on.  We understand that they can have a painful bite—not fatal for old people, but fatal for very young ones.  We are more vigilant about where we walk—the cockroaches don’t bother us because they scatter fast into a hole even though they are big.

This is probably little too long—but, you have a delete button!!!

Take care and hope y’all who are getting that big snow storm will be able to enjoy it—somebody make a snowoman for Joan.

Love and Prayers,
Joan and Harry