Dear Family and Friends,

Another week has flown by—it does not seem possible that we have been here four weeks and have about six to go.  For those of you who have asked, we leave Ghana on March 16 and will spend a week in England on our way home.  We are staying with two friends.  One lives about an hour south of London and the other lives right in London.  We arrive in Glenville on March 23.  We have much to do and not enough time to get it all done.  We can’t make things move any faster than they do..

We told you in a past letter that several students and we were interviewed by a student newspaper that is published in Accra, the capital.  This week they published interviews with four students with their picture.  We expect the article and pictures with us will be in the next issue or a later one depending upon space and need.  They did a very nice job with the interviews of the kids.

We did not go to Mamfe for the “obronis” night on Wednesday.  We had been the past two weeks and decided to take a break.  The older folks that we met have returned home to the Netherlands.

The work on the doors and windows continued through the week.  The “masons” came and knocked out the wooden frames to create the opening.  The “installers” then put the frames into all the openings.  Once that was completed they put the plexi-glass into the frames.  When that was completed the “masons” returned and filled in all the gaps with cement.  They look great and we were impressed at how hard everyone worked.  No real breaks during the day.  We understand that they are at the school today, Saturday, to finish.  It has been about ten days since the decision to spend “Friends” money on the windows and they are installed.  Amazing!!!  This was done very fast—impressive!

We have not seen the chairs and tables being made yet but we know that they are under construction.  That is a field trip we can make some afternoon after class.

Thursday afternoon most of the students were issued their “sports wear”.  These are the shirts with Joan Thornhills, Harry Thornhills, JaneLizzy, and McKenna on the back.  They are the four houses into which the school has been divided for sporting and other events.  The JaneLizzy represents two girls who were here from the States together as volunteers and McKenna was an Irish volunteer.  We are in touch with Jane and she is looking for an NGO job in either Washington, DC or the San Francisco area.  She has done consulting for an on-line software company.  Anyone have a lead for her?  She just finished trekking across Asia.  Friday most of the students wore the outfits and they practiced marching by group.  It is a bit strange to see your name on the back of so many students. 

Friday morning several parents of the students who are on scholarship through “Friends” came to the school to thank us personally.  It was humbling.  Six mothers and two fathers came.  When the first group of five mothers came, Joan was teaching. Harry met with them and explained that much of the money had been raised by children in America to support their sons or daughters.  He also took a picture with them.  When Joan finished her class she was able to meet three of the mothers as they were still on campus.  About an hour later the two fathers showed up but we forgot to take a picture with them.  “Friends” has been sponsoring nine students but on Friday we agreed to sponsor a tenth.  The girl is very bright and has a great personality, but there is not much parental support.  In the fall, “Friends” paid the tuition for the year for the nine so we have paid for the tenth.  It costs approximately $100 per trimester for tuition and expenses.

Vera and Veronica went to Accra today.  Veronica bought some beautiful material to have a dress made and some beads to give as gifts.  They mailed the penpal letters from the airport for Koda and Guilderland.  They left Ghana –theoretically—the same day.

Joan and I went to Koforidua.  We were looking for some more textbooks—especially for the French teacher.  We were able to find some for the Primary level but not for the Junior High.  We will look in Accra when we go there.  We also found some books containing questions from past examinations for English, Math, Social Studies, Moral Education, and Science.  As we mentioned earlier the government keeps changing the course and thus the need for a new text which has not been written.  We use the old standbys which we purchased before—they are good books.

We had a delicious lunch at a local chop shop we had visited other years. Joan had rice and fried chicken with a tomato type sauce on it while Harry had fried plantain with chicken.  The plantain was very much like dry French fries.  The palm oil just adds such a tasty flavor—yummy but not good for the arteries—oh well!

After lunch we saw two older white women on the street so we approached them and found out that they are Peace Corps Volunteers.  The eldest woman is 79 and the other is in her mid 60’s (we think).  They were on their way to their favorite eatery so we joined them—while they ate we had some fanta.  Their projects are very interesting –both had been in business before Peace Corps.  They have been in the country about nine months.  The volunteers are paid 6 Ghana Cedis a day—about $4 plus housing.  They did get to see Obama when he was here in September.  Dorothy, the eldest, is working on a tourism project dealing with a cocoa plantation.  Part of the funding is coming from the Cadbury candy people..  She lives alone and does not have electricity.  The other woman, Katherine, is working for an NGO helping women.  They do this by training the woman to make jewelry for a Danish company.  They have been working with a Danish designer but now have a Ghanaian designer as well.  They are a Fair Trade group.  The woman she works with earns more than the average wage in Ghana (about $2 a day)—they make about $5.  For last year she worked up a spread sheet showing the woman how many items they had produced and privately provided them with a slip telling them how much they had earned for the year.  She told them not to share the information with boy friends or anyone. Many were amazed at how much they had earned.  She questioned them about how they had spent the money as she is trying to get them to save some and to spend the money wisely.  Quite often it is the mothers who pay the school fees.  There are 130 Peace Corps Volunteers in the country with approximately one third being in education and the others doing a variety of other projects.  The women were amazed that we were able to curtail the caning in our school

The Peace Corps women informed us that President Atta Mills as well as his entire cabinet and a large per cent of the members of Parliament had Peace Corps teachers at some time during their education experience—GO PEACE CORPS!  MAYBE that is why Ghana is a peaceful country.

We didn’t mention our harrowing ride in the tro-tro on the way to Koforidua.  The road is narrow, full of pot holes, hairpin curves, and parts are very steep.  The steepest part is about a 3 mile stretch.  Our driver was a maniac driver—I think he was practicing for the Indy 500. It is a good thing we don’t have false teeth—they would have bounced out! There are no guard rails,

 and  significant drop offs on either side of the road.  People get off here and there to go to there villages—you can see the paths leading to them  so someone may have to get off on a curve or on a steep incline.  Well!  Some people had to disembark at one of these steep incline stops and the driver had to help unload tons of produce from the back.  While he was doing this the tro-tro started to roll down the hill—only half of our lives passed by.  In the nick of time, the driver and the “conductor” hopped in and we were on our way.  The people were yelling at him.  This didn’t slow him down!

On the way home we were in a tro-tro which we feared would not make it up the hill because it had trouble just getting out of the parking lot.  We stopped in town and picked up about six sheets of metal roofing panels which were tied to the roof.  On the first attempt they tied open the sliding door on the side of the van and had to re-tie the knot.  Everyone was laughing at the situation.  It is a show!

We will try to send some pictures along with this letter.  Hopefully, everything works.

Take care.  We hope that all is well with you.  We love hearing from you.

Love and Prayers,
Joan and Harry