Thornhills in Ghana - Letter 3
Greetings from Akropong-Akuapem!
We arrived last Saturday. Our liason, Eric drove us to Akropong in the late morning. It took about an hour and a half. The road was "paved", potted and narrow. We traveled up through a mountain area--very pretty. Our home is a "boarding" house. There are Ghanaians--two men and our host teacher (female) and another woman staying here. It is very nice. We have a formal living room and dining room--which no one uses. We are the only ones who use the dining room. Madame Verra, our host teacher is our cook. The kitchen is very interesting. Sometimes she uses the "crow" pot (an metal hibachi type thing), sometimes she uses a hot plate if there is electricity. We do have running water with an inside toilet and shower. Our bedroom is quite large and we have put our twin beds together and moved some of the furniture around a bit. We have two plastic chairs, a very old broken vanity, and an armoire type closet--also broken. We have linoleum on the cement floor.
In the afternoon, Verra took us for a long walk around town. We visited the School for the Blind that is in Akropong--quite large and well maintained. The students (several hundred) live there in dormitories. It is amazing to see how well they get around because it is hilly and the paths are not smooth. We wonder how they see snakes! We came back by walking around almost the entire town and got a bit lost. We walked to another town before we realized that we did not know where we were--Verra was not with us as we had dropped her off at her church. We got a taxi to bring us home.
On Sunday we went to Mass at a new Catholic Church located down the block from our home. The priest was African and we think that he must have several towns to cover because he was gone before we got out of church. Mass had lots of drums, singing, clapping, insense, bells, and a choir dressed in maroon graduation gowns and caps. They welcomed us and had us introduce ourselves. The church is called St. Pauls. In the afternoon, we took a walk to our school--Akuffo-Tom--to see how long it would take us to walk in the morning. We ended up going the long way so it took about 45 minutes. The biggest problem for retired people is a huge hill that we have to go down in the morning and back up in the afternoon heat. It is a bit like climbing Prospect Mountain as the road and paths are full of potholes , gullies, stones, and litter. It is all red dirt.
Our first impression was--What have we gotten ourselves into!--keep in mind that it is a sauna. There is a breeze early in the morning and late in the afternoon. The school is very old. The elementary school is made of wood with cement floors. The desks and chairs are also made of wood. The students must share the desks, benches and books--old books. The Junior Secondary School where we teach is made of cement blocks with metal pan roofs with a small square panel to let in light. It is newer than the elementary buildings. The schools are seperated by a "playground" which is very steep, barren, and filled with tree stumps. There is no equipment. The students and faculty have a latrine (seperate). There is no faculty room, zerox machine, running water, electricity, or spare desks or chairs.
Monday morning we met with the owner of the school and the headmaster of the JSS, Mr. Latte. We are assigned to teach English (Joan) and Social Studies (Harry) to Forms 1 and 2 which is like 7th and 8th grade. The ages are between 10 and 16. Form 1 has 40 students and Form 2 has 28. We are on a college-like schedule so that we do not meet our classes at the same time every day or even every day. Joan has ten classes a week and Harry only has 6. We have been team-teaching in both (a new concept to them). We are impressed with the students and the quality of education that they have received despite their surroundings. Joan had them write letters and they were quite good. The faculty is very dedicated and work very hard trying to give the students a good education. Akuffo-Tom has a very good reputation in town and last year all of their students went on to high school (we think they weed out the ones that will not make it so that it will look good for the school). The students are very well behaved because they are caned if they are not!--interesting! Harry has to teach about human rights as part of my curriculum. We have to follow the government syllabus when we teach--with no resources.
Yesterday, a group of students took us for a walk to a nearby waterfall during the lunch break. It was another steep hill. Joan wears her sneakers all the time because she would break her ankle in sandels. The paths and the roads are rocky, gullied and steep. We do take a shortcut to school which takes us through the back areas of living compounds. People are constantly saying hello to us and trying to teach us some of the local language--Twi. The food has been quite good. We have had rice almost every day with a pepper sauce with either fish or meat. Sometimes we have banku which is a ball of dough that has a vinegar taste--we are not fond of this one but when you are hungry you eat. We have had lots of fresh fruit--banana, pineapple, oranges, and papaya. We drink lots of bottled water. We even found a place in town to buy fudgesicle type things--we don't know what happens when electricity goes out as it has twice since we have been here. Verra gave us a kerosene lantern and a candle.
We came down to Mampong on Wednesday afternoon (where we are now) to use the internet cafe but all the mail servers were down and we could not get through. What a big disappointment! The internet cafe is located in an African medicine research facility. It is quite a modern, big building. They study herbs and tropical medicines. There is also a western-type hospital in town. The place is about ten miles from Akropong toward Accra so if we did not get through today we would have continued down the road until we found one that worked. The internet is old and very, very, very, slow. It takes a few minutes to get one of your letters to appear on the screen.
Our health has been very good. Neither of us has been ill in any way. (The students health also seems to be good.) We are enjoying our time--and have lots of it. We have both finished The Da Vinci Code and have started other books. We did take another walk with Verra during the week and visited the Presbyterian Teacher Training College in Akropong--extremely nice facility. It is the oldes teacher training college in the country and is well kept. We also visited an institute for religious research and studies--they do give Master's and Doctorate in Theology. Presently they have 30 students who come from all over West Africa. Tomorrow we are hoping to go to another waterfalls--a big one that is in the tour book. We want to get up to the dam on the Volta River also. Thats all the news for now. We will try to give at least weekly updates.
Love and Prayers, Joan and Harry