Week in Review

It has been quite a week filled with physical growth, broad perspectives, and good experiences. I have gotten acquainted now with my daily routine. I wake up early, around 7, walk a couple of blocks past my friends who I saw good morning to and practice by Twi and catch a cab to campus. I have my courses during the day, which I'm kind of enjoying. The classes are nothing like the US, my first class Africa and the Global System the professor has prepared note for the class and literally reads them word for word while the class copies it down. Nonetheless, the class has brought up some very interesting questions for me. One day we talked about African states focusing on survival and that the political elite don't control much of the country in Africa and therefore must focus on what will preserve their power. My other class, Strategies of Development in Africa has also been interesting. The first day of class the professor went through a set of statistics setting the groundwork for explaining why Africa is behind in development. In the US, we tend to look at the US first and then pity the other countries, for instance the Mortality rate for children in the US is 6/1000 and then we look at other countries and see Sub-Saharan Africa at 157/1000 and say "Wow, that's really bad". But in Ghana, the professor prefaced the statistics by saying "I'm really sorry to have to share these damaging statistics with you. But only through seeing how bad it is can we be compelled to change it".

Classes have forced me to open up my eyes to how different education is in the developing world. For these classes, books aren't available and course packets take weeks to complete and prepare. As a result, the professor spends a god portion of their time going over readings or reading things outloud that in the US we could've covered in 10 minutes in a powerpoint if everyone had done the reading. Because resources aren't available here it has also led to a system of rote memorization in classes, there is very little critical thinking and discussion even in 300 level classes.

Nonetheless, I've definitely been growing, well at least my stomach has. Everyday I come home from classes to a nice large meal. Last night it was a large ball of sticky rice with palm nut soup and chicken, some nights it's a 8 inch high mound of joloff rice with vegetables and talapia. I have eaten quite a lot and my host Mom continues to tell me that she wants to send me home to America with big cheeks.

This past weekend was very interesting. On Saturday I went with my family and neighbors to the beach, a typical Saturday activity for Ghanaian families. We jumped around in the water and I noticed that none of the Ghanaian women would go above their knees unless forced and none of the Ghanaian men would go above their shoulders. Ironically, most Ghanaians don't know how to swim, women especially. Nonetheless, I was lent a boogie board by a nice Ghanaian man and rode the waves for a while. When I came back I taught the family how to play Uno, and it took almost 3 hours to complete the first game because it just kept going. While playing my family bought a dog for about $50. Two interesting phenomena in Ghana. The first is that anything is for sale on the beach: people walk around with dogs for sale, horses to ride, snakes to take a picture with, little 6yr old acrobats doing tricks for money. The second is that "pets" are treated very differently here. They aren't pet or domesticated-they mainly stay outside and the interaction with people is just being fed or if they come to close to our dinner a fake motion of kicking. My family has 4 dogs now, three of them are pretty much guard dogs as in they make a ton of noise when someone opens the gate too late at night. So also this weekend was the superbowl which I went to an American sports Bar and watched with 5 of my friends. It was an extremely exciting game eventhough we were in Ghana, minus that fact that it was on ESPN so there were no superbowl commercials just the same adverts for ESPN shows and sporting events over and over. I saw at least 5 clips from the strongest man competition, lol. Regardless, there were certain things that I thought I would miss by coming to Ghana, but I was fortunate to still be able to experience it.

I started at my internship last Monday, working with an organization called People's Dialogue that works in slums communities creating groups and regular meetings, savings and loan programs, education programs, facilitating cooperation with the government. I've realized that the slum population is a mainly forgotten problem tied to urbanization. In Ghana, there are thousands living in slums, the biggest of which is Old Fadama which houses about 30,000 people. This slum in particular is tied to the KLERP project by the government to turn that area into an ecological preserve so the Ghanaian government can evict the slum dwellers at any time. The problem is that the government has offered them no alternative housing. So People's Dialogue is working to raise people above the slum life, create infrastructure for better slum conditions, and work with the government to ensure housing alternatives. I'm not sure yet what I'm doing at the internship, but I'll keep you posted. Things moved quite a bit slower here than in the US.

Nonetheless, it's really nice that everyday there's something for me to look at as I go home, new words to learn, new places to explore, and new thoughts developing just while sitting in class. I have almost no homework here and frankly most of the time I still feel like I'm on vacation. Regardless, I'm growing significantly as I learn about life as a Ghanaian. Thank you so much for keeping with my blog and I'll update you again next week. Yebeshia Bio- we will meet again.