Last Chance to Be…

Saturday 24th February 2007

It’s been a while since my last post as I have been busy working.

Having not posted for so long, I wrote my usual huge entry in the interim with the intention of posting it just now. Having reread it, while sitting down at the shite cafe, I realise it turned into a ten page whine epic, so I scrapped it.

Instead here is a poem I wrote on the Tro Tro on the way here.

Marcus Didius Gecko.

Who knows where my Gecko goes?
For weeks on end the only clue…..he is here at all….is Gecko poo

In amongst the VSO highs and lows, while I am lying on my bed
He appears on the wall, and for no reason at all
I line him up between my toes.

Perhaps now would be a good time for a recap.

My name is Jon and I am VSO volunteer. A few months ago I gave up my cosy life in Britain to teach IT to disabled kids in Ghana.

Life on the equator is tough but the climate has turned out to be the least of my challenges.

Teaching a technical subject to children who believe that God created Adam and Eve is the hardest thing I have ever done. They have no concept of speed, time or efficiency, all of which are essential to understanding and learning the basics of computers. A computer is, after all, a time saving device.

They don’t know about dinosaurs, space, physics, gravity, history or much else. If I try to teach them any of this, they think I am telling them fictional stories, boring ones at that.

I once told them that we descended from Apes and they couldn’t stop laughing at me.

Food and the actual logistics of running an IT dept in a Third World country are also interesting personal challenges.

My VSO placement is also isolated beyond belief and very far from the description of the placement I originally accepted.

Despite all this, I am feeling fit and healthy and have had some amazing support from readers of this site. For that I need to take the time to say thank you.

I have four weeks left until the end of my first term, at which time I plan to go to Accra and spend a few days in an air-conditioned flea pit hotel room, eating chips. I am looking forward to it immensely.

I have been here for three months. In that time I have had malaria, frogs in my toilet, snake encounters, a mosquito behind my eyeball, a maggot in my arm, cockroaches in my toilet roll and three marriage proposals and that was just in the first month.

Lately things have been more sedate and more serious. Either that or I have stopped noticing all the hilarity.

As Arthur C Clarke writes in the second of his Odysseys, ‘The human mind has an astonishing capacity to adapt; after a while, even the incredible becomes commonplace.’

I leave you with two pictures.

One is of me in my classroom with my students. There are only seven of them now. Three of them have left after being asked to provide proof that they have the required certificate to take their exam in May. Another left in sympathy. That was a very long story and it would be unfair on them to reveal the details here.

The second is part two of my Microsoft Paint, preconceptions project. Last November, if you read back through the archives of this site, you will find part one, and an explanation.

Anyway, that’s all for now, it was after all, time I made a post which was actually readable for those of you who have lives to attend to.

I will update more fully soon, either at or before the end of term. Send my love to Britain, the Internet and Cheese and Onion crisps.

Cheers

Jon