Last Chance to Be…

SUNDAY 11^TH MARCH 2006

 

HELLO READERS! Good to be back….. so what’s new?

 

Well, thanks to a friend of mine sending me a network switch and some cables, I have started to network the classroom. The first thing I did was to install a networked version of Microsoft Encarta onto the students’ computers. They think it is tremendous. For now, they have just been looking at the pictures and watching the videos. (Imagine being 21 and having never seen all those things you take for granted – from moon landings to ice-skating). Eventually they will have seen them all and will start actually reading the entries.

 

The day before yesterday it rained for the first time in five and a half months. I had a free period so walked out into the rain and got soaked. It was quite beautiful. Everybody was happy about the rainfall, but sadly it only lasted a few hours. When the rainy season starts in earnest, it will rain for a few months!

 

When it rains the temperature drops to about 22-25 degrees. This actually feels a bit chilly to me now. Only a few months ago I would have thought it to be a hot day. Having said this, chilly is definitely a very nice experience.

 

The downside of the rain is the increased humidity, which increases from around 80% to 100%. Not so nice. As soon as you start to sweat, you overheat as the air is too humid to evaporate any more water. The hanky in
Africa, is used to wipe the sweat from your face not blow your nose. It’s a technique I have adopted and it works remarkably well.

 

The second unfortunate side effect of rain is that all the insects that have been hiding in the dry season, instantly breed and start flying around. Last night the whole place was awash with giant flying ants. For ‘giant’ read one inch long. Outrageous.

 

FRIDAY 16^TH MARCH 2005

 

ACCRA!

 

It nearly rained again last night, despite lots of thunder and strong winds. “The rain is coming soon,” is repeated daily in my conversations with staff and students.

 

So anyway, on Monday I finally made it to
Accra and I got a lift, which meant I could go to Koala and have a party. For those of you who have never been to
Accra and have not been frequent readers to this site, you won’t know much about Koala.

 

Next to the ‘Shite Café’, it’s the best and worst place to be in the World. The best because it sells ‘luxuries’, such as toothpaste, and the worst, because of the cost.

 

A lot of Europeans who work in
Africa earn a basic Euro salary plus extra for the inconvenience of being away from home. Let’s say for the sake of argument that most of them earn say £50k. That’s 900 000 000 Cedis per year. The average yearly wage in
Ghana is (allegedly) 6 000 000. So by very rough calculations the ‘average Euro’ earns 150 times more than the ‘Average Ghanaian’. The kind Lebanese gents who own Koala, the only real supermarket in
Ghana are well aware of this fact and milk the situation, thoroughly.

 

A tin of ‘Best-In’ value mixed vegetables might cost 15p in
Britain. In fact a lot of the products in Koala still have the British prices on them. 15p in Cedis is 2700. How this product ends up costing more like 25 000 Cedis is beyond me. Or, more precisely, it’s not beyond me at all, it’s obvious.

 

I wonder if the owners of Koala have realised that a large number of Euros in 3^rd World Countries are not on salaries 150 times that of the locals. My salary for example, is a mere 4 times the average.

 

Want another shocking example? One small block of cheese – one day’s wages for me, four days wages for my colleagues.

 

Tortuously, I was presented with a million things I needed and close to a million things I couldn’t buy. Luckily, in Abor there is very little I want or need so I was able to spend a month’s wages on Western luxuries. I can justify anything if it keeps me happy while I am here.

 

The following day (Tuesday) was quite an event – it went like this.

 

Get up and clean teeth with a NEW toothbrush and REAL toothpaste.

 

Shower with SOAP, wash hair with SHAMPOO and shave with FOAM.

 

Apply DEODORANT.

 

Have NICE BREAD with BUTTER and JAM and NICE COFFEE with MILK. Eat a chocolate CROISSANT (I can’t begin to explain how completely amazing this was!)

 

LUNCH

 

POTATOES + VEGTABLE curry and LEBANESE BREAD, followed by YOGHURT!

 

Etc etc.

 

Everything in CAPS was a novelty. Ironically, the Lebanese Bread was the only thing I didn’t get from the Lebanese Supermarket, therefore subsequently I could actually afford to buy it without guilt. Very nice it was too.

 

In a few weeks time I get to go to
Accra again but this time on VSO business and in a Tro Tro so I won’t be able to buy so much ‘Best-In’ quality produce.

 

WEDNESDAY 21^ST MARCH 2007

 

Slowly, slowly or ‘small small’, as the locals would say, I am beginning to worry less about actually coping here and starting to focus on my work.

 

My students are really nice kids, but also have had an inadequate education. Their level of English is not far from basic Pidgin English. They have very small vocabularies and atrocious grammar. Nobody has ever bothered to correct their mistakes. Now in their early twenties, to have me raving that their English is too poor to pass an exam, is quite a shock to everyone, especially them.

 

Having now been here for four months, I care less about the toes of the resident English teacher and have decided to become an English/IT teacher, therefore treading on afore-mentioned foot digits. Ah well. I start next term in a new dual role. This creates more work, but also much more flexibility so I am quite happy about the whole thing.

 

If English was not the official language of
Ghana, I would not be so perturbed by all this but it is. I don’t care if a Professor from the

University of
Accra comes on GTV (Ghana Television) without a subject-verb agreement to his name, my students are going to get it right. Fortunately, the Director of the school agrees with me, so roll on next term – all ‘fourteen weeks’ without a break of it.

 

GEEK APPEAL UPDATE

 

The Geek Appeal was a good bit of fun, which had a few lovely responses, so thank you. As a result the classroom is halfway to being networked and I have been able to upgrade a few PCS along with putting some memory and processors in our growing spares dept. Some kind soul also sent me a bunch of blank CDs and I will be able to teach the kids about CD Burning and Piracy and such, they will love it I am sure.

 

The joke about needing a wealthy philanthropist also bore fruit so I am going to ask them to help me find some special mice for the physically disabled. I hope they read my email before this!

 

EVOLUTION

 

So, my kids don’t know what dinosaurs are and my five year old nephew would give them a run for their money in the English Department. When I got here I often questioned what on Earth I was doing by trying to teach them IT. What on Earth were VSO thinking? Anyway I have got over that and along with teaching them English, I am also planning to fill the enormous gaps in their general knowledge.

 

It is a heavy responsibility to teach a devout Christian that the world is not in fact 5000 years old and that he is not a direct descendant of Adam and Eve. It is also, quite possibly, something I should not be doing at all in a centre funded by the Catholic Church, ah well, I’m going to anyway.

 

A FAIR SWAP

 

You might consider it a fair swap to receive a free education and food etc, in exchange for a bit of indoctrination or religious conversion. Personally, I consider it rather unfair to teach somebody English, Maths or even IT but no History and Science.

 

So part two of my efforts to bring about some change will also happen next term by way of a science club. I would really like to start an Astronomy Club as
Ghana has the clearest skies, especially during light off, but finding a telescope in a Third World County is an impossible mission.

 

I’M COMING HOME

 

Well hopefully, in July I will be flying from Accra to Milan, taking the train to France, having a holiday, coming to Britain to buy ‘stuff’ then coming back to
Africa again. That’s the plan anyway.

 

(UPDATE: I got a quote for a ticket to
Milan - $1200! Righto)

 

THURSDAY 29^TH MARCH 2007.

 

CHICKEN DEATH

 

I went to the village a few days ago, to drink beer with a friend of mine. As usual the place was surrounded by rubbish, chickens and flies. Halfway through beer number one, a chicken approached me.

 

It stood between my feet and looked up at me. It started to cough. It started to splutter. It started to do both at once. It fell over and died at my feet. After it coughed its final cough, about half a litre of fluid came out of its mouth and splashed about the place. The girl working at the ‘Spot’ (the name for a bar in Ghana), put down the drinks she was serving, came and picked up the chicken, threw it on a pile of rubbish and continued to serve drinks, (needless to say she did not wash her hands between either).

 

‘Welcome to
Ghana,’ said my friend. ‘Welcome to
Ghana,’ is the ubiquitous term said by anyone and anything whenever anything vaguely disgusting happens, or even when nothing happens at all.

 

If it wasn’t for the fact I saw a live cat fed to a pig the day before, I think I would have been more concerned. As it was I grinned, accepted the welcome, and ordered another beer.

 

As we have a poultry farm in the school, later that day, I asked the guy who runs the place what the symptoms were of a chicken dying from bird flu. He laughed as if to say ‘This is
Africa, I neither know, nor care,’ and I suspect both are true.

 

MY PASSPORT

 

So far, in this blog of mine, I have told the truth but I have also withheld some information. Some of the things I have not told you about are corruption, religious indoctrination and propaganda. There are reasons for this and the main one is that I have to live here. Despite the government’s claims that nobody, since the current government came to power six years ago, has been prosecuted or imprisoned for exercising their right to free speech, I don’t believe them, so I am chickening out on that one.

 

My students have nearly finished their exams, which means I am nearly in Accra, eating chips and getting bitten by the same
Accra mosquitoes which gave me Malaria the first time around.

 

Despite asking for my passport from VSO for the past four and a half months, they have not given it to me. They think I am going to take it and run away back to
Britain. I have tried to explain that I need it to go to
Togo to buy FOOD, something which nobody at VSO seems to care about. As a result it has been something which we have almost started to argue about. Withholding my passport, in truth, would be the only thing to make me want to leave, but VSO Ghana fail to grasp this simple concept.

 

While in
Accra during the holiday I will finally be able to collect it.

 

VSO Ghana’s administrative ineptitude, however, is the other thing I have not mentioned (until now) and, since I am hoping they will arrange my flight to
Milan for me, my hands are tied again. I will leave it at this for now but you never know, I may be forced to revisit, when I no longer need favours.

 

CYCLE RIDE

 

FRIDAY 30^th MARCH 07

 

Yesterday I went for a cycle ride. I had no idea where I was going. All I knew was that there was a road that lead South of the village with little or no potholes that I liked the look of.

 

I left at 3pm so as to leave me three and a half hours of daylight, without it being two hot, and rode off into the sunset. Despite the heat, it was the best thing I have done since I have been here.

 

To completely leave the school (and its politics and evangelism) and the village (and its cries of Javu Javu) behind me and cycle ten or so miles into the
Africa bush, alone, was beyond the scope of any adjectives I know.

 

I managed to cycle all the way to Keta Lagoon. The road was flat and empty. I passed through several villages, some of whom had not seen a white man for a while but they were so shocked to see me I was gone before the Javu shouting started. Outside of the villages, away from the heckling, I would wave at the occasional farmer who seemed intensely happy to have somebody greet them.

 

The sense of freedom was intense, free from
Europe, mass consumerism, pollution and waste. The bush was flat and vast and the road slightly elevated to protect it when the lagoon floods. This meant I was able to see for miles from the raised seat of my bicycle.

 

It’s a shame the rest of West Africa is in such military and political turmoil or I would seriously consider cycling home all the way to
Britain.

 

As I came back a few hours later, feeling all warm inside, I cycled past a small house. One of the side windows opened and a man leaned out of it. He hawked up something quite terrifying and spat it out into the road in front of me. He looked up at me, grinned, and called out ‘Hey Javu Javu, Welcome to
Ghana!’. I guess I was naive to think the elation would last.

 

ENERGY CRISIS

 

Yes,
Ghana is having an energy crisis. A short while ago the President of Ghana, John Kufuor requested that the media stop reporting ‘bad news’ from
Africa. I question his motives, however, it probably means the rest of the world is unaware of said crisis.

 

In around 1960, the huge Akosombo Damn was built, providing hydro-electricity for the whole country. Since then demand has risen but energy provision has not. Every now and then, during a drought, there is a power shortage which results in rationing. Despite this, little or no provision has been made for the increasing demand. That leaves us where we are now, with frequent rationing of power, but no measures being taken to resolve the situation as it has been left too late. It gets worse each week.

 

I wonder if this, or the fact that Kufour invited Robert Mugabe to
Ghana’s 50^th Anniversary of Independence was reported elsewhere in the World.

Friday 6th April 2007

ACCRA AGAIN

Yes I am here again this time on VSO business and a short shopping trip.

Politics are everywhere right now, at the school, with VSO and on TV (there was talk of a miltary coup this morning!) and, to be frank, the keyboard in this cafe is just too poor to make it easy to explain everything so I will stop here.

Suffice to say I am still happy about my actual job, my kids are great, but everything else is pretty much crappy.

 

That’s all for now. There is a chance, albeit slight, that next term we will get internet access at the school. Until then, I will have to rely on infrequent visits to far away internet cafes to update again. See you soon.

 

Jon

 

 PS Thank you for all your kind words and love to Britain.