Ghana Fishin': Lights out!

So, on top of not always having running water, turns out I don’t always have power either. Last night I was in the middle of dinner when, all of a sudden, the lights and fan in my room turned off randomly. Apparently there are a couple power outages per neighborhood per week. These, again, are unscheduled. Or at least to my knowledge. Good thing I brought my headlamp and I spend most of my night outside anyway because the lights here are pretty dim. The power outage wasn’t the only first yesterday though, I also went for my first run since getting to Ghana. Actually, I have to specify that I went jogging, they seem to associate running with something bad happening or running away from something. Anyway, I went on a nice jog around the area I’m living and succeeded in getting the weirdest looks ever, along with many more exclamations of “Obruni!” I guess people here don’t go running for exercise very often since many of them do physical labor as their job and they don’t need any extra exercise. Either way, I’m assuming my runs are going to be a topic of many “silly white person” jokes.

Speaking of silly white person… it’s really funny being considered the pale person here. Though people obviously know I’m not Caucasian, they still refer to me as white. This is compared to Jenison and Dartmouth where people say I get so tan in the summer that I look black. Everything depends on perspective, I guess.

School the past couple days has settled into a nice routine of observing the teachers' teaching styles and taking some notes, both on the teaching styles and what they're actually teaching. Today I sat in on a Class 1 English lesson and learned the Twi words for grandma, grandpa, mother, father, sister, and brother. My vocabulary is growing every day. Yesterday I learned to count to three. :)

I’ve also become good friends with one of the teachers, Sir Ernest. He doesn’t believe in caning as punishment. As far as I can tell, he is the only one. Caning has been a pretty hard thing to deal with. I didn’t think it’d be this difficult, but watching kids as young as 8 or 9 (especially the little girls) getting caned to the point of tears has definitely been the hardest thing about NAP so far. That’s why it’s so refreshing to find a teacher that believes more in rewards like a small treat or punishments like not being allowed to go to break than physical punishment. On top of that, he’s just a really nice guy. Both yesterday and today after lunch we have shared a dessert of bananas and peanuts. I’m very excited to see how this friendship develops. I think he’s going to be taking me to his church over one of the coming weekends too.

That’s another big surprise about Ghana: how religious everyone is. According to Ernest, almost 90% of the country is Christian. In fact, every Wednesday morning, all the schools hold worship. Look below for a picture I took this morning. All the kids gathered in one of the bigger classrooms singing and praying. Very amazing. In fact, I’ll be teaching some classic American praise songs as part of the music class I’ll be leading. This Friday’s song is “How Great is Our God”.

Overall, things are still going really well. Days seem very long, but that’s because my day now starts at 6:45. Last time I got up this early on a regular basis was junior year of high school. Let me tell you, I’m definitely looking forward to 10 AM classes again.

Oh, and a quick shout-out to Kaila for helping me buy the gifts that I brought over. I’ve given the tea and honey to my two “Ghana mothers’ and the jelly to Sir Dun, the headmaster. They’ve been a huge hit and I’ve been told to thank my friend who helped me buy them. So Kaila, thank you from three random Ghanaians that you’ve never met. :)

The last thing I’ll leave everyone with before heading to bed is a poem that I’m sure you all know and that Sir Ernest taught his Class 3 class today:

The cock crows in the morn,

To tell us to rise,

For he who lies late,

Will never be wise;

For early to bed,

And early to rise,

Makes a man healthy,

Wealthy and wise