took a taxi to school

Day five, no water. Today was the first day I took a taxi to school. The head master at the school, madam, has arranged a taxi to pick me up from the hotel at 8:20am to the school. He will then also pick me up at Charles’ house in the evening and take me back to the hotel. This will continue until Charles gets his car fixed. This means no more trotro to work.
School was ok today. Mondays seem to be a bit boring. I have decided that I am going to make a few kids in class four that sit in the back sit in the front because they are not paying attention and not learning. Hopefully this will shut them up and improve their exercise scores.
I sat in on the sexual education lesson for class six. It was very conservative. The book stated that girls should dress decently so that they do not become victims of rape. Being a member of our colleges sexual assault task force (even though at times I didn’t agree with everything we were taught) I thought it was terrible for schools to be reinforcing the idea that if a woman dresses in a certain way than she brings rape upon herself. Because this was a lesson that pertained to Ghanaian cultural values, I sat quietly on the side of the classroom. But I was at times disgusted at the archaic mind set. Sometimes the information was simply wrong or misleading. I was however happy that at the end of the lesson condoms were stressed at the ONLY way to prevent STDs and pregnancy.
I was supposed to go to the internet café today but was unable to. I was disappointed because I have not been able to have any contact with my family and friends back home for a week. I hope that tomorrow will be a different story.
Tomorrow we will start on some construction at the school project site with some money that I was given before I left for Africa (not the money I raised at church). I am, and so are the community members, grateful for this benevolent contribution. I am very excited to start work and help supervise. We will be getting prisoners to do the work. (much cheaper labor than hiring laborers from town)
Tonight I had a breakthrough with a little girl named Aunty Abba. She is probably about one and a half years old and lives next to Charles with her three year old sister and parents. When I first arrived in Ghana, she was the first to come and greet me. But ever since then she has been very afraid of me and would not come near me and when she saw me she would cry and run to her mother. Last night she began to warm up a bit when she waved bye-bye when I left. Today I was able to get her to come up to me and she even talked to me a bit. I gave her some candy and I think that she will no longer be afraid of the scary Obruni.