no AC, no water, no peanut soup
Day 13, no water. It also seems that the buckets of water they bring me everyday gets dirtier and dirtier as the weeks go on.
Today I was shown the school computer lab. While in American standards, it would be considered quite poor, for a Ghanaian school it is very nice. It includes 15 used computers that were sent by a US company. I have inquired as to the cost of bringing internet to the school and Mr. Abbey said he would look into it. What I was thinking is that some of the money I raised before I came could be used to connect the school to the internet which would be a great asset to the students and the teachers here. It is so important for children to learn/understand computers if they want to really succeed into the future. Unfortunately, nobody has home computers and the internet cafes cost money so there is no real access to computers or the internet for these students. I even brought up the idea of using the computer lab in the evening as an internet café that could help generate money for the school and then that money could go towards buying new computers/equipment as well as recoup the cost of maintaining an internet connection. The teachers that I talked to about this were very excited and hopeful that this could work. I need to talk to the head mistress and gather all the necessary information to present a coherent idea.
It rained today and when I say it rained I mean it POURED. Not long after lunchtime the rain began to fall and then didn't stop until about 3pm only to continue raining again at 4pm. The children act as though a blizzard has hit even though it was still probably around 80degrees. When I left school I found that the road in front of the complex had turned into a river and this is not an exaggeration.
Today I made a trip to the ATM. This should be the last trip for a while. It is a bit of a pain to go to the atm because it is so far away and there is much traffic to and from the location. Moses took me there today after school got out. It was still pouring rain and the trotro was leaking like crazy. When we got to the junction where we needed to change cars as soon as we got out of the trotro we were drenched. It took a couple of minutes to find a decent taxi because they all wanted to charge ridiculous amounts. This was because 1. I am white 2. It was raining so hard people would pay just to get out of the rain and 3. The traffic was hell. On the way back we took a round about way to avoid most of the traffic. We were on dirt roads the entire time and some of them were heavily damaged by the rain storm. I was wondering if we were going to get stuck in the mud and be stranded in the middle of nowhere, but the taxi made it. We stopped at an internet café to test its speed, check my email and get Moses an email account set up. We got it all set up and his email address is ekowmq@yahoo.com there were a number of questions he needed to answer to get the account. One of them was his date of birth. It turns out that Moses is not 25 as he had told me previously. He was born in 1984, which makes him 21. Everyone at school thinks he is 25 because that is what he has told them. He did that so that he would be able to get a job at the school. If they knew his real age he would most likely have been turned down for the job. Because he is an excellent teacher I have absolutely no qualms. He has been working at the school for over 2.5 years now and this is a good thing. I have promised to keep this a secret from everyone here in Ghana. (So if you are reading this, keep it to yourself and don't mention it next time your talking to a Ghanaian ☺) I also found out through our conversation that he has never tasted alcohol.
Tonight my AC blew out ☹. I am hopping that it will not take as long to reverse the dilemma as it has taken them to fix the water problem. Because I had no AC I used my ceiling fan, which has questionable stability. I was expecting it to fall on me at any moment during the night.
I had two disappointments today. I was not able to get back to Charles' house in time to eat with them so Rebecca packed up some dinner for me to take home. It was peanut soup with chicken and rice, my favorite Ghanaian dish. When I got to the hotel and stepped out of the taxi my food container fell to the ground and burst open. I had been looking forward to the peanut soup all day. I ended up ordering peanut soup from the hotel for dinner but it was definitely not as good as Rebecca's. The other disappointment was my emails. I had saved them to my USB drive and was planning on reading them when I got back to the hotel. When I tried to open them they were blank. They had not saved correctly so I will have to wait now until probably Friday to check/read my emails.
Today I was shown the school computer lab. While in American standards, it would be considered quite poor, for a Ghanaian school it is very nice. It includes 15 used computers that were sent by a US company. I have inquired as to the cost of bringing internet to the school and Mr. Abbey said he would look into it. What I was thinking is that some of the money I raised before I came could be used to connect the school to the internet which would be a great asset to the students and the teachers here. It is so important for children to learn/understand computers if they want to really succeed into the future. Unfortunately, nobody has home computers and the internet cafes cost money so there is no real access to computers or the internet for these students. I even brought up the idea of using the computer lab in the evening as an internet café that could help generate money for the school and then that money could go towards buying new computers/equipment as well as recoup the cost of maintaining an internet connection. The teachers that I talked to about this were very excited and hopeful that this could work. I need to talk to the head mistress and gather all the necessary information to present a coherent idea.
It rained today and when I say it rained I mean it POURED. Not long after lunchtime the rain began to fall and then didn't stop until about 3pm only to continue raining again at 4pm. The children act as though a blizzard has hit even though it was still probably around 80degrees. When I left school I found that the road in front of the complex had turned into a river and this is not an exaggeration.
Today I made a trip to the ATM. This should be the last trip for a while. It is a bit of a pain to go to the atm because it is so far away and there is much traffic to and from the location. Moses took me there today after school got out. It was still pouring rain and the trotro was leaking like crazy. When we got to the junction where we needed to change cars as soon as we got out of the trotro we were drenched. It took a couple of minutes to find a decent taxi because they all wanted to charge ridiculous amounts. This was because 1. I am white 2. It was raining so hard people would pay just to get out of the rain and 3. The traffic was hell. On the way back we took a round about way to avoid most of the traffic. We were on dirt roads the entire time and some of them were heavily damaged by the rain storm. I was wondering if we were going to get stuck in the mud and be stranded in the middle of nowhere, but the taxi made it. We stopped at an internet café to test its speed, check my email and get Moses an email account set up. We got it all set up and his email address is ekowmq@yahoo.com there were a number of questions he needed to answer to get the account. One of them was his date of birth. It turns out that Moses is not 25 as he had told me previously. He was born in 1984, which makes him 21. Everyone at school thinks he is 25 because that is what he has told them. He did that so that he would be able to get a job at the school. If they knew his real age he would most likely have been turned down for the job. Because he is an excellent teacher I have absolutely no qualms. He has been working at the school for over 2.5 years now and this is a good thing. I have promised to keep this a secret from everyone here in Ghana. (So if you are reading this, keep it to yourself and don't mention it next time your talking to a Ghanaian ☺) I also found out through our conversation that he has never tasted alcohol.
Tonight my AC blew out ☹. I am hopping that it will not take as long to reverse the dilemma as it has taken them to fix the water problem. Because I had no AC I used my ceiling fan, which has questionable stability. I was expecting it to fall on me at any moment during the night.I had two disappointments today. I was not able to get back to Charles' house in time to eat with them so Rebecca packed up some dinner for me to take home. It was peanut soup with chicken and rice, my favorite Ghanaian dish. When I got to the hotel and stepped out of the taxi my food container fell to the ground and burst open. I had been looking forward to the peanut soup all day. I ended up ordering peanut soup from the hotel for dinner but it was definitely not as good as Rebecca's. The other disappointment was my emails. I had saved them to my USB drive and was planning on reading them when I got back to the hotel. When I tried to open them they were blank. They had not saved correctly so I will have to wait now until probably Friday to check/read my emails.
posted by joshua | 12:11 PM
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