Your Shirt in Africa

My biggest news this week is that I’ve started teaching maths again. I’m helping out in the form 2 class so the other teacher can focus on preparing the form 3 students for the upcoming Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in April. The students are pretty behind in both forms so it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed but all I can do is my best. We started a new topic on angles and I tried to make a joke about being careful about spelling the word correctly because if not angels aren’t really math related. A few students chuckled so I guess it was ok but humor doesn't always cross between cultures. At the end of the class on the different types, I had the students stand up and make acute, right, etc angles with their arms. They seemed to have fun with it and hopefully it will help them remember too.

I know I’ve posted about this before but recently I read an article about how donated clothes in America find their way to African markets to be sold (yes for a price). It was written by a journalist who was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo and was pretty interesting. It definitely made me think about the shirts I see her in a new light but I still find amusement from all the different shirts I see. For example recently I saw an Atlanta ’96, got really excited and took a photo. When we first arrived in Ghana, a common rookie mistake by me and my fellow trainees was to try to strike up conversation with folks based on the team's hat or shirt they were wearing. We quickly learned that clothes here are worn for more practical purposes and not for frivolity. One of my students came by my house recently for me to look at an old (and I mean old) laptop- it’s a Toshiba T2150CDS and doesn’t have the normal QWERTY keyboard- wearing a shirt that read ‘I’m definitely up to something.’ So I asked her ‘Emelia, what are you up to? Your shirt says you’re up to something?’ She laughed and I explained to her that the expression usually means that you are doing something that is no good. By the way, if anyone has any knowledge about old computers let me know because I am supposed to be the expert here but as once we turned on the laptop the screen was just black and I have no idea what to do!

It’s been quite the football frenzy around town recently. There were matches being played in the field which is just behind my house Sunday and Monday so it gets pretty loud. I watched on Monday night with one of my students. Over the weekend the African Cup of Nations started and last night the Ghana Black Starts played in their first match and gamed (beat) Botswana. I walked over to the other teacher’s quarters to watch the match with a bunch of teachers and enjoyed watching the men passionately discuss football. It seemed the conversation got heated even though everyone was rooting for the same team!

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I had some of my students write things they like and dislike about the our school and I was amazed at how positive the responses were in general. There were a few similar themes in the items they saw needed improvement but overall they are happy with their school and education. It was eye opening for me to read their responses and realize that this school is all they know and this is normal for them. It's hard for me not to dwell on and get frustrated by all the problems I see here, especially with the education system. Later in the week I read this article about child slaves working on cocoa fields in Ivory Coast and how they perceive their lives as normal. It is telling and put Ghana's problems into perspective for me since Ivory Coast is a neighbor.


I’ve been making frequent social calls to a student’s house to check on the construction of a new mud hut in their compound. Joyce’s house is on the way to the dam where I like to walk in the evenings and her father and other family members are always yelling ‘Jam(Come!)” to me. Thankfully she’s usually around and can help translate when her dad inevitably starts telling me something in Buli I don’t understand. I’ve been a few times the past week or so to snap photos of the progress on the house and the last time I went he told me I should come every day. I told him I would try but that sometimes I might not be able to go. Maybe if I do go visit every day the baby won't be so terrified of me...