Disting

Last Tuesday night one of my form 3 students Diana came to the house complaining of neck pain and went with Felicity who stays with me to the clinic. They were already closed but she went back in the morning and they referred her to the Sandema hospital. Fortunately, it was market day so she had no trouble finding transportation to get there. That night Felicity went to Diana’s house to check on her but she hadn’t come back yet. We knew either she’d had to wait so long that she couldn’t find a lorry back or she’d been admitted. I feared the latter because of CSM. The next day her mother went to go see what had happened since Diana doesn’t have a cell phone so has no way of getting in touch with her family. On Friday we found out that she’d been admitted to the hospital with CSM but that she was expected to fully recover. Saturday I went to Sandema for market and ran into her father and one of her friends in the lorry station. Her father is one of the friendliest people I’ve met in the village and always tries speaking English with me even though he’s had no formal education (which means I get called sir but I’m ok with that). I went to the hospital to visit her and received special treatment; I was allowed to see her even though visiting hours were past. That doesn’t mean the security guard was very nice about it but at least he let me into the ward area. I made the visit quick and just wanted to see how she was doing really. She was dressed and up and looked strong. She was hoping to even be discharged the next day but didn’t get released until today. I’m yet to ask her if she took the injection when the nurses came to the school but I am curious. The number of deaths in the Upper East region is now up to 27 which I shared with one of my classes today. I also asked a question on an ICT class test about the signs/symptoms of CSM. One person wrote small malaria (a lot of people here refer to sickness here as malaria even when it’s not which gets rather confusing as you can imagine) which is of course incorrect and brings me to the next topic- five Ghanaian English words/phrases you probably don’t know.

I’ve been meaning to do a longer post with a dictionary of sorts but apparently find that task daunting so decided today just to post them in small small (little) chunks:

Madam Diana this morning upon meeting me outside brushing my teeth outside my house on her way to school: I’ll take the lead (I’ll go first to the place where we’re both headed)

My friend Chris today discussing the heat: Ahhh chalay (friend) this weather makes us tired so we must rest small.

Me every day when I leave school to go to my house to eat lunch: I will go and come.

Other people when I’m departing from their company despite the fact that I’m not at all expected to actually come back: You go and come.

Me either when people knock on my door or when students come to fetch me when it’s time for me to teach but is also used in situations where you leave and many people use it despite having no intention whatsoever of returning: I’m coming

Lazy person’s greeting: How? (meaning How are you? How’s the day? How is it?) Always respond: I am fine (even if you’re not fine at all) or We are fine (if responding in a group setting like school or if you’re a primary school kid who doesn’t yet understand what we means yet).

Discussing American versus British/Ghanaian English pronunciation with my friend Mohammed: I think it’s easier to spell disting using your English instead of trying to spell disting using our pronunciation. Basically instead of using the actual word term for what you mean (in this example disting means words) you use disting instead. Just for fun. Some teachers use it a lot in their classes and I have no idea how students understand what they’re talking about.

More to come next time…

I was telling Mohammed about my attempt to do a bee with my form 1 class today after we revised the class test I gave them yesterday. We’ve finished all the topics for the term and their spelling is absolutely atrocious so I thought doing this would be something fun but helpful too. It went fairly well but ended up doing it more one on one with the students by walking to each student to ask and listen to their spelling. I also had them spell their name first just to practice and feel comfortable. I’ve never been good at spelling aloud and know it’s not easy especially if it’s your second language. 13 of the students spelled their words correctly so we’ll hold a round 2 and subsequent rounds next. But I did have a rather difficult time not chuckling at some of the crazy spellings. I held it together but just barely....

Sorry no photo this week I only took one of a giant spider I was afraid was poisonous (it's not) and one of some of the kiddos playing with balloons in my house. Neither were really pertinent.