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I keep forgetting to post some answers to abbreviations from the internet class test I gave to my form 1 students.  They’re pretty awesome!

WWW- wild world web
HTTP: headache treating telephone process
FTP: floppy the paper

Wow I promise I taught the correct answers!

Moving on…last Tuesday the Peace Corps Ghana Country Director (we call him CD Mike) came to visit.  From what I understand, he tries to visit each volunteer about once a year.  I think that’d be a really fun part of his job to go around and see what everyone is up to at their sites.  He came right as I was wrapping up teaching my form 2 students math so he watched the last 15 minutes of my lesson on probability and then spoke to my class.  We then went to the form 1 class so he could briefly speak to those students.  Then we took a walk around my village to the building we’re planning on renovating into an ICT lab, to the primary school (the kids were in awe), to the few stores, and then through the football field to my house.  They brought me books from Accra and also bread and eggs.  I gave CD Mike a quick tour of my house before we rode in the Peace Corps vehicle to see more of the village.  We drove out to the Kunkwak dam where I usually bike too.  It was a short visit (two hours) but it was nice to have someone to show around.  Since I’m so remote my nearest neighbor is the only volunteer who’s visited me so far though my homestay brother did come up from the Eastern region back in December.

After school Wednesday I met with the girls for girls club to talk about HIV/AIDS.  I usually try to open with a game to make it fun and they love this game called ‘Wah!’ that I learned from some Canadian volunteers in Sandema.  I’ll teach it to you when I’m in Atlanta in August IN LESS THAN A MONTH!  Then we started the short talk by discussing basic HIV transmission facts and by doing a Fact/Myth exercise.  The main points we talked about are why women and girls are more vulnerable.  I was really excited because 20 girls came which was the most yet.  After we wrapped up in the classroom, all the girls came to my house to watch some short HIV films on my Scenarios from Africa DVD that I picked up at our Ghana AIDS Project meeting last month.   I choose four films that targeted young girls and they were a hit.  The next day some of the same students returned and new people came to watch.  These films have made me super popular! 

Then Friday a bunch of students were sticking around to watch a football match in the evening so also viewed some films.  We also had a small dance party so the girls could warm up for their ‘cheerleading’ (dancing) at the game.  Some of the small kiddos were around too and two in particular busted a move (check out the face photo of Awenwe and Mariana). I enjoy watching the boys play football but I also like watching the girls do the local dances.  Apparently the dancing helped cheer on the boys because our team won 1-0!  Go Gbedema!

Last week was a really great week here but I did get discouraged Friday when I met with our peer educators for some training.  This will probably be the last time we meet this term so we did a revision of some basic facts on STIs and HIV/AIDS and then they did some role plays on being assertive.  We also talked about their roles as peer educators and what a serious responsibility it is.  Somehow at the end when I opened it up for last minute questions some of the boys started talking about how people living with HIV should be forced out of their communities to go live isolated in a camp.  This very thing has happened to ‘witches’ who now live in Gambaga in the Northern region so that’s where they got the idea.  A common response my students give to ‘What would you do if you found out you have HIV?’ is ‘Kill myself.’  I tried asking what if it was you or a close family member and they still thought the same thing.  I shared with them my perspective and turned it around to focus on what we can realistically (and humanely) do to stop the spread of HIV.  It was pretty discouraging for me to realize how much of a problem stigma is here regarding people living with HIV.  Plus even though I’ve been educating my students on how you can live a long and successful life with HIV the point doesn’t seem to be getting across.  But I still have a year here to hopefully influence them so I can take it as a challenge that I still have plenty of work to do here- especially on stigma reduction.