I forgot to write last time that I’m officially on school vacation! Last Thursday was the last day of school for the term and exams ended the day before. Thankfully both my exams- ICT and Math- were the week before so I had plenty of the mark my papers and get them back to the students. It wasn’t fun but it was easy- and besides it’s my job. Between 3 ICT classes and 1 Math class, I had approximately 250 papers to grade. But especially because I teach ICT there are always funny things about my students’ answers so that helps break up the monotony. Let me back up and say that I had the nurse do condom demonstrations in each class for World AIDS Day. So when one of my form 2 girls was labeling parts of a computer she got confused for a pen drive and wrote ‘penis.’ Now I have to do some teaching again there and make sure all is clear… also in my form 1 class I had a safety and health question about what can happen to you by using the computer. It was an ‘all except’ type question with choices like wrist pain, headache, HIV and back pain. Some students got the question wrong which doesn’t worry me that much since I’m hoping it’s more a misunderstanding of the English language rather than a misconception about health. I’ll make sure I review that next term just in case- you never know.
I’m enjoying my free time on break but have still been somewhat productive cleaning my house, working on writing a small grant, visiting and photographing people, and holding a couple of club meetings. One of my student’s (Ruth our library prefect and one of our brightest girls in form 3) families asked me to come to their house a while ago to take photos of them. Yesterday she came to get me yesterday to take me there and I finally went. Of course once there I had to wait a while for them to gather and prepare by changing into nice clothes, borrowing my earrings (yes her sister did that), etc. There were kids everywhere and it ended up being a lot of fun photographing everyone. The last person I photographer was her great-grandmother who’s in her 90s. After snapping her sitting in a chair, she decided to get up and dance so I could take her photo again. It was pretty great and I got a video of her singing and dancing too.
It’s been a long time since I wrote about the clubs I’m working on here so thought I’d update on things. I think already I wrote about doing a Girls Club on HIV/AIDS and condom use last month. On Friday, the day after school vacated, we met and I taught the girls how to make coin purses out of water sachets. Hurrah for crafts were you reuse rubbish! It was perfect because the girls came in staggered at different times so it made it easier to help then. Once some of the girls finished their own, they helped the other girls. I had hip life music playing while they were working and everyone had fun hanging out and chatting. Of course I took tons of photos especially of their finished products. I gave each girl an extra zip to take home and make another too.
Every time I announce Girls Club, the boys always either ask me if they can attend or if I’ll start a Boys Club for them. For a while I told them no they needed to ask one of the masters since maybe it’d be strange for me a woman to lead a boys club. But more recently I changed my mind after realizing I shouldn’t deny the boys the opportunity to meet in a club setting first off and second maybe the things I’ll talk about with them nobody else will. For our first meeting we basically did the same HIV/AIDS and condom use lesson I did with the Girls Club last month. It’s great because the peer educators can help with some of the games and the condom demonstration so it’s more student-led than me-led.
Last month, after returning from camp and having the students who attended the camp debrief their classmates, Chris and I formed an Agriculture club. Our first meeting was well attended (40-50 students) but very short since it was after extra classes one day and the students were really hungry but we talked about why we were starting the club, discussed food security so that they understood it’s an issue here that they have the power to do something about, and then talked small about school gardens. The students are really interested in school gardens and beekeeping so we’re hoping to focus on those topics first. On Wednesday this week we held another club meeting about nutrition and moringa. I was worried the students had forgotten about the meeting since it was during break. One girl knocked on my door promptly at 10AM so we went to the school to wait on the others. And we waited. And we waited. Around 11AM more students came so I played a Planet Earth episode on my laptop while we waited some more. Finally around 10:30AM we started about 20 students strong with a short review on nutrition- they learn about it in school so have all the knowledge but don’t necessarily apply it. Moringa trees are scattered around our village but most people don’t know about the nutritional benefit so that was our next topic. Then we had story time- I read them a kid’s book on Wangari Maathi, the Noble Peace Prize winner who started the Green Belt movement in Kenya. Then last, as promised, I gave them each some moringa seeds to take home and nurse.
My friend Joseph and I finally had the chance to meet with some of the women in our community to discuss the kayeiyo issue that we attended training on way back in June. He talked about it briefly at our PTA meeting in October but was able to go more in-depth in our meeting with the mothers. I had the projector for our first mother’s meeting last month which was great because we could show pictures of some of the living conditions girls/women find themselves in when they travel to the big cities in the south to do menial jobs. Of course the meetings are all in Buli so much of the time I zone out or make faces at babies to try to make them smile. Last week we held our second meeting and Joseph, brave man, talked about family planning. I think it’s always good to talk about but inevitably the women say that the men make the decisions around that so really we need to discuss it with them. I finally got to meet native of our village named Lariba who now lives Germany and returns periodically. She’s formed an NGO there called Maara to help the village and part of what she wants to do is form a women’s group. We discussed joining our efforts together since it’s the same women and we want to work on the same issues. In fact, in a meeting she had with them over the weekend she discussed the healing properties of moringa which is perfect because next month we’ll talk about nutrition and moringa with the mothers like we did with the students, also giving them seeds to plan.
Getting into the Christmas spirit here is rather difficult but I have been listening to Christmas music, watching movies, daily tearing links off my handmade Christmas countdown paper chain, and eating watermelon. Yes I now associate eating watermelon with Christmas because it’s one of two seasons of having watermelon here. This year I’ll be home from Christmas only in my dreams (I’ll be spending it with other volunteers at our office in Tamale again) but next year I’ll really be home! Hope everyone has a very happy Christmas. I’ll be taking a 3 week break from updating the blog so see you next year! Lots to look forward to in 2013…
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