Every day, I see something else I want to have a picture or video of to show people back home, and I keep forgetting my camera. I've thought about always carrying it with me, but then I know I'd lose it, since that's what I do. I'm not used to carrying anything around with me really, so I tend to set things down and not remember to pick them up. Didn't really want to do that with a camera. I've been asking people leaving if they'd please remember to email me their pictures, just in case I really don't remember any.
Aankit and I went into Agona again, yes. The district office person still isn't there, even though we were told they would be. Apparently, this is common in Ghana. It was frustrating, but only slightly, since I was still learning and having fun, and able to help the kids in the after school program, so it's not like I was just sitting there twiddling my thumbs. Aankit needed to print something, so we went to the internet cafe (apparently, that's the only real feasible way of printing anything). Unfortunately, there were storms last night, so the power was still out, even though it was bright and sunny weather today. Actually, according to Aankit, the power doesn't generally go out because of the storms knocking down power lines or anything, but because, when it storms, someone at the power plant throws a switch to turn off power in case a power line gets knocked down. So, when it's still off, that means someone didn't show up for work, or forgot to flip the switch.
The feeling I got with Henry still bothered me, so I asked Aankit about flirting in Ghana, and whether he thought I should worry. He said basically everyone in Ghana flirts with everyone else, by our standards. It's just a way of being with each other for Ghanaians. So, don't worry, was what he basically said. That made me feel a lot better, since I don't know how to deal with that too well.
On our way back, I noticed myself thinking how odd it was that people were walking on the sides of the streets (instead of the middle). That surprised me since, in the US, people are supposed to walk on the side of the street. But, in Ghana, no one walks on the side of the street, unless it's a very main road. Like, only on the highway does that happen. I thought it was cool I sort of started thinking within the norms of Ghana, and it was my first time noticing it!
We got back to the house mid-morning, and everyone was still at home. This is weird for a weekday, since the scholars are usually in school, and the volunteers are usually out and about eating, drinking, smoking, talking, or just enjoying the ocean. I was a little unnerved by the change of pace. So many people in the house makes it terribly claustrophobic. And you know me, I'm good with that, right? (I'll give you a hint - that's a no). Well, the reason all the scholars were there was because Aankit forgot to tell his bank that he was coming to Ghana, so they took his card when he tried to extract money from the ATM in Takoradi, I believe. So, he couldn't pay the school fees, which were due today, Wednesday. If the students show up and don't pay the fees, they get caned and sent home. So, none of the kids went because they didn't want to get hit. Makes sense to me.
After school, I worked with the Red group, which is the group of students who don't yet know their letters. That is, they can't accurately and consistently identify written letters in uppercase, lowercase, or both. I had only five kids there today, which is not that many. I'm not sure why, since it's a nice day out. Anyway, with these kids, we went around in a circle and practiced with flash cards and then, when I realized I didn't have a complete set of flash cards, with the kids themselves writing a letter down and asking the person next to them what it was. We moved eventually to me whispering a letter to them, the student having to write it down correctly in both upper and lower case, and the next having to tell us what the letter was. It was fun, and had enough personal involvement that I could see where each was struggling. Three kids had the letters down well, and probably should have been in the Orange group, where they start with sounds. Two of the students were having a lot of difficulty, mostly with the group of letters that sound alike. They'd think 'Z' was 'P' or vice versa. It didn't seem to be necessarily based on shape, just sound.
The two who needed the most practice with letters left first. They usually leave early, probably due to chores or something, but it was disappointing to see them leave when I had just caught on to how they seemed to be doing and why. (One child refused to actually look at the letter before guessing). For the three who appeared ready to work on sounds, I would ask, "What letter?" and then, "What sound?" Two of them were having a lot of problems with that. They'd say a word that started with the letter, instead of the sound of the letter. This was a common problem I'd noticed when giving the original letter recognition tests, and I wasn't sure how to approach it. The Twi alphabet is phonetic, so the letters are just sound-names, but there aren't two things to remember with each symbol, so it's hard to explain that, in English, each letter has a name, and a sound.
The third student stayed after the other two left, and I found him looking at an approximately third grade version of Peter Pan. I figured this would be a good time to have him start putting sounds together, since he'd seem to have gotten it before with the other two working on it. I pointed to the word, "Peter," specifically the 'P', and asked him what...and he interrupted, saying, "Peter". So, I kept going down the page. He could read! Why was he put into the Red group? I saved that question for later, but, in the next half hour, we got through almost a full chapter of the book! And he'd had only a few mistakes I'd needed to help correct, mostly with the non-phonetic words like 'enough'. I was excited, and I asked Aankit afterward if I could look at the student's profile so I could make a note that he'd been placed in the wrong group. Actually, he'd just had the same name as someone who wasn't there that day, but was supposed to be in the Red group. So, we just needed to be careful of names. I am just glad the day wasn't a complete bore/waste for the student.
Wednesday evening, we had our first Twi lesson. Emmanuel, one of the scholars, thought it would be cool if the volunteers could learn a little Twi while they were here, even though we're supposed to be immersing the students in English to help them learn it. I thought it was a cool idea, and I sat down with excitement. We started off with the alphabet. I'm going to make the whole of what I learned of the language another post, so you can skip the technicalities if you would like. Anyway, we went over the alphabet and some digraphs (two letter combinations that don't necessarily sound like how they should if you just put the two sounds together - like the English 'th'). We were so excited about our lesson, we missed most of News Hour! We decided from then on to have the lessons upstairs so we would be able to keep track of when News started.
Other than that, my mosquito bites are finally starting to get itchy. Not fun. But, they weren't for the whole almost four days after I first got them. That's different than the Midwest mosquitoes. The bites themselves even look different. They're not as softly rounded and pink. Instead, they're more pointed, like cones, and much more red than pink.
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