Ghana Update Week 8: Leaving So Soon?

This week we received visitors from Germantown, Tennessee. Twelve or so people came to organize a VBS and do some painting for the week. They also threw a party! Each child received a bag of goodies: a tin to put special items, a notebook, pencils, yoyos, crayons, and, of course, taffies. Taffy is the word for candy here and I have found that no matter what word is used, children in all cultures have a sweet tooth... Perhaps this should be added to Austen’s list of universal truths....

The saying “Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today” rings particularly true in a region where electricity is irregular at times. Just when you think you have learned this lesson successfully, you find that you have fumbled the ball yet again: forgetting a task or simply by failing to make a plan B. Typing exams, copying worksheets, printing reports where just some of the simply tasks that were a little tricky this week. Covering for the primary Bible classes was also a little tricky last week with only a video... We managed, but it would have been much easier to cover two classes at a time if the video had worked.

It rained two evenings this week. The kids did not seem all too excited but Nathanael and I were thrilled. Firstly, it was nice to have a change but more importantly the temperature dropped considerably! It was great to just sit on the porch listening to the rain, watching the lightening, occasionally enjoying a couple drop that sailed through the mosquito netting. Later that same night, I found myself on a different porch playing Kofi Says (Simon Says). Completely different ways of enjoying the cool evening weather, but both wonderful.

On Saturday night the boarding students put on some entertainment in one of the classrooms at the school. It was really just supposed to be an "internal" sort of thing, but I happened to stumble upon it while I was sending some emails. Let me just tell you, these kids can dance! It is interesting to see some of the moves they do and to compair them to moves I see in America. My exposure to pop culture isn't all that extensive, I will confess, but some things I have never seen while others I haven't see in about 10 years. Needless to say, I found the entertainment to be, well, entertaining in a way they probably didn't expect.

Overall it has been a fairly quiet week. The reading curriculum training is complete and the teachers have not been out much so I have been catching up on things, doing some tasks for the graduation of our 9th graders at the end of April, and preparing to leave for a couple weeks. That just means I got to spend a lot of time with the children -- which is the way I like it. Even with a quiet week, you can learn some interesting things. I will leave you with two Ghanaian culture tidbits I learned this week:

• If you walk over a person while they are seated, the seated person will no longer grow.

• If you lose a tooth, you must throw it so it hits the ceiling of a building or your new tooth will not grow.