Grant Dobbe

I’m attempting to push my posting/emailing schedule back to Saturday; thus, this week’s missive comes on a Thursday.

I’m not going to lie — I’m a bit frazzled. The end of the term is fast approaching, and I have all of the requisite paperwork, grading, and maintenance that comes with it. Plus, I’ve been trying to keep the house in order and trying to plan for two back-to-back weekends of traveling. To top it all off, I’ve got another mouse in my house.

This one at least has the good sense to keep quiet. I’ve seen him more than I’ve heard him. He managed to startle the crap out of me two days ago by running out of my closet when I was going into it. I found his nest under my bookshelf, and his likely entry point in my guest room. I’m hoping to get the ceiling plywood replaced soon, but I’m not holding my breath — slow is the new fast in Ghana. I’ve plugged it as best I can with steel wool and duct tape for the time being to prevent further mouse entry and egress, but that does not resolve the problem of my current rodent roommate.

Thus, I’ve resorted to trying to catch the little bugger. Ideally, I’d like to poison him so that he can’t find his way back, but the closest mouse poison is in Berekum. So, I’m trying a live trap. This morning, I placed a scrap of bread with some peanut butter in an empty powdered milk canister, and balanced it on the edge of my table/countertop with a  tall bucket underneath it. My hope is that the mouse gets curious, goes to investigate the snack, and gets trapped in the bucket. After I get a chance to rough him up a bit (meaning a bicycle ride out of town), I’ll let him go somewhere very far away from my house.

In other news, the KSO Thanksgiving Extravaganza is actually *this* weekend. Tomorrow morning, I’ll get up extra super-duper early and head for Kumasi, stopping in Berekum and Sunyani on the way to run errands and resupply. I’m hoping to find a new cogset in Kumasi to replace the well-worn and skip-prone one that my bicycle currently has, as well as some muslin or cheesecloth so that I can try making cheese at home. I also plan to fill my innards with turkey and other goodness.

Next weekend, I head for Bunso, where I will reside in relative comfort for approximately 5 days while eating meals that someone else cooks, playing cribbage with my fellow PCVs, sitting through a number of Peace Corps-oriented plenary sessions, and wait out the Ghanaian Presidential and Parliamentary elections in security and obscurity. It sounds nice, but it means I have to prepare lesson plans that allow me to not be at school. Personally, I’d rather stay close to home and work on growing my stockpile of rice and canned goods. Oh well. It’s a free vacation.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got. You stay classy, folks.

Holy Aunt Jemima, have I been busy. Since the last missive, I’ve been grading midterms, upgrading lab software, planning a computer club and an elective ICT course, creating a student ICT position, writing lesson plans, and trying to be creative in my water conservation techniques. Let’s start at the top and work our way down, shall we?

ITEM THE FIRST — Grading tests is a chore not unlike shoveling snow — it’s always harder than you think it is, it takes longer than you expect, and it has the ability to sap the life out of you if you don’t do it properly. Having never had to give or grade a test before, I am experiencing this magnificent joy for the first time. 36 down, 93 to go. Ick.

ITEM THE SECOND — I managed to deploy version 0.2 of my computer lab software “build” this weekend. Nothing radical in way of changes; just some upgrades, some bug fixes, and a program for practicing mouse clicks called xball. I did manage to get computer #5 up and running, so that’s a bit of a victory for me. Still in the staff common room, though. One battle at a time, right?

ITEM THE THIRD — The end of my first term as a Ghanaian teacher is fast approaching, which means I have to plan for the second term just as quickly. I get a nice, cushy 3 week break between terms, which is nice. Next term, ICT for forms 2 and 3 is an elective course, which will reduces my numbers significantly (it’s looking like between 20 and 30 in each form), and will make life a little simpler in terms of planning. I’m also planning to create an extra-curricular club for doing “fun” computing projects, like playing games, running an internet cafe, etc. I’m putting a grade restriction on both: anyone interested must be in good academic standing in order to qualify. That gives the students something to work for, and keeps me from rewarding under-achievement.

ITEM THE FOURTH — I have too much work on my hands in running a computer lab. I also want my students to take responsibility for something as well as showing them how to take pride in their work. Therefore, I’ve proposed and gotten approval to appoint lab prefects. Basically, these are students who will help me to run the computer lab. They will help their fellow students by answering questions, doing hardware installs, software upgrades, and basic troubleshooting. My goal is to get to a point where if I’m not available to open/run the lab, they are. And, come next year, they will be able to train their replacements in how the whole system works. Beautiful, eh?

ITEM THE PENULTIMATE — After studying the curriculum, my lesson plans to date, the lunar cycles, consulting the I Ching, and a good deal of weeping (as well as gnashing of teeth), I have finished all but one of my lesson plans for the remainder of the term. Next task is to start writing my final exams for this term. Egad.

ITEM THE ULTIMATE — There’s a joke amongst us hippie types that goes: A pessimist sees the glass as half-empty, the optimist sees the glass as half-full, and the Peace Corps Volunteer sees the glass and says “Hey! I could take a bath with that!” We’re well into the dry season now, and while it doesn’t mean the wells have run dry and there’s no moisture to be found, it *does* mean that the rainfall has slowed to very occasionally (it hasn’t rained more than a trace amount this month). Thus, I am now hauling both my drinking water and my wash/bathwater by bicycle. As I am naturally lazy, I try to minimize my consumption as much as possible; thus, I am now cooking in a way that minimizes the dirty dishes, shaving and washing my face with half as much water as I used to, and bathing with about 1.5 gallons of water instead of my extravagant 2.5-gallon baths of the pat. Same amount of clean, less amount of carry. Everyone wins, except for the boy who enjoyed pouring the last .5 gallons over his head at the end.

Alright, that’s it. I’m going to the KSO for Thanksgiving next weekend. You can expect a full report after I wake up from the turkey coma.

hana is an interesting place. It has been an independent country for a little over 50 years, and in that time there have been several economic crises and several military (albeit bloodless) coups d’etat. Yet in that time, the Ghanaian people have kept an admirable commitment to peace and stability while the countries around them have experienced civil war and genocide. The 2000 election and transition of power here was considered a milestone, because it was the first peaceful handover of power from a former military dictator to a civilian government in over 25 years.

But for all of the great strides that have been taken in this country, there are still many more ahead. Corruption (especially in the police and civil service) is a major problem, and the national road infrastructure is a major hindrance to agricultural development in the rural areas. And if you happen to be a person whose paycheck comes from a government ministry, it’s a sad reality of life that your bi-monthly paychecks might actually come every other month, or not at all.

This week, I asked my students what they would change if they were in charge. Everything I mentioned above was covered. I asked them what they liked about their country, and they told me about the peaceful stability of their country. But they knew things could be better.

This week, I got the rare opportunity to watch the world change. For the first time in American history, a black man was elected to the presidency. And not by a small margin, either.

Ignore the political ramifications and just think about that for a minute. 100 years ago, black people could not vote in U.S. elections, much less run as candidates. 50 years ago, protesters (black and white) had dogs and fire hoses turned on them simply because they thought you should be able to eat at any restaurant, shop at any store, and take any seat on a bus regardless of your skin color. 40 years ago, a black Baptist preacher made known to the world his dream that one day, his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, and lost his life for it.

And on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 3:30am, I sat by the radio and listened as the American electorate voted for a man based not on the color of his skin, but on the content of his character. I don’t care what party you ally to: that, my friends, is a reason to pay attention.

Ghanaians — and the rest of the world, for that matter — were paying attention, too. Many, like me, got up at obscene hours of the day to huddle around shortwave radios and listen to election coverage. And as the day progressed, there was a lot of talk about what an American president with African roots means for Africa, a continent where for many, indoor plumbing is considered a luxury and electricity may or may not come to your village. The jury’s still out on that one, but it seems like a lot of people are saying “If America can overcome its issues, why can’t we?”

I look at my students, and I see kids who struggle to overcome adversity every day. They’re thrown out of classes for not knowing answers, caned for the slightest transgressions, and yet they still show up, eager for the opportunity to learn. They show up with the hopes that if they work hard and keep trying, they can someday make things better. If nothing else, they can now look at the soon-to-be 44th president of the United States of America and know that hard work and a good education will get you anywhere you want to go, regardless of who you are.

Greetings and salutations from the middle of the world.

I spent yet another Saturday afternoon riding my bicycle through the back-country of Ghana, with GPS receiver strapped down tightly and these thoughts wandering in and out of my head:

- “I wonder where this road is going to end up…”
- “Oh, look. Another hill. Joy of joys.” (followed by frantic down-shifting of gears)
- “WHEEEEEEEEEE!” (on the other side of the aforementioned hills)
- “Wow. That’s a lot of green.”

I took a road I had been wanting to take for some time, and ended up following it into a town called Asuokor that I’d passed through on another bike ride, though by a different road. I waved at a bunch of little kids, passed through town, and stopped outside so that I could answer the call of nature and check my tire pressure. I then turned around to go back through town and begin my trip home.

In the five minutes that I spent parked outside of town, the people of Asuokor decided that this white guy on the mountain bike was pretty much the high point of their day, and decided to give me something akin to a hero’s welcome. As I pedaled back through this town, there were people lining both sides of the street cheering, blowing whistles, waving flags/banners/whatever they could find, and jogging alongside me just to say hello. It was simultaneously the funniest and coolest thing I had ever experienced. I have never felt more welcome in Ghana than during this afternoon’s bike ride.

In other news, this week was what I’m calling my “Harry Potter” week. Ghanaian schools are organized in the classic British styling: the students are grouped by forms and houses, the teachers are called “masters” or “tutors”, the school is run by a headmaster, and there are prefects and class captains for enforcing the rules and managing decorum. This week was my turn as master-on-duty, meaning that I was in charge of discipline, overseeing the morning assembly, and supervising the two breaks during the day.

I was also appointed the head of House #2, which does not yet have a name. Personally, I’m lobbying for Awesome House or Gryffindor House, but I think both references would be lost on my students. Oh well.

That’s all I’ve got.  Don’t forget to vote, and  keep on keepin’ on.