Grant Dobbe

I’ve been traveling. A lot. Let’s start from the top:

Cheers,
Grant

I’m having a bad day.

It started this morning at 5:30am, when I woke up feeling achy and exhausted. I laid in bed for 30 minutes hoping that the problem would alleviate itself, but alas, I am still achy even as I write this.

I then headed to school with my Vision Quester. I went to class expecting my students to have done their homework. Because I had been traveling, I gave them a group project before I left and told them it would be due the day I returned. I would be gone for 9 days, so I gave them 2 weeks to do it. That works, right?
Wrong.

I came into my first class, and less than half of them had done it. Not only was I angry, I was also disappointed and frustrated.

Ever the optimist, I went into my second class to be presented with exactly the same thing: 45 students out of 100 did the group project I had assigned, and the rest of them were frantically trying to finish it in class.

At that point, I was ready to go home and call it a day. Unfortunately, the day had barely begun.

I went home for a little bit to wash some laundry and put it out to dry. The minute I hung the last article of clothing on the line, it started to drizzle. Being tired and in no mood to take all the laundry in, I decided to leave it hang there, in a metaphorical nose-thumbing to mother nature.

We then went to market (that is, my Vision Quester and I) and bought some vegetables, a few two-yards, and some glorious, glorious FanIce. That, as I think of it now, was the eye of the storm.

I went to the computer lab to set up shop to discover a missing power strip, no chairs, and a mob of raucous, unruly students. After making one kneel in the grass for “acting like a goat” (she tried to budge her way into the lab under my arms as I was standing in the door) and sacking two for hitting another student, things calmed down a bit. I jury-rigged the power strip situation, got everything running, and have since spent the last 5 hours answering student questions.

My Vision Quester, on the other hand, has been awesome. He’s helped out with chores, talked to people, and just been an all-around good guy. Kudos, Mike.

Alright. I’m tired. Time to wind this party down and hope that I can still buy food in town after 6pm. Cheers, y’all.

Gotta love it when people run over fiber optic cables that supply Internet access to West Africa. It’s been hit-or-miss since the last message, but it appears to be ok now.

I’m in Accra. I’ve been here since last Sunday. I have completed my mid-service medical exam. For those of you who are wondering, I weigh 185 pounds, have a blood pressure of 110/70, picture perfect cholesterol, and absolutely no parasites or other tropical diseases. In other words, I’m pretty much the picture of health.

After my mid-service medical was finished, I put on my PCVRF hat (that’s Peace Corps Volunteer Resource Facilitator) and moved to the suburbs of Accra to help shepherd 67 brand-new, fresh-smelling Peace Corps Trainees through the fledgling stages of their pre-service training. It’s been a lot of tiredness, a lot of acronyms, but on the whole, a lot of fun.

It makes me think back to one year ago tomorrow, when I was first getting off the plane at Kotoka International Airport. I remember being excited, nervous, and scared, and being so impressed by the brightly dressed, smiling, excited PCVRFs who greeted us first thing out of the airport. It made me feel like a rock star, and it helped me to understand that what I had done was take the first step towards something incredibly challenging, but incredibly rewarding.

On Tuesday, I head to site with one of these new PCTs in tow so that he can get an idea of what it’s like to live the rustic, dirty, tree-hugging, dirt-worshipping hippie lifestyle. I hope to have a fresh update for you next week, now that everything’s back in order with the Internets.

Until then, keep on keepin’ on.