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The Letter R

Thursday, August 5, 2010

This is not my last message from Ghana. It is, however, my last message as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

I moved out of my house on Saturday morning, and said goodbye to Seikwa for who knows how long. I left saddened, but satisfied. I know that in some small way, I left the place better than I found it. My students were better off for my having been there, as was the school and, to a lesser extent, the community. And now, I’m in Accra, going through the Close-of-Service Process.

Accra is — as it always has been — surreal. I took a tro-tro to the office this morning, and was passed by at least 3 BMVs on the way. It is a harbinger, of sorts — it’s as close to America as I can get at the moment, and I’m not exactly sure how I feel about that. It’ll grow on me in time, I suppose, but I’ll never again look at a used car or a bathtub the same way ever again.

My Close of Service has gone as smoothly as I could expect it to go. My bags are packed. My paperwork is in order. All I’m waiting for is one last interview and some signatures tomorrow, and I’ll be a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.

RPCV.

There’s a lot of significance in that letter R. It means that despite the frustrations, the low points, the longing for home, the illnesses, the delays, and everything else that seems to work in consort to make you give up, I was successful. That letter R is a testament to my service. That R means I am a full-fledged dirty hippie. That R symbolizes my commitment to my work, and my desire to have a positive impact on the world. That R is my entire service boiled down to one
letter, one word: Returned.

It also means that my service is never over. As I’ve said before, I’ll spend the rest of my life committed to sharing Ghana with other Americans. I’ll spend the rest of my life searching for banku and making waakye for people, and talking to classrooms full of students who, like me, will some day hopefully wonder what they can do to make the world a better place.

I will spend the rest of my life remembering this experience, and recounting it time and time again to anyone who will do me the kindness of listening. I will spend countless words describing what I saw, what I did, and how it affected me. Right now, I’m savoring that R.

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The Other 90%

Monday, June 28, 2010
There’s a saying in software development: the first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% of the work takes the other 90%.
Well, that’s where I’m at right now. I have about 4 weeks left before I travel to Accra and go through my Completion of Service process, and I feel like I’ve got about another year’s work ahead of me. I have lessons to give, papers to mark, exams to write, computer labs to fix, documentation to write so that other people can keep the lab running, paperwork to fill out, Peace Corps books and property to inventory and return, reports to write, people to say goodbye to, bank accounts to close, and a house full of stuff that I have to decide whether to keep, give away, or try to sell.
On top of that, there’s everything related to returning to the United States. Caroline and I have been working on updating our resumes, looking for jobs (though that’s pretty low key at the moment), trying to arrange for housing in Madison, figuring out how to budget our combined re-adjustment allowances, and beginning to talk about what kind of wedding we want, and when and where we should have it. I’m also at the point in my marathon training where I’m running about 30 miles a week and hungry much more often than I used to be.
So, there’s that.
My last day here in Seikwa is August 1st. My last day as a PCV will be August 6th. As I attempt to wind down my life here, and at the same time try to prepare for a new life in America, I find myself reminiscing about the good times, as well as reflecting on the bad times and what I could have done better. I’ve learned a lot of things here — patience and persistance pays off (case in point: my computer lab); don’t believe anything until you see it for yourself (again, the computer lab, but also travel and other things); no plan survives its first contact with reality; and never be afraid to ask questions, no matter how trivial or ridiculous they may seem to you (Ghanaian culture at large).
The most important thing I’ve learned, though, is this: as long as you are willing to learn, and to try new things, and to embrace your sense of curiousity, anything is possible. I’ve traveled and met people and experienced life here for two years, and every day it becomes more strikingly clear just how little I actually know. I’ve learned a lot about administering Linux boxes, and maintaining computers, and squeezing the absolute maximum performance out of a computer; and as I’ve learned to do that, I’ve realized how much more I didn’t know about using computers, and teaching people how to use them, and teaching people how to maintain them. I’ve learned a lot about myself; and in doing so, I’ve realized just how little I actually knew, and still know about who I am and who I want to be.
I am absolutely fascinated by the world around me, and how it works, and I know so very little about it. But as long as I am willing to be curious, and ask questions, and accept that inevitably I will not know or understand something, then my ignorance will not be an obstacle, and the world will be open to me. That’s true of the Peace Corps and experiencing Ghanaian (or any other) culture, but that’s also true of the American culture I’m returning to. This is work — hard work — that I will likely never finish, but, then again, I’m not sure I want it to be. That’s part of the fun.
And, in the end, that’s the other 90% of what I have to do. Peace Corps has 3 goals; the first one is to train people in technical skills; the second is to help people of other countries get a better understanding of America. But the third one is to help Americans to get a better understanding of other countries. I spent two years here, teaching people about computers and computer skills, learning about and experiencing Ghana first-hand, and now I get to come back and spend the rest of my life trying to explain Ghana to you.
So, the next time you see me in America, remember this: I may look at appliances with varying degrees of bewilderment and confusion. I may ask questions that seem ridiculous, such as “So, who’s this Lady Gaga that I keep hearing about?”, and I might cry a little if you offer me a turkey sandwich on wheat bread with a glass of lemonade. But if you ask me a question about Ghana or the Peace Corps, I’ll try to answer it as best I can, and I will ask questions of my own in return. Together, we can figure out how the world works a little bit better, and take care of that other 90%.
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Yep. Still here.

Friday, May 21, 2010
*sigh*
 
Well, then.
 
April was intense. May was even more intense. Let me tell you about it.
 
The first April crisis was that Caroline and I both got malaria. Well, technically, we already *had* malaria, seeing as the malaria prophylaxis that all Peace Corps Volunteers are required to take just keeps the malaria parasite from reproducing in your bloodstream. But when you combine several days of high stress with poor nutrition, strenuous travel, and little sleep, even the best prophylaxis in the world can’t keep your immune system from throwing in the towel. So, we both got malaria, right as we were returning to my site from KSO.
 
What is malaria like, you may wonder? Well, it kinda sneaks up on you. For a day or so, I felt mildly ill, but well enough to take care of Caroline. The next day, however, I felt like I had the flu: joint and muscle aches, fever, general malaise, and tiredness. Then, the headaches started and the fever really ramped itself up.
 
Imagine having the inside of your head scraped out with a rusty shovel. Imagine it happening at random. Then, throw in a fever of 103 and all of the aforementioned symptoms, and add really weird hallucinations whenever you try to sleep. That’s what malaria was like for me. The sad thing is that it comes and goes in cycles, so that you almost begin to feel better, and then it hits you again and you’re back to being totally incapacitated.
 
Luckily, at that point, Caroline was feeling well enough to take care of me and make me take my Coartem (the drug we use to treat malaria).
 
Coartem is a really effective drug. It is so effective that after my second dose, I was feeling well enough to get on a tro-tro with Caroline and come back to KSO… which is when she started having a high fever and chills. So she took *her* Coartem. And after several days of having malaria and then recovering from it, we both felt like someone had run us through a garbage disposal. In fact, my first training run after recovering was easily the most difficult 5K run I have ever done.
 
Anyway, we eventually recuperated and started to feel human again, and I managed to get all of my final exams marked. I also  got some good work done on the freedom toaster, and even found time to plan some things for my mother’s visit in May. And that’s when the second crisis happened…
 
Caroline’s roof blew off in a thunderstorm.
 
Yep. Blew. off. And her ceiling caved in, too.
 
She was not hurt, and she had the good sense of mind to put all of her electronics and books into her giant wardrobe once her ceiling started to leak like a running faucet. The only things she needed to replace were her towels (which she put down on the floor to prevent her slipping and breaking her neck) and her pots and pans (which she was using to catch water when she thought it was just a leak, and which got crushed by the ceiling after it caved in). I left my site to come help with the cleanup effort as soon as I could get out of town, and she ended up coming back to my site for a week while the school repaired her ceiling and roof.
 
The last week of April was the All-Volunteer Conference at Chances Hotel in Ho, Volta Region. After the preceeding events of April, this was a welcome relief. I got to spend time with friends, eat meals I didn’t have to cook, do a little gaming, and learn a little bit about what my colleagues have been doing at their sites.
 
After All-Vols, the remaining members of my training group had our Close-of-Service Conference, where we discussed how to say goodbye at our sites and prepare for returning to the U.S. This is a topic for another blog post in the future, but it was sobering and a little bit sad, while at the same time being fun and exciting. I look forward to seeing you all in September, when Caroline and I return to the U.S. as RPCVs.
 
This brings us to May, when Caroline and I met our mothers at the airport for a two week trip around Ghana. There is much to say about this trip. We laughed; we cried; we got sick; we got better. All in all, it was an experience that none of us will ever forget. I will write more about this when I get a chance to sit down and process it in more depth.
 
Alright, that’s all I’ve got for now. I promise to not get malaria again and keep the updates regular.
 
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Pregnant cats, bike chains, and freedom toasters

Sunday, March 21, 2010

I present to you, for your enjoyment, a random selection of scenes from my life, in no particular order whatsoever.

** My cat is pregnant. *Very* pregnant. I estimate her belly contains somewhere between 30 and 40 kittens. It has had the wonderful side effect of mellowing her out; less meowing, less demanding to be let in/out, and more sleeping. I approve. At least until the kittens arrive, that is.

** My students are continually flabbergasted at all the things I can do, like cook, fetch water, use a broom, and talk to them in my (very) rudimentary Twi. I don’t know if it’s the gender roles (very rare to see a man cook or sweep) or the fact that I’m white that causes their surprise. Just today, I surprised two of my female students by lighting a coalpot and cooking up a giant pot of black-eyed peas. They stood, watched, and congratulated me (not kidding — they literally said “You have done well, sir!”) for a full 10 minutes as I stirred the beans and fanned the coals while sitting on my wooden cooking stool. It’s a tough job, but somehow I manage.

** The term is over in approximately a week and a half. I get a brief bit of respite until I have to mark the bazillion exam papers that I will have from all of my classes. The sad thing is that I _just_ finished marking homeworks and class tests last Wednesday. *sigh*

** Marathon training is coming along well. I am steadily working at building my base, and steadily growing hungrier as I do it. I just completed a 23km week; next week is a 24.5km week. And so we go from there. At some point, I will be averaging 50km per week. And that’s before I start the honest-to-God training. *gulp*

** Every time I pay my electric bill, I have to replace a light bulb. An odd coincidence, but I don’t like doing my evening routine in the dark, so I do it. When I went to the provision store to buy a bulb, the owner gave me a “blue” one — one that resembles a black light that is used in bars for mood lighting. I didn’t bother to check, and you can’t return goods in Ghana without a serious fight, so I now have a black-light style light in my main hallway. I feel like I’m 13 again.

** My bike chain broke the other day. I was hauling water, and luckily was returning to the house with my last jerry can before the bearing slipped and the link bent itself at a very odd angle. And of course, when I tried to replace the chain with the spare one I brought from America, my chain breaker (the tool you use for removing/opening the links) promptly broke.

Luckily, Mike Simpson at KSO has a complete set of bike tools, so I’ll just bring my bike there and get the chain fixed; it’s just a question of when. I’d like to have a working bike for hauling water during the break, as well as for marathon cross-training; on the other hand, traveling with a bike sucks. Really sucks.

** I’ve been spending a large amount of my free time trying to assemble a working Freedom Toaster, and then compile my efforts into a distributable package that can be used to create additional Freedom Toasters.

What is a Freedom Toaster, you ask?

A Freedom Toaster is a stand-alone, easy-to-use kiosk that is used to distribute open-source software and freely licensed media (a la Creative Commons). A user goes up to the Toaster, picks out their software/content using a touchscreen or trackball, and inserts a blank CD, and the toaster burns it all to a CD for them.

The original Freedom Toaster was first proposed in South Africa as a way to facilitate the distribution of open-source software in places where broadband internet access (the traditional delivery tool for open-source software) was prohibitively expensive or non-existant. It can be put in places like libraries, internet cafes, public computing labs, and university campuses to allow the public to take full advantage of quality software.

The original project had quite a bit of steam, and several toasters were built from an open code base before the developers founded a company in 2007 to build them (only in South Africa, to my disappointment), and the open code base for building a toaster was left to moulder. Thus, I grabbed the code, set up my own development environment, and set to work updating it so it would install again. If you feel so inclined, you can help me: the code’s at https://code.google.com/p/freedomtoaster/

** Caroline and I do not yet have a definite date set for our wedding, but we’d really like to have it within 6 months of returning to the U.S. We’ll keep y’all posted.

Alright. That’s all I’ve got. Until next time…

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.7

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In which I ask some very important questions

Monday, March 8, 2010

The first question I asked was of Caroline. She was taking a nap, and I entered the bedroom with a little ring box. She woke up and saw the box, and after a little nervous fumbling, I got down on one knee and asked the most important question I’ve ever asked anyone:

“Will you marry me?”

Thankfully, for my sake, she said yes. Actually, it was more like “YES!!!”

Anyway, I am now engaged. That’s the first important question I have to talk about.

———-

The remaining questions I have to ask are from my students. We’ve been studying the internet this term, and at the beginning of the term, we did a group project where I posed the following scenario to them:

Pretend that you have been asked by the government to represent the youth of Ghana at a congress of world youth. Every country in the world is sending a delegation of their best and brightest students to represent them. As part of the congress, you will be asked to give a 20-minute presentation on any topic you like. There will also be a question period where you can ask 5 questions for the other congress attendees to answer.

I then asked them, in groups, to write down:

a.) the topic that they would present
b.) their 5 questions for the rest of the congress

I went around to all 8 of my classes and had the students vote on their favorite topics and questions, and told them the winners would be posted on the internet for the whole world to see.

So, now I make good on my promise, and let you see their questions. I’ve organized them by classes, so you can see the similarities and differences between each.

—–

3 Arts 1
Winning topic: Teenage Pregnancy
Winning questions:
1. What can we do to limit and reduce unemployment?
2. How can we make sure that the schools provide adequate ICT education?
3. How can we deal with the problem of street children?
4. How can we prevent deforestation?
5. How can we avoid teenage pregnancy?

—–

3 Business
Winning topic: Teenage Pregnancy
Winning questions:
1. What are the causes of increased teenage pregnancy in Ghana?
2. What can we do to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS?
3. Why do African countries find it difficult to develop?
4. Why should students have access to the internet?
5. Why are foreign industries developing faster than local industries in Ghana?

—–

3 Agric
Winning Topic: Teenage Pregnancy
Winning questions:
1. How can we avoid teenage pregnancy?
2. How can we bring teenage pregnancy under control?
3. As future leaders, what can we do to stop HIV/AIDS?
4. Is teenage pregnancy only an African problem?
5. What is the world doing to curb the effects of global warming?

—–

3 Arts 2
Winning topic: 3 year vs. 4 year high school education
Winning questions:
1. How can we prevent bush fires?
2. What punishment should be given to those who start bush fires?
3. Can the government of Ghana provide enough infrastructure for a 4 year SHS system?
4. What can we do to control teenage pregnancy?
5. Why is teenage pregnancy such a big problem?

—–

2 Arts 1
Winning topic: Teenage pregnancy
Winning questions:
1. Why is it important to educate our children?
2. What can we do to eliminate malaria in Ghana and the rest of Africa?
3. How can we support democracy in Africa?
4. Will there be enough security at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa?
5. Why do Ghanaians have freedom of speech, but other countries don’t?

—–

2 Agric
Winning topic: Girl-child education
Winning questions:
1. What can the government do to create more jobs?
2. Why do we put so much money into football?
3. Why are farmers poor?
4. Is HIPC a good fund, and should African countries join it?
5. Why can’t university graduates in Ghana find jobs?

—–

2 Business
Winning topic: Education
Winning questions:
1. How can we prevent corruption?
2. How can we prevent serious accidents in our countries?
3. Why don’t Europeans like Africans?
4. Why did HIV/AIDS spread so quickly?
5. How can we improve education?

—–

2 Arts 2
Winning Topic: Bush Burning
Winning questions:
1. How can we prevent deforestation?
2. Why is Africa the “poverty continent”?
3. How can we prevent bush burning?
4. What can we do to improve the standard of education world-wide?
5. How can we prevent HIV/AIDS from spreading?

—–

Now, it’s my turn. How would you answer these questions? What questions would you ask my students? What questions do you have for me? If you send me your answers, or things you want to ask my students, I will pass them on.

Cheers,
Grant

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