Grant Dobbe

Ah, Peace Corps. In the span of a week, I’ve gone from a schedule full of tests, grading, traveling, shopping, and cooking to a schedule where working on my bike is the highpoint of my day. My kitchen is clean, my furniture has been rearranged, my house is clean, my laundry is done, and I have finished 3 books.

For any of you who might be envious, I remind you that the only requirements for Peace Corps service are that you be 18 years old, a U.S. citizen, and not in the employ of any intelligence service. In 6-12 short months, you too could be hauling your own water, sweating for no good reason, and wielding your very own machete.

Which brings me to this week’s topic: gardens. Having never tended my own garden, much less put one in, I may be getting myself into more work than I bargained for, but when you think about it, there’s really no good reason for a person with my amount of free time *not* to put in a garden. It gives me an excuse to play in the dirt, and I (hopefully) get some fresh vegetables out of it. Plus, it’s pretty much the only way I can get things like lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, and green peppers without subjecting myself to 3 hours of round-trip travel over roads that make Michigan look like the pinnacle of modern civil engineering.

It’s been a slow process. I got the gardening bug at the beginning of the previous term, when my storm-damaged plantain tree started to die and I thought, “you know, that looks like a good place for a garden.” The tree continued dying, and I began plotting. As the end of the term approached, I found a couple of students to help me in the beginning stages, and began starting some seeds.

Today, I put on my straw hat, got out my machete, and got busy. All that remains is tree stumps, which should soften with the rains I’m hoping for tonight and come out easily tomorrow. Plantain trees are members of the palm family, which means that they have soft trunks and shallow roots. Tomorrow, the students and I start the hard work of tearing out the roots and turning over the soil.

Once the tree is no more, I plan to burn the remnants, turn some of the ashes in with the soil, and build a fence to keep the sheep out. From there, we plant and hope for the best.

My cat is now sleeping on my lap, which means that I have to get up and take a shower. Such a hard life she leads. Until next time…   

It’s been a long time since I last wrote. I can blame travel, work, and illness for a great deal of it, but there’s also the problem of trying to think of new things to send home every week. Nonetheless, I will endeavor to bring more fascinating facts from my dull and mundane life as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

This term has been consumed with lots of traveling, lots of illness, and lots of struggle. The travel portion has been well-documented in previous posts. The illness I’ve been dealing with last week and the week before was most likely giardia, a lovely intestinal parasite that loves to travel around with small children. It brings lots of sulfur-scented gas, bloating, and trips to the latrine. Before the midterm break, I had a small bout with the flu.

Struggle has been with things like bike maintenance, exercise, writing lesson plans, getting enough time to do the things I need to do and the things I want to do, getting funding for more computer parts, and so on. It seems as though things are getting easier as the end of the term approaches, but my internal skeptic says “yeah. right.” We’ll see. I’m definitely due for a vacation away from site and some luxurious self-indulgence.

Speaking of luxury…

One of the interesting things that happens to you when you move to a developing country is that your concept of luxury changes. For example, when I was living in the U.S. I would have never considered Heinz Ketchup to be a luxury item. The same is true for cheese, wine, olives, mayonnaise, green peppers, carrots, lettuce, apples, canned tuna, fruit juice of any kind, automatic washers and dryers, air conditioning, running water, riding in a private car, having your own house, using your own internet connection, or even owning your own computer. Even books are a bit of a luxury here; it’s common for Peace Corps Volunteers to leave a sub-office with a bag full of books simply because they can’t get them anywhere else. For the last 9 months, I’ve not driven anywhere on my own, nor have I used a washer, dryer, dishwasher, or vacuum cleaner; I would probably spend at least a good 10 minutes just staring, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, at any kind of appliance more complicated than a toaster, after which I would finally remark “WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?”

On the other hand, there are things that I would have considered a luxury in the U.S. that are very commonplace here. For example: having students cook, clean, do laundry, or work on your garden/farm is so commonplace that it’s almost weird not to do it. The same is true of tropical fruit: I regularly buy fresh pineapple, papaya, avocado, bananas, and oranges for less money than I’d spend on a cup of coffee in the U.S. Mangoes are so plentiful that people don’t even bother to pick them off the trees after a certain point in the season, and I can get freshly made organic peanut butter for about 50 cents a cup. A great deal of my wardrobe is tailor-made, and I can easily have any other clothes I buy altered to fit better for a small fee. I’ve had two custom patio chairs, a kitchen table, and two end-tables/nightstands made for my house, none of which cost more than $20.

I guess what I’m trying to say is two-fold. My first point is that the concept of luxury is relative, and that anything that provides comfort in relative scarcity will fit the bill. My second point is that it’s really surprising how much you can do without when you put your mind to it.

Alright, time to prepare myself for the dreaded end-of-term exams. This week and next are full of papers, watches, and red pens; after the 3rd, I hope to escape to Kumasi for a few days. Take it easy…

The rainy season has returned. It’s rained twice in 24 hours. It also means my cell phone/internet provider now has a legitimate excuse for their consistently random service outages. MTN = Most Terrible Network.

Not that I’m, you know, bitter about that or anything. If it weren’t for the fact that so many people already have my number and it would be a serious pain to get the new one to them, I’d switch to Tigo in a heartbeat. Alas, I am restricted by my own popularity (which, consequently, is a phrase that has never been uttered by me.)

Some interesting things have happened since my last transmission from the trenches. I got asked to go talk to some art teachers, started assembling a small army of students, went to the North, and came back to the south. Let’s do an anachronistically-ordered list for old time’s sake, shall we?

(And yes, I am being rather exuberant with my choice of vocabulary. What of it?)

ITEM THE FIRST: EDUCATION OF THE DIRTY ART HIPPIES BY THE DIRTY ICT HIPPIE

As is typical of Peace Corps Volunteers in Ghana, Art teachers are asked to wear many hats: many teach English or ICT in addition to/instead of Art. As a result, I was invited to come and present a session on teaching ICT and all of the fun ICT-related things you can do with Art at the Art Teacher’s Inservice Training. Handouts were dispersed, CDs full of open-source software were distributed, pizza was eaten*, and a good time was had by all.

It was a wonderful opportunity to see all the other dirty hippies that I didn’t get to see at my IST. It was also a good excuse for me to get away from site for a few days; I didn’t quite realize it at the time, but I was starting to get pretty burned out. Which brings me to…

ITEM THE SECOND: THE RECRUITMENT OF MINIONS

Being one of the only computer-literate people at the school makes me busier than a one-legged man at an… well, it makes me busy. It often requires me to be in at least 3 places at once. In order to reduce some of my burden and introduce some good ol’-fashioned experiential learning into my school, I have selected/appointed/volunteered some of my students to help me run the computer lab. Basically, the idea is that if I’m not around, they can open the lab, answer questions, record names for credit, and shut everything down at night.

So far, it appears to be working pretty well. I can sit in the lab, write lesson plans, and answer the occasional advanced question while they keep order. Not that there’s a lot of rowdiness involved with teenagers using computers (more sloth), but it’s still nice not to have to answer student questions and staff questions at the same time.

ITEM THE THIRD: THE DISTANT NORTH, AND ALL OF THE JEWELS THAT CAN BE FOUND THERE

Last weekend, I went north of the White Volta, which (if you listen to them, anyway) is where all of the *real* Peace Corps Volunteers are assigned. You see, the northern 3 regions of Ghana are incredibly impoverished places, as well as being really hot. So, not only do you suffer from the heat, you suffer from the lack of things you need, like chalk, computer equipment, electricity, etc. And since Peace Corps Volunteers love to compare how much they suffer, it’s pretty much a given that you’ll eventually be out-suffered by someone from the Upper East, Upper West, or Northern Regions**.

I had two reasons for visiting the North. The first was to drop off the ICT Software Repository and redo the ICT bulletin board at the Tamale Suboffice (that’s TSO for those of you playing the Peace Corps Acronym Game at home). The second was Caroline.

Now, those of you who are quick on the draw realize that this is now the third message in which I’ve mentioned her name. You’re also probably realizing the significance of last Saturday’s date. Allow me to save you some inquisitive email: yes, we’re dating. Yes, she’s awesome. Yes, she’s as nerdy, if not nerdier, than I am. I liiiike her.

We cooked, we worked on nerd stuff, we went out for hamburgers on Valentine’s Day (you know you’re in Peace Corps when anything resembling American fare can be considered a romantic meal), and we exchanged gifts. Again, a good time was had by all.

Alas, the weekend ended, I was forced to return to my site, and she hers. Nonetheless, I feel recharged and ready to educate the students in my care.

And now, here I sit, once again procrastinating in folding and putting away my laundry. I might just open up the DVD collection and watch a movie, natch. I hope you’re all staying warm out there. Until next time…

Cheers,
Grant

*The Peace Corps Office of the Inspector General is in Ghana doing a performance review of sorts, which means that there’s an OIG inspector traveling about and interviewing some of my colleagues. It just so happens that the OIG inspector was at the KSO at the same time I was, and invited everyone that was standing around out to pizza — her treat. Seeing as free food — nay, free AMERICAN food — was involved, I jumped on that opportunity like a flea on a dog.

For those of you who speak internet, all I can say is OMG OMNOMNOMNOMNOM  WIN KTHXBAI.

**Personally, I think we’re all closet masochists.