Peripatetic Journal: March 2012

Two new videos posted to the right!

Observations:

2 men + 2 screen doors on 1 motorcycle

1 man + 4 toddlers on 1 motorcycle

2 men + 4 sheep on 1 motorcycle

1 man + 1 cow on 1 motorcycle

-Ghanaians think that my freckles are mosquito bites and my acne is a rash. I was asked twice last week about the rash on my face. Thanks, folks. It’s really not that bad, either. I blame the heat---the heat!

-I hung up some photos of dinosaurs, and my students had no idea what they were. “Do we eat them? Do you eat them in America?” they asked. “They would eat YOU!” I said. I told them that dinosaurs lived a long time ago, before people, but I’m not sure that it meant much to them. They have a hard time conceptualizing a world outside of Ghana, let alone a world 250 million years ago.

-I went to an event hosted by the Ghana Education Service. They invited my students, plus several high schools in the area, and they brought a motivational speaker who told the students that they could rise above their circumstances, and do great things. Afterward, I spoke to some GES representatives, and I told them that they need to make sure there are sign language interpreters at the college level because when I tell my students that they can do anything with their lives (doctors, teachers, etc.), I want it to be true.

-While at the GES event, I met one of my students as I was coming out of the bathroom. She walked directly into a stall with a toilet, then walked out, and asked me (in sign) where the bathroom was. I’m not sure if she’d ever seen a toilet, and if she had, she didn’t realize you can pee in it, in addition to doing more serious business.

-We started painting the murals at my school...and it is a mess! Oh, I hate oil paint! But there are few choices here: it's either shitty emulsion paint that stains if you press your finger against it, or serious, shiny oil paint. It's really thin, so it drips everywhere, and all the kids are standing around, sticking their fingers into the drips. And then we have to clean everything afterward with thinner...and then clean the kids.

-I rode my bike out to another volunteer's site in Yapalsi. The volunteer, Diana, told me that there is a deaf girl living in her community who doesn't go to school. Yapalsi is only 10 km away from my school, and the School for the Deaf is free, so I couldn't understand why her parents weren't sending her to school. So I spoke to her parents, and told them that their daughter could learn to read and write and use sign language, and that it was important that she go to school. And they seemed receptive, so I hope it will happen. They need to register her by September for the next school year.