murals happening

My best student, Kwabene

             One mural wall finished.  This is the best it will ever look--it's all downhill from here.

Notes:

--I saw a young boy pooping in a field adjacent to a gas station, and then wiping his butt with multiple rocks.  He would pick up a new rock like one might pick up a new piece of toilet paper. 

--Evidently breastfeeding numerous children renders a woman’s breast looking like a half-used tube of toothpaste or perhaps a cake frosting dispenser. 

--I overhear the teachers at my school complaining a lot about how deaf students can’t learn.  If someone offered to give them three times their normal salary if they could teach our students to read….I think they’d be trying a little harder,  and I think they would be astounded by the results. 

--I was taking a bus back from Kumasi, and the bus was playing a movie called “Sheena,” which I’d never heard of before, but which was about a white baby that is abandoned by her family, and adopted and raised by Africans (ya know, the kind who wear loin cloths).  The baby girl grew up to be a beautiful, busty blonde who rides a ‘zebra’ (a horse painted with black stripes), and wears a few scraps of leather to cover her important parts.  The bus I was riding in was filled entirely with Ghanaian muslims headed north, and I represented the lone busty blonde on board.  I have to say this movie did not do me any favors, nor did it help to quell any stereotypes about promiscuous westerners.  Ah. 

--I recently saw the 2-year-old next door, Jessie, licking the inside of an empty bicycle tube box, and then wearing it on her head. 

--Imagine for a moment, that you have a continual orchestral performance happening outside of your house 24 hours a day—perhaps something dissonant from eastern europe---now substitute each of the instruments for two dozen goats...and you will begin to understand my life.

--Boils!!  Who knew?  Everyone gets them here, and so do I.  Bummer.  I guess they are caused by bacteria in my hair follicles.  I had one in my armpit, and then one on my finger.  They are awful and really painful.  

another mural I've done

weaving around a plate

We visited the village of one of Mark's students, and this is the chief.  

The chief and his grandchildren.

Mark's student, Abdulai, and his mother.

Abdulai's father

another village elder

and the grandchildren

We stayed overnight in this village.  There are 18 compounds in the village, and we visited every single one, and greeted everyone who wasn't at farm.  This is where people sit all day, everyday. 

The compound we stayed in.

Our house for the night.  No ventilation, and I was bitten on my finger by a mouse in the middle of the night.  My arm had been dangling over the side of the bed, and evidently the mouse could not resist. 

Lydia, a little charmer in the village

...they grow up so fast...

the village Catholic church

Catholic church

The (hearing) girls who live next to my house.  Their father is the deaf kente weaving teacher.

Jessie only frowns on camera.

Bashiru---I like to call him 'Trouble #1'--one of my students, probably my worst student in many ways. But he loves art class, even though I kick him out half the time.

Monica, the wife of the deaf kente weaving teacher.

weaving with yarn on a plate!  My students went crazy for this project, literally.  

working on a painting of the human cell...still need to label it.

more murals I've done