Farmer's Day: December 2nd

                 I’ll start this post by saying that I am thankful that I was educated in Plymouth, Indiana. To all my teachers, coaches, aides and administrators, thank you for not only giving me the tools to learn whatever I want, but for giving me experiences that I will take with me wherever I go. 

            I really don’t mean to gush. Few days go by where I don’t turn to Jamie after something good happens and say, “oh, well, that’s how we did it in P-town.”   Yesterday we finally executed an idea that sprouted from Plymouth’s Saturday Enrichment program.

The Idea
         Jamie and I don't have backgrounds in teaching.  We have backgrounds in psychology/anthropology and economics/philosophy respectively. So were were a little dismayed that our students could tell us about Halloween, Thanksgiving and Columbus Day; yet they knew nothing about the origins of some of their own nation's holidays. Saturday Enrichment is not really a concept that has hit Ghana, or at least Kasoa, yet.  But when we asked if we could have a Saturday Enrichment program on Farmers' Day, our Headmistress, Sister Esther, was receptive of the idea. Jamie and I started researching (since we knew nothing about Farmer's Day ourselves).  We planned art projects and activities, eventually sending home letters with our students in Basic 3 and 4 explaining that we wanted to have an educational morning where together we'd all learn about Ghana's Farmers' Day through experiential projects.  We were hoping to get at least 20 students to come.

            Two mornings after we sent home the letters, the program was filled.    We were turning kids away in tears. (One student cried so much, Sister Esther let her attend, so we actually had 41 students).

Welcome to Farmers' Day!: Introduction

            Yesterday, with the excitement of a young child before Christmas morning, Jamie and I jumped out of bed out of bed at 6am. Good thing, too!  Our first student arrived for our 9 am program at 6:20 in the morning! He was sent home to eat breakfast and come back.  But when Jamie and I arrived at school a little before 8, students were already there.  Armed and ready to teach these kids everything we had learned about Farmer’s Day, we began with our lessons!

                  To warm up we had our students make “maize” name tags.  They got to use markers and crayons however they wanted to design their name tags - something our students don’t get to do often.  Jamie is my official organizer; she checked everyone in and took care of problems like the girl who showed up, but hadn’t signed up.  She also wrote names on the plastic cups and managed what could have been a chaotic morning.  We talked a little about what crops grow in Ghana before transitioning outside.

In The Beginning...
               Each student received a black piece of construction paper and some sidewalk chalk.  I read the Creation story from Genesis and everyone drew their own picture of what they heard.  We went back in the classroom and matted our pictures (with glue!) on a larger sheet of construction paper.  The emphasis for this project was that God creates the Earth and commands us to take care of it.

Farming and Trees: Keeping the Balance

            After a break, Jamie used her former environmental club experience to explain that we need balance. While farming is good, because we need food, it also leads to major deforestation and a lack of trees. She talked about Ghana and subsistence farming, and how subsistence farming accounts for the majority of deforestation in Africa. She talked about how we need to be cautious with how much of things we use, and to not waste things especially paper.  To illustrate her points she made the classic, “newspaper tree,” where one rolls up 5 or 6 sheets of newspaper, cuts some slits, and then pulls up the middle to make a giant tree.  Through the project our students learned a) less can really be more as it is hard to cut through layers of newspaper with safety scissors and b) while we need paper and pencils and things made from trees, we shouldn’t waste our resources.

Planting Seeds: Practicing Sustainable Agriculture

            Of course, what good would a Farmer’s Day enrichment program be without actually planting crops? Every student was able to plant their own pepper, tomato, or garden egg (eggplant) seed in a cup.  We talked about how to care for plants and a little bit about crop rotation. Mostly, however, we talked about ways we can not just celebrate farmers, but be better farmers and consumers ourselves.  After I told the story of  Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement (www.greenbeltmovement.org) , we came up with ways we could actively take care of our world: we can plant trees, we can throw our biscuit wrappers and water sachets away in the bin instead of on the side of the road, and we can chose to not eat our pencils in class. 

Education Is Key to Being the Change You Want To See In The World

            And so that was Farmer’s Day. If it seems a little bit like Earth Day, you are correct. Ghana’s government gives a lot of machinery and monetary gifts to the “top” farmers in the country.  But the focus of this year’s celebration is agricultural sustainability, and so Jamie  followed the plan we laid out.  Some of you may ask, “Isn’t it a little hypocritical for an American to teach kids in a developing nation to use less resources?” To this I will admit that there was some guilt present as I realized how much I waste on a daily basis simply because our life is easy.  But the consequences of the Western World’s development are impacting, and will continue to impact, Africa the hardest.   While I have a responsibility when I go home to make sure I am taking care of our planet, my students here also need to be prepared.  The way we live now is not sustainable and the change must begin somewhere.  I would love to go to school tomorrow and witness my students throwing away all of their wrappers.  I would love to see my students take care of their pencils instead of eating them, losing them, breaking them or throwing them at things.   But if I do not see any of those thing for the rest of the term, I have the confidence that a seed has been planted.  I’ll keep watering, but not unlike the rest of education, the light and the ultimate outcome are in Another’s hands. 

           

Our Week in Pictures:

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us in Ghana!

What?! Jollof Rice with Turkey? HECK YES!

Helene was wonderful enough to take some pictures of our classes. 

We are very proud of our Thomas the Tank Engine train.

Lizziey's idea, Jamie's execution

Read to Grow, Grow to Read

The library: always a work in progress.

Of writer's block and jumbled thoughts...

So I had planned on writing a blog post soon after Lizziey's last post... but that didn't happen... obviously. 

The problem: I honestly don't know what to write about. 

The approach: Writing about being unable to write. This comes teacher advice for writing reflections and journal entries. Whenever students complained about not knowing what to write about, teachers would usually say to write about the assignment itself. Of course, this usually turned into long rants complaining about the absurdity of the assignment, but Hey! It was technically a reflection/journal entry after all. Wow, I just had a flash-back memory of TAPATEA(O)s* for Spanish in middle school!

The solution: To start writing, even though I don't have a specific topic on mind...

The result:

 I still don't know what to write about! I have plenty of budding ideas, but most of them are too time consuming to actually carry out...

A long while back I wanted to write about the facial scars some of the kids have at school. I had known that these deep and noticeable markings had been made intentionally, and were not the result of some strange type of abuse. I carefully asked one of the B4 kids about it, and he managed a short mumbled explanation.

      "Other people have it too..."  "It's okay." I said after noticing his reluctance. "You don't need to tell me if you don't want to, I won't force you, I was just curious." Then I resumed my work of organizing books, so as to make clear that he needed not continue his story. "It is not good Madame"...  (I waited patiently for him to continue) "It means my mom had a baby that died." He explained a little more, but the gist of it was that when a baby died, he and and his sibling got the marks. 

Recently I remembered to do some research about it and found that the facial scars in Ghana held many meanings for different people. Some were basically "tribal marks", others were used for beauty, and others for medicinal/spiritual purposes. I found a better explanation about the one's pertaining to an infant's death. According to the information I found** the belief is that after the death of an infant, that same spirit goes into the next child born. They are considered children who "come and go", and the marks are meant to keep the child from dying (so as to keep him/her in the realm of the living)... 

I don't know how accurate this finding is for the case of the student here, but I presume it to be pretty close....

I still don't know what to write about...

Women often wear long colorful tailored dresses to special occasions (such as church). Street vendors often carry things on the top of their head. Babies are carried piggy-back style, using a large sheet for support. Drivers treat traffic signals as mere suggestions, even seat belts are optional for passengers (but not for drivers). Plastic bags and random trash lay by the waste-filled ditches by the side of the roads. Traffic is a nightmare (literally you can stay in the same exact spot for 20 min. before advancing!). Herds of goats and sheep lurk in every corner. Sunsets and star filled skies are breathtakingly beautiful. Music and signing can be heard at all hours of the day (and night). Ants and lizards are everywhere, it is impossible to avoid them. The pineapple is very sweet!...

That's the end of my fragmented and rambled thoughts.

~Jamie

*TAPATEA(O) were basically complex and thorough book reports for spanish, each letter stands for a different section of the report: T(title), A(author), P(characters), A(argument), T(theme), E(style), A(environment and atmosphere), and O (personal opinion). 

** An Ancient Practice-Scarification and Tribal Marking in Ghana by Alyssa Irving. 

Thursdays

Thursdays are Jamie's favorite day of the week.

I am not Jamie, and Thursdays are not my favorite. Usually the only things I love about Thursdays are the fact that the house serves Jollof rice with PLENTY PEHPEH and that Friday is the next day.

Today we had fried rice, but I guess that is okay because today was the best Thursday I have had yet.

Yesterday I sat in the library feeling like a total failure. I leaned up against the wall and did what any teacher would do when they felt totally unprepared, inadequate, and unmotivated. I pouted.

Then I wrote a poem.

I've since lost said poem or I would write it here. Like most of my poems, it turned into a prayer. God and I have had several chats in the library. We chatted during my first weeks of teaching when I asked "Why am I here?" and He told me I was here to learn how to live. And then we chatted again when I walked in and there was water everywhere from the previous night's storm and I yelled at him for destroying books, but then He hold me that I was really upset that the water had altered my plans for the day.   But yesterday when I asked him again why I felt totally inadequate and why in the world would He put me here when I cannot possibly do a good enough job He replied, "Because you need to learn to need me. You kind of depend on yourself a lot, and you just aren't that cool."

Okay.

Instead of grading the ever increasing mountain of paragraphs, poems and paintings my students have created for me, I sat with our plan book and completely rewrote my lesson plans. I was determined and set and ready to go for my crazy Thursday of teaching ICT.  But then the power went off today and that plan, of course, was thrown out the window so instead we wrote a poem about fish.

The moral of this story? When in doubt, write a poem.


It's Thursday and Jamie is asking me about yarrow which reminded me of my first pet rabbits: Yarrow and Dandelion.  It made me nostalgic for the days when I would pluck their wool so my neighbor friend could spin it.  Jamie is sitting on her cute twin bed, identical to mine but still has its sheet on it, shopping for fun stuff and singing the camp version of the song, "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

The students march to the actual song on their way to class somedays. But I don't know the actual words, so I just sing this instead:

"Oh I wear my pink pajamas in the summer when its hot
And I wear my flannel nighty in the winter when its not
And sometimes in the springtime and sometimes in the fall
I jump between the sheets with nothin' on at all.

Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory what's it to ya?!
Balmy Breezes blowin' through ya,
with nothing on at all! "



I like this poem the best.

Contentment

Today I contemplated....

      getting a PhD in theology

                                          teaching piano lessons out of my home
 

               buying a goat instead of a puppy when I return to the states

 
     painting my nails 3 different colors

                                          that I may be a heathen for living      where I am, but  not attending church



But instead I decided that I am going to start observing the sabbath. 


            

Long Overdue and Waiting!

Well we are getting close to the 3 week mark and still no blog! AAAAHH!!!! :O

We just finished our mid-term break and today classes began once more. Technically we have been on break since last Friday. We didn’t have classes on Wednesday because of some major flooding; on Thursday only two thirds of the students for every class could make it to school. So I guess I have had some time to write, but somehow I haven’t gotten around to it… Also, even though there wasn’t school we still had A LOT of work to do. Namely grading, which in it of itself isn’t very bad, but still quite time consuming (as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts). So thank you for being so patient with us!

Th break has been really good! Somehow Lizziey and I managed to make it to Accra on Sunday morning. We stayed at her cousin’s house, which was fully equipped with internet, air conditioning and a 11 to 12 ft. deep swimming pool. Let me just say that the pool is a VERY big deal for me. I love to swim, and I especially love the feeling of being underwater! This pool is perfect for both. It is long enough for me to just barely make it from one side to the other in just one breath, and it is deep enough to require depressurizing your ears. Yeap, I was in pool heaven! I swam until my fingers got all prunny and wrinkled, and then I lounged by the pool to dry off. While I was drying, and let’s face it partially tanning, I listened to some Latin pop favorites. That’s when IT happened… for the briefest moment, I felt like I was back home (in Puerto Rico)! Even with my eyes opened, everything around me was familiar looking. Then a salsa song started to play, and I was overcome with the urge to dance. I dance a few steps and pretty soon I’ve managed to get Lizziey to join in. We danced until the end of the song and then made our way back inside the apartment.By this time it was around 1:30 (9:30 a.m. back home) and I managed to video Skype with my mom. I was also able to watch the live stream of church service, which was super nice. I really miss my church family and can’t wait to be back home with them!

On Monday we took an array of taxis and tro-tro’s to get back to Kasoa. A tro-tro, by the way, works something like a bus. In reality, it’s a van that crams in 20-25 people, not unlike the public “guaguas” in Puerto Rico. You pay considerably less than a taxi (1 GH cedis vs 20 GH cedis), and can hop on or off at different unmarked places. I think we will try to find out if there is a tro-tro that goes from “Circle” (it’s a huge round-about in Accra, with shops and other stuff near it) to the Accra Mall, since its 6 cedis for a taxi to the mall and another 6 cedis to Lizziey’s cousin’s house. Yes, there is a mall… sort of. It reminds me of the Montehiedras Mall back home, although it is much smaller. Everything is super expensive… at least for us it is. I guess in actuality it is not much different from back home, but we don’t have a lot of money to spend on frivolous whims. Most of our money is spent on transportation and phone credits. Were trying to see if we could take a tro-tro from circle to the Accra mall, which would save us lots of money. We figure that the Accra mall is probably central enough to have a tro-tro stop. Then again, we could be completely wrong about that assumption…

Anyways, we made it back to Kasoa in good time, managing to avoid the 4-hour long evening traffic. We were happy to be back home. J On Tuesday the candidates and sisters went to a nearby beach. Lizziey and I decided it would be better for us to stay home and rest. I feel a little bad because I’m not very big on the whole going out thing, I like to just stay home. Should I be making a more conscious effort to go out and explore?... However, we used the time to be productive. We hand-washed our laundry, graded mid-term exams, cleaned our room, and worked on lesson plans, all things that we needed to get done before Wednesday.

Classes were back in session on Wednesday, and we pretty much had a regular rest of the week. The kids were a little harder to work with than usual because they had just been on break. Each day brought it’s own challenges and rewards. Often, the same kids that exasperate me inside the classroom are the ones who make me smile the most outside it. Every morning I am greeted by an array of “Madam Jamie!” shouts, waves and hugs. As soon as I walk into a classroom, whether I am teaching or not, kids get up and greet me with “Good morning/afternoon Madame Jamie!”. There is also the period right after snack, when I am usually in the B3 classroom waiting for them to arrive. The B1 and B2 kids pass by, on their way to their own classrooms, and as soon as they spot me they excitedly wave and call me “Madam Jamie, Madam Jamie, good morning!”. I look up from my notes to smile and wave, then I urge them to keep walking to their classrooms. I love my crazy kids. They are squirmy, loud, impatient and full of boundless energy. It would be so much easier and fun to just play with them all day, to skip the learning and the discipline. I love them too much to do that though, because I know that they need to learn what I am trying to teach them. So I use everything I have in trying to get them to learn, even when I know they won’t like it, even when I think they might like me less for it.

Maybe that is how God feels about us. He takes us through the hard path, so that we may learn, because He loves us so much. He is asking us to be still, pay attention and wait for His help. When I go around the classroom helping kids on things, they all want me to help them at the same time. I am just one, so I often say they need to be patient, that I am coming around to help everyone but I need them to be still. Granted, God does not need us to wait because He is too busy somewhere else, but He does want us to learn to listen so we can follow instructions and pay attention to Him. He wants us to learn to be patient, to trust that He will come around to explain at the right time. Sometimes we go through rough situations because of our own foolishness; we did not follow instructions or pay attention. Other times it is because it is the only way that He can teach us what we need to learn. The only way He can shape us into who He has planned for us to become.

I know I am here for a reason. I have always known He sent me here with a purpose. I do not know the full purpose, but I can trust that He will reveal it to me in due time. In the meantime I will continue to learn and to teach. Just knowing that I am here for that (leaning and teaching) is more than enough for me. I have already learned so much more than I could’ve imagined, and I know that there is still a lot more to come.

God bless,

~Jamie

A Rocky Road: Lizziey's Long Trip Down Memory Lane

         Most are aware that the tree is my life symbol, serving as a constant reminder that I am to stay "rooted and established" in God's love because of the love He has for me.  I milked my tree symbolism for all that it was worth one summer when I found myself serving as a camp counselor.  

      After two years working in high adventure I found myself uprooted from my comfortable job and placed as a one-on-one counselor for a high school student named B.

      

       You couldn't tell B was in need of a special need counselor when I walked into the scene. She was sitting in the middle of the dining room floor playing cards with fellow campers. Within the first 5 minutes she got up, gave me a hug, and everyone began clearing the tables and cleaning up after dinner. We spent our days serving the other campers; working in the dining hall, picking up trash, cleaning bathrooms.  We sang Taylor Swift songs while the other campers played their guitars.  But in between those times, B suffered greatly. The girl struggled with hearing voices: voices telling her that she didn't deserve to live, voices telling her to hurt herself.
           So I did my best to distract B that summer. We found a Bible verse from Galatians 5:13: " You, my brothers, were called to be free. But, do not use your freedom to indulge in the sinful nature, rather serve one another in love."  We used that verse to find ways to serve others whenever she felt the urge to harm herself. We wrote notes to the staff, we picked up trash, we did whatever we could.

    One particular rough day, B and I took a walk down to a nearby creek with a couple other campers. The creek was icy cold, but we splashed and played in anyway.  This creek was especially beautiful, because it was surrounded by geodes.  I asked all of the girls to pick up a geode. Later that night, we debriefed our creek experience.  

The geode, at first look, is strange looking. 

                             It is wrinkled, orange, ugly. 

                                       Not smooth like the other river rocks.

Yet, when we crack the geodes, their insides are exposed. 

                              And what is there? 

                           Crystals, beautiful, sparkling, gorgeous.

    And together we broke open our ugly rocks. We sat there and realized that when we allow God to use us, it hurts.  We are shattered. When we allow God to break us, it hurts. We are shattered. But only when we allow God to use us as he wants can we see the beauty that is within.

When B left camp, she handed me a large geode she had found. 

B and I bonded even after camp.  We talked on the phone at least once a week.  One chilly November day, I sat in my car outside of Starbucks drinking a warm latte. The rain pounded on my roof as I stared out at US 933 and made plans to meet up with B in Chicago as she walked to her grandparents' house.  We said goodbye when she told me she had arrived safely. 

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There is something about taking the South Shore into Chicago that invigorates my soul. It always leaves me in a contemplative mode. Somewhere around Roosevelt, I picked up my cell phone to call B.

She didn’t answer.

            I went to my friend’s dorm early, anticipating B’s return call.

It never came.

Nor did she answer when I called the next day.

I didn't hear from her for a month. I would call off and on but never a response.

Finally, during the first chill blast of December one of my other campers sent me an email saying how sorry she was. "Sorry for what?"

My camper told me to go check B's Facebook.

I read pages of tributes to her life. But B’s own presence was distinctly absent. I finally found a post that said: "B took her own life on November 17th at her grandparents house."

I picked up B's geode: the first time I'd held it since move-in day.

It cracked into two distinct halves without my prompting.

Like a fault line erupts from the unseen depths of the earth, so stood my geode. Fault lines produce such simple, clean breaks, but manage to wreck havoc on our man-made and God-given world in such a way that it alters the way we view our lives from this day forward.

Closely, I examine my geode. I feel the two heavy pieces in my hands as the crumbs tumble to my dorm room floor. My roommates watch (listen) in bafflement. I barely take notice.

For the new crack has revealed the crystals produced from within, from the very depths of the being that created the fault line to begin with. My geode knew that it was time to shine.

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So you see, if a tree is my constant reminder to be rooted and established in God's love, then a geode is my reminder that God uses us even when it hurts. God thinks we are worthy and beautiful, even when we view ourselves as ugly.  The geode is my reminder that "God's grace is sufficient for me."  
It really shouldn't surprise me then, that the paths in Ghana are covered in geodes. I step on so many geodes every day that my footprints make a "crunch" "crunch" noise as I walk to and from.  
Serving in Ghana is rough.  Actually, it's just different. I struggle with things I did not expect, and things I expected to be difficult are strangely easy. 
My greatest difficulty is with myself. I never feel worthy, feel capable, feel like I am doing the best I can.  But then a geode gets caught in my Chaco, and I realize that God has placed me in a land with the constant reminder, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power made perfect in weakness." 
So I'm still here, letting the roughness of my exterior show, and slowly trusting God to break me so that the love and grace he has poured into me can shine through.

And all that being said, November 17th is quickly approaching. And so, I dedicate this blog post to my friend, B, who I knew for such a short time, but whose life continues to impact me on a daily basis.  My prayer is that I may trust God to use me despite my flaws, just as you always trusted Him.