So to catch you up on the past few days of whirl wind i'll tell you what's been going on.
Wednesday i got up early and taught 4 lessons of computer science theory in the local school. That's right, theory. I had a text book and i taught year 8 and year 10 computer sciences in theory. For year eight i taught them the methods of cutting and pasting text in word. For year 10 i taught them about the scroll bars and the tool bars in word. Seriously adorable having them take notes in their note books about these things.
After school i grabbed myself some beans n cassava, showered and hopped on a bus for 2 hours to nkawkaw. Why? Well you see, i ordered a ghana guide book on amazon for $3 second hand. But it didn't arrive before i left. So my mum posted it to me. The issue is that the mailbox that she sent it to is 3 hours away from where i live. Wtf ghana? Boys who gave me that post office box you didn't think you should mention this minor fact/inconvenience to me? Anyways so it arrived in a town call new abriem. In their defence, we couldn't have it sent to our house b/c there are no house addresses in ghana, if you want to receive mail you have to organise a P.O. Box. Luckily for me however the boy who had my book was willing to meet me halfway in nkawkaw. And to be honest, i don't really mind bus rides. So i on the way there i listened to one by ethan tucker on homosexuality which i didn't think was great and on the way back i listened to that lecture at mechon hadar about israeli democracy. i'd say a totally worthwhile bus ride. Even though i will never those 4 hour back. When i arrived in the bus station i went to the place we agreed to wait. I sat and waited. Because it was after 5 the bus station was closing. But i could get more tro tros from the side of the road near the station so i wasn't worried. Meanwhile every single ghanaian in the area came up to me to tell me that the station was closing but that i could get a bus from the side of the road. When i told them i was waiting for a friend they all sat down and said that they were going to wait with me until he came just to make sure that i was ok. Adorable. Anyways, i called him again after 45 min of waiting only to find out we'd had a misunderstanding and he was waiting by the side of the road not in the station. So i got up and said goodbye to all the concerned ghanaians. I met up with him, got the book and hopped on another tro tro back home.
Thursday i got up early and went to teach. They were practical classes in the computer labs. These kids have a totally kickass computer lab donated by the local queen mother. But their computer skills are terrible. It took us an hour to learn how to cut and past in word and even now i'm not sure that if any of them were placed in front of a computer again that they could replicate the actions. The reason is that they don't have enough teachers for the subject but also because they rarely get practical classes. This is because the queen mother donated the lab but not money for electricity to run it. So the school can't afford to use the lab.
The thing that was disturbing about the class was the student-teacher relationship. The teachers do nothing themselves. They get students to get their books for them, to clear the board for them, to get them lunch, to wash their dishes. But also they beat the kids. They hit them with a cane all the time. For any minor disruption or misbehaviour or for not being fast enough. They cane them on their hands and the backs of their knees. Meanwhile compared to my school the kids are so much better behaved. Indeed when i was teaching the kids by myself and i didn't have another teacher with a cane looking over 'maintaining discipline' they behaved even better. In my mind they responded to respect much better than to a cane. But i mean, i get it, i suppose. Africa is a little bit behind. The boys told me that there are new laws limiting the number of hits you can give and you might have to face a disciplinary committee if you can't defend why you gave the caning.
After school i came home and went with susan the australia and andy a ghanaian to the livestock markets to buy a goat. This was an out of control experience. We wanted a goat b/c we were celebrating australia day on Thursday b/c next week i won't be in kumasi. The livestock markets had heaps of sheep and goats and cows just roaming. So we went, we chose one, we bargained for a long time and then for about $40 we bought one and split the cost between us. Meanwhile a goat is enough to feed 40 people. So we took it home. We named him curious george (only the later discover that it was a girl). We then went out to buy vegetables. While we were out i bought some groundnut paste at the vegetable markets from a bucket. I was going to make groundnut soup for the non-meat eaters (ie: myself). By the time we'd gotten home the boys had killed the goat with the kitchen knife. Because the knife isn't very sharp it takes a lot of hacking at the neck before it dies. The boys then skinned it and gutted it.
It's interesting, the laws of schita make so much more sense in the 3rd world. Indeed a lot of halacha makes more sense n the 3rd world. Having laws that require you to kill your meat quickly might seem obvious to us in the west but in the developing world it's a lot of effort to find a knife that is that sharp and to maintain it that sharp. It means you can't use it for anything else. Furthermore the blood. The blood is full of nutrients so of course they don't drain it out. But meanwhile it's totally gross and at least to me it means that it's a lot easier to eat meat b/c you don't have to process it as much. Anyways so the boys took half the meat and made a stew with it and we fed 20 people with it. The other half they chopped up and took to a friends house to freeze (he has a freezer!) to use another day.
So basically, it was probably the most sustainable meat i've ever seen. But obviously i didn't eat it.
Instead, i made my soup. We ate merrily, streamed triple j and played australian music. Everybody had to have some Vegemite. It was a great night.
But it was all down hill from there. At 5am i woke up with terrible stomach pains and got up and went to the bathroom. For the next 4 hours i barely left the bathroom because of my projectile vomiting. After that i spent the rest of the day in bed feeling totally nauseous. I was supposed to go to sefwi wiaso that day to finally have a shabbat with Jews. Yet, there was no way that i could travel. By the afternoon i had a high fever of 39.2 degrees and i couldn't keep down any food or drink. I was pretty miserable. So i took some neurofen and slept for 22 hours and by shabbat morning i was feeling better. I took 2 dry biscuits and an energy drink to rehydrate me. I couldn't eat or drink anything else. I spent shabz reading and napping and recovering some more. i've decided that it was food poisoning from the groundnut paste that i bought from the bucket in the market. It looked pretty dodgy. So today i'm going to go to the village.
Woot.
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