Ghana II: Teaching Woes and Wli Falls

Okay, back to Ghana!

On one of the first days I was teaching science, we were discussing  personal hygiene. I was teaching the kids about staying healthy and keeping themselves clean by brushing their teeth after meals and taking a shower everyday.

Teaching them these things is interesting, and it dawned on me that they don’t all have their own toothbrushes.

I taught them about the environment and not littering. This was also an interesting experience, because I realized that this is contradictory to what they have been shown to do for their entire lives. There are no trash cans anywhere because, like I said before, they have no organized public waste system. So to stand in front of a classroom and tell kids not to litter when it is generally their only option felt strange. What a trip.

Later that day, one of the children told me to follow them, and they took me to an area where they had a boiling pot of water over fire and were preparing to cook a “grasscutter“. I’m a little apprehensive when it comes to eating new (to me) meat, so what I was about to see was probably not entirely conducive to me consuming this meat later: The grasscutter looked like a big beaver, and they were using a machete to cut all of it’s hair/skin off, and then using their bare hands to pull its eyes out. I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to that sort of thing.

That afternoon we took a tro-tro to Hohoe. This was the first time that we attempted to get around without someone from the orphanage accompanying us.

This was also our first (but certainly not last) experience with the term “yovo” – Which we were told means “white man”. Whenever people (generally smaller children) see you, they get excited and yell “yovo!” It sounds like they are saying “yobo” though. I thought this was cute, and it never really annoyed me at all, because as soon as they realize that they have your attention, they get all excited and smile and wave at you. Sometimes older people would yell it though, and that felt a bit more derogatory, as from what I’ve seen it’s a term that is generally used by kiddos.

While we were in Hohoe, we found an internet cafe (which I’m honestly convinced used a shared dial-up connection, it was crazy slow) and bought phone cards. Margie got a message from someone in the DAVS organization that said they needed us to come back to Ho that Friday for a meeting.

That evening was spent the same way that most weekday nights were: Sitting around with the children outside, talking with them and playing cards. This is always enjoyable, but sometimes the kids can be a bit overwhelming. They love to touch you and feel your hair and skin, and I found that I needed to set some boundaries after awhile.

This particular night, one of the kids was sitting on my lap. At one point he said “look what I have” and held his hand out. He had something small and white in it. I asked him “what is that?” and he told me “my tooth”. When I looked at his face, I saw that there was lots of blood in his mouth. It caught me a bit off guard! I witnessed similar things a few other times, when children would be sitting with me and have open sores that they’ll pick at. I’m unsure how to react in those situations.

That night I had a particularly vivid dream about the drug “jenkem”. In the dream, the jenkem was in pill form, and somehow it ended up in my mouth and I was freaking out and woke up in a panic, and was so disturbed by this dream that I didn’t want to go back to sleep. I realize that this sounds silly (there was more to it than that but there’s no reason to get into all the details) but it really upset me in the moment. I never have dreams like that at home, and I feel like the malaria medicine had something to do with it.

After a week of teaching, I felt like I was getting better at it, but I wasn’t being given advice or receiving much feedback. Teaching felt a bit frustrating, because the classes were being taught by others before we arrived, so we were just relieving them of their duties for the month. But they had been teaching these classes for years before us, and it would’ve been nice to get some coaching or training before we started.

Occasionally this led me to wonder how much I was really helping anyone, especially if they’re not learning as much as they were before I took over the class. I tried not to let this bother me too much, and just focused on writing better lesson plans and coming up with activities that the kids would enjoy.

We left for Ho around 7:45 am that first Friday, November 16th. I mentioned earlier that someone from DAVS called Margie and told her that we needed to be there for a meeting. When we got there, we met Jerusha, a new volunteer. She wouldn’t be at the orphanage with us though. She was there to do HIV awareness programs at schools. We were told that she was leading an educational program later that day at an all-girls high school and that we’d be helping her out.

We arrived at Ola Secondary School and met with the headmistress. It’d been a long time since I sat down in a principal’s office, and certainly one of the first times that I had ever been there on my own accord. After some introductions, we headed over to the church (this was a Catholic school) where we’d be giving the presentation.

We sat down in chairs on the altar as the students all showed up. There were probably about children there!

Clayman, who was in charge of DAVS, gave a quick speech and then introduced us one by one to the students. After saying each of our names, they’d stand up and the girls would all clap. I think he introduced me second or third, but after I stood up, the girls went crazy. They were all yelling and cheering for what felt like an eternity! I was laughing because I didn’t know how else to respond. I suppose it’s just because I’m a white guy and they don’t see too many of us there. Either way, it was pretty amusing – I was the star of the show and I hadn’t said a word yet!

Jerusha spoke to the kids about HIV prevention, chastity and different forms of contraceptives, and debunked some common myths about the virus. They have some terrible misinformation over there, like “if you rape a virgin child it will cure you of HIV”. That was actually printed in some of the literature that she had. I have no idea how an idea like that gets into circulation.

After she talked to the kids for awhile, she and Cortney (along with the help of a volunteer from the audience) demonstrated how to put a condom on… Using a banana. The fact that this was all happening on the altar in a Catholic church was cracking me up, but it’s great that they’re learning this stuff.

We stood outside for a bit after the presentation, and the girls were coming up to us and asking for our email addresses and phone numbers. I actually have received emails and phone calls from them since I’ve returned to the US!

Later that day we went for dinner and drinks in Ho.

While we were sitting in the restaurant, Nana (one of the members of DAVS) told us that giving the “thumbs-up” (followed by putting your thumb down) meant “I will defecate inside your mouth”. I couldn’t believe this, as I had given the thumbs-up so many times since my arrival. It’s not something I do often here in the states, but when you come to a new country you find yourself resorting to body language/hand gestures when there’s a language barrier. Either way, this blew my mind, but other people would later verify that it did indeed mean what he told me it meant. So from that day on I made a conscious effort to avoid hand gestures for the remainder of my trip.

While we were in the restaurant, there were many people marching down the street. They were all clapping and singing and some had instruments. It was some sort of procession. Nana explained to us that this was part of a funeral. Funerals in Ghana can last up to a week (they’re usually at least 5 days long if I remember correctly) and what we were witnessing was the part of the process where they are “searching” for the deceased person. It’s basically a procession to the mortuary, where they will “find” the body, and its part of the acceptance process that the individual had passed on. He also told us that this was likely the 3rd or 4th day of the funeral.

The following day (Saturday, November 17th) was their “Thanksgiving”. It has nothing to do with the Thanksgiving traditions that are celebrated in America. It’s celebrated as a result of a long legal battle that the village father was involved in. He explained the story to us but I didn’t write it down so I don’t remember all of the details. Anyway, the case was dismissed on November 17th, so they celebrate that day every year. So we attended a lengthy (3 hours!) church service. Afterwards, everyone in the village got a soda. It was awesome to see how excited the kids got about this. Clearly it’s not something that they get very often… they were stoked.

Later that day, I decided to do some laundry. There are no washing machines there, you wash the clothes in buckets using your hands. As soon as the children noticed what I was doing, they took over! I tried to wash my clothes myself, but they wouldn’t let me. So we washed them together.

As we were finishing up, it started to rain, so I hung my clothes to dry on some string in my room.

Later that night, Cortney and I drank some cheap Ghanaian whiskey before bed.

The following day (Sunday, Nov 18th) Cortney, Margie, Jerusha, Jerusha’s friend Lizzy, Appiah, and I traveled to Wli Falls. We took a tro-tro into Hohoe and bought some food to take to the falls – Bananas, bread, crackers, and water. I also found someone selling fresh pineapple, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. All of the fruit I’d tried in Ghana tasted incredible.

We argued with taxi drivers until we arrived at a reasonable price. As soon as we got into the taxi my stomach started acting up. This was the first of many times that this would happen, but it got pretty bad, to the point where I didn’t even want to move around. Not fun.

The taxi broke down on the way to the falls, so we actually sat on the side of the road for 45 minutes or so while the driver repaired whatever was wrong with the engine.

After he got the car running again, he was driving like an absolute madman. Most drivers over there are pretty bold, and people don’t follow the speed limits at all.

We passed a tro-tro with a group of people standing outside of it. One guy had all of his belongings sitting on the ground next to him, and the taxi got so close to him that it ran over whatever he had sitting on the ground. I couldn’t believe our driver did this, and he didn’t so much as even tap on the breaks after he demolished all of this guy’s stuff. There is no way that he was oblivious to what happened, there was a really loud crunching noise as we passed the dude and the entire car shook. I found myself laughing at the absurdity of the situation, but I felt really bad for the guy. If that happened to me it’d ruin my day.

When we got to the falls, we paid 8 Ghana cedi to get in. It would have been cheaper if we just wanted to see the lower falls (as it only takes 15 minutes to hike to them, and there is no climbing required) but we had been told that the upper falls were much more spectacular, and that they were worth the hike. We were assigned a guide, and our journey began.

After about 15 minutes of walking on flat ground (and crossing bridges) we took a right turn (instead of going straight, which led to the lower falls) and started to climb uphill.

The hike was much steeper than we expected!

I had originally planned on wearing flip flops, and had I done that, there is absolutely no way I would have made it to the top. We took several breaks on the way up.

At certain points during the hike (as we got closer to the upper falls) you could see the waterfall through the trees, which made it more exciting and provided some motivation. I don’t think I’m in great shape or anything, but I run frequently enough that I’m confident in my general hiking abilities. But even for me, this hike was exhausting, so for those in the group that don’t do a lot of cardio, I can imagine it was pretty rigorous.

The mountain that the falls are located on is Agumatsa, and at the very top of the mountain, there is a village with around 400 people living in it. I was also told that when we were at Wli falls, we were technically in Togo, the country to the east of Ghana. We ended up traveling to Togo again later on in our trip.

When we finally arrived at the upper falls, it was more magnificent then I imagined it would be. “Powerful” is probably the best single term to describe it: It’s so enormous and loud, and the force of the water hitting the ground is overwhelming. When you get within 10-15 ft of the actual waterfall, it feels like you’re in a hurricane, it’s just an amazing feeling, and it really puts you in your place. After swimming, wading, and climbing some ridiculously slippery rocks for a while (in very cold water), we had some lunch there.

After we hung out for a little while, we decided to hike back down the mountain to check out the lower falls. The hike back down wasn’t as bad as the hike up, but it definitely wasn’t easy, either. It was harder for me to have good footing when going downhill, and at many points, if you lose your footing, you’d probably fall off off the side and die, so that was a little scary.

When we got to the bottom, we spent about 20 minutes at the lower falls. They were cool, but paled in comparison to the upper falls. The lower falls weren’t as big, and there were tons of annoying bugs that swarm around your head – These bugs weren’t annoying us when we were at the upper falls. On the walls of the lower falls are thousands of bats – More than I have ever seen in my entire life. It’s kind of gross to think that all of those bats crap into the water that you’re swimming in, though. One cool thing about the lower falls was the rainbow. Like I said, we stuck around for about 20 minutes before we left. Checked out a few of the gift shops at the visitors center, and then we headed back to the village.

Since we invited Appiah to come along, we had to follow the “tradition” (which he didn’t tell us about until after we had invited him) where we pay for everything for the guest. I found myself wondering whether this was real or just something he made up on the spot. Since there were 5 of us chipping in, it wasn’t a big deal, but was certainly amusing.

Once again, that’s all I have time for right now. I don’t know how many parts this Ghana experience will be separated into, but I’m using my “journal” from the trip as a reference guide for these blog posts, and it looks like I’m about 25% of the way through it.

I hope you’re all enjoying the holidays, and I’ll be posting again soon – I’m driving to Albany on the 29th to visit a friend, and from there heading to Montreal on the 30th (for New Years), so I don’t know if I will get around to making a New Year’s post or not, but I’ll try. From what I can remember, this site started in 1998, so its 10th birthday is approaching. GET EXCITED! No, you probably shouldn’t. Anyway, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next chapter.