Week 6/ Photos!

Awkwaaba!
So I've finally figured out how to do photos!  I'm officially 1/3 of the way through my 4 month stay here in Ghana as of Wednesday.  So I think that this post is going to be mainly explanations of photos!  Also, feel free to email me if you have any questions about Ghanaian life...  I'm starting to run out of things to talk about, since I'm getting used to things and (almost) forget what's novel!  :)

This is a view from the back of our house.  We live in Effia-Kuma, which is a neighborhood outside of Takoradi.  You can see next to the laundry line where the water pump is for most people.  We have running water in our house, but many people don't. The water from this pump is clean and drinkable.  In the mornings there are lots of people filling up buckets to bring home.  Those are banana and plantain trees.  We could reach off the back porch and pick bananas if we wanted to!  

This is the view from the front of the house.  The section of the street right next to us is where the little kids often gather to play.  To the left of this picture is a bigger area where the "big kids" and young men come to play football.  Almost everyone here has goats, sheep, cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, etc.  They all run around during the day, and at night they come home to their coops.  You wouldn't think a goat would be smart enough to run around town all day and then return home, but apparently they do.  Many of the animal have strings on their ankles to show what family they belong to.

This is the view from the school.  We are on the third floor of our building which is in the middle of Takoradi.    The streets are even crazier then they appear!  There are little to no traffic laws, as far as I can tell.  Except, if you honk first, you have the right of way!  Also, the streets are lined with shops and stalls selling everything you could possibly imagine.  Quite interesting!

This is the house directly across from us.  No one has washers and dryers, so everyone washes in buckets then hangs the clothes out to dry.  It's a lot harder than you'd think, especially since everything is SO DUSTY!  You scrub something, then it's dusty again just from hanging outside... alas. 

Kids playing outside the house.  I was trying to be sneaky photographing them, but this guy busted me!   

These girls live across the street.  The little one is my friend.  Every morning we'd wave and jump and do a variety of mirroring actions.  But, when ever I was near her, she'd burst into tears and run away.  Scary obruni!  Unfortunately, she was hit by a car and killed last week at the junction.  Terribly sad.

This is the bridge that we cross every day going to and from school.  It's sketchier then it looks!  All the sewage lines from the area drain into this creek thing... it's pretty disgusting.  Plus just to the right of the bridge is the local trash deposit.  The dumpster probably hasn't been emptied in years, so it just overflows, covering about half an acre in solid trash, which of course blows into this creek.  The solution?  Light a series of small fires in the trash to burn up what you can.  The smell? Exactly what you can imagine...

Wednesday March 6 was Ghana's Independence Day!  Pretty cool.  We came a little late to Jubilee Park where they had the parade.  Got there just in time for the eternal speech, though!  The schools are selected to choose a group of students to march, and there were soldiers from the army, air force, navy and police forces, too.  

Market lady carrying things on her head.  You wouldn't believe how skilled they are with this!  It's unbelievable how  much they can carry and still walk around!  This is how a lot of people make their living, selling oranges, pastries, etc from their head.  Hard work in the heat, that's for sure!

These guys were far more interested in the obrunis (and having their picture taken) than playing football!  They followed us home for a bit, until we got boring too!

These are some kids from a near by school.  We've been doing instrument demonstrations at schools in order to try and start after school music programs.  This school has open air classrooms, which shoddy roofs over them.  I can't imagine what they do in the rainy season!  It's amazing the things teachers can do with 40 kids in a class, little to no materials, and children who don't really speak English that well!

This is at Agyiba International School, one of the fancier private schools in town.  We go twice a week for an hour and teach lessons to kids.  It's pure chaos, really.  There are 12 kids, each learning a different instrument in the same room.  We're trying to figure out a better way of doing it, but that's where we're at now.  

This is us (me, John, and Katie) learning to some African dances!  A man named Edwin has a group of street kids and orphans and such and gathers them every weekday in this abandoned colonial outdoor cinema.  He teaches them traditional drumming and dance, and he's brilliant.  He's slightly out of his gourd, but it so much the "crazy artist" type... he reminds me a lot of Beethoven!  The kids are so talented.  The thing with African dance is there is no "vocabulary" like we know.  You learn a series of steps for each dance, and the lead drummer plays a call, and you change steps.  Each step has a different call, and each dance has different calls/steps.  It's a lot to learn, but these kids know tons of them!  It's amazing!

I've now figured out how to post pictures, so from now on I'll be posting like this!  This is way more fun to SEE Ghana then it is to hear about it!  More to come eventually!

Mi do paa!

(fante for I love you very much!)

Briana