My Dishtowels Are Killing Me
I recently bought "new" dishtowels. It's hard to know if anything I
buy here is really new. For example, I bought a cell phone several
weeks ago. But when I turned it on there were a few numbers stored in
the phone with Chinese characters. When I went back to the store to
point this out, the owner of the store insisted that the phone was
still new, it's just that someone in China had stored a few numbers on
it to test it at the cell phone factory. He then said something in Twi
to the woman who sold me the phone, and I'm pretty sure it meant
something like "you forgot to delete the phone numbers from the phone
before you sold it to this white man." So they gave me a new phone,
although it still displays the China Mobile logo when I turn it on.
But getting back to the dishtowels...In the Land of Secondhand, it's
important to wash things before using them. And when I washed my new
orange, pink, and red dishtowels by hand in a bucket (that's how it's
done here) I had orange, pink and red water. That's when it hit me -
my dishtowels, along with most everything else here, are slowly
killing me.
There are things here that kill quickly. An example is malaria. But in
order not to die from this disease that kills 3 million people each
year, I take anti-malaria medication daily. Supposedly this isn't
particularly good for my body, but at least I won't die from malaria
in the next two years. Peace Corps certainly does not want me to be
another statistic (note: many volunteers take a weekly medication, but
supposedly it makes people crazy, so i go with the daily anti-biotic).
And I sleep under an insecticide-treated bednet. That can't be healthy
in the long run. Also, I spray Raid everywhere. It certainly does
"kill bugs dead" but it's probably also going to give me some sort of
unhealthy growth at some point in the future.
I use a surprisingly large number of products that are mass-produced.
More than I anticipated when I signed up for Peace Corps (Unilever is
everywhere) These things are cheap. Way cheaper than in the US, and
they allow me to enjoy a better standard of living (depends on the
definition, i guess) here in Ghana. But safety standards in Ghana may
not be quite up to par. So what I'm getting at is I'm using a lot of
cheap products that may contain ingredients that are not quite
rigorously tested for human safety. And, in the long run, these
products will be the end of me.
(Note: I pretty much have the same theory about products in the US,
but somehow the cheapness of everything has to be explained by more
than international monetary policy, the low cost of labor and other
things that I know nothing about. Don't worry, crazy conspiracy guy is
doing just fine. He just wanted something amusing to write about on
his little travel website.)
I thought that the food here in Ghana would be more natural than most
food in the US. But, pesticides abound and MSG is in everything.
Mostly it's in flavor packets that people use in stew and other
things, but they also sell large bags of pure MSG. I just take it
straight (not true)...
Addendum #1: I'd like to upload more photos, specifically of my
village and of me with a beard. Unfortunately, this Internet is slow
slow (and I actually just had to retype some of this because of a
network error). Argh. But rest assured, I look fantastic with facial
hair.
Addendum #2: Happy Jew Year.
Back to School
Monday was the first day of school. By the end of the week, about two-thirds of the teachers had shown up. Another quarter are on strike (only a particular union is striking) and I guess the rest are just MIA. But there aren't many students. It's pretty standard in Ghana for students to slowly trickle in after the start date of school (some of the students are boarders, but I have not yet found anyone that can tell me how many).
The students that have arrived are quickly put to work. Most students are occupied with cleaning the school - sweeping classrooms, weeding the grounds, moving furniture, etc. Some are given individual assignments, such as washing the taxi owned by one of the teachers (maybe this is why most students arrive late?). Students here will do anything a teacher asks. Clean the computer lab. They're on it. Do my laundry. On it. Cook me dinner. On it.
The discipline is unlike anything I've ever seen. Students do as they're told, or rather as they're ordered. I have not yet actually asked a student to do anything for me, and I also wouldn't talk to another person the way teachers talk to students. But it's also the way many parents in Ghana talk to their children. Children are often treated somewhat like property, which probably is not subconsciously related to the economic logic of having too many kids in a developing country but I wanted to mention that anyway. Maybe this is just a cultural difference that I'm spinning negatively based on my own background. Maybe it's OK that in some cultures it's perfectly acceptable to treat children as less than what they are. Maybe Americans' behavior evolved from a similar place (I don't know. I'm not that old). There are, I'm sure, a lot of plausible explanations for the treatment of children and students here, but really, who likes social science anyway.
But, then there is the corporal punishment. At homestay, my mother and grandmother would occasionally hit one of the younger kids and the kids were often hitting each other. At school, we had an assembly this past week and one of the students had to kneel on the concrete floor in front of the whole school (well, everyone that was actually there) for the duration of the assembly because he was slightly improperly dressed. The assembly continued as if he wasn't kneeling in front of the whole school (but he was).
Caning, popular among the nation's goat herders, is still technically allowed by the national education ministry. By rule, a caning is only allowed in response to specific student misconduct and it must be administered by the headmaster and recorded in a log book. And only three hits (they don't want to be cruel)! But such technicalities are for bureaucrats pandering to NGOs and donor countries. Out here, the real world, the bush, the policy is just a bit more flexible. I've heard that students get caned for not paying their school fees, literally punishing the children for the sins of the father.
All of this puts me in a spot. I'm not going to cane any students and if I ever ask a student to do anything for me I'm going to say please and thank you. If I'm too soft and friendly, they'll eventually take advantage of it (I would). I could try and tap into the existing discipline to maintain order in my classroom, even though that mindset may come from a dirty place. In other words, I could be hard-ass without actually forcibly shoving their heads up my rear as the other teachers do. Hopefully, I'll find some middle ground.
Maybe class will start tomorrow, Monday the 18th. My class schedule is pretty light. I teach every student in the school (all 600), but each class has computers for just 40 minutes a week. The school has 12 classes (4 in each grade, or form as they're called here), so my schedule for the week is only 12 40-minute classes. And unfortunately, some classes are so large that I will need to split them into two. So those students will only have 40-minutes of class every two weeks. I'll also open the lab after school for interested students to have extra time in front of the computer. And teachers want to learn too, so I'll be busier than just 12 classes a week...
Addendum #1: Lack of recent updates entirely due to lack of Internet access. It seems that every time I go to the Internet cafe it's either light off or network down.
Addendum #2: Here's something delicious I make in Ghana that you can make too! Slice a banana length-wise and cover in sugar. Fry for a couple of minutes in oil. Just before it's finished pour melted chocolate on it. Yum!
Addendum #3: How are the Giants doing?
