No more sleeping past 6 a.m.
Trip Start
Sep 04, 2010
1
7
25
Trip End
Jan 04, 2011
Legon, Ghana
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
When I said we lived in close quarters with our neighbors, I wasn’t kidding. Our home is literally 5 feet away from our neighbors. So every morning around 5:30 a.m., our 4 neighbor children wake up, play, cry, scream and get yelled at by their mother. People start their chores, sweeping, dishes, clang clang clang. People are singing and shouting. I guess it’s time I become a morning person? Just as well, Jesper and I are usually asleep at 9 p.m. anyways.
This school week has been good. These kids are pretty tough to teach though. They come from such an unstable home life that their way of dealing with emotions/problems/education is very, very hard to understand. Some will start bawling if they don’t understand, others will pick fights, distract others or just completely shut off. Okay, so maybe not too unlike American children.
There are three brothers, Reuben, Randolf and Gabriel who have started coming to Mawuvio’s and they are all deaf. The two youngest, Reuben and Randolf have had no prior education, and the oldest, Gabriel has only had a little. They have 5 other siblings (8 total) and the parents can only afford to send some of them to public schooling. Sad stuff. Anyways, with my extensive background of (high school) sign language (ha) myself and a fellow volunteer, David, have been chosen to tutor them. Wow. Two days only and it’s unbelievable how challenging it is. It’s great though because they are very well behaved and love learning. I don’t think they have very many opportunities to learn so they love coming to school and are always smiling.
Last night (Tuesday) we went to Legon (the University of Accra) to a place called Pizza Inn where they had 2 for 1 pizza. It was like Christmas. I haven’t had cheese since I’ve been here, mostly because it doesn’t exist here. Great night.
That’s probably it for this week.
Me, Jesper and about 8 other volunteers are headed to Kumasi this weekend to explore. In other news, a good friend from high school, Joeva Rock, just got accepted to work for an organization based out of Cape Coast (about 2 hours from where I am) for the next year. Can’t wait to reunite.
Tony
