Some Slight Schedule Schanges

One of the most exciting things about this Ghanaian adventure that I am living is that things are always developing, from my relationship with my host family to my understanding of culture to my enjoyment of traditional dishes (fufu, banku, kokonte, ampesi with palava sauce... yum!). Included among these dynamic components of my life is my exact schedule--when I will be living where and for how long. Over the weekend, after visiting a monkey sanctuary where I got to hand-feed a banana to a monkey, our program coordinator shared an update about our schedule for the rest of our time here.

[here are some of the monkeys I got to see on our trip last weekend... perhaps their names are Jessica, Chet, and Hudson?]


Currently I am still working in Accra, the capital, and will be until early January. On 6 January I, my four fellow Bridge Year students, and our two coordinators will travel to Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana, where we will stay for about 5 days' mini-orientation prior to the second phase of our Bridge Year volunteering. On 11 January we will move in with our new host families in a village an hour or two outside Kumasi, and on 12 January school will resume in the nearby middle schools where each of us will be assisting teachers and perhaps leading some lessons. School will close for the year on 15 April, soon after which our group will return to the city of Kumasi for about three weeks of working together at an orphanage. If everything falls into place as we hope, we will spend the last three weeks in May together in one of the northern regions completing a group project. Our final few days in Ghana will be spent back in Accra, bidding farewell before our 31 August departure for the US.

I know that you are keeping me and the rest in your prayers, and as I ponder how it will be to move to the village and then to Kumasi and the north, I am grateful to know that you are supporting me and thinking of me!

Adwuma, adwuma!

"Work, work!"
Adwuma yε. "It is good to work."/"Work is good."

This is a typical greeting and response among co-workers, and one that I can expect to hear from my supervisor, Mr. Amuzu, about once a day. Seeing as I haven't written much about work lately, allow me to share with you some updated attitudes toward my job at the Office for Students with Special Needs at the University of Ghana. The words themselves are a little outdated (each month, one of the five of us Bridge Year students writes an update on our experience on behalf of the group, so when it was Cole's turn to write about November he asked us to fill out a survey about work so that he could write about it, my complete answers to which I am sharing with you here; check here to read the finished update), but the thoughts are still pretty relevant. So without further ado, my answers [and a few updated thoughts]...


Q: What has been your most challenging experience at work so far?

A: Rather than a single experience, the most challenging aspect of my work has been the helplessness I often feel when I recognize a problem that is outside the realm of my ability to fix it. Whether the "problem" is a lack of adequate equipment [or space], a particular student's impairment, or an organizational issue [of the sort that happens in all offices], I often can do nothing to solve it. For example, one problem is that there is simply a huge volume of text to be scanned, edited, and Brailled, so some students don't receive their course materials until two weeks before exams; however, I can't solve this by working faster than I already do.


Q: Do you feel that you are "making an impact?" Why or why not?

A: In short, yes and no, but I can elaborate. Because the scope of my work is limited to scanning and editing, whether I make an impact of visually impaired students' learning through the materials I prepare for them depends mostly on whether the students do their readings--most do, but some don't. However, enough do that I know my work is good and worthwhile--for example, a level 600 students who is pursuing his law degree. I can delude myself into thinking that my impact is minimal when I think about not creating lasting change in the Office for Students with Special Needs (because the staff there are highly competent and capable of affecting their own change), but my real impact is evident though the students who learn and perform better because of my work. If I am not "making an impact," it is only because of my own misguided perception of my work.


Q: What has been your most rewarding experience at work?

A: My rewarding experiences are all pretty small: handing a blind student a Brailled copy of a text that I scanned and edited, learning from a deaf students how to respond, "I'm fine" when he signs, "How are you?", and sending a completed volume to my supervisor to be Brailled. It is also particularly rewarding to have my work affirmed. My supervisor once told me that although I should keep showing up at 8:00 am, my productivity would still be unusually high if i didn't come to work until 11:00 am.


Q: Now that we have reached the halfway point of working with these NGOs and University Organizations, are there things that you would like to change for the remaining time? Goals, attitudes, approaches, etc.? [This survey was distributed in early November, and I completed it on 11 November. It is hard to believe that I have only about a week or two left at work before Christmas and then our move to Kumasi!]

A: Being that I essentially work at a desk job in an office, I would like to be intentionally more relational. My coworkers and the students we serve are quite friendly and not shy to engage me in a conversation, but I can let myself become so focused on the amount of work that needs to be done (or the intriguing content of my work--political theory, the world media prism, 19th century West African history, communication theory, macrosociology...) that I don't often venture outside the "me ma mo akye" ["good morning to you all"] realm. When I have had extended conversations, they have been fascinating, so over the coming weeks I am going to strive to me more relational to catch some more Ghanaian culture, build friendships, and practice Twi! [Update: Especially as the volume of our work has been reduced as the end of the semester is imminent, I am glad to report that I think I have been very successful at pursuing my goal! I have learned a lot about perceptions of wealth, America, marriage, and more through conversations with my coworkers. One of the reasons that I was hesitant to talk more was that I was self-conscious about my still-inadequate ability to converse beyond the basics in Twi, but I now understand that there's nothing wrong with using English even as I practice Twi. After all, learning Twi is important, but so is learning culture, and expecting myself to have a sophisticated conversation in a language I have been studying only three months is an unrealistic expectation that would inhibit my understanding of Ghanaian culture.]


Q: How does your experience differ from what you expected? What did you expect coming here to work for a volunteer organization?

When I considered what working for a volunteer organization might be like, I think the best way to describe what I imagined I would be doing is "forging"--forging relationships, forging solutions, forging a new path of change. (Come to think of it, maybe forging isn't the best word because of its possible meaning of falsifying/forgery, but in the "blazing a trail" sense it's exactly what I intend.) Rather than innovating and pioneering, though, I am filling a set role. Some days I feel distinctly like a cog--functional and necessary, but replaceable. But I know I do good work [though sometimes I am liable to be discouraged by the apparent monotony of it], and I don't mean this despairingly; on the contrary, the fact that I am an interchangeable part reflects well on my office, for it means that it will not be crippled by a void in leadership or vision come early January when we move to Kumasi. Although my role is much different from my expectations, I am glad it means my office is organizationally sound.

[at work editing a text to be Brailled for a visually impaired student]


[my wonderful coworkers!]



So, dear friends, I leave you with a little insight into my work, at least as it has been for the last three months. With changes on the horizon come 6 January and our arrival in Kumasi, I can't predict what work will look like in another three months, though I do know I will be working as a teacher or teacher's assistant in a middle school. As I have learned, any expectations I have of work will probably not prove to be spot on--but I am looking forward to what the new stage of work and life in Ghana will bring!

Also, here's a link to a short video spot that is part of Princeton's alumni giving campaign and features the Bridge Year program if you are interested in viewing it.

Wo ne Nyame nkכ; me ne Nyame ntena.
You and God should go; I and God should stay.

Thanksgiving is not just for November!

Hello friends,
It's been a while. Are you healthy, and happy? How is life treating you? Has it been well? Let me tell you now, before you read any further: I am thankful for you!

I have just returned from vacation, and being away reminded me of just how incredibly thankful I am for so many things--your support among them! But let's begin back when it was still November, on Thanksgiving Day to be exact...

As you might imagine, I had quite the atypical Thanksgiving. It began early as usual, with a refreshing bucket bath to start off the morning. I had planned to meet Kathleen and Aria (my Ghana sisters and fellow Princeton Tigers class of '14) for a trip to Makola market, a sprawling region of Accra where you can buy just about anything that the average person in Ghana would need, that morning, and so I hustled to catch a tro-tro to meet them. At Makola we hoped to explore and do a bit of preliminary Christmas shopping before meeting up with our Ghana brothers, Cole and Nick, to see a movie at the mall and then venture out for our version of Thanksgiving dinner. Though assailed by unidentifiable scents and occasionally distracted by a stray chick underfoot, the three of us ventured through the cramped isles between stalls. Having dressed for the celebratory occasion in African garb, women in the market called out to us: "Akosua, wo ho yε fε paa!" / "[Generic name for any white lady, but specifically an Akan/Ashanti woman born on a Sunday], you look very beautiful!" Some stopped us and asked our names, others tried very forcefully to sell us shea butter, and others just laughed appreciatively when we told them, in Twi, that we were from America but had been in Ghana for three months. Makola was hectic, it has sweaty, it was friendly, and it was overwhelming.

We wandered about, greeted and haggled in Twi, avoided being hit by renegade taxis, and eventually emerged to purchase a massive mango with a pineapple to accompany it as a noontime snack. While it was obvious that we were still quite conspicuous and, in the eyes of many of the people we passed, a little of an oddity in a typical Ghanaian market, I was not greatly bothered by this. I realize that going to the market was exciting for me in a way that it probably never will be for the thousands of people who go there daily, who don't have the alternatives to this teeming human hub that I do, who can't just wait another six months to go back to the US or have something mailed from there to here if they can't find it at the market, who might not even have the option of going to a chain store like ShopRite at the Accra Mall when they want a little less chaos. And yet, though I and most of the Ghanaians at Makola don't share the same experience when we go there, the sights we see are the same, and so are the smells, the sounds. Like most things I do in Ghana, I will never do them quite the same as Ghanaians do or experience them in quite the same way, but the mere fact that I am experiencing them and grappling with them is significant and important, and I am thankful for the opportunity to do so.

After leaving the market, succulent mango and sweet pineapple in hand, we caught a tro-tro to the Accra mall, a location which embodied the difference between my Ghana life and that of many of the Ghanaians I met in the market. Of course, plenty of Ghanaians frequent the mall, and some shop for groceries almost exclusively at ShopRite--after all, the Accra mall is a fairly ritzy place, especially in comparison with Makola market, but it is not only for foreigners. However, the distinction between the market where average Ghanaian shops and the mall where we now found ourselves was striking. Humbled, I was thankful for the incredible and undeserved privileges I have been granted and reminded not to take them for granted.

Aria, Kathleen, and I met up with Cole and Nick at the mall, and after obtaining the movie schedule, selecting a movie, finding out it was not actually playing as per the schedule, settling for our second choice, and spending a few hours in the theater absorbing the film, the five of us gathered our belongings and headed first by tro-tro and then by a very cramped taxi to Osu for Thanksgiving Dinner.

[a tro-tro ride...]


We strolled down Oxford Street, the focus of activity in Osu, until we reached Haveli's Indian restaurant, which had been recommended to us by Kathleen's friend from work. Not quite sure what to expect as a couple of Americans entering an Indian restaurant in a part of Ghana known for being frequented by oborunis (foreigners), we nevertheless filed in. No one else was in the restaurant, which was warm and authentically furnished with the lights slightly dimmed, and as we were shown to our seats at a table appropriate for a banquet but slightly imposing for a group of five, our waiter obligingly switched on the air conditioning for us. After perusing the menu we ordered, chatted, and awaited what proved to be a delicious--if eclectic--Thanksgiving dinner. Each of us shared a few things we were thankful for, and though our gratitude was spread widely, all of us seemed to be thankful for, in addition to the unique things, similar things: our families and those supporting us during this year, and the incredible privilege that each of us has to be in Ghana.

[Nick, Kathleen, and I at Thanksgiving dinner...]


Following dinner we met Yaw and Clara, our incredible program directors, for ice cream before taking the long tro-tro ride back home. As soon as I arrived at my house to find everyone asleep, I called my family back in the U.S., and was fortunate to get to talk with my parents, my brothers, and almost my entire Dad's side of the family: the perfect end to a day of thanksgiving!

The next morning the five of us, along with Yaw and Clara, set out for a five-day vacation to the Volta Region, the easternmost part of Ghana, which borders Togo. I won't offer you a travelogue on a day-by-day basis, but I can assure you that it was everything a vacation should be: fun, exciting, relaxing, and wonderful! Being able to be instantly understood when speaking English at my typically rapid rate and with the usual idioms was a simple change from my daily life in Accra, but even that capability was a welcome freedom. We simply had a fantastic time. Let me share a couple of pictures with you:

[learning to weave kente...]


We learned how the Ewes, the primary group of people who live in the Volta Region, weave kente cloth by observing some very skilled weavers and then trying our suddenly clumsy hands at it. The cloth is woven into strips a few inches across and then created by sewing about twenty strips of cloth together to make a large piece of fabric. The Ashantis of central Ghana (who speak Twi and are the primary residents of Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region, where I will be moving in about a month) also weave kente, but Ewe kente differs in its patterns.

[dressed for the shrine: Kathleen, Cole, Nick, Clara, me, Aria, and Kwakukye, our gracious Ewe-speaking guide for the weekend...]


Though a shrine is not somewhere I would go on my own, visiting briefly was an interesting cultural experience. We met the chief priest and the chief priestess as well as a group of drummers and musicians who performed traditional music and dances before we were given the chance to ask a few questions. The particular shrine we visited claims to worship one supreme being through the vessel of a lesser deity called Tobia Awia (which may not be spelled correctly?) who communicates directly with the chief priest. We were not allowed to wear our usual clothes or shoes to the shrine as doing so is a taboo.

[dancing agbodje, a traditional Ewe dance...]


Some weeks ago we took a lesson in this traditional style of dance, characterized by vigorous shoulder movements slightly akin to flapping like a bird, and the lesson has come in handy on many occasions when we have been called upon to perform! The dance is a war dance, depicting a battle, but it is performed at almost any community events, from weddings to funerals to festivals and anything in between. Our skills are certainly improving!

[the beach...]


On the last day of our vacation we spent a little time at the beach, which was positively amazing. I think no further explanation is needed :)


And so, friends, I have much to be thankful for every day. As I begin my last month in Accra, I am overwhelmed to think that already my time in Ghana is 1/3 over, but when I look back at the last three months, I am stunned by gratitude. Surely, God is good!

Love to all, and my thanks as always for reading and caring!
Jessica