Halloween

Sitting down to type this new entry my mind is swirling in an endless number of thoughts, emotions, people, colours and experiences. Having said that, I believe the easiest place to start would be on the night of October 31st - Halloween.
I had thought it might be fun to employ a North American tradition of celebration at our house since the boys of Namaskar had never even heard, nor could prounouce the holiday, Halloween. With the enlisted help of Nathan we scoured the Monday Market of Ejura for watermelons, knives and candles that we would use to make our very own African jack-o-lanterns.
We hollowed out the watermelons and gave the boys examples of jack-o-latern designs from which sprung their own ideas of what an "African pumpkin" should look like in the spirit of "allolleen."
After the melons were carved we filled up some water balloons we had brought and played 4 rounds of "Balloon Toss," rewarding winners and participators with an exorbitant amount of candy Nathan and I had rounded up at a local shop.
We then moved to a riotous game of "Apple Bobbing" which had the boys in a frenzy, plunging their heads into water a number of feet deep, awkwardly pounding their foreheads at the bottom of the bucket admist great laughter and armless imbalance.
When we sat down at the end of the night to lose our thoughts in the chill of a good ghost story the boys were more than adequately buzzed on the sugar we had fed them throughout the night and the story stopped and started like a car attempting to manouevere it's way through 6 police officers with nothing to do, needlessly throwing up road signs and stopping the driver with pointless and time consuming questions, asking each one with a knowing, mischevious smile behind their eyes.
The night after Halloween, we were escorted to the yearly Yam Festival by the teachers of the Neo-Humanism Primary School of Ejura - the school at which I teach.
The Yam Festival is a celebration of the yam harvest for the year. It is attended by locals and in the middle of it all sits the chief of Ejura, adorned in gold on his throne and surrounded by the Queen Mothers and Key Masters of the out-lying villages.
I believe the actual harvest takes place in and around June-August. During the time between the harvest and the festival the chief and his followers abstain from eating yam until the celebration as a sacrifice for their ancestors. If the harvest is poor, many believe it is a bad omen for the coming year - an omen of death. The Ashanti people celebrate regardless of whether the harvest is poor or plentiful but the path of celebration changes a little - with regards to the prayers - with the quality of harvest.
On this day, as on Akwasidae, people pay homage to the chief and there is much singing, drumming and dancing.
But, seeing as election year is near, this day was to have another special event and visitor - the vice president was to grace all with his glorious presence.
He arrived amidst much hoopla and chaos - police officers beat onlookers back to an imaginary line they were to stand behind, the vice president arrived in the only SUV I have yet to see in Ghana, topped with blaring sirens and a contingent of gun toting National Security officers.
The vice president took his place on the decorated riser that awaited him and smiled at the adoring audience. He gave an eloquent speech in english that I know more than three quarters of the people did not understand and had his team strategically placed amongst the crowd, enthusiastically starting off the applause when the president would make a hollow promise that no one understood.
I apologize to be so cynical, but from all that I have heard, the government does nothing for the country and everything for themselves so this event struck me as a sickening display of souless fireworks and empty words.
Finally, I will impart to you some of the challenges I have come across in teaching here in Ghana.
I teach four remedial classes - two periods of english and two periods of math, as well as a music class and a movement class. The remedial classes I teach solely to the grade threes but the music and movement classes I teach to every grade - P1 (primary one) to P6, the music class being co-taught with Nathan.
There is no room in the building for me to teach remedial classes so everday I grab a bench from the common area and make my way to the end of the sand field, where we have movement, to teach under the shade of a large mango tree. Since there is no centralized plumbing or garbage system the path is often littered with human excrement and plastic bags, the smell of burning garbage not too far off as the door keeper, Papa, tends to it with his cane at the entrance of the school.
Papa, from what I can tell, is the school custodian but mostly resigns himself to standing at the door of the school, caning kids who try to leave, which proves often to be an unsuccessful endeavour in the skin and bones of his ailing body.
I begin my lessons amongst herds of goat and cattle and the two or three kids who would rather skip school and look over my shoulder for the duration of the period.
The kids here learn from the local teachers by way of call and response - memorization without understanding. While I'll admit, memorization works to a degree, the children I have been assigned have no understanding of many basic concepts that date back to P1 while the rest of the class trucks on at a pace that is so far beyond them.
Many times I am unsure if they misunderstand me because of a language barrier or if these concepts really do allude them.
But, there is always joy to be had in the small triumphs when one of my students will come to school and tell me what room temperature is in degrees celsius or when listening to a chaotic court yard full of children singing the lines of a song Nathan and I have taught them.
This particular half of the journey is fraught with many challenges, inward reflection and outward reflection on a culture and system so vastly different from ours.
So there you have it - finally, a small glimpse into the world of education in Ghana which I have promised for the last three blogs. I thank you for your patience and continued readership.
You are in my thoughts.
David