Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Rainy Season has officialy begun. It rains every day now, although it only seems to rain in the evenings. Every time it rains the lights go out, so i am becoming increasingly greatfull for the somewhat ridiculous looking but very practical head torch, given to me by the Eggar family! Thank you! I feel like i have had a very busy week this week although i am not sure exactly what i have done.
I started giving the children short tests every day in maths, english and spelling and then rewarding the highest scorer with pens and notebooks. it is incredible how much positive re-inforcement works with these children, i guess because they never get rewarded in school, only punished. Suddenly however, their marks are improving, they are staying in at break to study and they are asking me when the next test will be. i keep trying to explain to the teacher that this is something he should continue but he doesn't seem to understand that he doesn't need to buy prizes for every test just occasionaly. The children have beenm practising their marching all week for independence day on the 6th when they will march, along with other schools at the sports grounds in the next town. it seems to be a big deal, as the king of the villag as well as the local chiefs will be there. i am moving to mampong tomorrow, but i plan to come back thursday to watch them march.
The babies home in mampong appears to be much more what i expected to be doing here in ghana, there are children ranging in age from just a few months to about five years old. I am not sure exactly what i will be doing yet but i believe the roles of the volunteers includes, bathing the children, feeding them and playing with them as well as putting them back to bed. We will mainly be working with the babies in the morning, i believe and playing and colouring with the younger children in the afternoon! i will however, update next week as to what i am doing there and how it compares to my experiences so far.
On thursday i attended a funeral of the mother of the woman who cares for the children in besease. It was very different to funerals i have attended back home. First we entered the house of the dead womans husband, and shook hands with the family who were seated around the courtyard in a square. There were tons of them and everyone shaking their hands seemed just to be doing it out of courtesy, they were not even looking at whose hand they were shaking. We were then lead into a room where, the open casket was and we had to walk around the body. i hope you don't think i'm rude but i have never seen a dead body before and this lady had been dead for over a month. The family had clearly dressed her in her best as she was wearing a huge flowing baby blue dress and she looked very small lying there. After shaking hands with the family again we were lead back to an open space in the village which had been set up for the funeral. There were huge open sided tents set up along 3 sides with hundreds of chairs. There must have been atleast 2000 people at the funeral, all dressed in the traditional black dresses, an example of which i now own. Programs were handed out to each guest and after bringing the coffin and placing it in the middle of the square they began with the ceremony. we heard speaches from family members, work colleagues, family friends and pastors, all in Twi of course and so completely incomprehensible to us. A lot of the speaches included singing of gospel type tunes which was most enjoyable. The church choir also sang and after about 4 hours ( in the sun - hot and uncomfortable!) cadets from the womans church came, with their marching band and we watched them perform marching excercises for about half an hour ( something that only the most important millitary personnel would recieve in england!) before they carried the coffin to the graveyard. We decided not to go to th grave site as mary was sick and we were very hot . We were not however allowed to leave without eating, no matter how much we insisted and so we were ushered to another of the family houses and given little baggys containing boxes of jollof rice and chicken- it was actually very good. The whole funeral was very interesting, i would have liked to be able to understand the speaches however. At the begining of the funeral they announced a couple of peoples presence, such as the queen mother of the funeral and of course mary and I, bas if it was an honour to have white ladies attend your funeral, as if we didnt allready draw enough attention! There were 2 camera men who filmed the entire ceremony but kept focusing in on us which was most awkward, we seemed to be somewhat of a highlight of the event, im not sure we will make for a very interesting funeral video however, i'm not sure i would really want a funeral video anyways but, different culture, different customs. all in all it was quite an experiences and i have many pictures, which i will put up when i get home, as the internet is far too slow.
hope everyone is well, keep me posted... until next week
- comments