Ahhhhhbrony!!!

Hey folks!

Sorry for the lapse in blogging – internet is not as accessible as we originally thought, and PC has been keeping us busy! The last two weeks were very full, which is good, since we don’t have much time to sit around and feel homesick and miss all of you J

What has Sarah been up to? I arrived at our homestay family’s house two and a half weeks ago, and was very excited to have Jordan show up a week later! The place we are in is nicer than some other volunteer’s, and not as nice as some others, so we are probably middle – we share the room with a dead cockroach, termites (now hopefully dead too after we sprayed some raid) lizards (we can hear them running around above our heads), and a mouse (which Jordan just heard the other night in one of the wooden cupboards we don’t use). Fun roommates! Thankfully we don’t spend too much time in our room, and when we are sleeping we are enclosed in our mosquito net J We share our outside space with our homestay family: Host mom Benedicta, Maude (Benedicta’s cousin), and Nana, Godfrey and Francis (Benedicta’s younger brothers). They are a fun bunch to be around, all between the ages of 17 and 32, so we all get along pretty well, and they are determined to always have us VERY full after meals (one can only eat so much rice, banku and fu-fu at any one meal before you are “maame pa” (Twi for very full – we say this during and after every meal we have here J).

I started teacher training last Monday, and taught in a local Municipal Authority JHS (which is government run) the last two weeks – the equivalent of 7^th and 8^th grade math and science. It has given me a whole new appreciation for the hard job teachers have, and the career my dad has had teaching junior high math – it is tough to get students excited about decimal fractions! Especially when their knowledge level where they should be is a grade level behind, and you find out in the middle of a class that the students don’t have a good grasp of doing long division! This whole journey will be a learning experience in patience and expanding my view of how to convey information. We’ve also started language training, as we were assigned our site!

Drum roll please….Jordan and I were assigned to the Upper West Region of Ghana, to a small village called Torsor (we’ve also seen it spelled Torso or Tarso) which is approximately 60km south of the border of Burkina Faso – whoa! Neither of us wanted to be sent that far away, as it takes at least a day’s trip to get anywhere of significance (except to a hospital, don’t worry, there is one only a 40minute taxi ride away, as our nearest larger city is Tumu which should show up on a map of Ghana). We also found out that we don’t have electricity, which after being here, we kinda expected we would, so it was kind of a let-down to realize we wouldn’t have it, especially after realizing the importance of a fan to get any kind of good sleep here in this hot weather! But after considering the fact that there were very few other locations where we could have been placed (maybe one), and considering the fact that we at least have each other and are located closest to the Tamale sub-office and will get to see Kelsey more frequently when she moves to Tamale in December, we were excited about our placement. The Upper West also place a high value on education, so hopefully that means I have students that are excited about learning! We also heard there are many different NGOs that are located in Tumu, and are interested in working with different organizations in the next few years as well.

As long as I stay busy, I don’t think too much about home, but I can’t tell you all (everyone that’s reading this) how much this has already made me appreciate you and miss you and love you more than I could imagine. It’s hard to think of not seeing your faces for so long, so I will make do for now by looking at your picture daily in my photo album – or just send us an e-mail with pictures of all the fun things you are doing back home to make us feel connected J LOVE SARAH

Jordan here: Much of the important stuff has already been said by Sarah, so of course that makes my entry easier. But how about a little about my experience. Since Sarah is in the education sector and I am in the group of ‘everyone else’, cleverly nicknamed ‘omnibus’ which means all together or something like that. This includes the health and water sanitation group aka Wat/San, and natural resource management group previously known as the environment sector. Education and omnibus are seldom together in training, even though Sarah and I have the same home stay family. The rest of my NRM group lives in a town called Maase, and Sarah and I live in Kukurantumi. PC did this so the wives don’t have to travel everyday to get to training. While Sarah has been busy teaching and a couple hours of language training, I have been studying language for 6 hours/day and then traveling to a different town to a new subject each day. Our language up in the Tarsor is called Sisaali, which is apparently only spoken by 30000 people world wide; I guess make that 30003. Other than Sarah and I, one other person is learning this language. He is also in education and since we do language training at different times, I get my language teacher all to myself for 6 hours! The subject I have been learning in NRM training include ecological zones of Ghana, environmental clubs, tree taxonomy, soil types of Ghana, clay stoves, and agroforestry 101. In a week I will leave to travel the country training in several sites for up to 5 weeks! On one of the days I was off-site in training at the Bunso arboretum (awesome!! Pretty much the rainforest) the group voted to stop at a legendary rest stop and get pizza! Yes, real pizza! I was nervous telling Sarah since she couldn’t come and I knew she’d be jealous. Today we are visiting a nearby larger town called Kofuridua, checking out some shops and markets, and then heading to another town to hang with much of the of the other Volunteers in Anyinasin for a little 4^th of July celebration! We’ll play a little futbol (soccer) make some American food, and maybe have a Castle (our favorite Ghanaian beer). Then we’ll come back and I have much studying to do to prepare for language class on Monday.

Something I forgot to mention: ahbrony. This is a word well-known by Ghanaians. I swear it must be the first word the utter as a child. It roughly translates as ‘foreigner’. We’ve been made sure to know there is no negative connotation involved because whenever there is a sighting of a white person, most time, especially from kids, we hear ‘ahbrony!!!’. Some volunteers let it bug them, but as most of you know, I love attention and I feel like a rock star when everyone notices you and wants to get your attention J I literally hear it said to me 40-50 times per day. I will be walking across a field without a house for 200 yards and hear a faint, yet exhuberant, ‘ahhhhhbrony’, letting me know I’ve been spotted. We’ve been told by locals to go ahead and respond with ‘ohbibany’ which roughly translates to ‘black person’ and they think its hilarious. I usually respond with a wave and a smile and go about my day knowing that all eyes are on me and the 68 other white people in town.

Be sure to check out some of the photos. Most of our homestay activities and family. Please make comments and let us know you’re following us. Like Sarah said, we miss everyone at home and want to send our best wishes to everyone reading this. We are incredibly grateful to have each other here. Happy 4^th of July to everyone!