Adenkrebi and Football

Sept. 6

Adenkrebi School

It’s Thursday, which means that we go to our internships/volunteering locations. It was my first day actually going to the school in Adenkrebi. To get there, we had to take a short tro-tro to Madina Station. Madina Station is a massive sea of tro-tros. You could get a ride to wherever you wanted there. It’s also a chaotic, yet functioning mess of people. They’re everywhere—trying to sell things, buy things, find tro-tro, wanting to help you find the tro-tro you need, etc. After a minute of being overwhelmed by and in awe of the craziness, a nice man helped us find a tro-tro that went to our next stop, Aburi. It’s about an hour and half ride to Aburi and from there we got a taxi to drive us up the bumpy mountain road to the school.

Upon our arrival, we were greeted by screams of excitement from the lower elementary kids. We went down to the main office and met Fortunate, one of the teachers. He gave us a brief tour. The school is quite small. The largest class has ten students on a good day. After our tour, we were taken back to the main office to meet some of the other teachers. The entire staff at Adenkrebi School is male. Apparently women don’t like traveling on the crazy roads to get there. We were then separated into different classrooms

I went to the Phase 1 room, which is basically sixth grade. The teacher asked me to pray for the class and then each student practiced their English by telling me there name, age, favorite game, and favorite food. The local language in the village is Ga, so a lot of the kids haven’t learned English. After that, I introduced myself and then the teacher told me that I was in charge and he left the room. Welp. I’m not a teacher, so I was a little scared. I decided that since I am not qualified to teach anything, that we would play games. A lot of the girls had the same favorite game, so I asked them to teach me. It’s called Ompe. There is a lot of jumping and clapping and flailing of legs. The students thought my attempts at playing were hilarious. Apparently I’m pretty bad. Oh well. We went back and fourth sharing games for about an hour.  I showed them Duck, Duck, Goose, Red Light Green Light, and Simon Says

Grass-Cutter 

After that it was break time. The kids went off to their homes to get lunch and we went to the main office to chat with the teachers. They asked us a lot of questions about America and ourselves. Someone also brought in a freshly slain grass-cutter. It’s a bush animal (a wild animal) that looks like an oversized hamster with a tail. Apparently, the meat is really expensive. I couldn’t help but be amused by scene—A big, dead hamster on the floor of the school’s main office with a bunch of people poking and prodding at it. Only in Ghana.

We ate lunch after all of that. It was Kenke. It’s a doughy ball that you eat with you hands by dipping pieces of the dough in a stew. The stew we had was spicy with sardines, onions, and tomatoes. I didn’t eat a lot…spicy foods are just not my thing, neither are sardines. After lunch, we visited Daniel, our contact person in Adenkrebi. Usually, we would sleep at Daniel’s, but since we were done so early at the school, we decided to go back to campus.

Sept. 7

It was activities day at the school. It rained really hard all morning, so it delayed our game playing. During the delay, we sang songs. I recognized most of the hymns they sang, so it was really fun to sing a long. After they sang all of their songs, they asked us to share ours. We taught them Father Abraham and This Little Light of Mine. They loved it. When we were done singing it was still raining, so we showed them how to play Heads Up, Seven Up.

Cooked Grass-Cutter

By the time that we were done with that, it was time for break. After break the rain stopped and the sun came out. Just in time for games. The kids played soccer, volleyball, net-ball (an all girls game of handball), and a variety of clapping and dancing games. I joined in on the clapping and dancing games at first since I learned Ompe the day before. I think I’ve improved because they didn’t really laugh at me and I won a few rounds. I also joined in on a volleyball game. After a while, the kids dispersed to their home and we ate lunch. Lunch happened to be the grass-cutter we met the day before, along with some stew. It was really good. After we ate, we went back to campus.

Later at night a girl named Mavis who works at the night market took us out on the town to show us around. It was cool. We got to meet a lot of new people.

Sept. 8

My desk has become the final resting place for several ants. I have no idea where they are coming from. I’ve cleared it off, killed the ants and then sprayed it with my bug spray and somehow, new ants find their way there. I’m hoping eventually they learn that if the go there, they die.

Pretty good seats, eh?

Anyways, today we went to the Ghana vs. Malawi soccer match at the Stadium in Accra. It was a good time. Vendors sold popcorn, so I was all over that. FanChoco was also sold, so I got some of that too.  The fans are crazy, they have a non-stop dance party during the game and the longest human wave ever happened. The wave went around the stadium 4 times. Ghana won and some people from our group even made it on TV.

After the game, I did homework and then watched Shawshank Redemption. I had never seen before, and it was really good. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it .

I also got to shower before bed. Nothing could be better.