Janae Schallert's Blog: Ghana, Kumasi, Spandex and the Macarena Dance!

It has been over a month since I last updated this! I apologize! Ghana continues to be an amazing adventure!

School in Ghana compared to the United States is so much different! Each class only meets once a week for 2 hours and you are lucky if the teacher shows up on time and stays the whole class period! I’m taking a Gender Issues class and the professor shows up about 35 minutes late to every class and we get dismissed about 30 minutes early. I’ve never been one to be upset when we didn’t have class but I appreciate my education more than ever and I miss being busy with classes. We had a group project for this class and as a group we decided on a time to meet up. I showed up and not one other person showed up. So we figured out another time, and again, nobody showed up but me. I guess you could say that I was pretty irritated. When I told one of our advisors about it, she said that if there is ever an international student, the Ghanaians will always count on them to do the assignment. I ended up calling one of the girls and telling her that we had to do this project together and out of the 8 of up in the group, three people showed up. One other international girl did her part, I did mine and the others literally copied and pasted from the Internet. So we erased that and did it over. We turned in the paper and then our teacher assigned another group project with the same group… We will see how that goes.

A couple weeks ago, we went to Kumasi for the weekend and it was a crazy and hilarious weekend. We went to the Kente village where they make beautiful cloth. They had such elaborate and amazing designs. I spent way too much money on fabric there but it looks exactly what you would picture Africa Print to look like. After the Kente village, we went to a place where they make ink for clothes and stamps. They explained how they are able to make the ink from a tree and showed us the process. It was super detailed and a long process but it was awesome to watch. We were given the chance to do some of the procedures and even stamp some of the cloth.

The following day, we went to a zoo, the largest market in West Africa, a really pretty lake and then made our way home. The zoo had a lot of animals but the quality of the zoo was really poor. It was dirty, unsanitary and the animals didn’t look very happy. We were able to touch an elephant but overall, I wasn’t super excited about the zoo. It was pretty sad. The largest open market in West Africa is pretty large! We walked through it but nobody bought anything. It was super crowded and people would grab onto us and it was kind stressful. There is NO personal space in Ghana.

After the market, we went to a beautiful lake. Some people went out on the boat, and others just hung out around the lake. There were many kids who enjoyed hanging out with us. There was a boy named Joshua who asked me if I could give him a science book or pencils. It broke my heart that I didn’t have anything for him so I gave him a pencil and a notebook and he was so happy. It is cool to see how something as simple as a pencil can make someone so happy.

Aboglushie is one of the slums of Ghana and I went a couple weeks ago to help out in one of the schools there. Getting there was tough, and it was pretty sketchy once we got there. If you picture a slum, this is it. It was super dirty, smelled awful, very crowded and not the safest place. Once we got to the school, it was a big building with TONS of kids inside. As we walked in, the kids were so happy to see us. Upstairs, there are about 8 classes that are poorly separated. You could hear everything and see everything in each classroom. Emily and I started playing games with the students and they taught us some fun African games. I have no idea where the teachers were or if there were teachers. After a bit, I decided to teach them the Macarena Dance…. This might be one of the funniest things I have ever done and the kids LOVED it! After the Macarena Dance, I taught them the “Jump On It” Dance and then we did the Hokey Pokey Dance. Eventually we asked what they wanted to learn and they said Physical Education so we did some stretches and some exercise and then the students said they wanted to learn RAM which is Religious and Moral Education. This caught me by surprise but I ended up telling a story from the bible about Zaccheaas. They were all so interested and as soon as I finished, they started to sing a song about what I just talked about. It was super interesting and eye opening about how religious their society is. Here is a video of our Macarena Dance!

http://www.youtube.com/v/qaL7Xof5tXg?autohide=1&version=3&autoplay=1&autohide=1&attribution_tag=3BVoYrB9ZaHk6mkzX8yJ4Q&showinfo=1&feature=share
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So it is super hot in Africa and it is super important to drink water… and a lot of it. It would be super expensive to buy each bottle of water so in Ghana, they have little sachets of water for 10 cents. They are perfectly healthy to drink and it has the amount of one water bottle in the sachets. You drink them by biting into the little plastics bags and drink them. So I live on the 4^th floor in the dorms and I heard one of my friends in the courtyard ask if we could throw down a sachet of water to her. I knew this was going to be funny so I offered. I then threw down the bag of water, which reacted like a water balloon as soon as she attempted to catch it, and exploded. Moral of the story, I now have really easy access to water balloons to anybody in the courtyard.

Playing basketball in Ghana is so different than the states. The team I am on is mostly international students who have played AAU, Club, Travel, and Varsity Basketball. So in other words, we are super good. We finished our “season” by going 6-0 and beating most teams by over 40 points. We were approached by one of the heads of Sports for the University of Ghana and she told us that we would be representing Ghana in a tournament in a couple of weeks. This is pretty cool but also extremely sad considering none of us are from Ghana and we are representing the entire country. Apparently they will recruit a couple Ghanaians to add to our team but we are the “starters.” Our coach is one of the best players in Ghana and is the captain of the National Team so if they qualify for the Olympics, he would be the captain.. pretty cool stuff!

Our coach invited us to go to the beach a couple weeks ago. We thought he was going to pick us up but instead he sent cars to pick us up from our dorms. We were sitting in the lobby when 2 big buff men come in and ask if we were going to the beach.. without asking questions we said yes. Thankfully, they were the right guys!

We also thought we were going to a beach in Accra…. Nope they took us about an hour away to a beach resort. We arrived at this resort and were fed really good fried chicken that came out of a box with Aladdin from Disney on it. We then played volleyball and I became thankful that I never joined a volleyball team cause I am awful!! We swam in the ocean that was warmer than any shower that I have had in Ghana! So in Ghana, they don’t really have bathing suits. So our coach went swimming in spandex, I think he must have watched Michael Phelps on TV or something.

We decided that we had to get home because of homework and such. Our coach offered to drive us to the main road where we could get a taxi. . Also, in Ghana… nobody wears seatbelts. So as we were driving, we somehow ended up in a HUGE ditch. After I face planted into the seat in front of me, we got out and assessed the damage. Many of the local villagers decided to help us basically pick up the car and get it out of the ditch which was very nice of them but they kept looking at us kinda funny because there were 3 white girls and a big Ghanaian man just wearing spandex. And then it gets weirder..So we continue driving and we get stopped at a police checkpoint…. I’m pretty sure it was because there is a large man still ONLY wearing spandex, after he tells the police man that he couldn’t “have” one of us, we are on our way. We get to the main road and Mimi (our coach) says he will get a taxi for us and we should wait in the car. Picture this, a large Ghanaian man in the middle on the street, in the dark, and ONLY wearing spandex.. lets just say that no taxi stopped for him and most swerved to avoid him because of how awkward he looked! Alex, one of my friends, decided she was going to try and within 3 seconds, a taxi stopped and we were on our way home!

Last Saturday, we decided to take a daytrip to Elmina Castle, which is another slave castle in Ghana. We took a Tro-Tro there and got there in about two hours. Once we were there, we stopped at a little restaurant right by the castle and there were about 5 things on the menu. (Fisherman’s Soup, Tomato Sandwich, Egg Sandwich, Fries) All of these items are fairly simple but it took about 3 hours to get our food. Shea who ordered a tomato sandwich literally got 2 slices of bread with ONE slice of tomato. This is an example of how things that could literally make you mad but instead it is just funny. We have a slogan we say often that is T.I.A. (This is Africa)

After lunch, we had a tour of the castle. The castle originally was a port for trading items such as sugar and cocoa but then turned into a slave castle. It was super sad walking through the dungeons but very eye-opening. The castle is located right on the beach and near a busy fishing boat area. There were TONS of boats near by and it was fascinating to watch.