Peace Corps in Ghana -- Emily Van Ark -- 1999

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Peace Corps in Ghana -- Emily Van Ark -- 1999



Peace Corps in Ghana -- Emily Van Ark -- 1999

Peace Corps in Ghana -- Emily Van Ark -- 1999


July 17, 1999
August 20, 1999
April 5, 2000
Visit Emily in Ghana!

Emily Van Ark graduated from Northwestern in June 1999 and was very active with Canterbury Northwestern while a student in Evanston. She accepted an offer to teach for the Peace Corp in Ghana, Africa. The following is a letter she wrote after finishing her homestay. She'd love to hear from you. Her address is included in the letter below.

July 17, 1999 -- GHANA

Dear all,

So my homestay ended yesterday with a big party where I got to wear a Kabba, which is Ghanaian for "dress with long straight skirt that you can barely walk in and top with BIG POOFY SLEEVES". It's not especially nice looking by American standards, but the huge shoulder look is "in" in Ghana, so everyone thought I looked great.

So now that homestay's over, I no longer have to spend every non-training minute with my host family and three of my fellow trainees and I have taken a tro-tro (small bus typically filled with twice as many people as it was built for) from Saltpond, the training-site village, to Cape Coast, the regional capital half an hour down the road. We heard a (correct) rumor that the University of Cape Coast has email access! Of course you can't write back to me by email, but you can answer this and then print it out and mail it! :) :) :) (PCT Emily Van Ark, c/o Peace Corps Ghana, PO Box 5796, Accra-North, Accra, GHANA) At this point I need to congratulation Dad (w/ note from mom), Amy's mom, Amy L, Sam, Jenn, Molly, and Kate for writing letters which got to me. And remind the rest of you to WRITE!!! :) :) :) It is a red letter day whenever we get mail! I have mailed postcards to Jenn, Amy, Amy, and Sam, and 2 letters to Mom and Dad. Hope you get them! The rest of you will get responses written soon!

Once we're done here at the university, we're going to go check out Cape Coast and do some shopping -- drop off some film for developing, see if there's any cool Ghanaian clothing we want to buy (Without Big Poofy Sleeves), look for a rain jacket or umbrella for me and some Charlie Waddies (flip flops/slippers/bathroom shoes) for one of my travelmates.

Charlie Waddies are an interesting Ghanaian phenomena -- you can buy a pair for approximately $1, and they're the standard informal shoe. And people do EVERYTHING in them -- two of the exiting volunteers ran a marathon in Accra (the capital) where they swear approximately half the people were running in Charlies, with string around the heel to make them a little easier to run in... and when they got sick of that they'd take the flip flops off and put them over their shoulders to carry them while they ran barefoot; another of the volunteers was guided around the slippery rocks of a waterfall by a native in... you guessed it! Charlies!

Training has been an exciting adventure -- we're learning enough of Twi, a semi-Ghana-wide language, to order around our tro-tro drivers, ask directions, and buy things in the markets. And greet of course. Greeting is very important here.... if you don't greet someone before you ask them for instructions, they'll ignore you (or overlook it as obruni -- "white person" -- stupidity). We're also learning important things like how to teach to different learning styles, how to write a lesson plan, how the Ghanaian Education System is structured (primary 1-6, junior secondary 1-3, and senior secondary 1-3, where I'll be). Then there's the "how to live two years in Ghana without offending half the population" sessions and the "let's talk about all the different ways you could get sick, and how to prevent all of them (besides living in a bubble)" sessions -- those are especially fun right before lunch. :P A typical day is: Up at 6ish, bathed and maybe some laundry hand washed by 7:00 breakfast, classes start at eight, have a half hour midmorning snack 10-10:30, classes till lunch at 12:30, nap or quiet reading (my choice, not enforced like band camp :) till class at 2, more class till 4:30 or 5, after which there might be drumming and dancing practice for the drumming and dancing we'll have to do at the "graduation" ceremony at the end of august when we officially become volunteers. After "school" we chill till dinner at 6, then hang out, do language homework, or go to the ever-popular California Bar down the street from the site. The typical daily schedule is broken up with field trips to observe schools or visit local industries, site visits, and we'll eventually do model school for three weeks.

Monday I found out that I will be posted in a town called Bawku (pronounced more like Boku) which is the far northeast corner of Ghana -- I'll be next door to both Burkina Faso and Togo. Because of this placement, I've switched to learning Hausa instead of Twi. I'll be teaching Core Maths (the math everyone is Senior Sec has to take) and Elective Physics (which is for people specializing in physics). I'm not particularly near any of my trainingmates, but there are supposed to be other volunteers in the near vicinity -- either people who are doing water&sanitation / forestry / small business development (who will train after the education people are done) or people who are already a year into their stint. I'm supposed to have a HUGE 3 bedroom house either to myself or sharing with a Ghanaian teacher, on the campus of my 1,500 student boarding school. The house comes with an electric stove and a refrigerator, both of which are very exciting to me. And the school has one of the "science resource centers" the government's set up to be lab facilities shared by 3 or 4 schools. This means that there will be computers!!! Probably not email, but at least someplace to type up and print out a letter! :) I'll know a lot more about my site in a week and a half -- on Monday a counterpart is supposed to come from each of our schools for a two day workshop and then we'll return with them to visit our sites for a week. Well, for at least 3 days after you subtract off two days' bus ride in either direction. :)

Training has been a mostly fun, exciting experience, with occasional bouts of homesickness and culture shock. The best episode of culture shock was a week ago when I suddenly, irrationally decided that I HATED the way Ghanaians speak English -- it's pretty different, more for African reasons than British ones... I think it was more of a reaction against my host mom (who had been getting on my nerves) and people who talk like her than Ghanaians in general, but it was still pretty annoying. After some forms and a nice walk on the beach (did I mention that we're training on the coast? it makes for absolutely stunning stars at night -- you can see the milky way!) with some friends, I was calmer. You do have to be careful to watch where you're walking on the beach. My host mom's family takes their garbage down to the beach in her village so the water can wash it away, and trash like hers is the nicest of the stuff that can be down there.... I'm not sure what else to tell you about Ghana except that I've gotten used to seeing chickens, guinea fowl (footballs with small heads and feathers), goats, and sheep wandering across any street I travel. And that there are lots of interesting half built houses which are 20 year works in progress -- the Cedi devalues so quickly that people buy the floor when they've got money for the floor, and the walls when they've got money for the walls, etc. instead of waiting to have a whole house-worth or getting a loan. And everywhere you go you're listening to "High Life" music which seems to be an interesting mix between R&B, rap, and muzak. Hmm.... now I've REALLY run out of things to say, so I guess I'll close by saying that I miss everyone and you should ALL WRITE TO ME!!! :) :) I promise I will eventually answer every single letter I get!

Okay, I'm not sure I got everyone's email address correct off the top of my head, and I'm SURE I've forgotten people, so feel free to forward this to anyone who seems appropriate.

Echure / Anjuma, (later in Twi and Hausa)

Emily

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August 20, 1999

Update on Emily from her mom (Judy Van Ark) as of 8/20/99

As of the first part of Sept., 1999, Emily will report to her new teaching post. It looks like the very edge of the nation, and isolated, on the map. In reality, it is "Obruni Central", with 5 Volunteers (3 Brit's and 2 PCV's) in the immediate are and another 6 or 7 more within an hour's tro-tro ride. Incidentally, Obruni is roughly "white man/woman, foreigner".

She will teach at a secondary school (high school to us) with 1100 boarding students and another 400 day students. With most of the teaching staff living in bungalows on site, it is more like a small village than a school. Her house, she says, will be fine after sweeping out five months of gecko crap and spiders that have accumulated since her predecessor left five months ago.

She will teach physics to one sophomore, 2 junior, and one senior classes, totaling about 200 students. Her classes each meet 7 times a week for 40 minutes.Her address at the school is:

PCV Emily Van Ark
c/o Bawku Secondary School
PO Box 50
Bawku, U.E.R.
GHANA

Visit Emily in Ghana!

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April 5, 2000

Emily Van Ark was travelling in Europe on a short vacation from her Peace Corps duties in Ghana. Here's part of her letter ...

April 5, 2000
So, update on me: I have now finished two months of training and two terms as a secondary school physics teacher at a boarding school of 1500 students in the northeast corner of Ghana. I've gotten pretty comfortable with teaching; I even enjoy it most days... the students are incredibly sweet and they try hard... and there are few pleasures in life so great as bopping one of them on the head with a chalkboard eraser when they fall asleep. It makes them all white and chalky and embarressed. O:) I've also gotten fairly comfortable in my (pretty large) town... I like the lifestyle (slow-paced, friendly, lots of bike riding and very few motorized vehicles). My main source of frustration in life is that the school system is very messed up in very many ways, but most of the time I can keep my blood pressure low by ignoring it.

At the moment I'm in Potsdam, Germany (a suburb of Berlin) hanging out with Amy Langenhorst (one of my NU friends). We'll be here till Saturday (and I'll be checking my mail about twice a day!), then we're going to meet two more friends and travel for a couple weeks (Rome, Venice, Vienna, Prauge :) -- there may be internet cafes along the way, so continue to write, but be patient), then we'll be back in Postdam over Easter weekend (definately more email access) and then I'll fly back to Ghana on April 25. Then you can all go back to snail mailing me!

For anyone who has NOT gotten my new address (probably because you haven't written me since last summer O:) :

Emily Van Ark
c/o Bawku Secondary School
PO Box 50
Bawku, UE/R
Ghana

Looking forward to hearing what's up with y'all...

Peace,
Emily



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Story Source: Canterbury Northwestern University

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Ghana

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