Last Day of Work before Vacation!

This morning we had porridge for breakfast, and Emil stopped by to say he’d try to get two people for interviews. I appreciated his help, because with only a few left to do, I was losing my motivation. Bismark surprisingly stopped by also. When he greeted us in English, we responded… in English, and he exclaimed that we didn’t greet him properly (in Ewe). Ugh. I so don’t care… He wanted to know how we were doing, since we “hadn’t come to see him at the office.” Well, clearly, when we’ve been there every Market Day (different days of the week), he’s never there because he only works 2 or 3 days a week, obviously we’ll never see him… I inquired about the money that Emil said Anyo didn’t get the last time I was here. He explained that since the home office (the two ex-Peace Corps volunteers that founded BRIDGE) in the US stopped supporting the office a year or two ago, BRIDGE found itself in a tough financial position, thereby taking away the obligation to pay the CBOs money, so they could support the office… the office that has expensive crappy internet when they’re only there 2 days a week, when you can check email for 20 peswas downstairs at the internet café… but whatever. I asked him for the breakdown of where the money we paid went, and he said he couldn’t be specific since he wasn’t at the office. He said on Wednesday he could give me more details. I knew full well that he knew exactly where every penny went. Emil was standing outside the door listening patiently, which I was pleased about. I didn’t really want to have to restate the conversation for the Anyo meeting tonight. Before Bismark left, somehow the topic of our caretakers came up. We said we felt bad that they weren’t letting us help with anything. To that he claimed we couldn’t wash clothes… I don’t know how he thinks Americans go about their daily lives; it’s not like we’re the Jetsons and have robots doing everything for us… we’re perfectly capable. He really irritates me.

We did one interview in the late morning, after which Mawufemor, Jessica and Michael visited us to color. I have to say, it’s interesting watching Jessica and Mawufemor together. Jessica is bold, sassy, and bossy; Mawufemor is quiet, sweet, always smiling the biggest most genuine smile you’ve ever seen. When Michael and Jessica started having issues sharing the crayons with Akiti (Mawufemor), Akiti gathered what she could, put them in the crayon box, walked over to me and placed the box under my chair. That way, she knew she would be able to get more crayons when she needed them. She also goes about and cleans up after everything, and organizes! She’s a girl after my own heart. Outside of that though, she really is an amazing little girl. Little, literally—she is 4 years old but could be 2 ½ or 3 by US size standards. Little, as “akiti” describes. I’ll really miss her smile when we leave. I wish Mama could move to the US and be my next door neighbor, and all her kids could go to good schools, and visit real libraries, and get real nutrition.

We held the JSS study session this afternoon, which went really well. All the kids who showed up (maybe about 15 kids) were so attentive and eager to do the activity. A few were shy about sharing what they read, but several seemed really excited about writing their own story. [One girl, Patricia, actually wrote a story and gave it to us the following Monday; She wrote a different one but lost it so wrote the replacement. It was about determination.] It seems that anything volunteers come to do with children really only gets anywhere with the JSS students. Primary kids are too young, and not as mature to take activities seriously, and part of it is because they don’t understand the English you’re using. That was something that I found really frustrating the last time I was here, and Samantha is feeling it as well now. They’re spoken to in English, taught in English, their exams are in English… yet they are not taught English as a language.

We had fufu for dinner; I didn’t eat much of it knowing how it sticks to your stomach like the rubber pancakes would in that Donald Duck cartoon. Afterwards, we headed to Richard’s for the Anyo meeting. We updated everyone on Bismark’s visit, and the progress with the study sessions and interviews. We decided to do a focus group with Anyo using some new questions I came up with regarding health in general. The focus group went really well—arguments between people with differing opinions, some really good points were made. I was glad I came up with the new questions. After the meeting, it was a little bit late so we went home to get ready for bed and our journey tomorrow.

Tomorrow we leave for Accra for the night, and then Friday it’s off to Cape Coast—I did manage to make a reservation at Oasis Beach Resort (yay). Hopefully it will be a good mini-vacation.