Sheehan Moore

PICTURES!

Album 1
Album 2
Album 3
Album 4
Album 5

I’ll write soon!

EDIT: This post had like 4 paragraphs. Don’t know where they all went!

This may just be my last blog post from Ghana! In just 10 days, I’ll be making sure my bag’s all packed and checking under my bed for anything left over. I hope I have room in my suitcase for my clothes!

Hello! Stress has been horrible lately, probably only made greater with the knowledge we’ll be leaving soon. (I’ll be on the plane in 17 days!) So, last Saturday, Fiona and I decided we had to get out of Ejura, just for a bit. We ended up chancing it with this place the Bradt Guide mentions, Operation Hand In Hand, in Nkronza — just 45 minutes down the road. I’m so glad we did! It’s a small community set up for mentally handicapped kids, with 10 guesthouses on the 24 acre grounds. There are about 20 caretakers and 30 handicapped residents — aged maybe 4 to 25 or so, with everything from Downs to autism to cerebral palsy. They all go to the adjoining government school, and the older ones, as well as handicapped folks from surrounding villages, work in “sheltered workshops” where they make beautiful beads from recycled plastic and really nice kente cloth, designed and woven on-site. These are available for sale there and at stores in Holland, where the founders are from. The grounds, adjacent to the hospital, are beautiful. Tons of green, great rock formations, and hills and hills. All the buildings, from the restaurant to the residents’ houses to the guesthouses, are whitewashed stone and very nice. Our room had 2 comfy chairs, which might not sound so exciting, but I haven’t sat in a comfy chair in 3 months. Flowers everywhere, donkeys, chickens, and guinea fowl mulling about. The kids were all really sweet and welcoming. Sunday morning, we got to meet Bob, who helps run the place. Fantastic, fantastic guy from Chicago — this 77-year old Jewish guy, very well read, very hilarious. He showed us around his house and was so welcoming. He’s married to one of the project’s founders, Dr. Ineke Bosman, who’s actually been honored by the Pope for her contributions to the Ghanaian National Health Insurance Scheme. Anyway, it was fantastic, and it really got me back in love with Ghana. I’m definitely volunteering there…maybe 5 years from now, maybe 20. But I’ll be back. Check out their website: http://operationhandinhand.nl/engels.htm

Trip Up North

Hello! I’m just back last night from our big trip. Here’s how it went: We left Sunday morning, taking taxis and tro-tros for the 6-7 hour trip to Tamale (pronounced tah-mah-LEE), which is the biggest city in the north. We got there with plenty of time to walk around the market there, and then to catch dinner at an Indian/Western restaurant uptown. Tamale is apparently being torn apart by warring rival factions of something or other, but we saw little sign of that, except for a couple army folks, a truck full of angry looking men, and what we thought was a shotgun shell, but which turned out to be a pen. That night we stayed at “Central Guesthouse”, which was overpriced for the hot rooms, flannelette sheets, and lack-of-running water we were given, but was centrally located, true to name. We weren’t able to get bus tickets the next morning to Larabanga, the village just outside Mole National Park, so we ended up having to hire a taxi. The three or four hour ride there is spent mostly driving down Ghana’s Most Hellish Road. It’s red dirt, and completely waterboarded, so that it looks like the entire road is rippled. I don’t want to dwell on what it was like having four of us crammed into the backseat on that road, or how unfathomable the amount of dust pouring in was, but by the end we were all of us red from head to toe (I have pictures that I’ll put up sometime!), and the taxi was making such horrible noises that we paid the driver extra because he needed to take it to the shop before he could turn around and go home. Larabanga was a neat place. We went on a tour that started out with just the mosque there—supposedly the oldest in Ghana and maybe West Africa, dating to 1421 or 1693, depending on who you ask—which was cool in itself, but then that turned into a tour of the village, which was really neat. The architecture style there is a lot different than in the Ashanti region. Here, traditional huts are dark mud with sticks running through them, but in the north, they’re made with sandier mud, without sticks, and often are circular with thatched hay roofs. This, combined with the savannah of the north of Ghana, gives it much more of an Africa® feel—almost more Disney or something, but in a good way. On our little walk, we got to see them making shea butter, which is HUGE in Ghana. It was really interesting, and a lot goes into it. That night, we stayed in Larabanga at the Salia Brothers Guesthouse, whose big draw is that you can sleep on the roof. It was a fantastic night playing rummy and sleeping up there, listening to the talking and the music and the calls to prayer wailing from the speakers by all the mosques. The next morning we took a car the six kilometers to Mole National Park (pronounced MOH-lay) and checked in. There was a nice cold pool and about a dozen African American kids from Alaska on a trip with an after school program. It was strange hearing kids with American accents after so long, and a little disconcerting! I swam for about ten minutes when all the sudden, what had started as a little bit of crampiness that morning, turned into an I-need-to-lie-down-before-I-throw-up-and-pass-out kinda feeling. So I went to the room—this was at around 10am—and then pretty much went through hell for the rest of the day. My stomach was hurting so bad at times that I was actually moaning out loud and writhing around. At around 2:00 in the afternoon, I heard a noise outside the window and looked up to see a bunch of baboons and warthogs just chilling around my room. At one point, one of the baboons actually pressed its face against the screen. I was sure that I was feverishly hallucinating, that this was the end, and that I’d be going off with the baboons and warthogs to meet my maker, but it turns out they were legit—I asked the others, and the same animals had been kicking it poolside all day. So yeah, finally, after five or six hours, I threw up. For me, this is a huge deal, because I don’t throw up—I think this was the first time in four or five years. I still felt horrible, but over the next hour I started to feel well enough to stand and sit with the others at dinner. That was a very eventful Tuesday. The next day I was a lot better. I got up at 6:15 (this is normal for me now, believe it or not!) and walked around, had some coffee. Then we all just sat around all day, but that’s not a bad thing: Mole Motel is situated on this bluff overlooking the park, with this amazing view of a watering hole, so there’s plenty to stare at (including elephants!). At 3:30, we had our first game walk. Immediately, as soon as we got onto the floor of the park, we saw hyena prints. I didn’t even realize there were hyenas in Ghana. Five minutes later, we saw a small Nile croc slip into the watering hole, and five minutes after that we started seeing antelope all over. Altogether, within the walking area, you’re only ever going to see eight mammal species—three types of antelope (kob, waterbuck, and bushbuck), three types of monkeys (baboon, green, and something else), warthog, and African elephants. Wednesday, we saw no elephants, which was disappointing, but we knew we had more time. It was still really cool seeing the antelope, the monkeys, and the warthogs in the wild! I have lots of pictures of warthogs, because you can just walk right up to them at the Motel. The baboons didn’t come back, so I may have to steal some pictures from the others. Thursday morning, I was stuck in bed again with stomach cramps. By the afternoon, though, I was able to get up and walk around to go on our second game walk. This time, within fifteen minutes, we found three elephants and got to follow them around for a good bit. Wow! It was nothing like seeing them in the zoo, knowing that there is absolutely nothing between you and them. The park isn’t fenced in or anything, either, so they were totally wild. They’re absolutely massive. We were really close to them, too—probably around forty metres at one point, which feels really close when something is that huge, and the only thing protecting us from them was our guide’s rifle. Fantastic. Totally cool. That night I was super sick again, but such is life. Friday morning, we woke up at 4:00 and got on the MetroMass bus back to Tamale. It was ten times smoother than the taxi because of its size and suspension. There were a couple drawbacks—it was cramped with people standing in the aisles, there was a chicken riding at my feet, and at one point, when we had to evacuate because a tire was on fire, people tried to climb over me and Fiona to jump out the window. It’s taking a lot more to surprise me these days, though. We stayed in Tamale for a couple hours to do some shopping at a store set up to empower women coming out of abusive situations by teaching them batik, tie-dye, sewing, and so on, and an arts and crafts market. We ran into a family from Ohio, who are living in Tamale while the husband does some work at the university there, and we saw our first white kids since January. They were these two adorable little girls, and when I first saw them it was so strange that I thought they had some kind of skin disorder. Nice folks, though. Finally, we headed back to Ejura. The entire day I’d only eaten about a dozen peanuts out of fear that I’d be seeing whatever I ate again, but by the time we got home I was feeling well enough to eat some banku, and when I got to bed, I was able to sleep on my stomach for the first time in five days. I’ve been kind of downplaying my illness in this entry; really, it’s the sickest I’ve been in years, which is hard for me since I don’t think of myself as a sickly person or anything. I think my body was just kinda ticked because it was trying to tell me it needed to rest, but I kept insisting it go on two hour hikes in 40C heat and stuffing it into tro-tros and taxis. So, yes, I was sick, BUT, I still had a fantastic time, and would do the sickness all over if it meant seeing those bizarre-looking warthogs and those fantastic elephants again. The north in general was really cool, too. The savannah was beautiful, the heat was much drier than the tropical central-region, and the culture had a different feel to it, maybe as a result of being much more Muslim. Next time I’m in Ghana, I hope to see more of Tamale and get up closer to Burkina-Faso in the far north. Next time! For now, though, I’m excited about getting back to see my kids on Monday. I’m afraid they’ve been neglected this last week—it was football tournament week, which at OTHER schools in Ejura means the football team goes to play football, and everyone else stays in class, but of course at International Neo-Humanist School, everyone else just goes home. I’ve got my work cut out for me!

So I had this nice entry all typed up on Jasmine’s laptop the other day, but I forgot the thumb drive, so whatever.

Today was my last day of school for a while. Tomorrow we have the Independence Day celebrations, and then we leave Sunday for Tamale and Mole National Park. We’re planning to get back Friday evening. I thought I’d be ecstatic, but I’m going to miss my kids. Really, I’ll only have 4 more weeks of school after I get back, which is hard to believe! I already know how quickly it will go by.

On Monday, my teacher, Paulina, slept all day and took a 2 hour lunch. Normally she’ll at least teach something. Tuesday and Wednesday, she didn’t come in at all. And today she was back and sleeping. I’ve been really nice to her up till now, because she can be nice and a lot of the previous volunteers have become genuine friends with her. But I have problems being friends with anyone that lazy and inconsiderate. Also, whenever we try to make friends with the teachers, they ask us to buy them things. So I’ve struggled through the last couple of days, because the kids are little terrors when she’s gone, but I made it. To celebrate Independence Day, I traced and cut out their hands onto red, yellow, and green construction paper, and then sticky-tacked them to the wall to make the Ghanaian flag. I’ll put up pictures soon! They love seeing their artwork.

We have a woman named Suzanne Eyers staying with us. She was a volunteer 3 years ago, and has come back every year with an organization called FACE to pick out kids to sponsor. She’s this 68-year-old Vancouver woman, and since she’s older than anyone, she’s not afraid to pick fights when they need picking, so it’s nice to have her around.

Speaking of fights, I got into a bit of a spat with Dada on Tuesday. It started with me needing scissors to cut out the hands. Dada wasn’t at the school, of course, so I went to the headmaster, Martins, to ask for the key to Dada’s cupboard, where I know there are scissors left behind by a previous volunteer. I knew full well he wouldn’t have the key, so it was kind of rhetorical, but then it turns out Martins didn’t even know there were school supplies in Dada’s cupboard. So I confronted Dada about it at lunch, saying that the school supplies he hoards in his cupboard and in his bedroom have been left behind by volunteers for the teachers and the school, so they need to have constant access to them, which is impossible when the key is with Dada, who’s in Kumasi 3 or 4 times a week, and off at his shop the rest of the days. Dada is amazing at talking in circles, and is quickly heading towards senility, so bascially it descended into this kinda heated argument. He kept saying, “Shee-Han! If the teachers need supplies, they can come to me in advance. That is MY cupboard and I keep MY records and clothes in there” and I kept saying, “Then DON’T leave the school supplies in there, too!” He told me to come to school and to “talk to the headmaster the way I’m talking to him.”

I wasn’t really being disrespectful or anything, but you have to understand that Dada is a crook, and there are few who would argue with that. He gets hundreds of dollars from us, $700 from Italy, and hundreds from other sources every month, but the house boys have to come to US for new shoes and bags, and the school is pretty much the laughing stock of Ejura for it’s mediocre teachers.

Anyway, I got to school, and it turns out it was me, Dada, Martins, and ALL the teachers meeting. I just sat there and made my case, and Dada and I had the same argument, except Dada started talking about a crazy man who used to come and smash the water tank, so we had to steer him back onto track. Eventually he agreed to get a new cabinet that the teachers can have access to, so a small victory there.

The whole time, the teachers just set there quietly, occasionally talking in each other in Twi. I felt like I was wasting my time, since it seemed like they didn’t really give a crap one way or another. I left kinda dejected, but then four teachers caught up with me and said, “Thank you, thank you! You have to talk for us! He says we can ask him for supplies, but if we do, or if we complain, we’ll be sacked!” And then they were saying they really need paper, and they’re expected to do all this art projects and make tests for the kids, but Dada never gives them anything. In theory, this school should be the richest, with all the nice new supplies pouring in, but the volunteers just use the supplies they bring on the class they teach, and anything left over gets taken by Dada. Very frustrating. So I’m going to try and scrape together some communal supplies. We’ll see.

Anyway, I’ve written way too much. Looking forward to the marching and partying tomorrow, and to my trip up north! Also, happy 30th to Matt on the 3rd, and happy 39th to Dad today! What an old man.

Just got back from a great little weekend at Lake Bosumtwi, which is in this meteorite crater a bit southeast of Kumasi. Had chicken, tuna, pancakes, coffee, and red wine. It was a nice change, but I am excited to get back to yams and jolloff rice tonight. Didn’t bring my camera cord, so I can’t upload pictures, but you can Google Image search it, or read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosumtwi_crater. Oh, and two of the volunteers, Fluffy and Melinda, managed to get engaged while we were there! So it was exciting, and now I’m ready to get back into the swing of school. Love you all, Sheehan

It’s been a while since I’ve written for real. Last Friday Richard came. I can’t remember if I mentioned him last time. I went on and on to Mom and Dad in a letter about how normal he is and how all he wanted to do was come up and do some accounting at the school to bulk up his resume, and poor, poor Richard who has to put up with all the chaos of the house in the school. Anyway, I’m formally retracting that opinion and submitting this: Richard is nuts. I offered him my room because Dada was going to sleep on the floor. But now he wakes me up 30-40 minutes early every morning because he’s singing Ghanaian R&B at the top of his lungs. He’s always, ALWAYS sighing. Something’s always wrong with him. We had this conversation the other morning where he was talking about going into town to get fish and rice for breakfast. He said, “I just…I can’t keep eating the liquid food.” “What do you mean by that, Richard?” “I think maybe I’d like some porridge.” “But porridge is liquid-y, Richard. I thought you said you didn’t want liquid food.” “I meant like tea and coffee.” “But tea and coffee aren’t food, Richard, they’re drinks.” “Then how can you only take tea and coffee for breakfast?” “We don’t, Richard, we eat bread and banana and pineapple and groundnut paste every morning, you’ve seen us.” “Ohhhh. (A pause.) So…the bread is your food?” “Yes, Richard, the bread is our food.” He’s a treasure. And 10x the mumbler I am. Anyway, he’s harmless, and he’s written a play to promote HIV awareness for the school. I edited and typeset it, but only to get out of directing it, which is what he originally had Fiona and I slated to do. (New paragraph. I’m emailing these entries in, and I think the formatting gets lost.) Last night I had grits! They call them something else, but really, they’re just grits with a little less water than we add. I almost peed myself. They were served with this foul-smelling fish sauce, but I just melted some cheap Babybel cheese into them and heaped on the salt. FANTASTIC. Grits in Ghana is a potential name for my potential memoir. Saturday morning, Fiona and I went to Kumasi. Valentine’s Day cards and chocolates EVERYWHERE! It’s very big here. We walked around the market, the largest in West Africa. I was called Peter Crouch about 6 times by separate people, and Steven Gerrard once. There are definitely worse things to be called! Word spread quickly in the market about my braces, so every couple metres we’d come across a woman who would say, “Show me your teeth!”, gasp, and then send the message further down the row so that others could ask to see, too. The boys at the school call them “ices” and all want them very badly. I wish braces on an 18-year-old were this cool back home! Saturday night there was a huge Valentine’s Day street party in front of our favorite bar. EVERYONE was out dancing, and many of them kept at it even once it started pouring down rain. We got drenched, but it was great. This weekend we are going to Lake Basumtwi and staying in little cottages on the shore. It will be a welcome change from Ejura and Kumasi. Swimming and biking are on the agenda. We’re also busy planning our excursion up north during the second week of March. I’m making an effort not to say, “I can’t wait!” for you, Matt. School is school. Today it kind of fell apart at 11, and everyone ended up going home. Thanks for the tips, Cinde! I’ve been thinking that now that I know the kids better, I’ll put together a seating plan. My “punishment” is making kids who fight apologize to each other and shake hands. They DREAD it. Anyway, I’m off. Overcast but very humid today, so I think I’ll buy some ice cream on the way home. Love you all!

Pictures!

Fluffy managed to get pictures up! For some reason only about half of mine, the most recent ones, are there, but more will follow! They’re small, but it’s something to look at! http://ghana.sarten-x.com/

Pictures!

Fluffy managed to get pictures up! For some reason only about half of mine, the most recent ones, are there, but more will follow! They’re small, but it’s something to look at! http://ghana.sarten-x.com/

Hey guys, not a lot of time to write, but I’ll say hi. I’m on my way back to Ejura from the Boabeng-Fiema monkey sanctuary, which was a GREAT time! I have lots of pictures, plus a video of a monkey with a baby hanging from her stomach snatching food from my hand! Might have to wait till I get home to upload that though. It was really, really nice to have the change of scenery. Everything was very green there, not like everywhere else where the ground is black from fires. Thanks for all your advice about the water. We’re pretty bad about it…we drink tea with water that’s just boiling, brush our teeth with it, and wash our salad with it. Luckily (maybe), we only have salad every couple of weeks. Cipro is cheap as sin here. Ahh! 45 seconds left. Bye guys!