Plan B

Zurich International School Dinner Cruise

Last Friday our school took us out on a school-year-kick-off boat cruise around the lake. Myself and a new friend, Melissa, are smiling with our whole faces, as pictured above. Below is a picture I took from the boat, at the southern part of the lake.

Techie Techie Switzerland

I haven't even been here a week and I walked in my apartment today to find my engraved name card on my doorbell and my mailbox and five different bills and payment receipts inside. That sure didn't take long. China must have just skipped paper and gone straight to computer, here it seems they do a combo of the two. Another thing I have noticed here is that garbage is only picked up in the special, very expensive trash bags so we should try to fill them slowwwwly... very smart.

The new hood - Thalwil

I have been in Zurich for five days now and I feel e - stablished. Since the moment I got off the plane my brain has been occupied with signing papers, receiving keys and shipments, meetings, orientations and tours. But, with that said, I now have a bank account, apartment, job, health plan, transit pass, my barings, new friends and acquaintances, my health... and my happiness!

The Zurich Street Parade

The secretary at my new school told me, "You must go to see the Zurich Street Parade because it is so not Swiss". Turns out that though it is smaller, this techno parade was actually the mother of the Berlin Love Parade. The music seemed like it pumped my heart for me.

Ghana - Asufutufiam Festival

In Big Ada every year, the people from this region come together to celebrate their historical victories in war and honour those who have died. At this festival, there were big parades of people carrying their chiefs, re-enacting the battles and ending up at the river where they cleansed themselves of the years deeds and made wishes for the new year. I stood in the water, made a wish and washed my face with my hands. Tracy, on the other hand, was splashed silly but an old lady. I wish I was splashed, too!

Sega

This was actually taken on one of my last days in Sega. We had just been sitting on this straw mat beside our house for awhile, playing with the kids and talking. I like this picture alot because it seems to me like all of us look just like how we felt that moment.

Teacher In-service training from myself and Tracy (we did do work too... actually, we are up there at the front, just not in the picture) and this is hanging out in the evening, it could have been any evening really.

Graduation and Speeches... on my Birthday!

As luck would have it, my birthday fell on the same day as the Graduation and Speech Giving ceremony for the school. It was a big show of culture, traditional dance and drumming, speeches from elders and myself (I don't exactly classify myself as an elder yet), and a ceremony to honour the graduates who are moving on. We were all dressed up in kente and given Ghanaian names, mine being Angmorkie (at best seldom comprehensible when I try to pronounce it). Everyone was really excited that day, and we ate really good food!

Assembly - Higha higha higha

Every Wednesday morning is worship, an assembly with the whole school. These videos show the energy of kids pretty well.

The Amazon Flute

When my dear friend Emily went from China to Peru to go down the Amazon River, she brought me back this traditional wooden flute, stating that she thought I would enjoy figuring out how to play it. I did. Jamie, my roommate, probably didn't enjoy me trying to figur out how to play it.

Because she gave it to me after my shipment had left to go to Switzerland, I had to bring it with me to Ghana. And what a good idea that turned out to be. Many hours passed unknowingly on its sole account.

To advertise the graduation festivities to neighbouring villages, we took two days, the kids, the drums and a lot of posters and signs to the neighbouring communities and paraded through their streets and markets, singing, dancing, handing out information and generally attracting attention. This is a picture of out parade and another of me dancing at de Yunction market with Jakob. ...

A Sega Photoshoot

Taking photos is so interesting in Sega because the kids will play with the camera like they will play with a football. In this video I tricked them into thinking I was taking a picture so I could remember how funny it all is. On this day we probably took pictures with the ant hill for a good 20 minutes before moving on.

Cape Coast

The Curious meet The Curious

The Maple Leaf School Charity collected over 2,000 pens and pencils for local and Ghanaian students. After schmoozing the airlines and miraculously getting them all here, I realized that it was doing more than just providing new writing tools. They caused a new curiousity about China to float through the school; wanting me to teach them the language, wanting me to read to them what is written on their pens (ha... ha.... ha....), wanting to hear Chinese songs, write to Chinese penpals, and actually, some just want to know where China is. How perfect!

A Fish Story

Sixty kilometers east of Accra, where the shores of Ghana meet the Atlantic Ocean, the white sand beaches stretch out and bask in the noon heat. The small village here is called Ada Foah, and on this July afternoon like every other afternoon, this coastal community’s young and old work together in two long, straight rows to heave in a far reaching net and the days catch. This is where I found myself that afternoon, having one of those simple traveler thoughts that has been hitting me hard lately – Ghana… I am here. Before I came here, I had 24 years to wonder what it might be like. I had an idea, but the truth is I had no idea. Isn’t that always the way!
Feet planted in the sand in pulling stance. The right hand is behind on the rope, palm down, and the left hand is up front, palm up, holding from underneath. That is what everyone else was doing, so I did it too. Pulling and pulling, moving farther and farther back up onto the beach until running up to the front again. As we worked, the other end of the net, far down the beach, pulled slowly towards us bringing our ends close until we crossed, sealed the catch and pulled it up onto the shore. I got tired after a while, so I stopped and a mother handed me her baby to hold. I had no complaints about this new responsibility, being anything but rusty with babies now having held more since arriving here than in the last five years combined. I stood back then as the net was pulled on shore and watched as everyone eyed the catch; a variety of sea life, including giant shrimps, lobster, barracudas, jellyfish and an ENORMOUS brown and yellow striped sea snake that scared the sarong of me when I noticed it slithering.
The baby fell asleep on my shoulder and a man walked over and presented me with a small fish, for helping I figure. So there I was with a baby in one hand and a barracuda in the other, thinking about nothing profound, except feeling deep inside somewhere that this was the kind of place and the kind of thing that leaves an etching. So I stood there and stared at the ocean and marveled the catch and cared for the baby and wondered what I was supposed to do with this wiggling fish.
That was two days ago, and now I have time to sit and think and write. I am sitting in my cool, dark room in Sega listening to kids playing and distant drumming, coming from the school on the other side of the village. Sega is 30 minutes away from two days ago; so small and off the bumpy red dirt road that those fishermen at the coast had never heard of it when we asked. Maybe it is its size that magnifies the community feeling that hits a person when they come here. It sure hit me. I have never seen a community to integrate people faster. The kids jump up on ledges and yell “catch me!” and you swing them around as they giggle, they run and give you hugs, tell you stories and invite you to play their games. The adults wave and always seem ready to talk, they let you stir their dinner in their giant pots, help you find your way, invite you in to meet their parents, to see their farm and introduce you to their babies, ask you where you are going and where you have come from. People stop to talk to each other and at first I thought, what are we going to talk about? But that has become less and less of an issue. This all happens around a patchy network of hand-made brick, tin roofed houses and mud hut kitchens, interspersed with enormous wide trunk, broad reaching trees… surrounded by the peoples farms of hot peppers, tomatoes and cassava, and a school (that is where I come in). It would be hard not to feel like I haven’t already been here a long time.
There is nothing about going to this new country, and continent for that matter, that doesn’t surprise me. Things surprise me either because they are exactly what I imagined or because they are very different from what I imagined; and that covers everything with an element of surprise. My idea of here is transforming so rapidly with all the new things I see and do. It is difficult to write about it because I imagine I will see it so different tomorrow, as I live each day here.
It was a beautiful place at that coastal village of Ada Foah but I think I am going to stay around here in Sega for a few weeks and try and learn it. I won’t be pulling in any ocean nets again soon, but I feel like coming here is pulling in my own kind of net; a real big net full of real knowledge about this place that I used to only imagine.