Akpe

As I told the group of community members from Ho that planned and orchestrated a beautiful welcoming ceremony for the team last night, we haven’t learned many words in Ewe (the regional dialect spoken in Ho) yet, but we did learn how to say thank you: Akpe. There isn’t a better word to summarize our first four days in Ghana- we are so thankful for the hospitality, friendship, and genuine welcome to the community we’ve received thus far. Last night’s ceremony was an amazing celebration of Ghanaian culture and tradition, with performances by children and adults in the community and each team member receiving a traditional Kente cloth with their name hand-embroidered on it. The whole team had the chance to participate in the dances and introduce themselves- I can’t think of a better way for the team to have spent our last truly free night in Ghana.

Cory accepting Max's Kente cloth- Max wasn't feeling well and couldn't make it to the ceremony. Each cloth is hand-embroidered with our full names and the name of Reverend Bankas's church.

Armed with the support of the community in Ho, we woke up today with a renewed energy and excitement for the first of our five visits to primary schools in the Volta region to teach public health lessons to Ghanaian students. We spent some time yesterday planning our lessons and preparing for the week, but we arrived at the McCollins Preparatory School today to find that we only had one hour to spend teaching the students. It was hectic, but the students' reactions to our presence and excitement over meeting us more than made up for the schedule changes.

After teaching our lessons, we helped the teachers with their regularly planned lessons for the rest of the day, which was challenging in a school that housed around 200 students from ages 1.5-12 in just 6 open rooms. It was loud and the students were often distracted, but their thirst for knowledge was evident. Some of our team members assisted the teachers, and others were given the chance to take over and teach their own lesson- Audrey and Amanda taught a science lesson about the states of matter, and Sarah and I had to refresh our memory about the types of triangles to teach a lesson about angles and triangles. Katie was almost always covered by 20 adoring children, and a few of the children asked Will if he was Jesus.

When we finally headed back to the city at the end of the day, we were exhausted, but we made some time to stop for souvenir shopping. A few of us are having skirts and blankets made, so we visited some fabric stores to pick out the designs, which was a unique (and somewhat overwhelming!) experience. We picked up a few other souvenirs, but I won't ruin the surprise in case any of you are the lucky recipients!

So sorry for a post without any pictures, but our WiFi connection at the Internet cafe isn't strong enough to upload pictures and videos- hopefully we'll be able to add some soon!

- Shikha