School Week Number 1

There is nothing better than waking up in the morning, walking across the street and asking your friend Mary to make you an egg sandwich with eggs that were recently laid, fresh tomatoes and fresh avocado. I wish I could live across from a farmers market for the rest of my life.

This past week was the first week of school and I can't remember this week ever being this chaotic in the states. Figuring out classes that don't clash and factoring in how far you have to walk between classes, proved to be far more difficult than at Bucknell. Not to mention that, in order to sign up for a class, you had to go to that department. For instance, I signed up for Dance, Drumming, Social Work and Psychology so I had to go to the Theater Arts Department, the Social Work Department, and the Psychology Department to register each class. This whole system would be so much easier if they simply put it online, which I think they are beginning to develop. The issue is, a lot of students don't have regular access to a computer, let alone the internet.

I'm loving my Twi class. My professor is hilarious and it's a small class so we each get to speak. What's bizarre is how Asian the language can sound from time to time. I suppose this makes sense due to it's tonal nature, but I would never have made the connection before actually hearing each word spoken slowly.

My psychology class has 900 students. 900. Classes at Bucknell are approximately 12-15 and lectures can be up to 40. 900. This is a huge change for me. Luckily, she split the class in two so that one half meets mondays, the other wednesdays. But still....450. Insanity. And this is considered the best Educational Institution in the country, yet it's so different from schools back home.

On Wednesday we went to the beach for Reggae Night. It was so much fun. The beach was beautiful, there were lots of people there, and the music was great. It happens every week on Wednesday night, so I'm sure we'll be back there at some point. This weekend seems like it will be really tame with only the International students welcome dinner on the schedule.

Some more culture points:

1. Baby/toddler shoes don't seem to exist here, despite the incredible number of babies. Unlike college campuses in the US, where it seems like you never see anyone outside the ages of 17 and 22, the University of Ghana is crawling with children. In the night market, children run around and try to get you to play with them. In other campus stores and cafeterias, there seems to always be the pitter-patter of little feet. In fact, just the other day, I was walking out of the cafeteria I frequent and a little girl runs up to me, taps me on the arm and then hands me a little purple flower. She stares at me for a few minutes and then runs away. It was absolutely adorable....but back to shoes. None of these children seem to be wearing any. It makes sense if you think about it. When children are that small, they grow out of shoes at a ridiculous rate. When money is tight, why waste it on something your child won't use in about a month. I still found it interesting though.

2. No one here smokes and that's hardly an exaggeration. For a woman to smoke here, it is seen as a sign of promiscuity and the men basically only smoke in bars. I find this interesting considering the amount of western culture they seem to imbibe. Somewhere along the lines, this one never caught on. Cool, huh?

3. Another part of western culture that seems incredibly far from reaching here is the whole "Green movement." Trash cans are fairly difficult to find, there's a fair amount of litter, and the most popular way of getting rid of trash seems to be setting fire to it right out in the open. I've seen this done before in Nicaragua, but it can't be that healthy, although I suppose it is cheap.

I'll be starting my internship next week. I will be working with a Ghanaian Psychologist at a Domestic Violence and Rape Clinic. Gender violence is one of the most common, least spoken of problems through out Africa. It starts to get noticed a bit during conflicts due to the use of rape as a weapon but as the conflict fades, so does our attention to these atrocities that still afflict women. It is a common problem in homes, refugee camps, cities and villages all over Africa. Interestingly, just before I left my internship at Columbia University's School of Public Health, one of the professors, Neil Boothby, told me about a recent survey they had done in Northern Uganda. For people who don't know me that well, Northern Uganda is kind of my obsession and where I hope to do a little bit of my masters or Doctoral work. Neil told me that after speaking to a number of women, they ran a survey regarding domestic violence and the result was incredibly alarming. Due to the deconstruction of their society and culture caused by over 20 years of civil war, most people in Northern Uganda live in IDP (Internally Displaced People) Camps. Within these camps, seems to be complete chaos, which results in a horrifying number of rapes and gender violence. This is something I will certainly keep in mind as I begin my internship next week. I look forward to seeing how a Ghanaian psychologists might differ in his/her techniques from those in the United States. I will update of what I find as soon as I can!