Valentine's weekend

Friday Feb. 13th we had an 'emergency' staff meeting. That doesn’t mean anything’s particularly wrong, it just means that you have less than one day’s notice. Teachers don’t have e-mail or even mail slots, so any type of announcement like this is made by putting a flyer on an outside door of the admin building. If you don’t happen to walk by, you’re out of luck! Fortunately I was told about this one. It was important because at the next staff meeting I wanted to show them the LCD projector and a little Power Point I’d done.

The staff meetings are held randomly in the middle of the day and the kids wait patiently in their classrooms while we meet. This one was called for 1:35 PM (love the 5!) which is a riot because no meeting I’ve ever attended in Ghana has come close to starting within 20-30 minutes (sometimes an hr or two) of when it’s supposed to! I had an idea… a friend had given me plastic pocket folder/binders that Staples had donated. I only had about 30 but I decided to hand them out to the first 30 teachers who got to the meeting.

I had about an hour to set up. I laid the folders on the stage. Next I went to set up my computer and the projector. Problem #1 no working power socket in the meeting hall (of course). I grabbed a kid and asked how to get power (I know they have power for the students- Sat night dances/bands etc) and he brought me the world’s LONGEST extension cord. I plugged in a power strip and then the boy took the end to God knows where and voila, I had power :) Problem #2-where can I show it? No screen or front wall-no worries I used a side wall.Let me digress a bit here and tell you that Valentine’s Day is HUGE in Ghana. It has gotten so out of hand that the churches have now stepped in and tried to calm people down. People go out to eat, stay in fancy hotels, buy balloons and chocolate and flowers…just like us. A staff member told me that if you go to any pharmacy on Valentine’s Day for a condom, they’re all sold out! (wishful thinking?) Last year apparently a young woman committed suicide because her lover asked someone else out…

Back to my meeting... I’d brought 5 Valentine’s Pez dispensers from home and decided to give them as door prizes. I quickly cut out 5 red construction paper hearts and masking taped them under 5 random chairs (well 4 random and the Headmistress’)

Ok it’s 1:35…..People dribbled in and loved the folders. They thanked me profusely and laughed at my tactic of getting people to meetings on time. They said the folders were ‘motivation. I ran out of the folders at 2PM and then the Headmistress came in and turned the meeting over to me. I announced that there were 5 hearts hidden under chairs. At first they hesitated and looked like they thought I was crazy…then they started looking...It was sooo much fun! First one teacher found one and screamed like she had won the lottery..then another, then the Headmistress found hers. I was handing out the Pez dispensers left and right. After a few seconds they realized the 5th heart had not been found and it must be under an unused chair. There was suddenly a mad dash (mostly men) for the unused chairs-these are ADULTS remember...and the 5th heart was found.

OK now everyone's smiling and it's time for the presentation. I explained that Power Point was easy to learn and I'd be happy to show anyone how and then I showed my little presentation (nothing special) but again they loved it-I got a 'standing O' (I think more for the folders and Pez dispenser game). Then the Headmistress talked for about an hour. Afterwards people came up and thanked me and told me it was the best faculty meeting yet. Little did I know I'd be modeling how to make faculty meetings a little less painless...guess that comes from over 27 years of them ;)


Briefly (OK I’m not brief I admit it) I’ll tell you that Rebecca and I spent Valentine’s Day in Togo. Togo is a only a 3 hour (1 hr very bumpy) ride away. When you get to the border you buy a VISA(our border guard slipped the ~$30 fee into his shirt pocket) and walk across the border into the capital of Togo, Lome. Instantly everyone’s speaking French and very little English is understood.


I can’t really comment on Togo after only being there a day and a half but I’ll say the city seemed to be a lot of older colonial style buildings in rather poor condition. Togo is not as ‘stable’ as Ghana. The hotel where we stayed was beautiful however and provided some good food, relaxation and opportunity to practice my high school French.

A fun thing about Togo is that in addition to Taxis, they drive people around in mopeds. You hail a moped and sit on the back. One slight issue…we were told it is seen as a sign of cowardice to hold onto the driver’s waist so you either don’t hold on, or you hold on to the bar behind you with white knuckles(like I did). It was a blast though, and Rebecca and I were both glad we did it. Here are other people on mopeds taken from a taxi- there was no way I could take a picture while riding!

Home Sweet Home

Au Revoir! Until next time.
Happy Birthday Teri!