Hi!
Wow I didn’t realize until I started writing this to you that I’ve forgotten so much about the trip!!! I will just have to highlight things in a probably inaccurate order.
My first trip to Mathias’ village: We went to the funeral which was in many ways the same as a Christian burial here. There were 3 people being buried at the same time though, and the ceremony went on basically all day long with people coming and going through the church grounds. There was a marching band playing there with young kids, and a really small boy went up and played the trumpet like a pro. Mathias’ mom is about 80 years old and looks like she is 45-50. She cooked amazing meals all weekend for me. She even gave me a beautiful cloth that is apparently very valuable as it is a bunch of local, traditional fabrics sewn together. We spent such a large majority of the weekend walking and talking to his family. But in a strange way it was really fun. We went to the funeral grounds early on where there was traditional drumming and dancing going on. They taught me the dance and it became a sensation. All weekend long I had to dance for everyone we saw because they’ve barely seen white people, yet none of them has seen a white person dance like that (in their traditional way). Basically, it was a weekend full of incredible hospitality - drinking, dancing, and eating in a gorgeous village. As we were leaving early in the morning, Mathias got a phone call saying that his cousin, who I had been dancing with merely the night before, had died mysteriously. He was in his mid-thirties. This became one of the reasons I went back to the village for a second time.
Before I talk about the second village trip I’ll briefly talk about my second placement. I began working at the Kaneshie daycare within walking distance of where we stayed. The first day I was there, I thought I would just be observing and teaching one subject, but they had me teach a class of 20 four year-olds by myself for the entire day. I was exhausted very quickly because there was absolutely no discipline when the kids are used to being beaten by a cane. I also had a hard time explaining things to the kids. In a lot of ways the placement was great because the kids were really cute and it was a great learning experience. The kids had the shortest attention span ever and I literally had to dance around like a clown to keep them interested. As soon as they weren’t interested they would start beating on each other and I would hear dramatic little voices “Aunty Becky he’s beaten’ me!” and as a response...”IT’S A LIE! IT’S A LIE”. And then there would be like 5 of these fights going on at once at which point I was ready to cry or scream or fight myself. So I would tell stories and play games and do magic white lady tricks and try not to laugh when they gave me confused looks about most of what I said. The best day was the last day. I went to Kaneshie market looking for “treats” for them. At first I felt bad because I didn’t have anything left for them - I had given it all to the other placement. So at Kaneshie I was just looking for anything I could use to entertain them and I found balloons, buttons, string, candy, toilet paper, and a few other odd items. We made necklaces with the buttons, we danced, we played keep up the balloons, we created chaos with the toilet paper and string, we had a picnic and scavenger hunt, and all sorts of things. So basically it was a magical last day full of whimsical fun.
Alright - there’s most of it. There’s still the last trip to Dzodze to tell you about. Tell me stories about life as a med student. I’m obviously not good at condensing things, so write as much as you can! Its so nice to hear from you :)
p.s. I will probably post this email on my blog because I feel bad about not finishing that off properly lol.
