to fill you in

3 am GMT Sept. 1, 2010

So I’m having a hard time sleeping in Ghana and a hard time posting pictures to this blog. I don’t what exactly is the difficulty. I know it has something to do with the sounds (frogs, wild dogs, howling birds…) the dampness is also a factor (I sort of feel like I’m sleeping in wet rags some nights). I don’t mean to be negative Nancy but today this is where I am. I thought I would share my classroom experiences at the university of Ghana. So far I’ve encounter too many students crammed into small classrooms. Ghanaians tend to ram into and over anyone in their path to the lone desk. That gets really annoying. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m past being friendly and respond with the same rude aggression with which I am approached. Today in my lecture of 100 plus students in a room designed to seat maybe 50 the lecturer proceeded to make us watch a VHS on a 30 inch tv screen that about 10 people in the very front row could see and hear. I was not one of those people. It is an extremely difficult environment to attempt to “learn” in. I have learned very quickly that the standard of “quality education” is very different than elite universities in the states. With that in mind, I spent much of my time today contemplating enter the teaching field as I previously thought I would. Primarily, I would do it to help bring quality education to urban youth in America. I have ideas about how to transform education and spaces in which people are meant to learn. I feel like the quality of a nation’s education is directly relational to the “quality” of it’s people. By that I mean what type of people a society produces in terms of their goals, contributions to the world, views, etc. Not that one person is better than another per say but perhaps education
is a vehicle by which people can be equipped to do and give more. I’m still developing these ideas and working them out in my head.

I’m blessed enough to have regular internet access in my room and I have the audacity to be frustrated that it’s inconsistent. (Privilege is an addiction)

I also wanted to mention some alarming things I’ve seen on this campus: (in no particular order)
• A monkey named Joe tied to a tree
• Massive terminate/ ant mounds everywhere that stand taller than me !! scary!!!
• Many lizards both large and small
• Wild dogs that roam around, most of them are starving
• Starving horses (I was not an eye witness but the pics were alarming)
• Men and women indiscreetly urinating in public places (this is unfortunately really common)
• I guess I could say people carrying things on there heads but it gets typical

With that said, I guess I’ll return to my bed and continue reading until the sun rises and I find something else to do.

Good morning good world!

-Camea Osborn