Physics of the Quest

So I recently watched the movie Eat Pray Love which is a movie starring Julia Roberts. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's about a woman who takes a year long journey through Italy, India, and Bali (that's probably spelled really wrong so sorry about that) to basically get a change from her life in America, learn about the world, learn about herself, and experience new things. She has good days, some bad days, and some really bad days. She faces language barriers, cultural barriers, meets some amazing people, and learns a lot of new things. Anyways, I feel as though many of the main plot points resemble my life these days. At the end of the movie she says, "In the end, I've come to believe in something I call "The Physics of the Quest." A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you." - Eat Pray Love. I started thinking about this and realized how much I have learned since I've been in Ghana. I even learn from the small children or from people who can't speak any English. Even on the bad days I learn something new and something wonderful, which makes it all worth the diarrhea and the harassment and the poor test scores and the serious lack of good chocolate. I will regard every single person I meet as a teacher because we all have something to share in this life. I can only hope that I will be able to share as much as I've been given...
Alright, enough with that stuff. Here's the list.
1. Well I told you all that I was sick a few weeks ago. Strangely enough it seems every single person in my village also found out. I was visited by all of the teachers at my school, and from the primary, and from the kindergarten. I'd say I had at least one visitor an hour for like 3 days straight. Part of me loves this, and part of me hates this. In America when we are sick, especially if it involves the gastrointestinal stuff, we don't really like to tell people. It's not like that here. In fact it's the other way around. If you don't tell people you are/were sick they become angry with you. Thankfully I only missed two days of school, but even that put me behind quite a bit.
2. We had our first staff meeting last week. It was a combined meeting between the kindergarten, primary, and JHS because we are such a small staff. We talked about quite a lot of things that I didn't even know existed. For example, we have things called thrift-and-loan, and welfare. They are programs in place where you put in certain amount of money every month. The welfare is mandatory and the thrift-and-loan is optional. Say for example you need money for something, but you don;t have it. You are able to take money from the thrift-and-loan and it has an interest rate (which I don't remember, maybe 10 percent?), so when you pay the money back everyone who has put money in has made a little bit of money. The idea is that at the end of the year (I think) we all get back the money we put in, plus the interest we have collected. Since Peace Corps Volunteers aren't allowed to make any money for their personal gain, I would use the money to help pay for a student's school fees or something. The welfare is similar but every month all of the teachers put in 5 cedis (there's 16 of us I believe - so 80 cedis a month), and its used for things like birthdays, deaths in the family, marriages, having a baby, and an end of year celebration. Each of these occasions has a set pay out fee that the person gets if one of these things happens. For example, on your birthday you get 50 cedis. Yay! We also talked about things like forcing the students in the primary school to speak English because several of them can't by the time they get to form 1 in the JHS, which makes my job impossible. Also, we need to be present, on time, every day. Typical staff meeting type things.
3. Most exciting thing recently was the traditional Ghanaian wedding that was at my house over the weekend. I say traditional because everyone here was calling it traditional, but to me it seemed very westernized. Some aspects are different, but many are very similar. So on Saturday morning around 10am the two families met to discuss the things that will be given as gifts. Typical things include alcohol, tobacco, and fabric. It was explained to me that the bride will take someone to be her "father" that is usually another family member or close friend, but is not her actual father. This "father" does a lot of the negotiating and is very active in the wedding. The brides family sits on one side, the grooms family on the other. The groom was sitting with his family, but the bride was inside still until much later in the ceremony. They do prayers, introductions (Which included mother, father, grandparents, and for some reason me. Even though I've never met the bride of the groom, but I just so happen to have white skin which makes me an important honorary guest), greetings and the man’s family explains why the bride’s family should allow her to go to their family. Then they collect money “to pay for the brides flight from America to Ghana" (actual words). Several women went into the room and made a procession to lead the bride outside. They pretended they were a plane (coming from America) and the bride comes out and sits in a chair near her side of the family. They then do a little service about how a man and a woman should be in a marriage and then the brides family physically gives her to the man and his family. Then the pastor comes and blesses the ring (they didn’t have one for the man, I don’t know why) they do the typical man putting the ring on the brides hand but instead of kissing they hug. Public display of affection is not accepted here. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that. Then there was dancing and similar to how they do it in the US you go and give the new couple money as they are dancing. This whole thing went about 5 hours straight. Then there was a reception with music, food, drinking, and dancing. This was all done on Saturday. On Sunday both sides of the family come back together to distribute the gifts. Most of the gifts were alcoholic: gin, whiskey, and some other spirits. There was also tobacco, and several other wrapped things that I don’t know, but I have been told that usually you include some nice fabric for the mother of the bride because of the fact that she carried the woman on her back for several years. I was told that the man is the one who pays for all of the things involved in the wedding. Separating out the gifts took about 3 hours because there was a lot of arguing and going back and forth. At the end, everyone present must take some sort of drink that was bought for the wedding: beer, spirits or soda which represents that you were a witness to the wedding. Also there was a lot of people at the wedding with cameras and since I’m a white person I managed to be in about 70% of these photos, even though I didn't know anyone. All in all it was a lot of fun.
4. Extra classes have started so I'm extra busy. Teaching ICT to 30 students with 1 computer is not easy-o.
5. There are designated weeks when all teachers are supposed to give class tests so this past week was test week. That means I gave 3 tests to the form ones, 1 to the form twos, and 1 to the form threes. UGH! I had some students who wrote literally nothing. Didn't even try to guess something that we had talked about in class, the just sat there for the whole class period, and wrote nothing. Some students did exceptionally well, and most of the students did about average. I had 6 form one students that I caught cheating. Side note: cheating on homework and tests, even standardized tests, is very common here. They learn this from the time they are in the primary schools, and it is a very hard habit to break. The problem is they aren't very good at it. They seem to think I can see them when they blatantly bring out their note books. So anyways, as punishment I made the 6 students come to my house and hand wash my clothes and fetch water for my poly tank. You may be thinking "Oh my God Sam, how could you do such a terrible thing? Are you even allowed to do that?" Well in reality this is a far less punishment than they are used to because the other teachers would cain them, but I'm not allowed to use a cain (Peace Corps rules). Also, I could (and most volunteers do) just make the students wash my clothes and fetch water just because without it being a punishment.
6. On Friday we had sports day which means all of the kids went and played soccer in the field. The teachers and a few older students played volleyball... have I mentioned I'm really, really bad at volleyball? Well, I am, and I'm pretty sure I embarrassed myself in front of several teachers and students. I told them that next sports day we are going to play a sport that I'm good at so I chose ultimate frisbee. We'll see how that goes.
7. Other notes:
-Some of us bought cheese in Ho. For a tiny block it's 10 cedis, which is a lot to us but it was delicious.
-I'm thinking of starting a boys/girls club with my form 3 students where the girls and boys meet separately every other week to talk about thing like puberty, sex, STDs, nutrition, and whatever else they have questions about. I asked them if they were interested and they said yes so I have to talk to my counterpart and headmaster now.
-I get "scolded" by my landlord/Ghanaian father about what time I should be home at, and who I should and should not talk to.

Yah I think that's about it for now. Until next time :)
P.S. Don't ever think for a second that a person won't be able to teach you something new, we can learn something from every experience if we just open our eyes.