Best Teacher of the Year Award

This year I was honored to have been nominated and selected to receive the Best Teacher of the Year Award in Ghana as a Foreign Volunteer. This award has been around for 19 years now and it is to recognize those teachers who have done an exceptional job in the teaching field. They have different sectors like Primary, Junior High, Senior High, ICT, Art, etc. The teachers go through several interviews and have to meet a lot of criteria in order to be selected for this award. For the Peace Corps, we don't have any interviews but we are selected by our staff based on the work we are doing at site.

It all happened very fast. My supervisor went on vacation so she was not around when the letter came in informing her that I had to be somewhere on October 2nd which was a Wednesday. The problem was that she told me that Monday, but I was already in Accra (the capital) which meant I had to go back to my site (about 4 hours away) pack my things and come back the next day. I arrived in Wa, Upper West Region, Ghana on September 2nd. It is 13 hours by an overnight bus. Something about these busses is that they keep the AC at a frigid temperature the whole way and the movie volume at a deafening volume so I didn't sleep much. The Upper West Region is known for being very hot and very dry so I was lucky that my first visit was during the rainy season. Most people of this region are Muslim, and are known to be very friendly and helpful. I noticed this as soon as I arrived and it was beautiful. The first day we didn't do anything so I used that opportunity to sleep. Thursday we started our adventures. We went and met the chief of Wa, who is a Muslim. The big white building is the outside of his palace and everyone had to remove their shoes before entering. There is also a picture of some drums which are used in war time, festivals, funerals and basically every situation you can think of. We went to a giant rock that you climb. We had to stop and visit the elders of the town before we were allowed to proceed though so that they could give us their blessing and pray for our safe journey. You are not allowed to take gold, water, or goat products (leather). Women who are menstruating are not allowed to climb, and you are not allowed to urinate on the mountain. Next we went to a place that had "mushroom" rocks. They are kind of shaped like mushrooms which was really cool. We were able to climb the rocks and it was a beautiful scene. They also had a performance for us by the local children where they danced and played xylophone. The next day we had a few ceremonies but we were mostly resting for the big day on Saturday. Saturday was the big ceremony where we were recognized for our successes. It was a fun program and I even got to see the Vice President of Ghana. The first place winner got 65,000 Ghana Cedis to build a house and cars. 2nd and 3rd place got cars, and laptops. Other prizes were cash prizes, gas stoves and double door fridges. I got a lot of African artifacts like beads, leather bags, carvings, and an awesome backpack. That evening we had a nice buffet dinner with a ton of food and there was a live band which played mostly 80s/90s love/rock songs. Everyone was dancing and it was a really good time.
I wasn't able to spend as much time as I had wanted too but I'm hoping to make it back there around Thanksgiving time.
Well that's all for now. Much love! P.S. Couldn't get the pictures to cooperate so they're out of order. It's like a fun guessing game to figure out which is which. Good luck!