Update for Late March

Hello,

I guess I should update! Things have been good in Ghana. I am approaching the end of March soon and the end of the second term here for the JHS students will arrive soon. It is crazy that I will have less than a month with the JHS students in the program. However, I think Laura and Rachel are going to let me work in Antoa for the third summer term. So I hopefully will get to keep all of my tutors.

Tutoring:

Things have been well though. There was an issue with scheduling that I resolved. The SHS tutors will end on March 26^th, but the JHS term goes till April 24^th. This means my tutors will no longer be living at the boarding school and will return home. Luckily the majority of my tutors agreed that they can still come on Tuesday and Thursday. Only one tutor can't, because his family is originally from Accra, and that is too far. Hopefully there are no issues with that...I gave them my number so they can call me if they are late.

My tutors left to right: Fatima, Agnes, John (in the back), Enock, and Isaac

John's JHS students

Agnes' JHS students

Fatima with her JHS students

Isaac with his JHS students

Girl's Leadership Program (GLP)

GLP is also doing well. This week we did a leadership/team building activity that was very fun and the girls enjoyed it a lot. I was frustrated though because we had our meeting and only ten girls showed up. I was understanding after I found out why though. The school kicks out all students that haven't fully paid their term fees before exams. If they don't pay up, they can't take their exams and have to repeat the form year they are in. So that means of my 23 students, 13 of them still owe school fees and were dropped. It is upsetting, especially when you have students who truly value education and want to be in school.

But GLP will be out of commission for a while until the break ends. The students, again, get out at the end of March and start back up on April 20^th. JHS ends the next week and won't be back till May 11^th. Since this is happening, I will not start the program up again till May 4^th. It will be a long time period, but I think scheduling wise it will be the best.

Break Time/Thoughts

So I will be also going on break soon. In that time, I intend to go traveling an bit with my roommate Kaia. She will be flying back to America on May 3^rd, and my other roommate, Rachel, will fly out April 12^th. The weekend of April 12^th I will go to Accra to see a TEDxAccra talk. With Kaia, I will probably bum around Ghana and go hiking with her, and travel to Togo and Benin with her. I think it will be fun, and it will be a chance to go around and see things.

Cause that is one thing I realize I need to do more. Just go out and explore. There are things around Kumasi and just in Ghana that I need to tell myself, “Yes, I will go there and see it.” I sometimes get caught up in the daily search for wifi or the laziness of not wanting to leave Antoa that I forget sometimes. I look forward to the travel though.

MALARIA

In other news. Hey guys I got malaria! It was horrible, and I was stupid because I did not take my medicine or have a mosquito net (not my fault...). So yea, I got sick and had to take the anti-malaria meds. I was fortunate though because the other woman who lives with us, Fad, is a nurse and would check on me and also gave me my malaria test. I've learned my lesson definitely...

I'll try to post more pictures again in time....when I have full internet and not the amount of data I have to pay for on my modem....

Taylor Out

Me and Abide