John's Next Step

Peace Corps Volunteers know that life goes on back home while we are away in service. We worry about our families – their health and well being back home. Since we are not around we don't know everything going on back home. We don't always know how people are really doing. Of course, the same is true of our families and friends who worry about our health and well being in our remote communities. They have an even harder time understanding what and how we are doing in a different culture under rather austere living conditions. Even with skype calls and blogs it is not always (not ever) possible to let people back home know how we are really doing. My daughter's wedding gives me the opportunity to come home to visit and to reconnect with family and friends. Spending time together in the same room is a good way to reconnect. Seeing each other and spending time together has been very nice. I spent this week with my mom and family in Northwest Arkansas. My family g...

I took the flight from Accra to New York to Atlanta to St. Louis. On Saturday I got up at 5 am Accra time and got into St. Louis at 11 pm central 20 something hours later at Accra is 5 hours ahead of St. Louis. It was much different from my 20 hours bus ride from Nandom to Accra on Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday late morning). I did not sleep on the plane and it was like 4 in the morning Accra time when I arrived so I was a zombie who could hardly think when I landed. I'm thankful that my son picked me up and let me recover for a few days. I got to hold Andy, my first grandchild, on Sunday morning. He is a cute baby at 9 months. Chris and Missy are doing well and the house looks fine.  Missy, Andy, and Chris Holding Andy. On Tuesday I was less of a zombie and I took the train from St. Louis to Kansas City to see Samantha and Brandon. The train trip was a very nice trip. I could get use to traveling in a first world country. My favorite (and only) daugh...

My bag is packed and I'm ready to travel to see family and friends. I am in Accra for mid-service medical exams and my flight back home. I will be leaving for the airport in less than 24 hours as I write this short post! I already have my boarding passes. It has been about 436 days since I started Peace Corps training and service. The first three months was training as a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) and one year as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCT). One year left in service. But who's counting? My estimated close of service (COS) is Monday August 15, 2016. This date is flexible with something like 30 days plus or minus to spread out those leaving the country and to allow last minute work on the site. Looking back and looking forward At the half way point I've gotten a lot out of my service in Ghana so far and hopefully given at least a little to the students and the community. Dropping in the middle of a foreign community to find your place and figure out what...

This week I will be traveling to Accra for a mid-service medical checkup and then MY FLIGHT HOME TO SEE FAMILY AND FRIENDS and MY DAUGHTER'S WEDDING!!!! So this past week I have been doing last minute clean up things and packing. I needed to move my earthworms from the temporary location by my front door to their new home under the rabbit cages. However, as I attempted to dig them up the ground was woven with teak roots from the trees close by. Teak trees have a way of stunting the germination of seeds and the growth of other roots so I had a problem. I ended up digging a trench around the flowerbed so I could cut the major roots and hopefully be able to use the flower beds for my original long term purpose – an herb garden. I cut through four fairly large roots so hopefully that helps the growing herbs. One of the larger roots that I needed to cut.  My cutlass and pick ax in the background Spearmint on the right and basil and oregano on the left in front of my p...

Actually, it is always “summer” here – just sometimes wet and sometime dry.  The students will be back after 6 weeks off or so – returning on September the 8 th  so not a long break. The last day celebration was held on the second to the last day of school. The day started with the killing of the pig at 6 am. The cooking of rice, soup, and meat started later in the day. The parents were told to come around 9 but we did not expect to start until 10. This is the primary farming season and everything planted some weeks ago needing to be weeded. The weeding is done by hand with the hoe.  Acres and acres of weeding around each plant by all available hands to do the work.  The technique basically scratches the surface and builds up the loose soil around the plants. Most of the parents stayed at farm rather than attending the celebration. By 10ish we started seeing some parents arrive and most everyone who was going to attend was seated at 11 – about 20 parents ...

The form 3 students took their final exams some weeks ago. The exams are standardize and given to all students in the country to determine if they will continue on to high school. A high score leads to a placement in a better high school. High schools in Ghana are boarding schools. This past week was exam week for the form 1 and form 2 students. The district standardized the test for the form 2 students this year to determine who would advance to form 3. The students took the tests in the school but then the test were sent to other local schools to be graded. I teach ICT to the form 2 students, but ICT was not one of the subjects tested by the district. Therefore, I did not need to grade form 2. Our school has the second largest number of form 2 students and the school that we are grading has one of the smallest number of form 2 students. I teach math and ICT to form 1 students. In our school the teachers write their own test and also grade their tests. This allows us t...

This past week I took part in a media training and production week in Accra. About 30 Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) attended the week long session. We had 25 from Ghana and invited PCV for countries in the region wanting to start a media group – Tanzania, Senegal, and Malawi. We also had two people from the headquarters: Meleia and Emily. I was the only 50+ volunteer and I felt like the only volunteer without recent video, audio, or editing experience. However, most volunteers did not have experience in all three areas of production so we were all there to learn. The week was divided into about a day of training and then working on multi-media projects. Most of the time was spent on filming and editing videos. I worked on three projects for the rest of the week. One of the projects was for the new Peace Corps Pledge that Meleia wrote. We produced a video that looks really nice. I think it will be posted on the offical Peace Corps channel – but I don't know when. I...