TICCS Course and a Visit to T-Poly

On Monday I went out to Tamale Polytechnic (T-Poly) to see my office and meet some of the staff out there. The school is located about 5km south from me and will be very easy to get to by bike. I was first greeted by the principal who has quite a resemblance to Shaft and spoke in the same slow, low tone. From there I was passed on to the Registrar's "right hand man" who took me all throughout the "campus" introducing me as "Miss Shawna from Canada" with a big smile. T-Poly is a large collection of open-air buildings where they offering everything from accounting to fashion design to welding.

On Tuesday I joined the group at the Tamale Institute for Cross Cultural Studies for a week of training on Ghanaian Culture. It is so very fascinating and has been very helpful to quickly gain at least a small understanding of this new world I'm living in. It has been particularly interesting to learn about their understanding of the gender roles which Dagombe (the tribe here in the North) people describe in the following equation: Men= Food Women=Soup. It is the man's job to get the food and keep away the evil spirits and it's the woman's job to make the food into something "sweet" and look after the children. Our two professors are very interesting and I'm already gettting very fond of their Ghanaian accents and expressions. Dr. James always asks us "Are you gettin' me?" in an accent that has a bit of a Jamaican flavour to it and Dr. Salifu always adds "So waz da matta?" with a big grin when he explains parts of the culture (like the concept of time) that boggle a Westerner's mind.

Our mornings consist of 3 related lectures and then we spend the afternoons travelling to various places throughout the city that correlate with the lesson. We have visited the "economic activities" which I briefly described in my last blog, we have been to Dr. David Abdulai's free medical clinic on the outskirts of town, we have gone to seek the "spiritual advice" of a local divine and dined out at a traditional village compound. All of these trips blow my mind as I witness things that I have never seen in my lifetime......I've never seen a crocodile hide concoted with natural chemicals to become leather, I've never visited a leper's residence or gone through an HIV hospice, I've never watched a divine work his fingers through a pile of sand and foretell the future....nor have I used my right hand to eat a big huge clump of mashed yams (fufu) with a Ghaniain village boy, surrounded by mud huts. I'm constantly amazed.

All in the all one of the highlights so far was the village children who were absolutely elated to have our group out to the compound. As soon as we got out of the van they came to hold our hands and asked "Hello!What's your name?Will you be my friend?" in one long string of questions....at which point they smile and we quickly learned they can't understand English. I think all the kids here are going to have me wrapped around their little fingers...they're SO cute!

I begin work on Monday and hope to write again next week : )