emotional splat.
Oh boy... for once I have so much to say, but it's all kinda dammed up in my head right now,
so this might not come out right.
For starters, I've been keeping to drumming for other dance classes. Last night there was this drum beat that was so hot I wanted to force the whole world to listen to it because it just might make everything better. Ugh, that makes no sense, but I'll try to get a nice recording and show ya'll what I mean. Amazing. The room was CRAMMED with sweaty people dancing and laughing and going wild and I was up on the stage with the drummers just watching and learning and loving every single mili-second of it, through my own sweat and exhaustion. Just the thought of it again literally gives me shivers up my spine. It's just... incredible.
Today I started my internship (which is what they call community service basically). I'll be teaching at a rural school in Nima, a predominately Muslim area. We got off the trotro (which was hotter today than any other days and I was soaked in sweat just sitting there) on the main road and disappeared between two buildings and were suddenly transported to, well, Ghana. Sometimes I feel as if the real Ghana is hiding before my very eyes. But here we were walking down narrow alley ways of dirt roads and mud homes and palm fronds and little tiny shack stores and kids all over... and I felt home. It almost made me cry, I had to honestly try really hard to fight it back. It was just so reminiscent of Ecuador... The one thing I'm starting to learn about travelling is the more places you go, the more you realize you haven't seen. But at the same time, you begin to realize how similar everything really is.
We (another girl on CIEE, the founder of the school and I) arrived at a wooden door that opened into a dirt courtyard with wooden-walled collapsable classrooms around the perimeter and were greeted (or should I say attacked) by little kids. Me, being the only white one in the group, got seiged by tots (ok, they were like 4 years old) trying to touch my skin, hair, clothes, rings, purse... anything. They kept calling me "white" in French since it's a French/English school (no luck for me there!). They grabbed every appendage (and I mean EVERY) and even began to fight over who was holding my hand. Madness... the teachers were no help, there are only four, and so I started a "game" where basically you make a chain of kids and run around in circles like a directionless train. Twas quite cute. We determined that Dani and I will each be teaching two days a week for two hours, covering math and whatever else we want. I'm gonna basically do virtues classes like I did in Ecuador, just modify them for the kids here (and in English... yikes, that'll be hard). Still even with that game plan, Dani and I looked at each other with these faces of overwhelmedness.... I mean, we didn't know we'd be having our own classes just like that.
Leaving the school was like finding your way out of a labyrinth, except nothing was trying to kill you. Just an eating fear I guess... don't really know what I'm scared of. Failure I guess? I want to do a good job with these kids, but I'm honestly kinda scared. I know they hit kids at this school. I know that two months isn't a long time to do anything at all. And I know more than anything that this will end up teaching me a lot more than I end up teaching them.
It was market day in Nima so we had to push through throngs of people. It was overwhelming, again. I'm beginning to realize more and more that I don't like huge groups of people. It makes me feel all weird and fidgety. The sounds of honking trotros and taxis (one of which hit me with its rear-view mirror at about .04 miles an hour), images of men and women with thick khol liner around their eyes, amazingly colorful fabrics, a myriad of strings of beads, the smell of dried fish and of thousands of other sweating bodies around me really startled me into... I dunno. Pensiveness? I just know the trotro ride home was eerily silent in my head, just trying to digest all the sights, sounds and feelings of the day. And it was only noon.
I can't quite explain how it all made me feel, but it made me feel something. Something big. Like something in my chest made a quiet explosion, but there are no outward scars to prove it. I came home, meekly greeted all my housemates and went to my room (after fixing a quick lunch) and just sat there for a bit. Then I did something I've been craving: I prayed. I mean, I do my obligatory prayer and my morning and night time prayers almost every day (at least I'm not lying)... but man does it feel good to pray when you just WANT to do it. I sat on my bed and sang the Tablet of Ahmad as little melodies came out, and it was the first time in a long time I've cried during that Tablet. I read a Hidden Word which also made me cry... and then had my own little music devotional, singing every loud, bluesy prayer/song I knew until my heart felt better.
I almost feel as if anyone reading this is gonna think I just wrote a page of nothing, because I can't wordify what it is that happened to me today. But it was big. I don't know how I'm different, but I am. Man, does spitting it out in semi-words feel good though.
so this might not come out right.
For starters, I've been keeping to drumming for other dance classes. Last night there was this drum beat that was so hot I wanted to force the whole world to listen to it because it just might make everything better. Ugh, that makes no sense, but I'll try to get a nice recording and show ya'll what I mean. Amazing. The room was CRAMMED with sweaty people dancing and laughing and going wild and I was up on the stage with the drummers just watching and learning and loving every single mili-second of it, through my own sweat and exhaustion. Just the thought of it again literally gives me shivers up my spine. It's just... incredible.
Today I started my internship (which is what they call community service basically). I'll be teaching at a rural school in Nima, a predominately Muslim area. We got off the trotro (which was hotter today than any other days and I was soaked in sweat just sitting there) on the main road and disappeared between two buildings and were suddenly transported to, well, Ghana. Sometimes I feel as if the real Ghana is hiding before my very eyes. But here we were walking down narrow alley ways of dirt roads and mud homes and palm fronds and little tiny shack stores and kids all over... and I felt home. It almost made me cry, I had to honestly try really hard to fight it back. It was just so reminiscent of Ecuador... The one thing I'm starting to learn about travelling is the more places you go, the more you realize you haven't seen. But at the same time, you begin to realize how similar everything really is.
We (another girl on CIEE, the founder of the school and I) arrived at a wooden door that opened into a dirt courtyard with wooden-walled collapsable classrooms around the perimeter and were greeted (or should I say attacked) by little kids. Me, being the only white one in the group, got seiged by tots (ok, they were like 4 years old) trying to touch my skin, hair, clothes, rings, purse... anything. They kept calling me "white" in French since it's a French/English school (no luck for me there!). They grabbed every appendage (and I mean EVERY) and even began to fight over who was holding my hand. Madness... the teachers were no help, there are only four, and so I started a "game" where basically you make a chain of kids and run around in circles like a directionless train. Twas quite cute. We determined that Dani and I will each be teaching two days a week for two hours, covering math and whatever else we want. I'm gonna basically do virtues classes like I did in Ecuador, just modify them for the kids here (and in English... yikes, that'll be hard). Still even with that game plan, Dani and I looked at each other with these faces of overwhelmedness.... I mean, we didn't know we'd be having our own classes just like that.
Leaving the school was like finding your way out of a labyrinth, except nothing was trying to kill you. Just an eating fear I guess... don't really know what I'm scared of. Failure I guess? I want to do a good job with these kids, but I'm honestly kinda scared. I know they hit kids at this school. I know that two months isn't a long time to do anything at all. And I know more than anything that this will end up teaching me a lot more than I end up teaching them.
It was market day in Nima so we had to push through throngs of people. It was overwhelming, again. I'm beginning to realize more and more that I don't like huge groups of people. It makes me feel all weird and fidgety. The sounds of honking trotros and taxis (one of which hit me with its rear-view mirror at about .04 miles an hour), images of men and women with thick khol liner around their eyes, amazingly colorful fabrics, a myriad of strings of beads, the smell of dried fish and of thousands of other sweating bodies around me really startled me into... I dunno. Pensiveness? I just know the trotro ride home was eerily silent in my head, just trying to digest all the sights, sounds and feelings of the day. And it was only noon.
I can't quite explain how it all made me feel, but it made me feel something. Something big. Like something in my chest made a quiet explosion, but there are no outward scars to prove it. I came home, meekly greeted all my housemates and went to my room (after fixing a quick lunch) and just sat there for a bit. Then I did something I've been craving: I prayed. I mean, I do my obligatory prayer and my morning and night time prayers almost every day (at least I'm not lying)... but man does it feel good to pray when you just WANT to do it. I sat on my bed and sang the Tablet of Ahmad as little melodies came out, and it was the first time in a long time I've cried during that Tablet. I read a Hidden Word which also made me cry... and then had my own little music devotional, singing every loud, bluesy prayer/song I knew until my heart felt better.
I almost feel as if anyone reading this is gonna think I just wrote a page of nothing, because I can't wordify what it is that happened to me today. But it was big. I don't know how I'm different, but I am. Man, does spitting it out in semi-words feel good though.