Reaching the half way mark

This has been an interesting week. On Monday 5 more Sabre volunteers came to help at Bantuma. That makes 12 of us. A huge number for a school who rarely gets any help at all. We have spent lots of time with children. Something they seem to crave.
On Tuesday it was the start of Bakatue Festival so school was dismissed at 10am. This was my third time at this festival. It is a grand display of African Tradition. Every one gets excited. Because of the festival, school attendence was pretty low on Wednesday. However, Class 6 had their practical for life skills which meant, cooking a real meal! I was honored to be invited to enjoy the food the Headmaster after the children finished. Admittedly, I was frightened of eating food cooked in a school setting but am glad to report that as of today I am still not ill! I guess they should all get an A+ as everything was also very delicious (I love the food here!)
Thursday brought an invitation to a conference Sponsored by UNICEF on the new KG cirrulum. We discussed the best way to implement the standards and then started listing the barriers that will be the cause of the impemention taking a longer time than hoped. After the conference I was even more conviced that Sabre's efforts to implement the standards in this area is the way we should go. It will be a generation before this government will be able to get it all done!
Saturday morning brought me to Cape Coast for food and stuff, where I passed a local high school celebrating the 100 year aniversary.
In the afternoon, I met up with Andrew, a young Fraterity Brother of George's who attends Case Western in Cleveland and hopes to go to medical school. He is here volunteering in Cape Coast for 6 weeks with a group that does outreach in the Rural areas for HIV/Aids.
We went to town so we could see the closing ceremony for Bakatue. Rudolph, Francis, Solo, Paul, and Richard soon found us as they wanted to meet Andrew who is not much older than they are while I neglected to take any pictures of the group, it was fun to watch them. I luckily did not forget to take pictures of the Ressional back to the palace of all the area Chiefs and various Elders etc. I also have some video that I will post on YouTube when I return home or when I am not paying by the upload!
I can not take pictures or video or find the right words to share with you the feeling of being here. There is so much joy and caring and during Bakatue and World Cup the pride and celebrating is so uplifting. Everyone watches out for me. The villagers where I live, the teachers at the school, even Taxi drivers worry about where I am going and how I am going to get there when I vary my routine!

Some Pictures of the week:

Bakatue Festival




The Library in Action after school, children playing with pictures we cut from the clock box, volunteers in the classrooms, volunteers spending time with children after school, a small boy with flip-flops on his hands acting as goalie playing football with a water bottle, and our favorite library patron the 2year old Patience.