my house

my house

view from my house - the big house opposite belongs to the vice principal who has the friendly daughters.

my garden!!!!!! the ground is a bit greener now but there are no houses for miles

Folie, Folie, Folie

I am getting quite annoyed with this chant now – I don’t mind the children calling it when I cycle through town to get my attention, they stop when I wave. It’s their way of saying hello look at me. But when teenagers and even adults chant I think it’s a little rude. I particularly have a problem when the nursery school at TUTCO chant. They went mad the other week and about 40 2-4 year olds chanted over and over and over. I was well out of site before they stopped. The next day when I cycled past they started up again, so this time I stopped and told them to stop chanting folie as I am not a stranger, I live here and my name is Lucy. This confused them for a bit and then one little girl said ok. Now when I pass by I get lots of Madam Lucy hello, Madam Lucy bye bye. This seems to be catching as now when I cycle through town I get a few madam Lucy greetings thrown into the folie chants. The other vols have also told me they have been greeted with Madam Lucy hello as they pass by…

Things are a changing…

I found the Easter break here very tough – when I am not working there really isn’t too much to do in Tumu and when lights go off a length of time there is even less.

I chatted to the other VSO’s and told them that I am finding it really hard to settle, and they told me that it can be quite often like that here, but, then you get the good moments which far out weigh the hard times. I looked at this optimistically and finally I had my first “this is a good moment”

I spent the Easter break very much being a stranger on campus again – the untrained teachers come in to take classes, with them they bring their children. As they are from the rural villages they don’t often see white people and just stare, rather than calling out. So many times I would be in my house and suddenly I get a feeling I am being watched – I then catch two or three sets of eves peeping over the window sill just watching.

Anyway they left as suddenly as they came and the regular students returned and my first cycle through campus was interrupted many times by students stopping to greet and have a chat, no more folie or staring – now it’s a wave and a greeting and once again is a pleasure to move through campus.

Finally an update...

Its been a while since I last updated my blog, this could be seen as good and bad, good because I have been so busy with work and life in Tumu. But bad cos there not much new to say.

My work at TUTCO has fallen into some kind of routine, a routine where I am still not sure what is really going on but one that every Monday I seem to struggle through and then ok for the rest of the week. I am still not sure how the college semesters are structured and am constantly surprised if the classes are taking place or not.

On my return from my trip south I genuinely thought I had a few weeks to finish the semester and go through all the topics the students need to be taught, however, I was shocked into reality when I was told half way through my first day back that the next week students would be writing continual assessment quizzes and were to take two in ICT, one theory and one Practical… this was fine I thought until I realised that the practical was to be on PowerPoint and that not all students had used PowerPoint before. So that week was to be a crash course in PowerPoint and how to create a multimedia presentation in 10 easy steps. The practicals were then to take place the weekend after the written quizzes. The students were great and took it very seriously, however, it showed how at present we don’t have enough computers – at some points when they had the opportunity to come and practice we had about 40 students vying for 5 PC’s. We hope this will soon be rectified as we have received 10 new computers but unfortunately have to wait for the suppliers to come and install them. I just hope it is in time for the next academic year. I hope the next batch of students can benefit from them.


So that was four weeks ago since then I have gone through the briefest of brief overviews of access and excel… I just hope it is enough for their final exams which start next week. I have seen the previous semester exam and if the questions are similar to that one I am not too worried – here’s an example: question 10 – Indicate as T (true) or F (false) in the space provided… A computer is made from wood - Ok so that was the easiest question but none of them are too hard (I hope!!!)

Once the exams are over the DBE II students will be leaving – having today found out their placements for the teaching practice. I will then have a couple more weeks with the JSS children (I think) and then the school term ends. I plan to start to train some of the college tutors on basic computer skills during the summer and write a supporting document for the curriculum and other training documents. Then it starts all over again with a few weeks of this is a mouse and this is how to use it…

The other big news is that we finally have Internet connection in Tumu, what a difference it will make. I have been able to check my emails so regularly recently that I am ahead of them and don’t always have any new ones… on a work note it will enable me to gather various research material as only having one source (Encarta) is not enough – there are no books at college on ICT or computers a bit difficult when having to explain things like how the Internet works and the benefits of a wireless network in a classroom… things I have not really ever had to explain before!

Life is pretty quiet at the moment, the current VSO volunteers are coming to the end of their time here, Katherine and Stephanie are already on their way home – taking the scenic route by cycling through West Africa to Spain – you can read about their adventures by clicking on the link on the right, Shewart and Bikeshorts do Africa (sorry K&S for the name I have given your link but it still makes me laugh!!) - there are also some pictures of Tumu on it – I have not been too good at uploading photo’s but now that the Internet is here I promise I will do better.



Brianne leaves in August and then hopefully new volunteers will arrive in September. I can’t believe then I will be the established volunteer in town and be the one to introduce the new vols to the wonders of Tumu – the endless restaurants, bars and nightclubs, the high street full of endless clothes stores and supermarkets – ok the chop bars, spots and …, and the weekly and daily market and folie shops, that’s a couple of hours covered! So the rest of the time can be spent getting comfortable at Tani’s (Best Bar of the Upper West 2006).

September is going to be a busy month my parents are coming over which I am very much looking forward to and we will go on a bit of a tour around Ghana.

Stop Press: Tumu moves with the times!

I am very happily writing this sitting in Tumu’s very own brand new Internet Café its very exciting… I hope this means that I will be able to update my blog more regularly and even upload some photos... perhaps all after the world cup has ended!

There is a great atmosphere around town at the moment, every shop that owns a tv has it plugged in and switched on outside the shop and there are usually crowds of people watching it... my only choice now is which shop do I go to on saturday for the next Ghana game.

i'll keep you posted