Impromptu Dance Party in Ghana

Its Official, i have now been in Ghana for a little over 7 months and have been a PCV for 4 of those months! How has the time just flown by? I know they say that as you age, time just slips by you, but why did that have to be one of the things that are true? Why couldn’t it have been like Santa and proved to be wrong (or is that the biggest ruse of all????) During the first 2 months at site, life was....should i say a bit difficult for me. I had to deal with the fact that i was alone....yet surrounded by people 24/7. It’s odd to be treated like a rock star just because of the color of my skin; I know that it will be difficult to go back to the states, where i will no longer get special treatment, because of the way i look.
I won’t lie to you, i did not do much those first 2-3 months; i read ALOT of books, watched some TV shows on my net book(when i had electricity), and walked around town. Again, for me, the hardest part of all of this was that i did not have anyone to really talk to in my village or anywhere near me. The closest volunteers to me are around 40 mins by taxi....when i can get a taxi that is. But, things are much better now. I have made many friends in the community, I painted my room, and made it mine, and got a cat.... I have also been laying the ground work for some projects!
Project 1: I have established a Shea Parkland in my community, this means that i worked with MOFA (Ministry of forestry and agriculture) to set a piece of land apart that is only going to be used to cultivate Shea. For the past few years, my community has been cutting down large, mature Shea trees for charcoal...Well that just won’t work for me! So i am setting up education for the farmers, giving them other options to use for charcoal and setting up the parkland. I am also going to be planting Grafted Shea (this is a process that makes trees come to maturation much faster, and bear fruit quicker) in this parkland.
Project 2: I am setting up a big brother, big sister program, where the JHS students will read story books to the Primary (elementary age for those in America) school, to practice their English, as well as having the younger kids get better exposure to English.
Project 3: I am going to be working with a Cashew farmer in my area, getting contracts for him so that he can get the best price for the nuts.
Project 4: This is my favorite, and going to take the longest; I am going to form a women’s group that will harvest honey! I am going to build (and when i say I, i mean a carpenter) around 6 hives, and then harvest the honey to sell at my local market. Women here, do not get many opportunities to make something of themselves, so i am going to do something about that, and try to get them to be able to do all the harvesting themselves. One of the biggest problems that Peace Corps Volunteers have is that they start something, but once they leave...so does the project..It’s all about sustainability people!
A small story about daily life in Ghana: Last night, a small group of us went out to get some Egg Sammies (aka egg sandwiches, one of the best things to get in Ghana) from a vender down the street. Since this is Ghana, someone near the vender was playing Very loud music, as they do at most times of the day and night...as we were waiting for our sammies, a man comes up to order one too...One of the people with me, starts to dance bit to the music, well let me tell you, Ghanaians LOVE to dance, so the man starts to dance with Jake (fellow PCV) than the other guy in our group (Jordan) gets into it as well! And we end up having an impromptu to dance party, at like 10 at night, eating egg sammies, and Chilin with this random Ghanaian....That is my life now....Wonderful 

Dyslexia: My Trials and Tribulations

This is a post/story to all who have been diagnosed with any type of learning disability and for those who try to understand how we view the world.

When I was younger, I did many things that my parents and teachers thought were just me trying to be ornery and difficult, but what they did not understand, was that when they said pull,  I was pulling with all my might, it just happened to be in the wrong direction. How was I to know that I was doing wrong, when what I heard meant one thing to you and had a completely different meaning for me. One example that my mother always tells me is this:  When she was teaching me to put my shoes on, she would say to push my foot into the shoe, and I did, but in my own way; I pulled my foot straight back, because in my mind, that is what push meant; my mother than burst into tears, realizing that there was more going on here than just a stubborn child’s willfulness.  My life before first grade was amazing, all rainbows and butterflies if you will, but then I met my first grade teacher, Mrs. Judy Suker and she changed the course of the rest of my life.

She, like my mother, noticed that I did some things differently and looked a bit more closely. At the time, early nineties, dyslexia was not a term many used or even knew much about, but somehow, I was fortunate enough to get the one teacher who knew the signs and was able to figure out what my problem might be.  From there I went into a world wind of meetings, tests and diagnoses. Much of this I don’t have a strong remembrance of; I remember getting a lot of candy and toys whenever I finished a test and getting to go to downtown Orlando often. Everyone was relieved to finally know why it seemed that I did things so off and opposite of the world. I was then put into “special” classes where I would get more attention and come to a better understanding of my “problem”. I had a tutor during school hours, as well as after school, to help me learn to read and process information correctly. At this point in my story, I am now in third grade and am starting to reorganize how my brain views and processes the world. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Bevan, helped me more than any other teacher had so far in my young life; she taught me to be proud of who I was, no matter the problems I might have in school and in life;   she taught me I was more than just my diagnoses, more than just my “problem”.

Let me take a moment to help you understand how I view the world, or should I say, how my mother describes to others how she thinks I must view it, since it would be difficult for me (even at this point in my life), to know if I truly see the world differently from the rest;  

“Imagine if you will, going into your favorite store; you know where everything is located, and can trust that it will always stay in the same place each time you enter. Now imagine you enter this same store, and everything is on the opposite side it once was, that is how my daughter see’s the world.”-Vicki May

As stated above, I cannot attest to if this is true or not , since I have only ever seen through my own eyes, and medical science has yet to create a….if you will, head transplant, I doubt that I will ever be able to know for sure if I do see the world differently. 

During the next few years, through the hard work of my teachers, tutors, and myself, I was able to learn how to correctly process the lessons that I was taught daily. This means that often, it takes me twice as long to do most things, since I have to now take what I “see”, reorganize it, and process the information so that it looks like it does for everyone else. All of this is done sub-consciously and is simple, for most parts of my life, but one….Math. To this day, I still cannot get a grasp on any math concept, simple or complex. My mother says that I just don’t have that light bulb, so it would be difficult to turn that light on, as the saying goes.   My handwriting as well, will never improve beyond what it is today; that of a 5^th graders. I am an excellent reader now because of the dedication of one tutor named Sabrina who worked with me for hours and hours to get me to a method of reading that worked. To her I am forever thankful, because without books, I don’t know where I would   be today.   

The reason I wanted to do this blog, is that for the first time in twenty five years, I had someone ask me:

“What are the benefits of being a dyslexic?”-Joe McCainna 

I had never thought about it before, nor had anyone ever brought up the positives of being dyslexic. Now don’t get me wrong, I was never brought down or told I was less than anyone because of this “disability”, if anything it makes me work harder at everything I do to make sure that no one takes notice of it, but the benefits? Never have I or anyone ever talked about the benefits that one might have being dyslexic.  And there benefits! Think of it this way or at least this is how I choose to, I am part of a very small and select group of people who get the privilege to view the world like no one else does, to have the chance to use my brain in new and different ways and have the capability to create amazing things, whether they be on paper, acted out, or in a new invention that only I could imagine because of the way my brain works. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t do something just as well as another; it might take you longer, and you will probably take a different path to get there, but you will get there, and you will appreciate the end result even more because of the effort and will that you put into it.  Dyslexia is not a “disability” it’s a different ability to see the world; an ability that it truly unique to only you, and no one can take that ability away from you.

That is my story and life; I will always think and look at the world a different way from most, and for that I am happy. It makes me who I am and I have done everything that I ever set my mind to; graduated from college with my bachelors of science (take that calculus!), and am now in Ghana, West Africa, serving in the Peace Corps. Dyslexia is merely a small obstacle which one must jump over in a different fashion each day and be that much stronger for it.