holes to heaven...

So this past week has had its ups and downs. I'll start with the ups, for optimistism's sake.
The work I did at Anidaso Fie was awesome. I got to work with around 15-20 women everyday, sometimes the same, and sometimes different depending on whether or not they chose to come to classe that day.
I was asked to help with the art classes they are now involved in to help them with batiking later on. The first couple days we worked on sketching and took nature walks to find inspiration. Then I taught them about basic drawing techniques, like breaking down larger shapes into smaller ones.
Let me just say, its very difficult to remember what its like to be 5, and in your first art class. Some of these women are older than I am, but when I ask them to draw two identical circles, they can't make replicas of the same shape. Or even simple things like drawing within the lines. They don't understand how to process visual information like that.
When we started painting it was so fun to help them out, and they were all so proud of what they were doing. The teacher just sat in the corner, randomly telling them instructions. She rarely taught them, just gave them things to do. To be able to guide these women, even in something as small as drawing was immensely fufilling. And just to realize how much your attention to their work means to them, made me feel purposeful.
The other couple days we focused on basic math, english and health issues. I was assigned the "highest form", the ladies that had the most education. They clearly were the ones who could understand my English the best, therefore made it alot easier to teach them. The "highest form" of these women 15-25 was the first grade.
We did math exercises consisting of addition, subtraction and basic multiplication. I started to teach them to divide, but we only got as far as drawing out a number of shapes and then dividing them with lines, and seeing the result.
This was also really difficult to remember how I was taught this kind of math. I was questioning whether I should have taught them double digit multiplication, or just moved straight onto division.
Some of these women are 25, and they are just learning how divide.
We then read a book "Willie isn't the Hugging Kind." A book written clearly for 5 year olds. We would read 10 pages at a time, and then I would write around 6-8 content questions on the board, like "Why did Willie's sister call him the not-hugging-kind?" Then they would take almost 30 minutes searching through the book for answers.
I am beginning to think that it would be of great value to publish a book for programs like this, which exist in most third world countries. A book that would be able to provide a low level of literacy, but with a content that would appeal much more to adults. As I spoke to the ladies about the book, they did the work I asked of them, but didn't appreciate that they were actually reading. Which is huge. I think it made them feel incompetent, and I don't blame them.
Its so interesting, and yet so scary, how the human mind needs so much attention to be able to function at its highest level. Even if these women went to school everyday, 8 hours a day, for the next 5 years they probably wouldn't know as much as I know as a 19 year old American.
I will write more about the project when I can really sit down and think about it. I haven't been able to because...
Ghana immigration is the most rude and difficult sum of human beings I have ever encountered in my life. Although the details of my situation with them are many and boring enough that I'll spare the dedicated readers of my blog the time, I will say I have never been treated with as much disrespect or carelessness to my situation in my entire life.
Its very frightening to realize you are in a country where you cannot trust the government, and if they want to, they can easily screw any plans of you leaving the country. Not to mention the fact that the organization which I paid to help me with these sort of things, if not just take care of them themselves is not being of much help...I'll also save the details of that for a later post.

Gotta run, more later.

Officials work while friendly
Once we drown them with our sweet talk
And we bribe them with our cigarettes and booze