Oh, Classes

Ok, so I think I've finally chosen my classes for this semester. I know, it's mid February and ordinarily I should have been certain about my classes a long time ago. However, it doesn't work that way here since the registration and course scheduling system is close to non existent.

Heres what happens, you look at the course handbook and select the courses you would like to take. Then you go to each department individually and are told that the courses you want to enroll in don't actually exist since the University of Ghana is too poor to print course handbooks more than once every few years (the current one is 4 years old). Now that you are discouraged, you reselect your courses from the list posted at each department.

Congratulations! After several days of walking around campus filling out forms for every department, since they all have their own unique registration process, you have a set of classes which you are satisfied with. Content with life, you relax for a week since none of the classes actually meet the first week.

Week two begins and after several days of rest, your optimism towards the educational system is restored... for three and a half minutes. After that amount of time in your first lecture you realize that half your professors have decided to change the time of lecture due to the fact that the afternoon is hot, they want to avoid morning rush hour traffic, or just because they hate tuesdays.

Back to the drawing board... you walk from department to department adding new classes which can fit into your newly thrashed schedule. Week two of classes comes to an end and a theoretically plausible schedule is in your possession at last. But will you like your classes?

Week three: time to test the waters of your new courses. Too bad your professors decided to take the day off, change lecture venue or cancel class. Some professors still aren't aware they have been assigned to lecture for your course yet. Oh well, maybe next week you'll find out if your classes are decent.

Week four: you have been to at least one lecture for every course and can predict a reasonable change of success. Now all thats left is dropping the extraneous classes on your schedule and you're done with registration. Congratulations! ... Oh yeah there is no guarantee that your final exam periods won't clash with each other resulting in an F for one class or the other. But exam schedules don't come out until April, so you can worry about it then.

So yeah, thats how it went.... I just registered for summer classes at UT this week . Took 2 minutes: click, click, click. Submit. Done.

Ok, so the classes I'm actually going to take here in Ghana are:

Society, Government and Politics of Ghana. The title pretty much describes that one.

Twi. The language spoken by most Ghanaians ... when they aren't speaking fluent english.

Physics of Materials. A senior level course in the Physics Department, it covers materials much like material science courses I've taken in the past but it also looks into optical and dielectric properties of materials.

Energy. Another senior level physics course. This course covers all types of energy production (Solar, Wind, Hydro, fossil fuels... etc). I actually really like this class despite the fact that the professor calls on me for nearly every question even though there are 50 other students in the room. I guess he likes playing the game of 'stump the American' since I'm the only non-Ghanaian in the class.

Strategies for Development in Africa. Yep, not gonna lie, I haven't actually gotten the opportunity to sit through a lecture for this yet due to late registration then subsequent class cancellations, but I have it on good authority that this is a decent class.

Please note that despite whatever tone I may have towards the registration process, I do, in fact, maintain a positive attitude towards The University of Ghana.

I don't have any travel plans this weekend so exciting pictures may not be on the near horizon but if you wait just a little bit, I'll be departing on a trip to the north and Mole NP one week from today. You know what that means? Yep... Elephants!

OMG Rain!

Today during class, the sky began to get dark and unleashed a furious flood of torrential rain for the first time after weeks of completely dry weather. When class was over, we went out to the corridor to watch the rain. It was without a doubt the most intense rainfall I've ever seen.

The class we were in was a USAC provided class so it was just a few of us stranded in the History Department, about a mile's walk from ISH(I). Tim, a fellow USAC student, and I decided to make a mad dash through the rain to the bookshop to buy umbrellas for the girls who stuck at the History Department with us. The bookshop was only a few hundred yards away so it seemed like a reasonable idea.

I stood in the doorway to stretch for my sprint then took a deep breath. I took off into the rain, attempting to run in flip flops. The stairs leading to the street had turned into a waterfall, the parking lot into a lake and the gutters overflowed to form rivers on the streets. Yes, the gutters that can be seen in my pictures (2-3 feet deep at least) were overflowing. Running through the rivers of roadway I felt like Dennis Nedry during his encounter with the Dilophosaur in Jurassic Park.

When we finally made it into the library, we were greeted by numerous snickering Ghanaians who must have been amused by the stupid Americans who were dumb enough to get caught in the tropical rainstorm. After dripping our way to the back of the library we discovered that umbrellas were 20GHC (~$13) each, which was beyond what it was worth to us at that point. Our friends back at the History Department hailed a cab to get back to ISH and Tim and I remained stranded at the bookshop waiting under the overhanging roof for the rain to stop.

We waited for over half an hour with numerous other patient observers of the storm until it finally let up and allowed for a semi-pleasant walk back to the hostel.

The University seemed like a whole new wold after the rain. There were tiny frogs sitting around the gutters and miniature streams of red-orange water carved their way through the previously dusty fields. The world, which the rain had put on pause for over an hour, resumed once more.

University of Ghana

I suppose I should talk about The University of Ghana, Legon. I mean, this is kinda where I live, study and spend most of my time so it's almost unacceptable that I haven't even mentioned anything about it yet.

This university is fairly large and it's situated on a sprawling campus, I have to walk nearly a mile to get from ISH to the Physics department for example. I certainly don't mind the excessive walking that is required being on this campus, but thinking ahead in terms of hydration is a must.

When I finally do arrive at my classes, the rooms are only furnished to minimal standards in terms of what an American would expect: a chalkboard, some benches with an attached table and if I'm very, very lucky, a fan. But of course these lecture halls are quite luxurious by Ghanaian standards.

One of the best lecture halls in the Chemistry Dept.

An interesting thing about the buildings here is that there is no true indoors. All the corridors are open and only the most important offices are outfitted with air conditioners. Another feature of this university which is different than most american universities is the library, which is the centerpiece and crown jewel of the university. The Balme Library is at the center of the university campus and features the most intriguing architecture due to it's huge significance to the students. In the US the library is a great place to study and a good resource for reading materials, but here, it is the only resource. Not many Ghanaian students have computers and ordering books from amazon is out of the question. If you want to read up on your classes you go to Balme, thats it.

Balme Library

All in all I really like the University of Ghana, but classes are just getting underway so I'll have to wait on talking about my opinion of the way classes are conducted.

On a side note related loosely to the educational system, I spent the day volunteering at a school in Madina which provides tutoring and additional support for the primary school students. I had a great time and hopefully I will get an opportunity to spend a couple days a week there. I didn't bring my camera so I'll wait on writing more about the school until I have pictures and more stories.

Ada District

Today we went to Ada, near the border of the Accra and Volta regions in Ghana. This is where the River Volta spills into the Gulf of Guinea. This was another trip organized by USAC so we had the luxury of prearranged food and travel.

Once we arrived at the hotel outside Ada Foah we boarded a boat which took us on a cruise down the Volta to the sea. We stopped at the mouth of the river to take in the spectacular view of the river emptying into the Atlantic. It was amazing to stand on a beach overlooking the ocean with the strong current of the river flowing parallel to the beach. I took the opportunity to do a little panoramic video of this:

After our encounter with the river/ocean beach we got back on the boat, which can be seen on the beach at the end of the video. From the ocean we moved back into the mouth of the river where we visited a village on one of the numerous islands. The chief of the village gave us a tour and showed us how they make alcohol from sugar cane. I felt like it would be rude to take pictures of his village while he was speaking to us so, I sadly do not have any pictures of this.

After the island village we headed back to the hotel for lunch. (I'll talk about Ghanaian food in a separate post someday when I have a more complete knowledge of the subject.) The rest of the day was relaxing but not really note worthy. I'm getting ready to go watch the Superbowl (Fun fact: if you add a random space, Superbowl can turn into: Superb owl ... which is pretty cool in itself.) so until next time, enjoy the snow!

P.S. - I went to the opening of the 2011 Africa Unite Symposium on Friday where there were speeches and a showing of Bob Marley's "Africa Unite!". After the video, the speaker wanted to acknowledge Rita Marley (Bob's wife). She had been sitting two rows behind me the whole time, how cool is that?