Hey,

The first month in Ho is over, hard to believe! Maite and I have settled in well since our arrival.

Except for the first week, I’ve been at my main work place, E. P. Kekeli International School. It’s a private school with around 150 students and 12 teachers. The kids range in age from 1 to 15 years, which I think is quite a broad spectrum. The school is divided into three departments: the Nursery and Kindergarten Department (ages 1-5), the Basic School Department (ages 6-12), and the Junior High School Department (ages 13-15). Each year has its own class, except for the last three years, which are combined into one class.

So far, I haven’t had any specific tasks since the students have been busy with exams, and I couldn’t really support the teachers there. However, after the holidays, I’m supposed to start teaching some basic German to all the grades. But even now, during lunch breaks, many kids come up to me, asking how to greet in German, they point at objects and want to know thow to call them in German, and want to learn German songs.

Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, it’s cool that the students at my school so curious and interested, but on the other hand, I still have concerns about whether this might reinforce colonial structures. If this continues, by the end of the year, the students might be better at speaking German than I will be at speaking Ewe, the local language. We haven’t received any language course yet, but we really want to learn some basic Ewe. My current knowledge of Ewe is limited to introducing myself, responding to „How are you?“ and understanding when someone talks about us because they say „yevo,“ which means „the white person.“ Improving my Ewe skills is definitely something I want to work on, although Amma, our Ghanaian housemate, thinks we’ll get by just fine throughout the year without ever speaking a word of Ewe.

Religion, so Christianity, seems to be very important here. Amma once told me, when I asked if she goes out for parties, „The economy is so bad, so either you go out partying or you pray, otherwise you get depressed.“ On Sundays, there are two church services, one held in English and one in Ewe. The English service starts at 7 AM (I will never complain again about our church service starting at 11 AM) and lasts for two hours. After that, there’s an EPSU (Evangelical Presbyterian Student Union) meeting for about 1-2 hours. Maite and I have also joined the EPSU choir, which meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 1.5 hours. So, there are quite a few church activities.

The most intense experience for me so far was the EPSU meeting. September is a month of prayer for EPSU, known as „September at Gethsemane“. That means at these meetings after church, there’s continuous prayer. And the way they pray is something else. First, the prayer leader states what we should pray for, and then everyone prays for the same thing but in different ways. Some whisper softly and indistinctly, some speak in tongues (basically, they utter something that isn’t words but connects them with the Holy Spirit), and some literally shout out their prayers. So, compared to the kind of praying I’m used to, it’s pretty loud.

Even in church, everything is louder, for example the music when the band plays. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I find the church service here much more lively; it’s almost like a party and puts me in a good mood. When the music is particularly good, a few people even come to the front of the church and start dancing. I feel it’s a much more liberating church experience than in Germany, everyone can experience it as they like (if that makes sense).

I also had a nice dinner with former volunteers, Bismark and Eric (both were South-North volunteers in Germany), and a future volunteer, Juliette (a good friend of ours). We talked a lot about German culture, and I was amazed at what they found strange about it, which was perfectly normal for me. We also discussed Ghanaian culture. It was great to have a casual conversation about two countries, laugh at parts of the cultures, but never judge. We talked about plastic consumption in Ghana, partying in Germany, racism in Germany, hail, bread (many Ghanaians don’t see bread as a full meal, and they find it quite strange that many Germans eat bread twice a day), and more. The conversation made me think about cultural differences and cultural exchange, and it was fascinating to see how Bismark and Eric perceived Germany as Ghanaians.

Bismark and Eric live in Accra, and maybe we’ll visit them in October for the Oktoberfest in Accra (yes, they have that there; I’m curious about that).

That’s it for now, although I could write ten times as much because so much has happened. But I don’t want to bore you any further, and it would take too long to write everything down.

Thanks for reading :))