Religion, the church and conversions

 It is unbelievable how ingrained the church is in everything out here!! We got introduced to the entire student body at the institute during assembly today … just after, as we sat down, a priest came in .. and they almost had a semi-mass there.. with singing and dancing and praise :O

So far, I had thought it was just the people who were religious and had close ties to the church.. so when they were trying to get a projector, they would ask the church, when listening to music.. it would be churchish..   and that was understandable.. given it's a government institute, I do not expect staff to be radical .. but, religion and education mixed together.. at a govt schools.. gosh, that does take me by surprise.


In fact, this was noticed by many of us which led to subsequent team discussions on various religions, their principles and beliefs.. yes, I did lead it for hinduism.. and it was hilarious that by the end of it, our team member from US got up and said, I have to tell my mom - I finally figured it out - I'm not episcapalean, I'm a hindu :) If there was a concept of conversion into hinduism, I think I just had my first successful one ;)

Religious Prayer at School Assembly

First Weekend - Celebrating Ghanaian Independence!

Our first weekend here and it's a long weekend with monday off. By the middle of last week, we had discussed the plan for the weekend and given how many different kinds of personalities we have in the team, that too from different countries, some even having definite opinions of what they want to do here.. I had almost expected we'd split up and have multiple plans. So, it was really surprising, when in almost half an hour, we all had decided on the plan for all the days and we were all in. It was really nice to have the whole team together.

Today was a trip to Kakum national park, with a nice canope walk, coconut grove for lunch and cape coast for castle sight-seeing... Elmina Castle(in portugese means mine - referring to africa as gold mine).. castle started as store for spices, then changed to trading and storage of slaves, then changed to police training ground.

Coconut grove was nice.. had a good conversation about political stability of ghana, democracy in brazil.. ran into an indian couple who were vacationing here from takoradi, apparently, there's a Delhi Public School in Tema.. gosh, didn't know they had spread out so much!
Pics of Kakum National Park and Canopy walk:

 

 

Elmina Castle at Cape Coast:

 

Beach view from Castle - Yes those are people - that's how crowded the beaches sometimes are!

Booooring? .... or did I just get used to excitement?

'Twas a very boring day today.. took a while to get setup in the morning.. there was some progress made on the existing school software - did manage to get it working and the introductions in the meeting with the institute board seemed to be taken well.. also I finally did manage to get an understanding of the admission process and the administration work at the school.. while getting introduced to a very interesting banana and groundnut combo .. and the website also seems to be taking shape.. hmm, in retrospect, a lot did happen today... guess I just started expecting exciting days as before :)

Tiring, tiring day!

This is the only client I've ever seen who isn't happy about us working long :D 8.30am - 4.00pm is their reccomendation and we have to end up with evening meetings at the hotel since we still need to get our work done :D
End to End meetings with the departments on their content and material.. it's draining to talk and listen all that much.. can't imagine how the sales and the HR guys conduct all day workshops!
Meeting the students was the best part ever! They gave fresh ideas and seemed more in tune with what should be on the website than the staff ... We'd planned to get them interested in fun things and started asking them what they'd like to see on the website.. and it just shocked me to see them raise their hand and read from small pieces of paper, the ideas they had written down - things like course structure, entry requirements... serious, detailed stuff.. not what I expect of students .. not what I expected them to start off with for sure.

Four days? … feels so comfortable, feels like forever!

Strangely, it's just been four days.. though if feels like forever… and not in a bad way at all! It feels like we know each other since a looong time… feels like we know the neighbourhood we live in.. our evening walks for grocery or otherwise, just feel so safe to walk around ... and we're making so much headway on our projects, with our clients... it's an unbelieveable feeling!!
The Electrical Company project CSC sub-team were supposed to have a presentation to the client leadership and we were amazed how they'd be ready on day 2 for it.. and they ended up doing it in a board meeting... successfully though, from the sound of it. One of the things that seemed very interesting was that in this room full of stern people who seemed to not react to the presentation at all, they got up and actually, very seriously, said a prayer before the meeting start.
We knew our project wasn't so formal when, at the time of gathering requirements from the administration staff, we had to ask them if we could turn the music down so we could hear them better :D It was a unique experience none-the-less. We met a german in the morning who was trying to set up a system to get students vocational training vouchers, funded by the govt. of Germany. The day was good with a new scope getting added to the project and a lot seeming achievable. Plenty still to be worked out though. Of course, it wasn't all cream and cheese! This was the first time the three of us from different countries, different background, different skills were working together and it took till the end of the day to get adjusted to the working styles and there's just been no looking back :)