Jane Williams
3:03 PM (31 minutes ago)
to bcc: me
Hi everyone!
As you already know or have probably guessed, I am no longer in Ghana. I flew home Wednesday/Thursday, and I write this instead from my home in California. Thank you all so much for checking up on me and for the support you have given me in recent days. The past two weeks have been an absolute rollercoaster of emotion, chaos, uncertainty, and anxiety. I am grateful for the experiences I was able to have over the past two months in Ghana, and for having the means to buy a plane ticket home from Ghana at a moment's notice. This email will be an overview of my second month studying abroad as well as the process of going home.
Academic updates:
I continued to go to classes, which continued to be very different from what I was used to. I actually never received the packet of readings for one of my classes, although I suppose it doesn't really matter now...I also turned in the one and only assignment I had, which was a couple of short answer questions about public administration practices in Ghana. It was interesting to learn about how Ghana's public sector is run, and to learn about the US system from an outside perspective.
The system in Ghana is based on the British/European academic system, where classes are split into class-wide lectures and smaller-group tutorials. Tutorials got into full swing 2-3 weeks ago, so I went to those, where 5-12 members of the class had a discussion about the material with the TAs. It was really interesting to hear more directly from local students and the TAs.
Nonacademic updates:
The air quality had significantly improved since my first update, and it started to rain occasionally! The rain was very welcomed, even though I did get caught in it a couple of times, because it really helped to cool everything down.
A couple of Saturdays ago, my program took us to the University of Ghana's botanical gardens, which included a canopy walk, a small lake, and a ropes course. We got to experience all three, making for a super fun day. We split up into teams because we found out the ropes course was a competition. I was with Avery and Monique (you remember them from the last update, I'm sure) and the program director's eight-year-old son! Pictures are included of all of this. Each team had to choose a representative to actually compete at the ropes course (think American Ninja Warrior but ropes, a harness, and probably no other regulations) and ultimately my team nominated yours truly. Thanks guys. I think I did them proud though because I came in second place(!!) behind the only boy who competed, who is taller and stronger than me. (Height was a significant advantage because many of the elements required reaching a faraway rope or step, and if your leg or arm wasn't long enough, you were kind of stuck). I was very impressed with myself nonetheless. Then after the competition round, I decided to do one of the higher courses, just for fun, and it was sooo much harder than the lower course. I was sore for days after.
My program also took us all to Kumasi, a city about 5 hours northwest of Accra, for the weekend. We went to the Manhyia Palace, or the palace of the Asante king, and learned about historical and contemporary local governance practices. We also went to the market in Kumasi, which is the largest market in all of West Africa. It appeared to be mostly houseware items and shoes. We were given about an hour to wander around, and Monique and I accidentally spent a lot of time in the shoes section. Our second day in Kumasi, we went to two fabric-making centers. The first was the Bonwire Kente Weaving Center, where we got to watch how the weavers actually make this famous, culturally significant fabric. Then we went to the Ntonso township, which is famous for its fabric stamped with Adinkra symbols. We learned how the dye is made (by pounding tree bark and boiling it several times) and got to try out the stamps ourselves!
Some more things I learned:
- always. put. on. bug. spray. at. night. I forgot to reapply twice while hanging out with people outside at the dorm at dusk, and boy did I pay for it.
- How to laugh about creepy encounters with men. Avery and I had just dropped off Monique at the airport, and were super sad, and this guy approached us and asked "so which one of you is for me?" I immediately said neither and that we both had boyfriends, so he would leave us alone. After he walked away, we were both like he really didn't notice that we were both crying did he. Avery joked that we should have pretended to fight each other for him, which we thought was hilarious. If we didn't create humor about this and many other similar situations, they would just wear us out.
- adjusting to Ghana time, aka nothing starts on time, except the one thing that you are running late for.
- sometimes there is just a random fire outside your dorm, and no one cares. Will it burn down the entire building? Probably not, but also who's to say.
- When it feels like everything is chaos and everyone is spiraling about the same issue, it is important to do fun things to distract yourself. My friends and I tried to spend as much time as possible together, because we knew we would likely all be going home within the next couple of days.
- I've said it before, and I will say it again. I love love love the friends I made abroad, and I am so thankful for the group of people I connected with, and the lifelong friendships I made.
How everything went down:
I have to say that my program handled the coronavirus situation rather poorly and unprofessionally. Individual schools had begun to pull students around Wednesday, March 11, and students from those schools started to leave Friday, March 13. We had received several emails from the president of CIEE around these dates telling us to stop worrying, that they would never cancel the program, and that we had access to excellent medical care in our locations, about all of which I had doubts. Our director in Ghana had also reminded us several times that our field office would never close because they hadn't closed during the Ebola crisis several years ago. Then on Sunday, March 15, we learned that lectures at the University of Ghana were suspended indefinitely. Several hours later, we received a text message from our director saying that we should have received an email about our program being canceled. We all freaked out, because of course we hadn't received an email. The email eventually arrived several hours later Sunday night, and I immediately booked my flight for Wednesday, March 18. CIEE ended up canceling all of its study abroad programs around the world, and yesterday, March 20, airlines began to cancel all of their flights from African countries (and Accra) to the US. It was crazy how fast things escalated, and I am so thankful that I was able to get a flight to DC and then to San Francisco, and that neither of those were canceled.
Moving forward:
The University of Ghana does not have the capacity to move classes online, so unless Elon helps me with online classes, I might not receive credit for the courses I started in Ghana. I need almost all of those classes to graduate, but I do have a lot of wiggle room in my plan for my senior year, so I would still be able to graduate on time even if I do not receive credit this semester. That would be a major bummer and a loss of a lot of money, but I can only wait to see what Elon's decision would be. I also will have to modify my research, but I have the utmost faith in my research mentor and our ability to come up with a new plan. For the moment, I am focused on adjusting back to life at home, under state-wide shelter-in-place orders and self-isolation. So far, the jet lag has not been that bad, and I hope it continues that way!
I hope everyone is safe and healthy and taking care of themselves. I also want to stress how important it is that everyone follow health and safety guidelines. We are all facing a remarkably dire future if we do not do everything in our power to slow the spread of the virus.
Best,
Jane
