Treasured friends, beloved family members, facebook stalkers, and robot code-bots:
Oh how we have missed your invisible presence on the other side of the blogosphere bubble. Unfortunately, our secretary Buster went off the deep end last year, and our new personal assistants, Gubby and Lolly, are on the 'backward' side (as they say a l'Inde), technologically-speaking. Thankfully, my whopping 14,000 USD annual salary has allowed me and Jones to take on a new staff member, so please welcome Yovo-Yovo-Bon-Soir (henceforth YYBS), who will be handling our Twitter, Blogspot, Tumblr, Flickr, Facebook, and (most importantly) Linked-In accounts while we are busy enjoying planet earth!
A brief recap of the last eight months: The second half of India was far more interesting and adventuresome than the first, so it's really too bad that Gubby and Lolly were so lousy about updating you all. Trains through endless fields of Mysore sugar cane; hills and hills of Siliguri tea plantations; wide rice paddies punctuated by women in bright saris and bangles, ankle deep in mud. Long walks in the mountains of Ladakh; hours of broken Hindi conversation with grey-haired men in the oldest temple in Manali, the snow falling softly as I learned of the Hindu-Rajasthani escape from the Mughals, ancient years ago. Road trips from Ahmedabad to Chennai to play Ultimate with the finest stray dogs that side of Bengal Bay, including one championship and a lot of wonderful new friends. All this while, Jones was doing something as-yet undisclosable. You'll find out all about it in part one of her memoirs, set for publication in May 2059 (I'll be the 'as told to').
Then, two months of fun in the US of A. You were all there. Jones was there too, but her activities were and still are classified information. Only our high-security-clearance staff even know what she was doing, and unfortunately for you, that does not include YYBS. So, ffwd...
Now, Accra: Ghana's fine capital. It gets a pretty bad rep in the guidebooks, mainly because of its lack of good, accessible tourist sites, but we like Accra just fine (me and YYBS, that is). The beach runs along the whole city, which keeps things nice and mellow-- a lot more breathing room than Delhi, for sure-- and the office and guesthouse are in a nice neighborhood-- not too expat-y, but within walking distance that serve foods that don't resemble fufu, banku, akplen, or any other starch-based paste, which can occasionally taste good (but let's be honest-- usually don't, at least to anyone with western taste buds) and result in illness at least 20% of the time.
The work has been great-- super busy-- and below is a picture for your viewing pleasure, a snapshot of my life so far.
As you can see, at times, we work in an office just like anyone else in the world. But it is quite entertaining, and soon, very soon, we will be out in the field, training surveyors, back-checking math tests, and evaluating the 500 schools covered in the TCAI programme (Teacher Community Assistant Initiative, which you can read more about here: http://www.poverty-action.org/remedialeducation/scalingup).
These people are spectacular workaholics (in case I felt homesick for my favorite robot compadre, Jonas Jonas Bon Soir (JJBS)) and require no food, sleep, or even water to function. One day, Joyce (sitting next to me in the foto) and I were sitting at our desks when her phone alarm started going off. It was 3:30 in the afternoon. "Oh!" she said, "I must have accidentally set it to PM today." Need I say more? It is cruel poetic justice for my job last year, where my coworkers abandoned ship at 4 45pm on a regular basis, leaving me and Shayak to fend off the work monsters ourselves.
And second, a map of the parts of Ghana for which I'll be responsible for our evaluation, my area outlined in red. (Also circled Tamale, where I'll be living, and Accra, where I've been for the last month.) So let's just say- there are a lot of long bus rides in my future.
Some equations, to summarize: end of rainy season= cool weather; accra= beach; bike= bamboo; ewe= adja (the language they speak in lokossa, benin); and benin=this weekend. E nyo= It's good. Life is good.
o dabs. byebye-o.
