Ghanaian Election and the PC All Volunteer Conference

December 7th was the date of the Ghanaian elections. This was roughly two weeks before the school term ended. There are two main parties - the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC). All signs indicated that it was going to be a tight race. There were some conflicts in the country leading up to the elections that resulted in a number of deaths, but these incidents were isolated. Kenya had also long been considered a stable country, but after their elections were marred with widespread violence resulting in the evacuation of the PVCs there, it was decided that some precautions were going to be taken for the PCVs in Ghana. Accordingly, all of the volunteers were gathered together in one place for an HIV/AIDS conference for a week during the elections. It was interesting getting to see all the PCVs in Ghana, because we don't usually meet together as a group. While we were there, we were continually informed of the progress of the elections, and we learned that things were progressing peacefully. The Ambassador and representativies from USAID came to the conference and gave presentations on HIV/AIDS topics. After the sessions, quite a few of the volunteers got together and played soccer and ultimate frisbee. I had neglected to bring my athletic shoes, so I figured I'd try out barefoot soccer. It sounded a little rough, but the grass was great, and kicking the ball isn't a problem as long as it is done properly. We had some great games.

As the election results came in, we were told that it was quite likely that there would be a run off election. The run off occurs when one candidate doesn't have more votes than all the other candidates combined. In the run off election, only the top two candidates will receive votes. When the final totals came in, the NPP had roughly 49% of the vote, and the NDC had about 48%, and the other parties split the remainder. This called for a run off election between the NPP and NDC. The run off election was going to be held roughly 20 days later.

Aside from a few minor incidents, the elections had been completely free of violence, and the majority of the volunteers were given the "all clear" to head back to site. Volunteers whose sites were near the locations of the election-related incidents needed to wait a couple days before returning, but were soon on their way.

Back at site, the students were supposed to be taking their final exams. As it turned out, the district education office hadn't even finished printing them yet. I wasn't too pleased about this. When the term started, I was teaching sequentially from the beginning of the Ghana Education Service (GES) syllabus. During the 8th week of the term, we were given the "scheme of work" from GES outlining the material that needed to be taught in order to prepare the students for their final exam. The material was selected from wide range of topics from all over the syllabus. It didn't appear to have any logical order to it, but at the time, I quickly rearranged the topics I was teaching in order to prepare the students for the final exam. But, after these efforts at preparing the students for the exams, we learned that the office simply hadn't printed the exams yet and would need to take the final exams during the first weeks of the second term - about 4 weeks later.