The last day of training seemed to peak off some of the frustrations we had had to that point. The idea was to have some sessions in the morning, and swearing-in rehearsal in the afternoon. We would work on the drumming and dancing portion, as well as some in-language skits which we had to prepare. That was the plan anyways. The idea was that the CD (Country Director) would come in the morning and lead one of those sessions, and everything would follow that.
Mike, our CD (we call call him CD Mike to avoid confusion with such a common name) was recently on vacation, and scheduled it to end early so he could be at our swearing in. Unfortunately due to airline issues and Ghana travel, he did not arrive at the training site till seriously like 2-3PM (If I remember correctly... it was really late either way).
So what did we do all day leading up to that point? Well that's a great question. We worked on our nearly perfected skills of sitting. We practiced our language skits once or twice I think, but overall there was just a lot of sitting.
Nearly 7 hours of it.
When CD Mike finally arrived, like I said it was somewhere between 1-3, I forget. So we were like, sweet, he's finally here, lets get this done. He went straight inside and didnt come out for another 45 minutes or so. Understandable, he's been gone for a few weeks on vacation, it's his first time back to training, him and Grace undoubtedly had to go over quite a few things about the upcoming ceremony. But try to explain that to a group of grumpy, tired, ready-to-be-done trainees.
Mike came out, we had a good talk about policies and procedures, and it was nearly 4. "OK now we will move to the OPASS field for swearing in practice." And there was a near mutiny on hand.
Having run a few organizations before, I understood the position the staff was in. It didnt matter what mistakes had been made up to this point, and no matter how grumpy everyone was, the practice had to be done. We had to do at least some form of a trial-run to see how everything would work together.
So we got to the field, and did some more sitting while the staff put together the agenda and called up one group at a time for their various assignments.
Well since we're on the OPASS field, I think this might be a good time to look for my ring. 2 nights before I came onto this field with Kwesi to try to find it. My logic was that since it's a simple silver band, if I came at night I could shine my headlamp around and it may reflect back. It was a decent idea, except for the fact that it started drizzling as soon as we headed onto the field, so EVERYTHING was shimmering with the dew on the leaves. Oh and also the grass had been mowed. I'm screwed.
Anyways back to the story. I thought: "We've been sitting a lot today, there's a pretty good chance we're going to do more sitting here... I'll try to do something more productive." So I headed to the general area where I had lost my ring.
And I started pacing around in circles like a crazy person.
Ari saw me and decided to help. Everyone knew I had lost my ring during the soccer game, and so she didnt even have to ask what I was doing. We half-joked about how to make a good estimate for where the ring was we should know the type of mower, and what side the grass-exhaust was to see how far it may have flown... leave it to 2 teachers to turn a needle in a haystack into a physics problem... Some OPASS students were on the field collecting the clumps of grass left by the mower. I'm guessing the school wanted them to make the field look spotless before all the dignitaries showed up for the swearing-in ceremony the next day. As they started getting closer I explained to them that I had lost, and was looking for, a ring. They all laughed at the notion of me finding it and one literally told me "you're not going to find it on this field". Thanks bro, that's a big help. Another student added "the mower will have destroyed it." Yes... I'm aware.. the odds are bad, but I have nothing better to be doing...
They started talking to their friends, laughing and joking in Twi. I could tell they were mocking me, and were asking questions like "what does it look like?" just to see if I would respond and add validity to my futile task. I explained that it was a simple silver ring, with nothing else on it.
They continued to talk to each other about how ridiculous it was that I was searching this massive field for a small ring I'd lost 4 days earlier, but then I noticed something. As they all made their jokes about how silly it was, they would look at each other, look at the ground, and then laugh while scanning the ground at the impossibility. It was like they were looking around to validate their joke. Like a kind of mental "sweep the immediate area... see? it's impossible!". Before I knew it, I had about 30 Ghanaian children laughing at me and searching the ground.
Wonderful!
I felt like Tom Sawyer and the white-wash episode where he talked the whole neighborhood into painting the fence for him.
After about 15 minutes, one of the kids goes "does it look kind of like this?" bent over, and picked up my Order of the Engineer ring out of some dirt and grass.
No. Freaking. Way.
I was at an absolute loss for words. I started cheering, and all his friends did too. They all looked at each other in disbelief. I raised his hand up and shouted across the field, and the trainees sitting and waiting started waving and clapping back that I had found it. I had to document this event.
In the US it would have been a "oh well, it was a nice ring. I'll have to get another" and there would be seriously zero chance of finding it again. But something about Ghanaians, and having a small army of child labor to do simple tasks apparently gets a lot of work done. One of the PCVL's for the KSO (Kumasi Sub Office) told a story about losing 6 tiny-tiny millimeter sized pieces to his bike on a dirt path and a small African child finding every single one. Apparently this just works here.
I was seriously incredulous for the rest of the day. Taking it off, looking at it, playing with it. I cant believe I found my ring! Haha another good story to add to the book.
"How does that even happen?"(Ring in my left hand)
This is great! First off as a retired soccer referee I would have never let you play with jewelry but I'm glad your ring was found. The young man who found it what was his reward? I hear you pledged to uphold the US constitution. How does that work in Ghana?
ReplyDeleteElyse's Mom