As part of our training and cultural assimilation we are each staying with a local Ghanaian family. The purpose of home-stay is to help us achieve a greater awareness and understanding of our new environment. The idea is to become totally immersed in the new culture. The PC home-stay program is a very good one but it is also a very stressful part of training. I guess the American proverb "no pain no gain" applies very well here.
There are four home-stay communities in the Techiman area (all the communities are villages outside of Techiman) in which we are all staying during our training. The families were selected by the Peace Corp trainers and had to meet certain basic criteria for selection. The criteria include providing a separate room with adaquate security and general hygienic and sanitary conditions. Host families selected tend to fall in the low and middle class level (Ghanian standards).
The reality is that home-stay is very stressful. It does however provide a very good way to become exposed to the local language and culture. And provides a "safe" preview of what we will encounter at our sites.
The home-stay families are to provied us with meals when we are scheduled to be at our home stay (every Friday night we stay at the Dery Hotel). The Peace Corps has provided the Ghanaian families with some training on how to safely prepare food for us so that we don't become sick. Unfortunately many of us became sick during our home-stay period. This may have been the result of eating street food or some other source, it's hard to tell. The result is that you end up in the "infirmary" at the Dery Hotel.
Our home-stay families are also supposed to help us with language skills and cultural adaptation. This is of course variable based upon the interaciton between the voulnteer and their family. Some of the families have people who don't speak English very well in some families almost everyone speaks English well.
I think the truth is that each volunteer has a unique home-stay experience and I can only speak for myself so here is mine. ...will be continued!!!
Many of the other volunteers will have their own stories about their home-stay. I hope to share some of these stories with you in the future...Will be contiued!!!
Here are some pictures taken during our home stays.
