Ghana Day 23

I lied, we came to the internets today so Katey could send "I'm alive" emails, so you all get the joy of my Thursday post : )

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Too much walking in heels happened today. My feet hurt and my shoes are crumbling : ( I’m hoping I don’t have to buy a new (used) pair while I’m here, I’d really like to just make due with this pair for 5 more weeks… but I’m not sure that’s gonna happen. We shall see how far I can get on shoes that are 25% super glue.

Parliament today was somewhat interesting for what did not happen – a declaration of assets bill was supposed to be considered according to last week’s forecast agenda, but shockingly the report was not ready or something like that and it did not get brought up.

What was brought up, besides passing a resolution to accept a loan to build a power plant, which is sort of good news, was alcoholism. Someone decided to make a statement about it and how it’s evil, and thus debate on the topic was opened. One guy proposed that MPs take alcohol tests to set an example, but he was booed down pretty quickly. Some other guy decided he needed to make a distinction between alcoholism and drinking just a bit of it, which was sort of entertaining because of the banter it inspired. One MP got up and said he wasn’t a doctor so he shouldn’t be saying that taking a little alcohol is good for your heart unless he could quote a study (because the first MP had said red wine was good for the heart), and this prompted the speaker of the house to say that the 2nd MP was wrong, and she herself (the honorable speaker) had found that a bit of it was good. This brought down the house for about 5 minutes.

Personally I thought the alcoholism thing wasn’t terribly pertinent or newsworthy, but I think Awudu got a story out of it about how the Speaker likes her booze. So whatever works for him.

After parliament I went off on my own. I walked a quarter to a half mile to where I could pick a tro-tro, and I went to the University of Ghana and walked definitely a half mile if not a mile to the conference room where the math conference was being held. It’s a really impressive campus – very large, fairly well-kept grounds, and paved roads. Poorly marked buildings though, and it was mostly by chance that I happened to be walking behind the two guys whose job it was to open up the doors and get the venue ready (of course, I was 5 minutes after I was told it would start and they only barely beat me to it).

The conference was slightly interesting. There’s going to be a math journal in Ghana starting soon, although I don’t have a launch date yet. There was also a guy who talked about how he struggled in his first math class in college because inappropriate examples were used – he was told to find trajectories of cricket balls and things like that, which he was totally unfamiliar with. He said that making math more accessible would involve using examples that were familiar, like how close together to plant cassava trees so that they offer the highest yield. Anyway, I wrote a story bout that. Dunno if it will show up anywhere.