We only have two more weeks of regular classes, then is a ‘revision week’ and then three weeks of finals! Two of my four classes finished last week so that is nice. I am starting to read re-read the articles for class, apparently the final exam is only on the readings.

On Saturday I toured a prison for my Penology class. The prison was about an hour away and we took buses, over 300 students went! We went to the male prison and all the men in our group had to sign a paper but none of the females did, we were confused (like usual) but waited in line to enter. Each tour group had about 50 students and only one guard. It was a medium security prison but with the amount of barbed wire, gates and guards with guns, it seemed to be otherwise. The prisons in Ghana are over populated and many inmates have not even had a trial or been sentenced yet. One man was saying he had been there for 5 years without a trial. The guard said many officers bring men in and then get switched to a different area and are not able to be contacted and therefore the inmates just sit in prison. There were a total of 4 white students (all females of course) and the inmates were very interested in us. One guy even asked me for my phone number. The inmates are able to cook there one food if they wanted to, we were not informed on how they were able to get supplies for cooking though. We toured about 5 different compounds that housed men, it was divided by barbed wire fences and the men were split up by the length of time they have to spend there. Inside one of the compounds were saw a cell the size of a single bed - 5 men were assigned to one room. The prison lacks resources and therefore are unable to have individual cells for all the inmates. On Saturday morning we met at 8 am and left at 9 am (not bad timing!) and did not realize it would be an all day field trip. Around 1 pm we left he prison all the guys had to show the guards their ID card and cross off their name. We loaded the bus and at this point we were tired, hot and hungry. But we were informed we would be going to the female prison too. This time all the females had to sign their names. The female prison had significantly less people and more room for them. Some prisoners come to prison pregnant, there was a room with cribs for the babies, they are able to stay for a year and then they are sent to someone in the mother’s family or to social services. We were not informed about the crimes the females committed which was too bad. At the end of the tour none of the females had to show ID but the security guard really stared us down when we were leaving. Multiple times during the tour students would ask if we were ok (the 4 white girls) we would always reply, “We are fine, this is what happens when white people are out in the sun for too long and are tired.” Are faces were red and we were sweating, they would just laugh. On Saturday night we went to Joseph and the Technicolor Dream coat put on by the theater department. It was definitely entertaining with some African dance moves thrown in!

Next weekend is Easter and I am going to church with my host family. I went to church the first weekend and went to the children’s service with my little host sister, it was 4 hours long!