How I Met Your Mother

The year is 2030. Ted Mosby is relaying the story of how he met his wife to his daughter and son. The story starts in the year 2005, when then twenty-seven year old architect Ted was spurred on to want to get married after lawyer Marshall Eriksen and kindergarten teacher Lily Aldrin, his best friends from their college days at Wesleyan and Marshall who was his roommate at the time, got engaged after nine years of dating each other. Ted's new quest in life was much to the dismay of his womanizing friend, Barney Stinson. But soon after Marshall and Lily's engagement, Ted believed that his life mate was going to be news reporter and aspiring news anchor Robin Scherbatsky, who, despite having had a romantic relationship with her after this time, ended up being who the kids know as their "Aunt" Robin. As Ted relays the story to his kids, the constants are that their Uncle Marshall, Aunt Lily, Uncle Barney and Aunt Robin are always in the picture and thus have something to do with how he got together with their mother.

TTFPP- UNIVERSITY FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

INTRODUCTION

The Third Trimester Field Practical Program (TTFPP) is an essential component of the curricular of the University for Development Studies. It draws its basis from the constitution (PNDC law 179),which mandate the University to blend the academic work with that of the community in order to provide a constructive interaction between the two for the total development of Northern Ghana in particular and  the whole country at large.

The program is divided into three main parts for three years, the first part involve coming out

with a profile of a community comprising of Natural Resources and Environment, Population Characteristics, Social Development, Economic Development and Historical and Local Governance system.

In year two (2), the idea is to deepen the students knowledge of the study community through more intensive interactions with the community members to enable students to appreciate the developmental problems that the community is confronted with and how this can be addressed using existing potentials within the community. These problems and potentials gathered in this second phase will serve as the basis for further work in year three (3).

The third year’s work aims at finding feasible interventions to the problems of the community identified in the previous year. The final stage therefore is a compilation of a reviewed profile of the community’s problems and potentials identified as well as development interventions proposed by students after an intensive deliberation with the community members. 

Objectives of the program include:

1. Helping students to develop favorable interest in working at rural Places.

2. To expose students practically to the nature of the development problems in deprived communities.

3. Providing useful services to rural communities through the exchange of knowledge in order to find solution to their problems,

4. Equip students with the basic tools, techniques and skills required for community studies and development.

5. To introduce students to community studies through interactions with communities.

6. To assist students to apply the method and experiences acquired to collect relevant data, and   on that basis write a comprehensive community profile of the studied community.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

I was privileged to be part of this program from 2008-2010 in group 123 consisting of ten students that were posted to Dadoto community a newly created district in the Krachi East of Volta region, during which we lived and worked in that community for two months each year.

In the beginning it was a bit challenging, working with new people altogether, getting to know the people in the community and adopting to the new environment as well as language barrier and of course the fact that the community lacks almost all basic social amenities such as; hydro-electricity community centre, cinema centre, communication centre, pit latrine, pipe borne water etc, but on the bright side the peaceful co-existence between the community members and the kind of cordial relation we established with them made our work much easier and in the end we were able to come out with the community’s profile, identified their problems and potentials and proposed some development interventions for the community, so I must say the whole exercise was successful.

KNOWLEDGE ACQUIRED

Living and working in a deprived community, collecting of relevant data and writing a report on a community’s profile, carrying out SWOT analysis and also writing a development proposal for a community.

THE VIRGIN BUCKET

Once upon a time there lived a plastic bucket called Ewurama in the girls dormitory of Techiman Senior High School (TESS) house two(2), Ewurama was the prettiest, cleanest and on top of it all she was a virgin,  virgin in the sense that, she has never being used for bathing washing of clothes, cleaning of utensils, mopping, scrubbing or any sort of unclean activities, due to this everyone in the dormitory loved and adored her and for that matter other buckets in the dormitory envied her.

One night a girl woke up and was hungry so she decided to eat some biscuits after a couple of biscuits she got choked and started coughing, she fell on the floor and was suffering, Her dorm mates waked and tried to helped her, she needed to take some water but the taps were not flowing, after searching for a while to no avail one of the girls saw Ewurama at the corner or the room neatly kept and covered, she opened it and to her surprise there was clean water, she used a cup fetch some and gave it to her friend, after taken the water she stopped coughing and instantly became ok, all the girls in the dorm started cheering and they were all happy.

The next day how Ewurama saved the girls life became news on campus and everyone was talking about her, this made her very popular on campus even among the boys and the day students as well. Another time a girl needed to take her medicine at night but could not find water, once she saw Ewurama she knew she was save and lo and behold there was clean water so she took her medicine.

Due to the popularity of Ewurama girls in other house wanted to keep her in their room whiles girls in house two resisted, this brought about fight and quarrels among the girls for quite some time, it took the intervention of the girls prefect to solve the issue over which house to keep Ewurama, the prefect decide that the house two girls should have it since they discovered Ewuama but still there was tension among the girls so she decide to keep it in her room for some time and if anyone wanted to see her she have to go to the girls prefect room.

One day the girls prefect sent one of the first years to use Ewurama to fetch water for her on her way back to the prefects room the siren sounded for lunch time and since she did not want to be late for lunch because if you are late you late you will not be allowed to enter so she left Ewurama at a corner where she thought it was safe and went for lunch.

A first year lady was also punished to scrub one of the bathrooms alone so she decide to do it at lunch time, immediately they left for lunch she looked for a bucket and found none other than Ewurama, she was happy because it was already filled with water, she took it to the bathroom added some detergent and started scrubbing, after some time the girls returned from lunch, one of the seniors passing by the bathroom heard someone scrubbing so she peep into see who was there only to find the first year student using Ewurama for scrubbing, she shouted oh! No which attracted the attention of most of the girls in the dormitory so they rushed to see what was happening only to be hit by the news that the virginity of Ewurama has been broken, it was a very sad moment in the dormitory but what has happened has happened there was nothing anyone could do to reverse the situation.

Soon the news about Ewurama spread through the entire school, it became the talk on campus. Since that day people started to use Ewurama for all sort of chores, anyone can just take her and used her for washing, mopping, scrubbing and cleaning she became just like every other bucket in the dormitory.

The story of Ewurama the beautiful bucket can be likened to any girl that preserves her virginity but carelessly lose it to someone and from there guys will start coming in and out of her life but will never respect or cherish her, beware beautiful girls.

Don’t Quit

When things go wrong as they sometimes will;

When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill;

When the funds are low, and the debts are high;

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh;

When care is pressing you down a bit

Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Success is failure turned inside out;

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;

And you can never tell how close you are;

It may be near when it seems afar.

So, stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit

it’s when things go wrong that you mustn’t quit.

Choose To Be Happy

Choose to be happy,
Choose to feel great,
Choose not to let things make you irate.

I know that some people are not feeling great,
And I know that some people just know how to hate.
And I wish that all people could be healthy and strong,
And I wish that all people would just get along.

If wands could be waved, and the world would be cured,
I’d wave that big wand, you can be assured.
But I’ll do what I can every day I am here,
And try to remember “the good,” year to year.

And I choose to be happy,
And I choose to feel great,
And I choose not to let things make me irate!

                                                                                                         By Marlene Rose

JOKES

One Dollar
Teacher: If you had one dollar and you asked your father for another, how many dollars would you have?
Vincent: One dollar.
Teacher: You don’t know your arithmetic.
Vincent: You don’t know my father.

 Mother and Son
Mother: Why did you get such a low mark on that test?
Junior: Because of absence.
Mother: You mean you were absent on the day of the test?
Junior: No, but the kid who sits next to me was.

 The principal’s Daughter
“Isn’t the principal a dummy!” said a boy to a girl.
“Well, do you know who I am?” asked the girl.
“No.” replied the boy.
“I’m the principal’s daughter.” said the girl.
“And do you know who I am?” asked the boy.
“No,” she replied.
“Thank goodness!” said the boy with a sign of relief.

I HAVE LEARNED(part III)

I’ve learned-
that true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. Same goes for true love.

I’ve learned-
that just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have.

I’ve learned-
that maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you’ve had and what you’ve learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you’ve celebrated.

I’ve learned-
that you should never tell a child their dreams are unlikely or outlandish. Few things are more humiliating, and what a tragedy it would be if they believed it.

I’ve learned-
that your family won’t always be there for you. It may seem funny, but people you aren’t related to can take care of you and love you and teach you to trust people again. Families aren’t biological.

I’ve learned-
that it isn’t always enough to be forgiven by others. Sometimes you are to learn to forgive yourself.

I’ve learned-
that no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn’t stop for your grief.

I’ve learned-
that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.

I’ve learned-
that a rich person is not the one who has the most, but is one who needs the least.

I’ve learned-
that just because two people argue, it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. And just because they don’t argue, it doesn’t mean they do.

I’ve learned-
that we don’t have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

I’ve learned-
that you shouldn’t be so eager to find out a secret. It could change your life forever.

I’ve learned-
that two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.

I’ve learned-
that no matter how you try to protect your children, they will eventually get hurt and you will hurt in the process.

I’ve learned-
that even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.

I’ve learned-
that credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.

I’ve learned-
that the people you care about most in life are taken from you too soon.

I’ve learned-
that it’s hard to determine where to draw the line between being nice and not hurting people’s feelings, and standing up for what you believe.

I’ve learned-
that people will forget what you said, and people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

By Omer B. Washington