Howdy!
Again, I know it's been a long time since I last wrote, and this time I actually have no excuse. The internet has been working just fine. I just haven't felt like writing. Not that life isn't blog-worthy, but recently I'd just rather read "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in my down time. Please forgive me! I figure that my Saturday was so cool, however, that I have to write about it before it becomes less clear in my memory. And plus, there is nothing to do right now since it's Sunday morning. I can hear at least two different church services going on near the guest house right now, and I know that nearly every Ghanaian is currently in church. I have no excuse not to write.
There are a few distinct groups of volunteers at the guest house right now: those of us who have been here forever, and those who are only here for ten days. There are a surprising number of volunteers who only come for ten days, and I'm still trying to figure out what they are thinking. Are they just here because they want to be able to put Unite for Sight on their resumes? Do they just want to run home to their clean little lives and soon as possible? I just can't understand why they wouldn't want to stay long enough to actually learn to be part of the culture. Well, the ten-day volunteers always feel rushed to see all the touristy stuff on the weekends (waterfalls and slave castles mostly) and those of us that have been here for months have seen these things at least twice already, so we often are at a loss for what to do on the weekends. However, five us of found an amazing thing to do yesterday.
One of our drivers, Bismarck, is from a town called Big Ada (about 2.5 hours out of Accra) and he went home for the weekend for the annual Ada-Asafotufiami festival. The celebration of the festival is in remembrance of the wars for settlement fought by the ancestors of the area. It's a week long celebration, and the stars of the show are the ten chiefs from the different villages of the Dangme East District of the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. Bismarck told us that the celebration was a ton of food, music, drinking, well-dressedness, and festivities, and those of us who were sick of tourist spots decided to catch a taxi to Big Ada for the day to get our festival on :)
We hired a taxi driver (a friend of Bismarck's who knows the Ada area well) and agreed to pay him 80 Cedi for the day to get us to Ada and back. That meant that each of the five of us only payed 16 Cedi each (about 10 USD) for the day. I still can't believe how far our dollars go here! However, fitting five us of in a taxi was . . . special. One in the front, four in the back. Kartee, one of the Unite for Sight nurses, calls it "Africa style" when there are four of you in the back of a car. He says there is nothing more quintessentially Ghanaian than having so many people in a vehicle that they all have to partially sit on each other and everyone's legs fall asleep. So, we did the 2.5 hour taxi ride Africa style. Man, it felt good to get out of that cab!
When we got to Ada, the cab just dove into a mob a people! As we approached Ada, every village seemed barren, and Humphrey the cab driver told us that was because everyone had packed up to stay in Ada for the weekend. Nearly everyone in the region was at the festival. In Ada, the streets were flooded with humanity. Our car actually had to gently push people out of the way. I guess when people feel a metal bumper pushing softly on the backs of their calves, they know it's time to scoot. We slowed to a crawl, and getting to the center of town took probably three times as long in the cab as it would if we had just walked.
Humphrey dumped us off right at the center of town and we exchanged phone numbers. Then the five of us - Anna, Jennifer, Lai, Dimas, and me - dove into the crowd. After that rather cramped car ride, we all had to go use the bushes before starting to party, but there were people everywhere! In Ghana, if you are a man, you can pee ANYWHERE, so Dimas and Lai were set. They joined a few other men peeing on a wall out in broad daylight. We ladies, however, had to find a building to go behind, and even then, our cover wasn't great. I think we amused a good number of locals when they saw two silly little white women blushing and pulling down their pants by a small bush. It's just so much easier for Ghanaian women to be discreet - they wear skirts! Smart smart smart.
We got to Ada around 11 AM, and the official ceremonies didn't start until around 2 PM, so we had a while to wander. In the center of town, a huge clearing was surrounded by chairs. The central clearing was probably the size of an entire city block and people were so densely crowded around it that it was really hard to see what was inside. At 11 AM, though, there wasn't much in the center except a few European-looking tourists looking clueless. We meandered around the packed area, bought cokes and fish pies, and people-watched. Everyone was dressed in their best. Women wore their best long-skirted dressed, decked themselves out in jewelry, and had their hair done. And you could always tell which groups were together because all the women in the group were dressed identically. They had the same dresses made out of the same fabric. The festival is such a big deal that groups of women go to the tailor's all together and have dresses made out of the same fabric for the occasion.
Before there was any official music or drumming, there were a few independent groups of drummers performing. We were drawn toward a group of people - three men drumming and a group of men and women dancing. They said they were from a fitness club, and they were singing and dancing to the different drum calls. Some of them really hammed up when we took their pictures, and then as soon as we put our cameras away, they pulled us into the dancing! It was such a surprise because two girls just grabbed Anna by the arm and yanked her inside. They rubbed their booties on her and made an Anna sandwich. She looked a little overwhelmed, but was a good sport. Then I jumped in and joined the gyration to help Anna feel a little more comfortable, but I think you can be only so comfortable when sweaty strangers and grinding on you :) Lai, Dimas, and Jennifer just laughed at us. I think they were glad that they didn't have to try to shake their butts too.
After we got covered in sweat and dirt from the dancing, we wandered around a bit more. We found a glorious little treat - shots in a bag! The water and ice cream in Ghana are in bags, so why shouldn't the booze be in bags too? We found a brand of gin called "White Virgin" and figured we had to each take a shot. Each bagged shot cost about 5 US cents, and tasted horrible! But you just can't pass up an opportunity to suck down something called "White Virgin" when you really are the only white people amongst thousands.
While we were still gagging, we heard the sound of car engines in the center of the huge arena. We walked over to see if something was happening, and saw that about 5 SUVs were inside. One of them drove over to a stage on one side of the stadium, but we couldn't see who was being dropped off. The whole morning, voices speaking the local language (unfortunately not Twi or Ewe) were being pumped over the loudspeakers, and of course none of us could tell what they were saying. Next, the man from the SUV came to speak on the PA, and this time everyone listened. We asked a man standing near us who the man speaking was, and he exclaimed, "the President!" "You mean Atta Mills?" (the president of Ghana), I asked. And he nodded enthusiastically. Although we didn't get to see him and couldn't understand his speaking, we witness the President of Ghana making a speech at the festival! He was only there for about 20 minutes, and after his speech the SUVs hauled him away quickly, but that was still pretty cool. Apparently, the Ada-Asafotufiami festival is a pretty big deal!
After the President left, the atmosphere picked up a bit. It looks like the down-time in the morning had simply been spent waiting for the President to arrive. While I was nibbling a grilled plantain, Anna and I were approached by a smiley man with a small recording device in his hand. He picked us out because we were obviously tourists, and he said he worked for a radio station that was going to air a segment about the festival. He held the device up to us and said, "Please, beautiful girls, what is your impression of the festival and of Ghana?" Uh. Anna and I felt really dumb responding, but we said that everyone was dressed so beautifully, that people were very very friendly, and that we loved the drumming. Arg, we probably sounded like ditsy tourists. But hey, I bet we were on the radio. Then, not even half an hour later a whole camera crew approached the two of us! I don't know why the media was out looking for white women! The man who was holding the camera said that they were traveling all over the coast and visiting many festivals so they could make a documentary for UNICEF. He asked us the same thing the radio man had - tell me your impression of the festival. Arg! We both insisted that we were too shy to be on camera, but the camera man was so persistent. We learned that his name was Enoch because he had though that he and Anna had the same name, and he didn't leave! He turned on the camera while we were still insisting that we didn't want to be recorded, and finally we gave in. We said our dumb tourist speech again, and blushed like crazy. They seemed to like it though! And then they were really nice and took pictures with us. After that encounter, my face was so hot - both from blushing and from the sun that was beating down on us. I started really wishing that I'd though about putting on some sunscreen. Especially since Anna and I were practically celebrities by this point. Haha.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The Swimming Pool in My Room
Two nights ago, we were having a lazy lazy day. It was Friday, and we had had the day off from outreach because we were going to work on Saturday. It was a wholly unremarkable day - I went to the gym (which I now have a month-long membership to, and will take full advantage), ate a mango and rice for lunch, and played cards with friends. Finally, we also said goodbye to many of some of my good friends who were here for the month of July.
I thought the day would end as quietly as it had progressed, but I was in a for a surprise. Anna and I came down from our room at 8 to watch the Cosby show and stuck around for Friends at 8:30, then right after Friends I walked lazily upstairs. When I felt the cold water rush around to envelop my toes, I became glued to the spot. Water was rushing out of my bedroom and I was standing in three inches of water pouring out into the hallway. All I could do was call Anna's name. First quietly, then with more desperation, all I could do was holler as my eyes bulged. "Anna? Anna! ANNA!!!!"
Another volunteer, Dimas, came running from his room down the hall, and ran past me as I was immobilized in the hallway. I followed him into our room and saw that water was exploding out of both the sink and the shower. Dimas cranked the sink and shower faucet knobs into the off positions and the water completely stopped. He turned around to look at me and said simply, "The water was on."
We would later learn that the hotel staff had turned on the water pressure to full blast and that some sealant of the faucets in our room had popped off. Other volunteers who had lived in the room before had warned about the sink mysteriously coming on in the middle of the night, but we had never been too worried about it causing too much trouble. Maybe we should have.
At that instant, Anna splashed into the room and gasped, "Our suitcases are floating!" Nearly all of our possessions were on the floor or in our suitcases - and of course our suitcases were open on the floor. It is a true miracle that my backpack containing all of my electronics - charge chords, telephone, and LAPTOP - was on the bed! Wondrously, Anna's phone and charger had been sitting on top of the fridge. By the time the situation had actually soaked into my consciousness, all the other volunteers were in my room too. They were suddenly zipping up all my things and hauling them, dripping wet, out onto high-and-dry ground. I picked up my soggy mounds of dirty clothes and dragged the wet masses out onto the balcony of the guest house. Aside from the clothes I was wearing and about ten other pieces that had been on the tops of the suitcase piles, all of my clothing was drenched.
The room was cleared out, and Anna and I were left damp and disturbed sitting on the couch downstairs. This is how we came to sleep at the Kingsby hotel for two nights. This is also how most of my clothing ended up on the front lawn of the Telecentre guest house. Anna and I hung our dripping wardrobes over the edge of the balcony, and I guess the wind had blown strongly in the night while we slept at the sketchy Kingsby hotel. My moist skirts and moldy-smelling shirts peppered the front yard and bushes of the Telecentre the next morning.
At this point, the carpet from our room and part of the hallway has been torn up and is drying on the front lawn. The entire upstairs of the Telecentre smells like humidity and rank mold. The biggest room in the Telecentre is out of commission just in time for more than ten UFS volunteers to arrive. And that's how seven of us ended up at the Kingsby last night.
The Kingsby was a special place. The rooms and the beds were huge, and there was a pool in the courtyard, but the pool was covered in scum, and the corner of a bed was covered in what could only have been a bloodstain. I didn't shower in the Kingsby bathroom, and I didn't sleep under the Kingsby covers. If we move back into the Telecentre tonight (which we are told we will), I will be one happy camper.
It's things like this that have eliminated almost every ounce of germophobia or need for cleanliness from my life. I'm wearing clothes that are actually growing mold. I've been wearing my glasses for almost two months. More often than not, when I go to the bathroom there is no toilet paper. There is no point in showering more than thre times a week because you feel dirty the second you step out of the cold trickle anyway. Even my teeth constantly feel scummy despite the fact that I brush at least twice a day.
In truth, I think it might be hard for be to get back into the habit of the Western standard of hygeine. Please still be my friend while I re-adjust?
:)
I thought the day would end as quietly as it had progressed, but I was in a for a surprise. Anna and I came down from our room at 8 to watch the Cosby show and stuck around for Friends at 8:30, then right after Friends I walked lazily upstairs. When I felt the cold water rush around to envelop my toes, I became glued to the spot. Water was rushing out of my bedroom and I was standing in three inches of water pouring out into the hallway. All I could do was call Anna's name. First quietly, then with more desperation, all I could do was holler as my eyes bulged. "Anna? Anna! ANNA!!!!"
Another volunteer, Dimas, came running from his room down the hall, and ran past me as I was immobilized in the hallway. I followed him into our room and saw that water was exploding out of both the sink and the shower. Dimas cranked the sink and shower faucet knobs into the off positions and the water completely stopped. He turned around to look at me and said simply, "The water was on."
We would later learn that the hotel staff had turned on the water pressure to full blast and that some sealant of the faucets in our room had popped off. Other volunteers who had lived in the room before had warned about the sink mysteriously coming on in the middle of the night, but we had never been too worried about it causing too much trouble. Maybe we should have.
At that instant, Anna splashed into the room and gasped, "Our suitcases are floating!" Nearly all of our possessions were on the floor or in our suitcases - and of course our suitcases were open on the floor. It is a true miracle that my backpack containing all of my electronics - charge chords, telephone, and LAPTOP - was on the bed! Wondrously, Anna's phone and charger had been sitting on top of the fridge. By the time the situation had actually soaked into my consciousness, all the other volunteers were in my room too. They were suddenly zipping up all my things and hauling them, dripping wet, out onto high-and-dry ground. I picked up my soggy mounds of dirty clothes and dragged the wet masses out onto the balcony of the guest house. Aside from the clothes I was wearing and about ten other pieces that had been on the tops of the suitcase piles, all of my clothing was drenched.
The room was cleared out, and Anna and I were left damp and disturbed sitting on the couch downstairs. This is how we came to sleep at the Kingsby hotel for two nights. This is also how most of my clothing ended up on the front lawn of the Telecentre guest house. Anna and I hung our dripping wardrobes over the edge of the balcony, and I guess the wind had blown strongly in the night while we slept at the sketchy Kingsby hotel. My moist skirts and moldy-smelling shirts peppered the front yard and bushes of the Telecentre the next morning.
At this point, the carpet from our room and part of the hallway has been torn up and is drying on the front lawn. The entire upstairs of the Telecentre smells like humidity and rank mold. The biggest room in the Telecentre is out of commission just in time for more than ten UFS volunteers to arrive. And that's how seven of us ended up at the Kingsby last night.
The Kingsby was a special place. The rooms and the beds were huge, and there was a pool in the courtyard, but the pool was covered in scum, and the corner of a bed was covered in what could only have been a bloodstain. I didn't shower in the Kingsby bathroom, and I didn't sleep under the Kingsby covers. If we move back into the Telecentre tonight (which we are told we will), I will be one happy camper.
It's things like this that have eliminated almost every ounce of germophobia or need for cleanliness from my life. I'm wearing clothes that are actually growing mold. I've been wearing my glasses for almost two months. More often than not, when I go to the bathroom there is no toilet paper. There is no point in showering more than thre times a week because you feel dirty the second you step out of the cold trickle anyway. Even my teeth constantly feel scummy despite the fact that I brush at least twice a day.
In truth, I think it might be hard for be to get back into the habit of the Western standard of hygeine. Please still be my friend while I re-adjust?
:)
Saturday, August 1, 2009
African Top Songz
Just like in the US, Africa has a nice little list of horribly overplayed popular songs. These songs are the "Poker Face" the "Boom Boom Pow" and the "Hot n Cold" of the francophone African countries. In case you guys wonder which songs have been getting drilled into my head on all our long long commutes, feel free to check out these youtube links. Beware, if you don't like hip hop, you may not be in to this playlist. I don't think I'd be that thrilled by it if I hadn't heard each of these songs a billion times. It's also worth noting that not all of these songs are produced in Ghana. In fact, the Sean Kingston song is American, and the "Do Me" and "Bumper to Bumper" songs are from Nigeria. I'm not sure about where the other songs were produced.
African Lady (I dey mad oh) - R2Bees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2wJOCy5RIE
Big Booty (Really called World Trade Center, but I have no idea why!) - 4x4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AbkcFxCyJ4
Make Me Fall in Love - Tic Tac
Sorry I couldn't find a link!
Me Love - Sean Kingston
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFJQAfW_jgw
Barack Obama - Blakk Rasta
See Previous Post :)
Bumper to Bumper - Wande Coal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH8mCqASZQI
Simple - Bradez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vhDsq29i04
Cool. I'll certainly write more later, but right now about ten new volunteers just arrived and I'm helping them get acclimated. I thought I would post these songs because I was introducing them to the songs they are going to get to know well while they're here. When I write next, I'll tell you about how everything I own is dripping wet from when my bedroom got flooded with three inches of water when the sink exploded. Haha, oh Ghana.
African Lady (I dey mad oh) - R2Bees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2wJOCy5RIE
Big Booty (Really called World Trade Center, but I have no idea why!) - 4x4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AbkcFxCyJ4
Make Me Fall in Love - Tic Tac
Sorry I couldn't find a link!
Me Love - Sean Kingston
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFJQAfW_jgw
Barack Obama - Blakk Rasta
See Previous Post :)
Bumper to Bumper - Wande Coal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH8mCqASZQI
Simple - Bradez
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vhDsq29i04
Cool. I'll certainly write more later, but right now about ten new volunteers just arrived and I'm helping them get acclimated. I thought I would post these songs because I was introducing them to the songs they are going to get to know well while they're here. When I write next, I'll tell you about how everything I own is dripping wet from when my bedroom got flooded with three inches of water when the sink exploded. Haha, oh Ghana.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Come Make We Talk About Barack Obama
I'm baaaaaack! I'm so sorry that I've been out of touch for almost two weeks without letting anyone know why. I just spent the last two weeks in a northern city in Ghana called Kumasi, and I had heard that there was a way to access the internet there. However, there was NOT! Haha. So we were "really roughing it" in Kumasi.
Also, since tons of people have been expressing concern about my brief encounter with malaria, I believe I have made a full recovery! At this point, I don't think I'll be able to donate blood for a good number of years, but other than that, I'm back to feeling good again. There are some good malaria medications on the market nowadays, and I took something called Coartem which knocked me out while I was taking it, but then left me completely mended after taking it for three days.
This post is long overdue, so just pretend I wrote it about two weeks ago :)
My Gampa wrote me a birthday e-mail :) and in it he asked about how Barack Obama was received in Ghana when he was here on July 10-11. I had completely forgotten to write about this (although I had planned to) so thanks to Gampa for the reminder!
I'm sure that the other countries that President Obama has visited have been excited for his arrival, but in Ghana this was less of an excitement and more of a mania! From the day I arrived here, in late June, people had been talking about Barack Obama coming. In fact, on the drive from the airport, I caught my first glimpse of one of the many billboards in downtown that sports the greeting "Akwaaba" (“Welcome” in Twi) and Barack's big beautiful face. This link: http://news.myjoyonline.com/photos/news/Obama%20Mills%2009.jpg
shows a similar image that has been all over the place. The man on the left side of the photo is the democratically elected President of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills. Also, since I've been here, I've probably been called "Barack Obama" as many times as I've been called "obrunni."
Barack Obama novelties are all over the place. So many shirts. So many sports jerseys. So many paintings. Billboards. Radio talk. Songs.
Songs. I have heard at least three different songs on the radio about Barack. And one of them is super super popular, to the point where before the President came to Ghana, I heard it about once a day on the radio. There is a big rasta scene in Ghana, which is so cool, and the most famous and popular rasta artist is Blakk Rasta. He even has his own radio show on top of having tons of well-loved songs. Well, Blakk Rasta's song, "Barack Obama" is one of the catchiest and most overplayed songs in all of Ghana, and it's great! In fact, here it is as a youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L85YF0pyPH0. Fun, right? This video is also a great example of how well-dressed African women look. The gorgeous colors and varied prints are exactly what everyone wears. The men in the video are a little more colorful and rasta than most Ghanaian men, though. And the montage of adorable children at the end is also exactly what beautiful Ghanaian children look like. They are everywhere, and they are glorious.
Ghana was SO excited for Barack to be here. In fact, on the day he arrived, one of the Unite for Sight nurses was driving in a taxi to get to the clinic, and he got delayed by traffic from the President's procession. He was stuck for suuuuch a long time in traffic, but it was all worth it because he got to see Obama waving out of a limo window! He was bragging all day long about how he got to see our President and we didn't. Haha.
The funny thing is that Barack was only in the country for less than 24 hours. In that time, he gave three important speeches, one which he gave on the first day in Accra and in which he outlined what he foresees for the relationship between Ghana and the U.S. It should be easy to find the speech online if you are interested in reading it. Basically, Barack chose Ghana as the sub-Saharan African country to visit because he sees Ghana as a country that is truly helping itself. Ghana has a democratically elected leader and is one of the more developed sub-Saharan countries, and in his speech, he praised the progress that Ghana has made. It's amazing to me that this place is more developed than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa (minus South Africa) because it's hard for me to imagine how other countries could be less developed. Most of Ghana has no electricity and no running water and people live in dirt huts. Perhaps the development in cities like Accra in Kumasi is better than large cities in other sub-Saharan countries? I'm embarrassed to say I don't know for sure. Perhaps it’s also the lack of an extremely corrupt government that puts Ghana ahead of the game.
The second speech that the President gave was at Cape Coast Castle about four hours out of Accra. The castle was a major holding-place for Africans who had been captured and would be sold into slavery and shipped to the Americas and European countries back in the 1700 and 1800’s. Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle are two of the largest slave castles on the West African coast, and Barack visited one. A few of us volunteers visited the other about two weeks before Barack came. Our visit to Elmina castle will be the subject of another post, worry not. I'm just very behind. However, it was very important to many Ghanaians that Barack visit a slave castle, because some of the few locals that I've talked with about the President's visit mention that they believe his visit helped to lay the souls of many dead American slaves to rest. They think that Barack helped to return their souls to their home in Africa so that they could finally be at peace.
The President gave his final speech at the airport on his way out of the country. I didn't watch this speech on the television like I watched the two others, but I imagine he thanked Ghana for his stay and highlighted his excitement for the continued development of US-Ghana relations and for the progress of Ghana as a country.
At the end of this post, I request that you listen to the Barack Obama song at the youtube link I gave you. It'll be stuck in your head all day, I promise :)
Also, since tons of people have been expressing concern about my brief encounter with malaria, I believe I have made a full recovery! At this point, I don't think I'll be able to donate blood for a good number of years, but other than that, I'm back to feeling good again. There are some good malaria medications on the market nowadays, and I took something called Coartem which knocked me out while I was taking it, but then left me completely mended after taking it for three days.
This post is long overdue, so just pretend I wrote it about two weeks ago :)
My Gampa wrote me a birthday e-mail :) and in it he asked about how Barack Obama was received in Ghana when he was here on July 10-11. I had completely forgotten to write about this (although I had planned to) so thanks to Gampa for the reminder!
I'm sure that the other countries that President Obama has visited have been excited for his arrival, but in Ghana this was less of an excitement and more of a mania! From the day I arrived here, in late June, people had been talking about Barack Obama coming. In fact, on the drive from the airport, I caught my first glimpse of one of the many billboards in downtown that sports the greeting "Akwaaba" (“Welcome” in Twi) and Barack's big beautiful face. This link: http://news.myjoyonline.com/photos/news/Obama%20Mills%2009.jpg
shows a similar image that has been all over the place. The man on the left side of the photo is the democratically elected President of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills. Also, since I've been here, I've probably been called "Barack Obama" as many times as I've been called "obrunni."
Barack Obama novelties are all over the place. So many shirts. So many sports jerseys. So many paintings. Billboards. Radio talk. Songs.
Songs. I have heard at least three different songs on the radio about Barack. And one of them is super super popular, to the point where before the President came to Ghana, I heard it about once a day on the radio. There is a big rasta scene in Ghana, which is so cool, and the most famous and popular rasta artist is Blakk Rasta. He even has his own radio show on top of having tons of well-loved songs. Well, Blakk Rasta's song, "Barack Obama" is one of the catchiest and most overplayed songs in all of Ghana, and it's great! In fact, here it is as a youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L85YF0pyPH0. Fun, right? This video is also a great example of how well-dressed African women look. The gorgeous colors and varied prints are exactly what everyone wears. The men in the video are a little more colorful and rasta than most Ghanaian men, though. And the montage of adorable children at the end is also exactly what beautiful Ghanaian children look like. They are everywhere, and they are glorious.
Ghana was SO excited for Barack to be here. In fact, on the day he arrived, one of the Unite for Sight nurses was driving in a taxi to get to the clinic, and he got delayed by traffic from the President's procession. He was stuck for suuuuch a long time in traffic, but it was all worth it because he got to see Obama waving out of a limo window! He was bragging all day long about how he got to see our President and we didn't. Haha.
The funny thing is that Barack was only in the country for less than 24 hours. In that time, he gave three important speeches, one which he gave on the first day in Accra and in which he outlined what he foresees for the relationship between Ghana and the U.S. It should be easy to find the speech online if you are interested in reading it. Basically, Barack chose Ghana as the sub-Saharan African country to visit because he sees Ghana as a country that is truly helping itself. Ghana has a democratically elected leader and is one of the more developed sub-Saharan countries, and in his speech, he praised the progress that Ghana has made. It's amazing to me that this place is more developed than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa (minus South Africa) because it's hard for me to imagine how other countries could be less developed. Most of Ghana has no electricity and no running water and people live in dirt huts. Perhaps the development in cities like Accra in Kumasi is better than large cities in other sub-Saharan countries? I'm embarrassed to say I don't know for sure. Perhaps it’s also the lack of an extremely corrupt government that puts Ghana ahead of the game.
The second speech that the President gave was at Cape Coast Castle about four hours out of Accra. The castle was a major holding-place for Africans who had been captured and would be sold into slavery and shipped to the Americas and European countries back in the 1700 and 1800’s. Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle are two of the largest slave castles on the West African coast, and Barack visited one. A few of us volunteers visited the other about two weeks before Barack came. Our visit to Elmina castle will be the subject of another post, worry not. I'm just very behind. However, it was very important to many Ghanaians that Barack visit a slave castle, because some of the few locals that I've talked with about the President's visit mention that they believe his visit helped to lay the souls of many dead American slaves to rest. They think that Barack helped to return their souls to their home in Africa so that they could finally be at peace.
The President gave his final speech at the airport on his way out of the country. I didn't watch this speech on the television like I watched the two others, but I imagine he thanked Ghana for his stay and highlighted his excitement for the continued development of US-Ghana relations and for the progress of Ghana as a country.
At the end of this post, I request that you listen to the Barack Obama song at the youtube link I gave you. It'll be stuck in your head all day, I promise :)
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
So Much for Malarone
I YEARN for a bowl of chicken noodle soup. I swear than when I get home, I will never take chicken noodle soup for granted ever again. Right now, I am recovering from being sick as a dog, and all I have is granola bars and water that tastes a bit like plastic. Blech. I could walk for half a mile (if I had the strength) and try to get a bowl of fermented banku with groundnut soup, but that's a lot of effort for something that doesn't sound so great either.
On Sunday afternoon, I was feeling exhausted. Not that I had done anything to warrant being so tired. So, I took a nap. When I woke up an hour later, I started barfing my brains out. By five, my stomach was empty, my bowels were empty, and I exhausted from dehydration and dry heaving. At that point, our nurse Kartee (thank goodness he was around) called a taxi and took me to the hospital.
This was how I came to spend the night in a Ghanaian urgent care clinic. I basically had to be carried into the building because I was so weak, and I got surprisingly little help or sympathy from the nurses who admitted me. They kicked out Kartee and two of my friends who had come along to help. They also put me in the unpleasant position that if I was going to vomit, I had to call out and have them bring me a bucket. They couldn't have just left it with me? Ug, and even if I wasn't going to vomit, the smell of that bucket would have forced me to. It was half-full of the strongest-smelling detergent imaginable and I just choked on the fumes while I heaved.
Before they deserted me for the evening, the nurses put me on a rock-hard bed in the hallway and put in an IV. They alternated between antibiotics and fluids throughout most of the night, and I didn't sleep a wink so I saw every time they changed the bag. Before they kicked out my friends, though, they gave me an injection in my butt cheek that they said would stop my vomiting - and it really did! I don't know what that miracle shot was, but it was impressively effective. It didn't make me feel any better, though.
So, I spent the entire night rolling around on a rock for a bed, desperately thirsty, with an IV in my hand and the much-needed bathroom far too distant. Once when I actually got to the bathroom . . . oh, ok I was going to share gory details, but have just decided against it :) Consider yourself lucky. Needless to say, the nurses were not pleased to clean up the mess that I really couldn't help making :(
Then, at 4:45 in the morning, after the longest night of my life, they moved me upstairs into a wonderfully comfortable bed in a room full of empty comfortable beds! Why the heck had I spent the night in the hallway on a stretcher getting eaten alive by mosquitoes when this room existed?!! I was so angry, but felt like being mad at the indifferent nurses would have been useless. That room wasn't so great once they put me in it, though, because they left the horribly bright lights on and then had the two cleaning guys come in and wash the floor while they blasted hip-hop. AH! I lost so much of my dignity that evening.
Then, FINALLY, around 8, they let Jerome come to check on me. He gave them a few harsh words for not letting him stay with me for the night, and I was glad that he did. Then the nurse informed us that the doctor would be in very soon to look at me. Now do you remember what I've told you about the meaning of "soon" in Ghana? If they told me he would be there "soon" at 8, what time do you think he came? You're right! Noon. The doctor got there at noon.
The doctor seemed just as interested in me as the nurses, but he took a small sample of blood and said he'd come back with the test results. I was expecting to have gastroenteritis from all the potentially dubious street food I'd been eating. However, when he came back an hour later, I looked up at him curiously and he said, "You have malaria parasites."
What?!! Seriously! Seriously? Yale made me purchase the most expensive malaria prophylaxis on the market, and I'd been taking it religiously! And somehow I still had malaria. Oh, and gastroenteritis too. Holy cow. And just the day before, a few volunteers and I had asked one of the UFS nurses if a UFS volunteer had even gotten malaria. He had said no. I guess that means I made Unite for Sight history? Whatever. I was not thrilled.
So, I got sent home from the clinic on Monday, and I was taking a treatment for acute malaria up until Thursday night. The medication that I took was called Coartem, and I think it had more symptoms that the parasites it was killing! I pretty much spent this entire week in bed, unable to eat and miserable. Today, though, I can walk! And as I said earlier, I just want some chicken noodle soup.
I guess the moral of this story is: I got malaria, but I'm ok. I'm on the upswing, so please don't be worried :) I figured I would wait until I was through the worst of it before making this news too public. And as Aaron told me, now I have an excellent war story to tell my grandkids.
Haha. Hope you are all doing well!
On Sunday afternoon, I was feeling exhausted. Not that I had done anything to warrant being so tired. So, I took a nap. When I woke up an hour later, I started barfing my brains out. By five, my stomach was empty, my bowels were empty, and I exhausted from dehydration and dry heaving. At that point, our nurse Kartee (thank goodness he was around) called a taxi and took me to the hospital.
This was how I came to spend the night in a Ghanaian urgent care clinic. I basically had to be carried into the building because I was so weak, and I got surprisingly little help or sympathy from the nurses who admitted me. They kicked out Kartee and two of my friends who had come along to help. They also put me in the unpleasant position that if I was going to vomit, I had to call out and have them bring me a bucket. They couldn't have just left it with me? Ug, and even if I wasn't going to vomit, the smell of that bucket would have forced me to. It was half-full of the strongest-smelling detergent imaginable and I just choked on the fumes while I heaved.
Before they deserted me for the evening, the nurses put me on a rock-hard bed in the hallway and put in an IV. They alternated between antibiotics and fluids throughout most of the night, and I didn't sleep a wink so I saw every time they changed the bag. Before they kicked out my friends, though, they gave me an injection in my butt cheek that they said would stop my vomiting - and it really did! I don't know what that miracle shot was, but it was impressively effective. It didn't make me feel any better, though.
So, I spent the entire night rolling around on a rock for a bed, desperately thirsty, with an IV in my hand and the much-needed bathroom far too distant. Once when I actually got to the bathroom . . . oh, ok I was going to share gory details, but have just decided against it :) Consider yourself lucky. Needless to say, the nurses were not pleased to clean up the mess that I really couldn't help making :(
Then, at 4:45 in the morning, after the longest night of my life, they moved me upstairs into a wonderfully comfortable bed in a room full of empty comfortable beds! Why the heck had I spent the night in the hallway on a stretcher getting eaten alive by mosquitoes when this room existed?!! I was so angry, but felt like being mad at the indifferent nurses would have been useless. That room wasn't so great once they put me in it, though, because they left the horribly bright lights on and then had the two cleaning guys come in and wash the floor while they blasted hip-hop. AH! I lost so much of my dignity that evening.
Then, FINALLY, around 8, they let Jerome come to check on me. He gave them a few harsh words for not letting him stay with me for the night, and I was glad that he did. Then the nurse informed us that the doctor would be in very soon to look at me. Now do you remember what I've told you about the meaning of "soon" in Ghana? If they told me he would be there "soon" at 8, what time do you think he came? You're right! Noon. The doctor got there at noon.
The doctor seemed just as interested in me as the nurses, but he took a small sample of blood and said he'd come back with the test results. I was expecting to have gastroenteritis from all the potentially dubious street food I'd been eating. However, when he came back an hour later, I looked up at him curiously and he said, "You have malaria parasites."
What?!! Seriously! Seriously? Yale made me purchase the most expensive malaria prophylaxis on the market, and I'd been taking it religiously! And somehow I still had malaria. Oh, and gastroenteritis too. Holy cow. And just the day before, a few volunteers and I had asked one of the UFS nurses if a UFS volunteer had even gotten malaria. He had said no. I guess that means I made Unite for Sight history? Whatever. I was not thrilled.
So, I got sent home from the clinic on Monday, and I was taking a treatment for acute malaria up until Thursday night. The medication that I took was called Coartem, and I think it had more symptoms that the parasites it was killing! I pretty much spent this entire week in bed, unable to eat and miserable. Today, though, I can walk! And as I said earlier, I just want some chicken noodle soup.
I guess the moral of this story is: I got malaria, but I'm ok. I'm on the upswing, so please don't be worried :) I figured I would wait until I was through the worst of it before making this news too public. And as Aaron told me, now I have an excellent war story to tell my grandkids.
Haha. Hope you are all doing well!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Salsamania
I wrote this post in Word a while ago and waited for the internet to be working :)
I realize that I've totally forgotten to mention the amazing group of volunteers that I'm with right now. Part of the reason that I've been writing less recently is because they are so much fun to hang out with that I spend more time with them and less with my computer. There are six of us that have really clicked, Emily, Anna, Scott, Mike, Andrew, and me. The way UFS works, there is a constant influx and outflux of people, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to know anyone for long enough to make good friends. However, Anna and I are both here from June 20 - August 20, so at least I have her. And we've been sharing a bed for this last week :) The others are here for all of July, so I've got them for a long time too. Some people, however, only stay for 10 days (the minimum stay), and so people are arriving and leaving all the time. Yesterday (July 11) we had an influx of seven new people, and they all seem pretty cool. This is such a relief because I've learned that not everyone who comes to volunteer is so cool. A girl left yesterday who I could barely stand. She was whiny, culturally insensitive, and just generally unpleasant. I was very glad to see her go.
One of our drivers, Bismarck, is an amazing source of advice and knowledge about things to do in and around Accra. He claims he knows where pretty much everything in Ghana is, and although I think that's a ridiculous assertion, he never fails to impress us. Last weekend, he told the six of us who were in Accra that we should go to "Salsamania" on Wednesday night at Coconut Groove, so we decided we would try.
Almost none of us brought any nice clothes to Ghana because we figured anything nice would get filthy and be ruined, so dressing up for a night of salsa was . . . interesting. These was lots of clothes-borrowing and less-than-flattering shoe choices, but we all tried to look as cute as possible with the circumstances as they were. We caught a taxi around 7 and headed out to Coconut Groove. As I've mentioned before, it gets dark here around 6, so by 7, it really is time to start thinking about going out.
Riding in taxis is hard. Not because the drivers are crazy - in fact you have to be crazy to drive in Ghana because if you aren't crazy you won't ever be able to assert yourself enough to enter the bumper-to-bumper flow of traffic - but because most taxi drivers keep their windows open and I end up gagging on all the dust and pollution. Since most of the roads are dirt roads, cars kick up tons of dust. The only days when the dusty air is manageable are the days when it rains. Also, the exhaust from all the cars is almost unbearable. I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about the fumes that I inhale on taxi rides. (My sick stomach is probably also due to a number of other factors which I'll talk about in my next post. . . sigh).
Riiiiiiiight, salsamania. Sorry for getting off topic! So we got to Coconut Groove around 8 and noticed that it was just a really nice hotel. There was a bar, a swimming pool, a goat-kabob stand, and a dance floor outside in the courtyard, and it looked like it might rain. The courtyard was gorgeous, though, and we each bought a Star (the Ghanaian beer of choice) and a goat-kabob while we waited for things to start.
I felt pretty confident about my mediocre salsa skillz because Aaron and I took a Latin dance class at school in the fall. Haha. He and I were the stars of the class, and it was super fun, so I felt like I had the basic steps down and could teach the other volunteers a little salsa. Most of them had no idea what to do. So after we munched down the goat, we stood around and I showed them the basic back and forth step and how it goes with music. Then, after about 1 minute of teaching them, a very tall Ghanaian man came over and asked me to dance. I told him, "Oh! I'm very bad!" but he insisted. So I tried. We actually danced pretty well. I certainly was nowhere near as good as he was, but I tried to follow as well as could have been expected. We danced for about 10 minutes, and then he went back over to someone who looked like she may have been his grumpy girlfriend. Haha. The other volunteers looked slightly impressed. But they all insisted that they needed to drink more if they were going to be able to try to dance.
As they got more drinks, the party got started. Some very good dancers were leading lessons for beginners and also for intermediate dancers. I went with the intermediate dancers and the other volunteers went with the beginners. Luckily, it didn't take me too long to pick up a Ghanaian partner. We learned some cool turns and the other volunteers learned the basics.
Then, a song started that all the Ghanaians recognized, and they all lined up on the patio. A lot of the music up until this point had been in Spanish, but this song was in Twi, and everyone knew the dance to it. Thank goodness the dance was very similar to the electric slide! We were able to catch on pretty quickly. Throughout the night, there were about 5 other line dances that everyone seemed to know. Of the 5 more, I was only able to catch on to about 1 of them. I'm pretty sure that the other dances were very complicated (and not that I'd just had too much to drink haha), but the truth remains unclear.
When we weren't line dancing, we were salsaing. Ghanaians, I learned, are very friendly and respectful partners who were always happy to dance with slightly-clueless obrunnis. I danced a little more than half of the time with locals, and the rest of the time with other volunteers. We had come with 4 girls and 3 guys, so I was often the volunteer who looked for partners outside our group.
As if it weren't amazing enough that we were all salsa dancing and line dancing on a gorgeous patio to amazing music, about 20 minutes into the party, it started pouring! The rain didn't let up until the party was over. Almost all of our dancing happened in the rain, and it was glorious! Tons of people hid under the balcony by the bar, but most of us (UFS volunteers) just stayed out in the downpour. We were soaked to the bone and I was so close to going swimming in the pool with my clothes on.
The only thing that we could think to ask each other the next morning was, "Did last night really happen?" Yeah. We really did salsa the night away in a downpour. It was an AMAZING night.
I realize that I've totally forgotten to mention the amazing group of volunteers that I'm with right now. Part of the reason that I've been writing less recently is because they are so much fun to hang out with that I spend more time with them and less with my computer. There are six of us that have really clicked, Emily, Anna, Scott, Mike, Andrew, and me. The way UFS works, there is a constant influx and outflux of people, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to know anyone for long enough to make good friends. However, Anna and I are both here from June 20 - August 20, so at least I have her. And we've been sharing a bed for this last week :) The others are here for all of July, so I've got them for a long time too. Some people, however, only stay for 10 days (the minimum stay), and so people are arriving and leaving all the time. Yesterday (July 11) we had an influx of seven new people, and they all seem pretty cool. This is such a relief because I've learned that not everyone who comes to volunteer is so cool. A girl left yesterday who I could barely stand. She was whiny, culturally insensitive, and just generally unpleasant. I was very glad to see her go.
One of our drivers, Bismarck, is an amazing source of advice and knowledge about things to do in and around Accra. He claims he knows where pretty much everything in Ghana is, and although I think that's a ridiculous assertion, he never fails to impress us. Last weekend, he told the six of us who were in Accra that we should go to "Salsamania" on Wednesday night at Coconut Groove, so we decided we would try.
Almost none of us brought any nice clothes to Ghana because we figured anything nice would get filthy and be ruined, so dressing up for a night of salsa was . . . interesting. These was lots of clothes-borrowing and less-than-flattering shoe choices, but we all tried to look as cute as possible with the circumstances as they were. We caught a taxi around 7 and headed out to Coconut Groove. As I've mentioned before, it gets dark here around 6, so by 7, it really is time to start thinking about going out.
Riding in taxis is hard. Not because the drivers are crazy - in fact you have to be crazy to drive in Ghana because if you aren't crazy you won't ever be able to assert yourself enough to enter the bumper-to-bumper flow of traffic - but because most taxi drivers keep their windows open and I end up gagging on all the dust and pollution. Since most of the roads are dirt roads, cars kick up tons of dust. The only days when the dusty air is manageable are the days when it rains. Also, the exhaust from all the cars is almost unbearable. I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about the fumes that I inhale on taxi rides. (My sick stomach is probably also due to a number of other factors which I'll talk about in my next post. . . sigh).
Riiiiiiiight, salsamania. Sorry for getting off topic! So we got to Coconut Groove around 8 and noticed that it was just a really nice hotel. There was a bar, a swimming pool, a goat-kabob stand, and a dance floor outside in the courtyard, and it looked like it might rain. The courtyard was gorgeous, though, and we each bought a Star (the Ghanaian beer of choice) and a goat-kabob while we waited for things to start.
I felt pretty confident about my mediocre salsa skillz because Aaron and I took a Latin dance class at school in the fall. Haha. He and I were the stars of the class, and it was super fun, so I felt like I had the basic steps down and could teach the other volunteers a little salsa. Most of them had no idea what to do. So after we munched down the goat, we stood around and I showed them the basic back and forth step and how it goes with music. Then, after about 1 minute of teaching them, a very tall Ghanaian man came over and asked me to dance. I told him, "Oh! I'm very bad!" but he insisted. So I tried. We actually danced pretty well. I certainly was nowhere near as good as he was, but I tried to follow as well as could have been expected. We danced for about 10 minutes, and then he went back over to someone who looked like she may have been his grumpy girlfriend. Haha. The other volunteers looked slightly impressed. But they all insisted that they needed to drink more if they were going to be able to try to dance.
As they got more drinks, the party got started. Some very good dancers were leading lessons for beginners and also for intermediate dancers. I went with the intermediate dancers and the other volunteers went with the beginners. Luckily, it didn't take me too long to pick up a Ghanaian partner. We learned some cool turns and the other volunteers learned the basics.
Then, a song started that all the Ghanaians recognized, and they all lined up on the patio. A lot of the music up until this point had been in Spanish, but this song was in Twi, and everyone knew the dance to it. Thank goodness the dance was very similar to the electric slide! We were able to catch on pretty quickly. Throughout the night, there were about 5 other line dances that everyone seemed to know. Of the 5 more, I was only able to catch on to about 1 of them. I'm pretty sure that the other dances were very complicated (and not that I'd just had too much to drink haha), but the truth remains unclear.
When we weren't line dancing, we were salsaing. Ghanaians, I learned, are very friendly and respectful partners who were always happy to dance with slightly-clueless obrunnis. I danced a little more than half of the time with locals, and the rest of the time with other volunteers. We had come with 4 girls and 3 guys, so I was often the volunteer who looked for partners outside our group.
As if it weren't amazing enough that we were all salsa dancing and line dancing on a gorgeous patio to amazing music, about 20 minutes into the party, it started pouring! The rain didn't let up until the party was over. Almost all of our dancing happened in the rain, and it was glorious! Tons of people hid under the balcony by the bar, but most of us (UFS volunteers) just stayed out in the downpour. We were soaked to the bone and I was so close to going swimming in the pool with my clothes on.
The only thing that we could think to ask each other the next morning was, "Did last night really happen?" Yeah. We really did salsa the night away in a downpour. It was an AMAZING night.
Fabulous!
I am so backlogged on blogging. I have so many more things to write about, and I keep putting them off because my choices are - 1) go out and have amazing times that are worth writing about, and 2) write about my amazing times. But ok, right now I'm gonna really take some time. Until I go to the beach :)
As promised, I'm going to work back through time. Right now, I'll talk about what I did exactly a week ago. On Sunday July 5th, we woke up too late to go to church, so we took an easy morning. Not much is open on Sunday because it truly is a day of rest. That's always slightly frustrating, though, because it's hard to find food to eat on a Sunday. However, there is another Ghanaian Sunday ritual in which we decided to partake that day. This, my friends, is the ritual of football.
Just as a note, football is not the same thing as American football. Ghanaians play the football that you actually play with your feet. We silly people know it better as soccer.
Every Sunday, there is a football game at the Accra stadium downtown. The stadium is about a 30 minute drive from the Telecentre, and it's a cool place. There are two tiers of seats - the top one is painted red, the lower is painted yellow, and of course the field is green. If you are perceptive, you realize that this turns the whole stadium into one big Ghanaian flag: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana. It looks great.
Last Sunday, we went to a football game. The two teams were Asante Kotoko (a club team from Kumasi whose mascot is the porcupine) and Liberty Professional (a pro team from Accra). It seems like Ghanaians are much more into club football than professional, because the Kotoko fans came out in swarms! We decided to root for Kotoko too because we figured they were the underdog being a club team playing a pro team and because the Kotoko fans thought it has a hoot that the obrunnis were wearing Kotoko hats and had Kotoko flags around their necks.
I bought a really crappy quality Kotoko flag to wear around my neck, and it the best-spend Cedi of my entire life. Accra is just filled with Kotoko fans, and on our way home from the game, we have so many friendly people holler at us about the team that we obviously mutually supported. People hanging out of car windows would yell "Kotoko!" or "Asante Kotoko, the best!" or "Fabulous!" (the team's motto) out their windows, and I got a free mango on the street because the vendor was a huge Kotoko fan who taught me his Kotoko chant. It was amazing - wearing Kotoko gear made us an instant favorite as we walked home from the game.
The game itself was nuts. Kotoko scored the first two goals, then Liberty scored three, and finally Kotoko scored one more in the last three seconds to end the game in a tie. Every time Kotoko scored, everyone went bonkers. The men hooped and hollered, jumping up and down and waving all their gear. They trash-talked each other and yelled with wide-eyed enthusiasm. And the Liberty fans sang amazing cheers when Liberty scored. They had full-length songs and ran laps around the stadium. They also brought along drums and drummed along with their cheers.
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