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.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The Village of Hope
Howdy!
I know it’s been a while since I last wrote, but although the Telecentre claims to have wireless internet, what it really should claim is that it has wireless internet . . . occasionally. The internet is down way more often that it’s up, and every time I try to get my e-mail on Thunderbird, I hold my breath to see if it will go through. What this means is that a lot of these posts have been written days ago and saved in Word until that magic moment when we have a small window of World-Wide-Wonder. In fact, as I write now, the Web is down. Maybe it will be of some help for me to tell you that I’m writing on July 7th, my BG’s birthday!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BG!!!!
Well I have a ton to write about, and I think I’m going to go backward. Right now, today is fresh in my mind, and last week in Tema is a dull and unpleasant memory. This post will be about today, then I’ll work back through our great weekend, and then I’ll say just a little bit about last week.
As the title of this post suggests, a number of us spent today in the
Today was particularly interesting for us as volunteers because we were doing a different type of outreach than we were used to. Instead of dispensing eyeglasses and medication, we dispensed knowledge! Our role was to provide an approximately 90 minute presentation to the first through fifth graders, and then another similar presentation to the JSS (junior secondary school) students afterward. When I learned what we would be doing, I was so excited to get to be a teacher for a day!
In preparing our presentation, we broke down the speech into the following topics:
1. Introduction to Eye Health and Unite for Sight
2. Anatomy and Functions of the Health Eye
3. Vitamin A Deficiency
4. Refractive Error
5. Conjunctivitis
6. Pterygium
7. The Sun and the Eye
8. Eye Trauma
9. Glaucoma
10. Cataracts
Topics 3-10 are all common diseases of the eye (minus number 7) and in each of these sections, we included symptoms, causes, prevention, and treatment. There were 7 volunteers and 1 nurse on this outreach, so the nurse did the introduction and each volunteer got one disease. However, I got to present 2 diseases because there were one fewer of us than there were diseases. I prepared to talk about conjunctivitis and cataracts.
After we prepared, the woman in charge of health education at school lead us to the lecture hall. We sat up front in chairs while at least 200 students, first through fifth grade, filed into the hall. In order to made the filling process more manageable, the students filed in while singing a song – “We love you with the love of the Lord.” One lucky fifth grader had been picked to lead the singing and the procession. Every student was wearing a blue and white uniform with closed toed shoes. Then, as soon as everyone was seated, a man who seemed to be in charge stood up front of the hall, asked everyone to bow his or her head, and said a prayer. He prayed that the students would be able to hear the message that we were bringing that day so that they could learn to protect their God-given gift of sight. It was a practical and beautiful sentiment. Then, it was time for us to speak.
The ophthalmic nurse, Robert, did our introduction. He talked about UFS and had each of us stand up to tell who we were and where we were from. It didn’t take long for him to see that these students were going to need constant engagement to keep their attention. This wasn’t because they were poorly behaved, but simply because they were young. You could see their eyes losing focus after only a minute of un-engaging speaking. So, Robert had them play a game to illustrate the effects of blindness on how a person can live life. He pulled a boy and a girl from the audience. They kids introduced themselves, blushing madly, and Robert took a tootsie pop from his pocket. He put the pop on the windowsill and said to the boy, “Find the toffee.” As expected, the boy went over and picked up the candy, grinning. But then, Robert blindfolded the boy, put the toffee on a different windowsill, and said, “Ok, find the toffee now.” As the blindfolded boy stumbled around, the whole lecture hall giggled wildly. It was a good thing that he was a good sport. While the boy was still blinded, Robert instructed the girl to help the boy to find the toffee, since she could see. She took him by the hand and led him to the right sill where he finally clutched the toffee in his tiny grip. The whole group laughed and applauded, and the blushing boy and girl returned to their seats with their tootsie pop prizes. Then Robert explain why this demonstration was so significant. When you are blind, you cannot do even the simplest tasks, and your blindness becomes a burden on not just you, but your whole family. Your family has to guide you in all your simple tasks, and they often have to do this at the expense of doing other things like going to school or doing their work. In this way, a blind family member is a burden on a family and on a community. I thought this was a very very effective way to begin our presentation.
I was about fourth in line to present, and I watched the other volunteers talk about eye anatomy and a few eye diseases. The other volunteers seemed to be having a bit of trouble in keeping the attention of the 200+ eyes in the audience, and I resolved to do better. When I stood up to talk about conjunctivitis, I asked the kids to say “conjunctivitis.” They giggled at how funny it was to say. Strangely, the locals call the disease “Apollo,” so when I told them that this funny word conjunctivitis was the same thing as Apollo, they grinned. I had a student stand up and tell me how you can tell if someone has Apollo, and I game him candy when he said, “The person will have big eyes, and they will be red!” Then I elaborated a bit on other symptoms. I always introduced a new topic with a question to the audience, and they loved to answer questions. It was so hard to pick which wildly-waving hand to call on! Finally, at the end I asked a concluding question to make sure they had been paying attention, and I rewarded the correct answer with a tootsie pop. As far as I could tell, I had really managed to keep the kids’ attention!
A few more volunteers presented their diseases, and then finally I stood up to talk about cataracts. The girl who had presented right before that had talked about refractive error with hyperopia and myopia, so I started my talk by showing the class my glasses and telling them that I was a perfect example of someone with myopia. I took the glasses off, and said, “Well now you all look like fuzzy blobs!” and they thought I was so silly. Then, I talked about cataracts, asking questions all the way, and finally I did a demonstration. I pulled a cute little boy from the audience and explained that having white cataracts is just like having pieces of white paper over your eyes - all you can see is light. So I put white paper over the boy’s eyes and waved my hands around. He giggled because he couldn’t see a thing. Then I shined a flashlight over the paper and he saw the light. It worked really well as a demonstration.
Basically, I loved teaching! One of the other volunteers recorded my cataract speech because I had done so well with my Apollo talk. Even Robert said I had done a really great job. This experience is really making me think that I should consider applying for Teach for
This has turned into an incredibly long post, so I guess I’ll just say one more thing about the school. This day was the first day where English had been the preferred method of communication with the local people! The kids’ English was great, and they seemed to understand everything we said as long as we talked slowly and clearly. It was amazing to be able to talk directly to the kids instead of speaking through local translators like we usually have to do at outreaches. It is so wonderful that the children at this wonderful school are being taught in English, because English is the key to mobility in
When the man in charge asked the kids to thank us for coming they responded in unison, “Thank you and may God bless you.” I echo this sentiment.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Ha!
Ok, as soon as I published that last post, I realized that Theatre~Dude must be Scott Gage. Yes? I certainly hope so :)
Goodnight again.
Goodnight again.
Back from Tema
Howdy Everyone,
I just got back from spending my week in the Accra suburb, Tema. I promise I will write a little more about it later - I'll tell you about our team, our outreaches, and about the other obrunnis that I met today. Right now, though, I don't feel muck like typing. I feel pretty put-off.
About 20 min ago (around 9:45 PM) I wanted to go down the street and buy a coke. A very simple quest. I set off down the road, but it didn't take me too long to realize that everything was closed. I guess this makes a good amount of sense since it's been dark since 6 PM. So, right as I turn around to head back, I notice that there are two guys quietly trying to speed up and walk behind me. I start to get nervous, and I turn around to look at them to let them know I see them. Then one of them starts to talk to me - "Hey angel. Are you scared? You are walking so fast . . . " I didn't know what to do but to pick up even more speed so that they would have to run to catch me, and I maintained course and speed for the 40 seconds longer it took to get to the road where the Telecentre is. As soon as I turned to the corner, I felt home bound because I could see other volunteers lounging on the front porch. Luckily, the creepy guys didn't turn down the road with me.
What the heck was that? I felt like I was back in New Haven. I've never been afraid to go out at night here in Ghana before, but maybe that was silly of me. Maybe I should be afraid. Well, I'll always go with a buddy from now on. Grr, I'm angry and insulted at being so blatantly disrespected.
So that's why I don't really feel like writing very much now. Not everything is sunshine and rainbows in Accra. But tomorrow we are going on a sight-seeing and sight-walking day trip to Kakum National Reserve which is a preserved area of rainforest. We are also going to the "slave castle" which used to be a huge containment facility for the slaves who were going to be shipped overseas from Ghana to the Caribbean and the Americas. It should be both a beautiful and solemn day. So once that cheers me up, I'll be ready to write! Sorry for being a bit frustrated right now.
Before signing off, I have one final question. Who are you, Theatre~Dude?! You keep commenting on my posts, but I don't have the slightest clue who you are. Please let me know, so I don't have to be sketched out by you like I was sketched out by the pair of Ghanaian night-crawlers that just ruined my evening.
Goodnight all!
I just got back from spending my week in the Accra suburb, Tema. I promise I will write a little more about it later - I'll tell you about our team, our outreaches, and about the other obrunnis that I met today. Right now, though, I don't feel muck like typing. I feel pretty put-off.
About 20 min ago (around 9:45 PM) I wanted to go down the street and buy a coke. A very simple quest. I set off down the road, but it didn't take me too long to realize that everything was closed. I guess this makes a good amount of sense since it's been dark since 6 PM. So, right as I turn around to head back, I notice that there are two guys quietly trying to speed up and walk behind me. I start to get nervous, and I turn around to look at them to let them know I see them. Then one of them starts to talk to me - "Hey angel. Are you scared? You are walking so fast . . . " I didn't know what to do but to pick up even more speed so that they would have to run to catch me, and I maintained course and speed for the 40 seconds longer it took to get to the road where the Telecentre is. As soon as I turned to the corner, I felt home bound because I could see other volunteers lounging on the front porch. Luckily, the creepy guys didn't turn down the road with me.
What the heck was that? I felt like I was back in New Haven. I've never been afraid to go out at night here in Ghana before, but maybe that was silly of me. Maybe I should be afraid. Well, I'll always go with a buddy from now on. Grr, I'm angry and insulted at being so blatantly disrespected.
So that's why I don't really feel like writing very much now. Not everything is sunshine and rainbows in Accra. But tomorrow we are going on a sight-seeing and sight-walking day trip to Kakum National Reserve which is a preserved area of rainforest. We are also going to the "slave castle" which used to be a huge containment facility for the slaves who were going to be shipped overseas from Ghana to the Caribbean and the Americas. It should be both a beautiful and solemn day. So once that cheers me up, I'll be ready to write! Sorry for being a bit frustrated right now.
Before signing off, I have one final question. Who are you, Theatre~Dude?! You keep commenting on my posts, but I don't have the slightest clue who you are. Please let me know, so I don't have to be sketched out by you like I was sketched out by the pair of Ghanaian night-crawlers that just ruined my evening.
Goodnight all!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Obrunni
We really are the only white people around. I think in the entire time I've been here, I've only seen two other white people, and they were at the tourist spot - the waterfall. I saw one Asian man, as well. He was just driving down the street.
It seems weird to me how racially homogeneous Ghana is, but there just aren't people here who aren't African. In the US, you have people from everywhere and different colors are common. In Ghana, if you aren't black, you are out of place.
We have had two different types of responses to our presence. In the city, taxis honk at us and men holler after us "I want you to be my wife!" in a way that I can't tell if it's taunting or sincere. I can't tell if the city men think we are beautiful, or just plain silly. And, of course, I really don't appreciate the hollering either way.
In the rural villages, the response is very different. People just stare. Pretty much every person you meet on the street follows you with his or her eyes until you pass. Everyone wants to say "good morning" to you - often the only English they know. But the most striking response we have had is from the beautiful Ghanaian children. Everywhere we go, we acquire a massive following of small children. They are just fascinated by us. They go crazy with blushing and smiling if you wave at them, and if you learn a few words of Twi or Ewe to say to them, like "memahmooasi" which means "good morning" in Twi, or "indi" which means "good morning" in Ewe, they get so excited! I've taken so many pictures of adorable masses of children, because they also love cameras. If you show them your camera and take their picture, they LOVE to see the picture you've taken. They laugh and smile until you can't help but laugh too! Even when we work our clinics at local churches, so many children commune to sit by the doors and just watch us. Sometimes our clinics can last all day, from 8:30 AM to 5 PM, and the children stay the whole time. They just watch, fascinated. They don't get bored, they don't talk too loudly, and they don't interfere until you address them first. They just watch. It was a bit eerie at first, but now it's just cool. And even thought I've found that many of the children know no English, a smile can go so far with a child. Smiling and waving can just make them giggle and giggle and giggle. Plus, at one place where we worked, the children were so excited to help us move all the chairs back after we had finished. They sprang up and ran to be helpful. Then they loved it when we shook their hands and said "akpe" or "thank you."
Another thing about Ghanaians that has really struck me is the sheer beauty of the women. Every Ghanaian woman wears some kind of dress or skirt made of beautifully colorful patterned cloth. The little girls have their ears pierced and wear beautiful cloth as well. The women are simply elegant. They have perfect skin and stand up very straight. And many of them have stunning smiles. I can't imagine why the Ghanaian men holler at the white women when they have gorgeous Ghanaian women everywhere who I think are FAR more beautiful.
Another cool thing about the women is how they carry their infants. They use a piece of cloth to put under the baby's bum, and then they tie the around their torsos. Again, here is a pretty good picture of the set-up that I found on the internet: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/155/394136715_9cee5977fe.jpg?v=0. I'm sorry for all the internet pictures, but I think they help me convey some of my thoughts that I'm not articulate enough to paint a mental picture of for you. And although this baby doesn't look very happy, so many of the babies that I've seen are perfectly serene. They seem to be so comfortable against their mothers' warm backs, that they often just snooze. Women are also not afraid to nurse in public. In fact, we have had one or two women nursing while we conducted their eye screenings.
Its hard for me to describe what I think about the Unite for Sight program so far. There are wonderful aspects, and there are aspects that trouble me. In particular, one of my greatest frustrations is the huge problem of the language barrier. Sure, many of these people have a few words of English, and sure I can say hello and count to five in Ewe, but that doesn't mean we can really communicate. I know personally that when I am a patient being cared for, I must know what is being done to me and why, and I must receive constant feedback, or I become very frightened. With these people, I can't imagine that they fully understand what many of us are trying to tell them, and the reasons that they are receiving glasses and medication are a mystery to many of them. We only have one guy on our team who speaks Ewe, and he doesn't have the time to explain every malady and every medication to the people because we are often so swamped that we don't have time to see everyone as it is! Although I think it's amazing that we are able to give these people eye glasses, medication, and surgeries, I am so worried that we are not telling them enough.
In terms of what this means for my views on medicine, I realize that I need to become fluent in Spanish. Right now, I am competent, but I want to be fluent. If I am going to be an effective doctor in the States, I need to be able to communicate with all my patients, not to the exclusion of the large Latino populations in so many cities. Being able to speak the same language as your patients seems invaluable, and it hurts me to not be able to give many of the people we see here the feedback they deserve.
Okay, okay. Again, I grow verbose. Of course I'll have more to write later, but perhaps I should spare you the trials of reading every single though that comes to my mind. I head out to Tema tonight to stay for a week. Tema is about an hour from Accra, and I don't know if there will be internet available, so perhaps you will be spared my rantings for another week. We'll see :)
It seems weird to me how racially homogeneous Ghana is, but there just aren't people here who aren't African. In the US, you have people from everywhere and different colors are common. In Ghana, if you aren't black, you are out of place.
We have had two different types of responses to our presence. In the city, taxis honk at us and men holler after us "I want you to be my wife!" in a way that I can't tell if it's taunting or sincere. I can't tell if the city men think we are beautiful, or just plain silly. And, of course, I really don't appreciate the hollering either way.
In the rural villages, the response is very different. People just stare. Pretty much every person you meet on the street follows you with his or her eyes until you pass. Everyone wants to say "good morning" to you - often the only English they know. But the most striking response we have had is from the beautiful Ghanaian children. Everywhere we go, we acquire a massive following of small children. They are just fascinated by us. They go crazy with blushing and smiling if you wave at them, and if you learn a few words of Twi or Ewe to say to them, like "memahmooasi" which means "good morning" in Twi, or "indi" which means "good morning" in Ewe, they get so excited! I've taken so many pictures of adorable masses of children, because they also love cameras. If you show them your camera and take their picture, they LOVE to see the picture you've taken. They laugh and smile until you can't help but laugh too! Even when we work our clinics at local churches, so many children commune to sit by the doors and just watch us. Sometimes our clinics can last all day, from 8:30 AM to 5 PM, and the children stay the whole time. They just watch, fascinated. They don't get bored, they don't talk too loudly, and they don't interfere until you address them first. They just watch. It was a bit eerie at first, but now it's just cool. And even thought I've found that many of the children know no English, a smile can go so far with a child. Smiling and waving can just make them giggle and giggle and giggle. Plus, at one place where we worked, the children were so excited to help us move all the chairs back after we had finished. They sprang up and ran to be helpful. Then they loved it when we shook their hands and said "akpe" or "thank you."
Another thing about Ghanaians that has really struck me is the sheer beauty of the women. Every Ghanaian woman wears some kind of dress or skirt made of beautifully colorful patterned cloth. The little girls have their ears pierced and wear beautiful cloth as well. The women are simply elegant. They have perfect skin and stand up very straight. And many of them have stunning smiles. I can't imagine why the Ghanaian men holler at the white women when they have gorgeous Ghanaian women everywhere who I think are FAR more beautiful.
Another cool thing about the women is how they carry their infants. They use a piece of cloth to put under the baby's bum, and then they tie the around their torsos. Again, here is a pretty good picture of the set-up that I found on the internet: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/155/394136715_9cee5977fe.jpg?v=0. I'm sorry for all the internet pictures, but I think they help me convey some of my thoughts that I'm not articulate enough to paint a mental picture of for you. And although this baby doesn't look very happy, so many of the babies that I've seen are perfectly serene. They seem to be so comfortable against their mothers' warm backs, that they often just snooze. Women are also not afraid to nurse in public. In fact, we have had one or two women nursing while we conducted their eye screenings.
Its hard for me to describe what I think about the Unite for Sight program so far. There are wonderful aspects, and there are aspects that trouble me. In particular, one of my greatest frustrations is the huge problem of the language barrier. Sure, many of these people have a few words of English, and sure I can say hello and count to five in Ewe, but that doesn't mean we can really communicate. I know personally that when I am a patient being cared for, I must know what is being done to me and why, and I must receive constant feedback, or I become very frightened. With these people, I can't imagine that they fully understand what many of us are trying to tell them, and the reasons that they are receiving glasses and medication are a mystery to many of them. We only have one guy on our team who speaks Ewe, and he doesn't have the time to explain every malady and every medication to the people because we are often so swamped that we don't have time to see everyone as it is! Although I think it's amazing that we are able to give these people eye glasses, medication, and surgeries, I am so worried that we are not telling them enough.
In terms of what this means for my views on medicine, I realize that I need to become fluent in Spanish. Right now, I am competent, but I want to be fluent. If I am going to be an effective doctor in the States, I need to be able to communicate with all my patients, not to the exclusion of the large Latino populations in so many cities. Being able to speak the same language as your patients seems invaluable, and it hurts me to not be able to give many of the people we see here the feedback they deserve.
Okay, okay. Again, I grow verbose. Of course I'll have more to write later, but perhaps I should spare you the trials of reading every single though that comes to my mind. I head out to Tema tonight to stay for a week. Tema is about an hour from Accra, and I don't know if there will be internet available, so perhaps you will be spared my rantings for another week. We'll see :)
Tourism!
Okay, so I can't just be working all the time. It's about time I told about the one touristy thing I've done so far, and about the prospect of another touristy adventure.
On Thursday of our visit to Jasikan, we had a very slow outreach day. We showed up around 8:30, and there were only about 50 people convened in the church where we were going to host the screenings. Considering that we've done more than 150 on some days, 50 seemed tiny! We were able to close the clinic at noon when there were no people left, and then we decided to drive to Hohoe and see the tallest waterfall in West Africa.
The drive was about 2 hours, but it was SO worth it. We met a tour guide when we got there, and he took us on a 45 minute hike up the side of the mountain. One the hike, he stopped to show us cocoa that was growing along the path. Later, he stopped us to show us a coffee tree as well. He also pointed out the edible little white mushrooms along the ground. We went over 9 different footbridges across the river on our way to the falls, and then, we were suddenly there! The falls were . . . the only word that really works is majestic. I took a few pictures with my camera, but I don't know how to put them on my computer, so I've found an adequate picture of the falls online. They look like this: http://image40.webshots.com/41/1/20/57/2830120570067495964bUyVCe_fs.jpg. We were allowed to wade in the water at the base, and we could just feel the forceful spray of the water that had fallen so far down the mountainside. In fact, in this picture, you can see a tiny little person standing right where we stood. It was AMAZING.
As we were leaving, our tour guide told us that some people come to the falls to do a three hour trek up to the top of the falls, where they camp for the night, and then hike back down the next day. He said that when you get to the top, you are no longer in Ghana, but in the neighboring country of Togo! And not only that, but near the top of the falls is a village of people who speak French, the national language of Togo. Usually, the guide said, people who hike up the mountain are greeted very enthusiastically by the people of the village, and they invite the hikers to celebrate with them all night. So, of course, a few of us are dead set on doing this. We all just need to coordinate a way to drive us up to Hohoe, 4 hours away, and get back the next day. We'll figure it out, and we'll go. We must!!!
On Thursday of our visit to Jasikan, we had a very slow outreach day. We showed up around 8:30, and there were only about 50 people convened in the church where we were going to host the screenings. Considering that we've done more than 150 on some days, 50 seemed tiny! We were able to close the clinic at noon when there were no people left, and then we decided to drive to Hohoe and see the tallest waterfall in West Africa.
The drive was about 2 hours, but it was SO worth it. We met a tour guide when we got there, and he took us on a 45 minute hike up the side of the mountain. One the hike, he stopped to show us cocoa that was growing along the path. Later, he stopped us to show us a coffee tree as well. He also pointed out the edible little white mushrooms along the ground. We went over 9 different footbridges across the river on our way to the falls, and then, we were suddenly there! The falls were . . . the only word that really works is majestic. I took a few pictures with my camera, but I don't know how to put them on my computer, so I've found an adequate picture of the falls online. They look like this: http://image40.webshots.com/41/1/20/57/2830120570067495964bUyVCe_fs.jpg. We were allowed to wade in the water at the base, and we could just feel the forceful spray of the water that had fallen so far down the mountainside. In fact, in this picture, you can see a tiny little person standing right where we stood. It was AMAZING.
As we were leaving, our tour guide told us that some people come to the falls to do a three hour trek up to the top of the falls, where they camp for the night, and then hike back down the next day. He said that when you get to the top, you are no longer in Ghana, but in the neighboring country of Togo! And not only that, but near the top of the falls is a village of people who speak French, the national language of Togo. Usually, the guide said, people who hike up the mountain are greeted very enthusiastically by the people of the village, and they invite the hikers to celebrate with them all night. So, of course, a few of us are dead set on doing this. We all just need to coordinate a way to drive us up to Hohoe, 4 hours away, and get back the next day. We'll figure it out, and we'll go. We must!!!
Jasikan
As I mentioned before, I was incommunicado for a few days because I went on an overnight outreach to the village of Jasikan. Getting to Jasikan takes about 5 hours through the pothole-ridden muddy streets of rural Ghana, so in order to see patients in that region, we had to stay there overnight. Just to give you some idea of where everything is that I'm talking about, here's a map of Ghana: http://www.web-translations.com/resources/country_guides/Ghana/map_of_ghana.gif. The primary location were Unite for Sight is stationed is in Accra, where the star is. Then, the Jasikan region is on the far East side, along the border of Togo, and near the indicated mountain. Tomorrow, I am going to go live in Tema, near Accra, for a week. Then, after that I will spend two weeks in Kumasi, which is about 5 hours northwest of Accra.
But I digress. This week, we were in Jasikan. We arrived on Tuesday, worked outreaches on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and drove back to Accra on Saturday night. This meant that we spent a lot of time driving in our van. We mostly tried to sleep, told riddles, read, chatted, or listened to Ghanaian reggae. One girl on the trip, Barclay, had bought a CD of Ghanaian reggae, and most of it was great! Some of it got really angry and political and there were songs about "shame on the politicians," "the great sins against the black man done by Satan's disciples," and "abortions bring FIRE, FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!" When the crazy rasta man started screaming about fire, we were all pretty surprised. Some of the reggae was just laid back and happy, though. We listened to that album on repeat a lot. Plus, sometimes we caught some American music on the radio. We heard some Backstreet Boys, Vanessa Carlton, and Michael Jackson (en memoriam I suppose). We also listened to crazy Ghanaian radio announcers who try to talk above loud music and end up being pretty much unintelligible. It was fun.
During one particularly long drive, I was trying really hard to sleep, but was way too uncomfortable. But then, a miracle was sent. We passed by a pillow vendor! Along the road, a woman was selling pillows she had made for 2 Cedi, so we all bought big pillows. And the best part of all - my pillow is covered in pictures of Pokemon! Everyone else just has pretty patterns, but I have Polywrath. I'd say I win :)
Okay, well the Jasikan region was much more rural than Accra. In Accra, there are gas stations, many cars, tons of people, and a good amount of commercial business. In the Jasikan region, there is almost nothing in terms of technology. No TVs, no internet anywhere, no AC. People live very simply, and everything is very very inexpensive.
We stayed at the local Catholic Diocese of Jasikan for about 4 USD a night per person. Our rooms were full full full of bugs - moths, ants, mosquitos (don't worry, I have malaria medication), geckos, and of course HUGE SPIDERS. Good god. HUGE. FREAKING. SPIDERS. One night, I got up to go use the hole in the ground, and saw a spider about 2 inches in diameter near the sink. Of course, I couldn't squash it, and the other girls were asleep, so I just crawled back into bed. I couldn't sleep a wink that night for fear that that damn thing was just going to leap into bed with me. I never found it again even though we were there for 3 more days. *Shudder*
In Jasikan, much like in Accra, chickens, dogs, and goats are free to roam. Our car has to dodge a number of goats on every drive, and we are woken up by stray roosters every darn morning. I don't know why there seem to be so many stray goats and chickens, because these are valuable animals! I asked someone in Accra how people know who the animals belong to, and he told me that all the animals know to go home at night. They graze around the city by day, but go home to their owners to sleep. I don't know how that could possibly be true, but it's what he said. Meh.
I'm also happy to see that there are a few more traditional Ghanaian dishes other than the classic rice and chicken combo. A few things that are prominent and delicious are banku, fufu, watche, and goat meat kabobs.
The goat meat kabobs don't need much explaining. You can buy a skewer of meat at a street vendor for 50 Gd (about 30 cents). Although, I learned the hard way that you have to ask for "meat" and not "the parts." The first time we had goat meat, it was very tender and delicious, but the second time it was chewy and flavorless. Our driver Bismarck told us that was because we had gotten the lower quality kabobs the second time - they were mostly fat and pieces of organs. Blech! And I had eaten all of it!
Watche is a yummy dish that is only served in the morning, and it's spicy and made of beans and a delicious sauce. You eat it with your hands. Only your right hand, though, to not offend anyone.
Banku is very interesting. The jury is still out on whether I like it or not. It's a two-part dish. One part is like the consistency of silly-puddy and is made of corn meal and cassava leaves. The mixture has been fermented and crushed until it's doughy. Then you dip the fermented dough into a soup made of fish or chicken. The dough is sour from the fermentation. This is another dish you eat with you hands, so you have to be pretty careful not to make a huge mess.
Fufu is very similar to banku, only it is made with crushed plantains and cassava leaves. And it isn't fermented, so the dough isn't sour. I think I like fufu better then banku :)
Okay, this post is getting long, so I'm going to munch on some leftover rice. I'll be back.
But I digress. This week, we were in Jasikan. We arrived on Tuesday, worked outreaches on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and drove back to Accra on Saturday night. This meant that we spent a lot of time driving in our van. We mostly tried to sleep, told riddles, read, chatted, or listened to Ghanaian reggae. One girl on the trip, Barclay, had bought a CD of Ghanaian reggae, and most of it was great! Some of it got really angry and political and there were songs about "shame on the politicians," "the great sins against the black man done by Satan's disciples," and "abortions bring FIRE, FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!" When the crazy rasta man started screaming about fire, we were all pretty surprised. Some of the reggae was just laid back and happy, though. We listened to that album on repeat a lot. Plus, sometimes we caught some American music on the radio. We heard some Backstreet Boys, Vanessa Carlton, and Michael Jackson (en memoriam I suppose). We also listened to crazy Ghanaian radio announcers who try to talk above loud music and end up being pretty much unintelligible. It was fun.
During one particularly long drive, I was trying really hard to sleep, but was way too uncomfortable. But then, a miracle was sent. We passed by a pillow vendor! Along the road, a woman was selling pillows she had made for 2 Cedi, so we all bought big pillows. And the best part of all - my pillow is covered in pictures of Pokemon! Everyone else just has pretty patterns, but I have Polywrath. I'd say I win :)
Okay, well the Jasikan region was much more rural than Accra. In Accra, there are gas stations, many cars, tons of people, and a good amount of commercial business. In the Jasikan region, there is almost nothing in terms of technology. No TVs, no internet anywhere, no AC. People live very simply, and everything is very very inexpensive.
We stayed at the local Catholic Diocese of Jasikan for about 4 USD a night per person. Our rooms were full full full of bugs - moths, ants, mosquitos (don't worry, I have malaria medication), geckos, and of course HUGE SPIDERS. Good god. HUGE. FREAKING. SPIDERS. One night, I got up to go use the hole in the ground, and saw a spider about 2 inches in diameter near the sink. Of course, I couldn't squash it, and the other girls were asleep, so I just crawled back into bed. I couldn't sleep a wink that night for fear that that damn thing was just going to leap into bed with me. I never found it again even though we were there for 3 more days. *Shudder*
In Jasikan, much like in Accra, chickens, dogs, and goats are free to roam. Our car has to dodge a number of goats on every drive, and we are woken up by stray roosters every darn morning. I don't know why there seem to be so many stray goats and chickens, because these are valuable animals! I asked someone in Accra how people know who the animals belong to, and he told me that all the animals know to go home at night. They graze around the city by day, but go home to their owners to sleep. I don't know how that could possibly be true, but it's what he said. Meh.
I'm also happy to see that there are a few more traditional Ghanaian dishes other than the classic rice and chicken combo. A few things that are prominent and delicious are banku, fufu, watche, and goat meat kabobs.
The goat meat kabobs don't need much explaining. You can buy a skewer of meat at a street vendor for 50 Gd (about 30 cents). Although, I learned the hard way that you have to ask for "meat" and not "the parts." The first time we had goat meat, it was very tender and delicious, but the second time it was chewy and flavorless. Our driver Bismarck told us that was because we had gotten the lower quality kabobs the second time - they were mostly fat and pieces of organs. Blech! And I had eaten all of it!
Watche is a yummy dish that is only served in the morning, and it's spicy and made of beans and a delicious sauce. You eat it with your hands. Only your right hand, though, to not offend anyone.
Banku is very interesting. The jury is still out on whether I like it or not. It's a two-part dish. One part is like the consistency of silly-puddy and is made of corn meal and cassava leaves. The mixture has been fermented and crushed until it's doughy. Then you dip the fermented dough into a soup made of fish or chicken. The dough is sour from the fermentation. This is another dish you eat with you hands, so you have to be pretty careful not to make a huge mess.
Fufu is very similar to banku, only it is made with crushed plantains and cassava leaves. And it isn't fermented, so the dough isn't sour. I think I like fufu better then banku :)
Okay, this post is getting long, so I'm going to munch on some leftover rice. I'll be back.
Mass
At 7:30 this morning, we caught a crazy taxi and drove over to Our Lady of Assumption Catholic church in Accra. It was the most beautiful building I've seen so far - okay, it's in a close tie with the hotel Villagio near the Accra Mall which is where I hear President Obama will be staying when he comes to Accra on July 11. But still, the church is surrounded by dirt roads and extremely modest houses, but it has beautiful stained glass windows! Plus, everyone wears his or her best clothes to church, so everyone looks very glamorous. In fact, many of the people in the congregation who are members of different church organizations have a shirt or a dress made of fabric that has a pattern saying the name of the organization! The organization gives them the fabric, and then they have it made into any piece of clothing to wear.
It's amazing how halfway across the globe, there are just so many things about a Catholic service that never change. Two of the other volunteers who went to church with me were Catholic, and they knew exactly what to say when and where. It was pretty cool!
This Catholic church was slightly spicier than I'm used to, though :) Their choir was SO GOOD, and I read in the program that they had about 8 different choirs, and this one wasn't even the most prestigious. Plus, accompanying the choir were a few marvelous drummers! The choir would sway and belt, and the drummers would beat those drums to death. During the offertory, people would dance up the aisles to put a few Cedi in the pot. Then, after the conventional offertory, they had a REAL offering. Many many people had brought food, and they processed up the aisles to put bread, and eggs, and bananas, and any other food they could make up to the alter. One of the other volunteers thought that the food would later be donated to charity.
Finally, near the end of the service, they asked for people with birthdays and anniversaries to come to the front and be blessed. Then the choir sang a beautiful arrangement of the birthday song! The Father then came over the small children with the microphone and asked them how old they were turning. The kids loved it, and they were so so cute!
Weirdly enough, we also ran into Robert, the ophthalmic nurse I've been working with all week, at church. It was a cool surprise! I'm definitely going back to church next Sunday :)
It's amazing how halfway across the globe, there are just so many things about a Catholic service that never change. Two of the other volunteers who went to church with me were Catholic, and they knew exactly what to say when and where. It was pretty cool!
This Catholic church was slightly spicier than I'm used to, though :) Their choir was SO GOOD, and I read in the program that they had about 8 different choirs, and this one wasn't even the most prestigious. Plus, accompanying the choir were a few marvelous drummers! The choir would sway and belt, and the drummers would beat those drums to death. During the offertory, people would dance up the aisles to put a few Cedi in the pot. Then, after the conventional offertory, they had a REAL offering. Many many people had brought food, and they processed up the aisles to put bread, and eggs, and bananas, and any other food they could make up to the alter. One of the other volunteers thought that the food would later be donated to charity.
Finally, near the end of the service, they asked for people with birthdays and anniversaries to come to the front and be blessed. Then the choir sang a beautiful arrangement of the birthday song! The Father then came over the small children with the microphone and asked them how old they were turning. The kids loved it, and they were so so cute!
Weirdly enough, we also ran into Robert, the ophthalmic nurse I've been working with all week, at church. It was a cool surprise! I'm definitely going back to church next Sunday :)
Good Hygiene
I just stepped out of the shower. Of course, another trickle of cold water. And this shower was my third shower since I've been in Ghana (a week and one day). I bet you can guess how good I smelled before I washed off :) On top of that, I realized a few days ago that if I want to have clean clothes, I'm going to have to hand wash them in the sink or the shower! Sooooo, I've been wearing dirty dirty clothes a lot. Pretty much any clothes are fair game as long as they don't look dirty. That means that I've probably worn some of my dark articles of clothes for at least three full days each, and they are getting to smell rank. Things get dirty quickly here because, well, the environment is dirty! We spend all day working in churches with dirt floors, walking around on dirt streets, and sweating like dogs. I have never been quite so unclean in my life, but since everyone else is gross too, it's not really so bad. That doesn't mean it doesn't feel glorious to be clean right now, though!
I also haven't been able to brush my teeth for a day or two because I ran out of water! Of course, the local water is un-drinkable, so we have to go out and buy huge bags of 28 smaller water baggies. The primary way that people here drink sanitary water is by buying these small 500 mL baggies of sanitary water, biting off the corner of the bag, and sucking the water out. These little plastic baggies are probably the primary piece of trash that you can find on the streets, but overall, people are reasonably good about throwing trash out. "Keep Ghana clean," is what people cry when they see someone litter.
Another interesting thing about litter is how sodas are dispensed. Coke, sprite, and fanta are the common sodas around here, and if you ever buy one of them from a vendor, you are expected to stick around and give the glass bottle back when you are done. They then send the bottle back to be refilled, and so glass bottles are recycled perfectly! It's a pretty cool idea, and encourages you to hang around and talk to the store owners while you drink your soda.
Oh yeah, and I've decided to break blog posts down into smaller piece that pertain to different topics! That way I won't just write one giant post today :) As you can tell, this post was about things pertaining to sanitation. Sweeeet. Oooo, and it just started raining outside my window. Ah, a lazy rainy Sunday.
I also haven't been able to brush my teeth for a day or two because I ran out of water! Of course, the local water is un-drinkable, so we have to go out and buy huge bags of 28 smaller water baggies. The primary way that people here drink sanitary water is by buying these small 500 mL baggies of sanitary water, biting off the corner of the bag, and sucking the water out. These little plastic baggies are probably the primary piece of trash that you can find on the streets, but overall, people are reasonably good about throwing trash out. "Keep Ghana clean," is what people cry when they see someone litter.
Another interesting thing about litter is how sodas are dispensed. Coke, sprite, and fanta are the common sodas around here, and if you ever buy one of them from a vendor, you are expected to stick around and give the glass bottle back when you are done. They then send the bottle back to be refilled, and so glass bottles are recycled perfectly! It's a pretty cool idea, and encourages you to hang around and talk to the store owners while you drink your soda.
Oh yeah, and I've decided to break blog posts down into smaller piece that pertain to different topics! That way I won't just write one giant post today :) As you can tell, this post was about things pertaining to sanitation. Sweeeet. Oooo, and it just started raining outside my window. Ah, a lazy rainy Sunday.
Monday, June 22, 2009
First Outreach
Again, my darling father has been asking questions, this time about the weather. Well, we are currently in Ghana during the "rainy season" which lasts from about June to August. It seems like Ghana weather has two options 1 - hot, 2 - hot and rainy. In the sun, the heat is pretty much unbearable, and in the shade, it's a tolerable version of stifling. During our outreach today, it was hot and sunny up until half an hour before we left the village, and then it started to rain. The rain really cooled things down and felt incredibly nice. Also, rainy season doesn't seem to mean that it rains a lot, just that it rains sometimes. I imagine in "non rainy-season," it doesn't really rain at all.
Well, today was my first day on the job, and it was very interesting. We went to a village in the Volta Region, about three hours away, called Wute. Our van left around 9 AM, we were in the village a little before noon, we worked until about 4:30, and we were home around 8. I was warned ahead of time that a good portion of the workday is spent commuting, so I brought a book for the drive. We have to commute a good distance to get out of the city because the city is HUGE and traffic is insane. We probably spent much of the commute time just getting to the outskirts of Accra.
When we arrived in Wute, there were about 90 people sitting outside a small building waiting for us. They had been told we were coming and that if they had any problems with their eyes, they could come to be examined for free. We ended up seeing 84 patients in a little under 4 hours, and I'll try my best to explain how it all went.
Luckily, Jerome, who is a member of our team, spoke the local language called Ewe, so he did the introductory health talk. Since I couldn't understand what he was saying, another volunteer told me that he told the people about common eye conditions, about how to adopt good eye health habits, about the treatability and non-treatabilty of certain conditions, and about the falsity of many of the local myths surrounding eye surgery. It is very very important to dispel fear about surgery so that if some patients are referred for procedures, they actually show up. At this village, one man stood up and asked if it was true that for eye surgery, he must have his eye removed and then returned to its socket. It was so so so important that Jerome help him understand that eye surgery was far less invasive and terrifying than that!
There were six of us on the job in Wute, and we each had an assigned station. Ben ran registration, I did the preliminary visual acuity screening, Robert the ophthalmic nurse did the eye examination along with Andrew, a medical student, and Ashley dispensed eye glasses and medications with Jerome.
First, the patient would sit down with Ben and translator who knew English and Ewe. Ben would speak directly to the patient in English, and the translator would relay Ben's questions. He wrote down the patient's name, age, and chief complaints. It was very interesting to see that many of the patients did not know their ages, but many of them had IDs that told their birthdays, so Ben found himself doing a lot a math.
After the patients were registered, they came to me to get their vision screened. First, I introduced myself to the patients and found out if they could read letters. A good number of the people we saw were illiterate, so instead of using the traditional Snellen's chart we had to use the "tumbling E chart." Both of these can be seen at this link so you know what I'm talking about http://i1.allaboutvision.com/i/eye-charts-358x338.gif. If we used the tumbling E chart, we simply asked them to point in the direction that the tines of the E were pointing. I would progress down the chart until the patient couldn't read the letters, and then I would record their acuity. If the patient could not see the chart at all, I would ask them to count my fingers at progressively closer distance. Acuity could be recorded by the distance at which they could count fingers. If they couldn't count fingers at a distance of one meter, I would simply ask them if they could see my hand waving if I waved it slowly. Finally, if they could not see my hand waving, I would shine a pen light back and forth across the eye to see if they could perceive light. If they could not perceive light, there was a good chance that glaucoma had made the patient completely blind, and the blindness caused by glaucoma is due to damage of the optic nerve and is irreversible.
After the patients saw Ben and then me, they went to be examined by the ophthalmic nurse who would dilate their eyes and diagnose their pathologies. He would determine which prescriptions of glasses, which medications, or which surgical referrals each patient would need. Then he sent each patient to the referral station where they were given free eyeglasses and very inexpensive eye medication. The patients were asked to pay the equivalent of 2 USD for eye medications just to make the medication more valuable to them. Unite for Sight has found in the past that if the medication is given away for free, the people do not think that it will be effective, and they do not use it. Making them pay a small amount for the medicine makes them value it much more. Plus, 2 USD is about all they can afford.
We saw a number of patients today who had one eye in which they had no light perception, and quite a few who could only perceive hand-waving. We saw a congenital cataract in a 4-year-old, a cataract due to trauma in a teenager, and many cataracts in the elderly. There were quite a few people with damage due to glaucoma, and a good many who had simple refractive errors. A disease you've probably never heard of, but that is pretty common in Ghana is pterygium, seen at this link - http://www.eye.com.ph/images/Pterygium1_300.jpg - where tissue grows over the eye and impairs vision. Many patients with pterygium showed up at the outreach today. I think, in total, six patients were referred for surgery, most for cataracts and one for a large growth on the eyelid. Many patients were given eye glasses, sunglasses, or medication.
Then, we drove home. When we got back, it was already dark and four of us went out and bought some spicy steak from a cart on the street. Good food at the end of a good day.
Okay, this is another super-long post, but I figured I would write a lot because from tomorrow to Saturday, I will be away from my computer. Five of us are going to stay over-night in a village called Jasikan to do three days of outreach and one day of sight-seeing at the highest waterfall in Ghana. I'm sure I'll have lots to write about when I get back from that!
Good night!
Well, today was my first day on the job, and it was very interesting. We went to a village in the Volta Region, about three hours away, called Wute. Our van left around 9 AM, we were in the village a little before noon, we worked until about 4:30, and we were home around 8. I was warned ahead of time that a good portion of the workday is spent commuting, so I brought a book for the drive. We have to commute a good distance to get out of the city because the city is HUGE and traffic is insane. We probably spent much of the commute time just getting to the outskirts of Accra.
When we arrived in Wute, there were about 90 people sitting outside a small building waiting for us. They had been told we were coming and that if they had any problems with their eyes, they could come to be examined for free. We ended up seeing 84 patients in a little under 4 hours, and I'll try my best to explain how it all went.
Luckily, Jerome, who is a member of our team, spoke the local language called Ewe, so he did the introductory health talk. Since I couldn't understand what he was saying, another volunteer told me that he told the people about common eye conditions, about how to adopt good eye health habits, about the treatability and non-treatabilty of certain conditions, and about the falsity of many of the local myths surrounding eye surgery. It is very very important to dispel fear about surgery so that if some patients are referred for procedures, they actually show up. At this village, one man stood up and asked if it was true that for eye surgery, he must have his eye removed and then returned to its socket. It was so so so important that Jerome help him understand that eye surgery was far less invasive and terrifying than that!
There were six of us on the job in Wute, and we each had an assigned station. Ben ran registration, I did the preliminary visual acuity screening, Robert the ophthalmic nurse did the eye examination along with Andrew, a medical student, and Ashley dispensed eye glasses and medications with Jerome.
First, the patient would sit down with Ben and translator who knew English and Ewe. Ben would speak directly to the patient in English, and the translator would relay Ben's questions. He wrote down the patient's name, age, and chief complaints. It was very interesting to see that many of the patients did not know their ages, but many of them had IDs that told their birthdays, so Ben found himself doing a lot a math.
After the patients were registered, they came to me to get their vision screened. First, I introduced myself to the patients and found out if they could read letters. A good number of the people we saw were illiterate, so instead of using the traditional Snellen's chart we had to use the "tumbling E chart." Both of these can be seen at this link so you know what I'm talking about http://i1.allaboutvision.com/i/eye-charts-358x338.gif. If we used the tumbling E chart, we simply asked them to point in the direction that the tines of the E were pointing. I would progress down the chart until the patient couldn't read the letters, and then I would record their acuity. If the patient could not see the chart at all, I would ask them to count my fingers at progressively closer distance. Acuity could be recorded by the distance at which they could count fingers. If they couldn't count fingers at a distance of one meter, I would simply ask them if they could see my hand waving if I waved it slowly. Finally, if they could not see my hand waving, I would shine a pen light back and forth across the eye to see if they could perceive light. If they could not perceive light, there was a good chance that glaucoma had made the patient completely blind, and the blindness caused by glaucoma is due to damage of the optic nerve and is irreversible.
After the patients saw Ben and then me, they went to be examined by the ophthalmic nurse who would dilate their eyes and diagnose their pathologies. He would determine which prescriptions of glasses, which medications, or which surgical referrals each patient would need. Then he sent each patient to the referral station where they were given free eyeglasses and very inexpensive eye medication. The patients were asked to pay the equivalent of 2 USD for eye medications just to make the medication more valuable to them. Unite for Sight has found in the past that if the medication is given away for free, the people do not think that it will be effective, and they do not use it. Making them pay a small amount for the medicine makes them value it much more. Plus, 2 USD is about all they can afford.
We saw a number of patients today who had one eye in which they had no light perception, and quite a few who could only perceive hand-waving. We saw a congenital cataract in a 4-year-old, a cataract due to trauma in a teenager, and many cataracts in the elderly. There were quite a few people with damage due to glaucoma, and a good many who had simple refractive errors. A disease you've probably never heard of, but that is pretty common in Ghana is pterygium, seen at this link - http://www.eye.com.ph/images/Pterygium1_300.jpg - where tissue grows over the eye and impairs vision. Many patients with pterygium showed up at the outreach today. I think, in total, six patients were referred for surgery, most for cataracts and one for a large growth on the eyelid. Many patients were given eye glasses, sunglasses, or medication.
Then, we drove home. When we got back, it was already dark and four of us went out and bought some spicy steak from a cart on the street. Good food at the end of a good day.
Okay, this is another super-long post, but I figured I would write a lot because from tomorrow to Saturday, I will be away from my computer. Five of us are going to stay over-night in a village called Jasikan to do three days of outreach and one day of sight-seeing at the highest waterfall in Ghana. I'm sure I'll have lots to write about when I get back from that!
Good night!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Lazy Evening
Times zones are odd here. I'm not exactly sure why, but it gets dark around 6 PM and light around 4 AM. We are only 4 hours different from Eastern time in the US, but we are aligned with the Prime Meridian which denotes a 6 hour difference in Europe. So . . . that means that it's 8 o'clock and already very dark outside! Weird, but I guess I'm going to get into a schedule of early to bed and early to rise.
My adoring father alerted me to the fact that I misspelled the word "sacrifices" in my last post. I indeed apologise for any future misspellings, but I don't apologise too much because I find spelling pretty irrelevant. I'll run spell-check on everything else from now on.
Sooooo, when I last left you, I was headed off to orientation. At orientation, we learned about our upcoming schedules for the week, reviewed a little bit about what our jobs are going to be (although I really get the sense that we'll learn pretty much everything on the job), and met the Accra area Unite for Sight coordinators. They are very, very cool guys. Robert, Kartee, and Dannis are the three ophthalmic nurses affiliated with Unite for Sight, and Jerome is the coordinator of everything else, like sight-seeing.
We were lazy for most of the day, just exploring the area around the Telecentre. Today is Sunday, and since Ghana is so heavily Christian, Sunday is truly a day of rest. Most shops were closed and lots of people were playing loud music and hanging out on the streets. This meant that we really had to search for places to be open so we could eat at them.
It's funny, but there definitely seems to be a common-denominator in Ghanaian food. For the two meals that I've bought so far, I've odered the exact same thing without even knowing it - Jaloff rice, fried chicken, and pseudo-cole slaw. This seems to be THE standard Ghanaian meal. Good thing that it's good! Jaloff rice is particularly good, since it's fully of savory vegetables and you can often get it with a spicy sauce that makes it taste a bit like Asian rice. I like it, but I hope I can find some other things to eat too :)
Accra, the city where I am staying, is the capital of Ghana. It is quite a city. It's huge, and it's raw. People drive like maniacs down dirty roads, and its amazing that they don't kill all the pedestrians that walk along the sides of the roads. Only main roads are paved, and very near the Telecentre there is a place called ABC Junction, a local landmark. Here, about 5 different roads converge in a dirty lot. Essentially, its a free-for-all for traffic arriving from 5 different directions and the poor pedestrians who want to walk across it. Cars and vans weave around each other and honk, and pedestrians run for their lives!
Women walk around carrying baskets and loads of goods on their heads, and many of them are dressed very beautifully. In fact, much of the traditional dress worn by men and women is gorgeous. We walked past a joyous ceremony today and learned that is was a "one week" celebration, meaning a celebration that happens one week after someone's death. At least 100 people were in attendance and they were wearing gorgeous outfits of only black and white. We learned the the black and white dress indicated the the deceased lived to a ripe old age, and the celebration was joyous to commemorate a long-lived life. However, if someone dies young or dies suddenly, people wear red and black to the ceremony.
Ghana reminds me a bit of Latin America. Every thing is open-air. Loud music is playing from all the little shacks along the sides of the road. Men aren't afraid to hassle you, especially of you are white - "obrunni" is the semi-derogatory word for white people that gets hollered at you. And everything is cheap! I bough about 15 liters of water for less than 1 USD and enough food for lunch and dinner for about 4.50 USD.
Also, although I have a great wireless internet connection here, I think that between June 23-27, I won't have any internet at all. Three other volunteers and I are doing an overnight outreach trip to a rural village called Jasikan, and the chances of internet are very very slim. We are staying overnight at this village because it is very far away (probably 6 hours) and because Unite for Sight's connection with the village is relatively new. I guess I'll just have to write about that when I get back.
Tomorrow should be an exciting day because it's my first day on the job. We are doing a day-long outreach to a village about 3 hours away. We will get picked up around 8:30, arrive in the village after driving all morning, spend about 5 hours seeing patients, and then drive home. I'm going to learn a whole lot tomorrow by simply getting thrown into my job. I'll probably have quite a lot to say tomorrow night.
Okay, this is a pretty long post, so I'll leave you along for now. Hope all is well!
My adoring father alerted me to the fact that I misspelled the word "sacrifices" in my last post. I indeed apologise for any future misspellings, but I don't apologise too much because I find spelling pretty irrelevant. I'll run spell-check on everything else from now on.
Sooooo, when I last left you, I was headed off to orientation. At orientation, we learned about our upcoming schedules for the week, reviewed a little bit about what our jobs are going to be (although I really get the sense that we'll learn pretty much everything on the job), and met the Accra area Unite for Sight coordinators. They are very, very cool guys. Robert, Kartee, and Dannis are the three ophthalmic nurses affiliated with Unite for Sight, and Jerome is the coordinator of everything else, like sight-seeing.
We were lazy for most of the day, just exploring the area around the Telecentre. Today is Sunday, and since Ghana is so heavily Christian, Sunday is truly a day of rest. Most shops were closed and lots of people were playing loud music and hanging out on the streets. This meant that we really had to search for places to be open so we could eat at them.
It's funny, but there definitely seems to be a common-denominator in Ghanaian food. For the two meals that I've bought so far, I've odered the exact same thing without even knowing it - Jaloff rice, fried chicken, and pseudo-cole slaw. This seems to be THE standard Ghanaian meal. Good thing that it's good! Jaloff rice is particularly good, since it's fully of savory vegetables and you can often get it with a spicy sauce that makes it taste a bit like Asian rice. I like it, but I hope I can find some other things to eat too :)
Accra, the city where I am staying, is the capital of Ghana. It is quite a city. It's huge, and it's raw. People drive like maniacs down dirty roads, and its amazing that they don't kill all the pedestrians that walk along the sides of the roads. Only main roads are paved, and very near the Telecentre there is a place called ABC Junction, a local landmark. Here, about 5 different roads converge in a dirty lot. Essentially, its a free-for-all for traffic arriving from 5 different directions and the poor pedestrians who want to walk across it. Cars and vans weave around each other and honk, and pedestrians run for their lives!
Women walk around carrying baskets and loads of goods on their heads, and many of them are dressed very beautifully. In fact, much of the traditional dress worn by men and women is gorgeous. We walked past a joyous ceremony today and learned that is was a "one week" celebration, meaning a celebration that happens one week after someone's death. At least 100 people were in attendance and they were wearing gorgeous outfits of only black and white. We learned the the black and white dress indicated the the deceased lived to a ripe old age, and the celebration was joyous to commemorate a long-lived life. However, if someone dies young or dies suddenly, people wear red and black to the ceremony.
Ghana reminds me a bit of Latin America. Every thing is open-air. Loud music is playing from all the little shacks along the sides of the road. Men aren't afraid to hassle you, especially of you are white - "obrunni" is the semi-derogatory word for white people that gets hollered at you. And everything is cheap! I bough about 15 liters of water for less than 1 USD and enough food for lunch and dinner for about 4.50 USD.
Also, although I have a great wireless internet connection here, I think that between June 23-27, I won't have any internet at all. Three other volunteers and I are doing an overnight outreach trip to a rural village called Jasikan, and the chances of internet are very very slim. We are staying overnight at this village because it is very far away (probably 6 hours) and because Unite for Sight's connection with the village is relatively new. I guess I'll just have to write about that when I get back.
Tomorrow should be an exciting day because it's my first day on the job. We are doing a day-long outreach to a village about 3 hours away. We will get picked up around 8:30, arrive in the village after driving all morning, spend about 5 hours seeing patients, and then drive home. I'm going to learn a whole lot tomorrow by simply getting thrown into my job. I'll probably have quite a lot to say tomorrow night.
Okay, this is a pretty long post, so I'll leave you along for now. Hope all is well!
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