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!