Let There Be Rain

So, the rainy season has officially begun here in Ghana. Currently it is pouring and there is some pretty intense thunder and lightening. Luckily it didn't start until long after I got home from work. Speaking of work, we got another volunteer today and one more is going to start soon. They both came through Ikando too, so we all know each other already. It's really nice to have other people in the office. Work is going well. I have been going into the schools and having a great time. It is kind of stressful when they don't really understand what I'm saying and are more fascinated by the fact that I'm white rather than interested in what I came to teach them. They're really sweet though and I think that is going to be my favorite part of the internship. Every time I come in to the office, I am told something else that they want me to do while I'm here. A few days ago I was told that I need to organize a training for students to be peer educators and train them on a bajillion topics in four hours. Right. Then a few days after, I was told that they want me to organize a drama group to perform in front of the school. Umm, I don't know about that. This will be interesting. One of the new volunteers will hopefully be helping me with the TB project, so that will be really helpful.

I have started putting together the TB client booklet with the interviews we did on Wednesday. I'm not very good with all of the formatting stuff, but I think it's coming together pretty well. At least I know for sure that I will have some sort of tangible product for my internship requirements (now I just have to finish getting my internship approved...).

Other than that, not much is going on, just life as normal. This weekend I'm hopefully going to Makola market to get batik fabric and have some stuff made. I can finally look legit. That's about it though. See? Not that exciting. I have, however, come to appreciate certain things a lot more since being here:

1. wireless internet that doesn't cut out every 5 seconds. Yeah that gets to be really annoying.

2. Smog checks. These do not seem to exist here. Driving down the road, if you happen to get stuck behind the wrong vehicle, you have to sit there breathing in the black plumes of carcinogenic fumes. I might get lung cancer just from this summer.

3. Covered sewers. Yeah, remember those ditches? Totally sewers. And sometimes they smell really bad. Like REALLY bad.

4. Waste removal services. Here they don't really have a garbage collection system. Everything just gets thrown in the streets or sewers. Some days on the way to work I see people cleaning out the massive amounts of rubbish that blocks the sewers. Definitely not my dream job, folks. If I learn nothing else from this experience, at least I've learned that I don't want to be a sewer cleaner.

There are a lot more things, but if I wrote an exhaustive list, this post would go on forever and you and I would be extremely bored. So here is where I will end for the day.

Quick shout out to Alicia and Eric: Happy 10th wedding anniversary! You guys are awesome!

Who Knew?

Who knew that country is popular in Ghana? And I’m not just talking about crossover pop/country like Taylor Swift or anything like that, but legit hick-ish country music. The radio was on at work today and they were playing Kenny Chesney, Dwight Yoakum, and a bunch of other stuff. That combined with lame 90s love songs made for quite an entertaining morning. But, before I get too far into that, I will share the events of the weekend.

Sunday morning I got up and went with my friend Nadine who I met at BYU to get a taxi and attempt to find the church building. We had the address, but no one really knows street numbers, or even some street names for that matter. I had never been there before, so I didn’t even know any landmarks in the area. Twenty minutes and several detours later, we found the church building. It is actually in the same compound as the Accra temple and the church office building for Ghana, which is pretty sweet. I don’t have any pictures yet, but hopefully this week I will have some time to take pictures. It’s beautiful. There are a bunch of other obrunis in the ward, including a missionary couple and a guy who is a lawyer for the church and his wife. The four of them talked with us after church for a while and made sure that we are taking our malaria medication, staying in at night, and being safe. They were very sweet, and the Thompsons (the lawyer and his wife) gave Nadine and I a ride home afterwards. It’s so nice that the church really is the same everywhere. When we got home, people asked if it was different, but other than having a somewhat difficult time understanding what the speakers were saying, it was the same as back home. The members of the ward were so friendly and welcoming and seemed excited that Nadine and I are staying for the summer.

I also went to Langma beach this weekend. Langma is about a half an hour east of Accra, but depending on traffic, it can take up to 2 hours to get there. The beach was beautiful, lined with palm trees and little huts to sit under. The water was perfect, too, which made swimming very enjoyable. Langma is heavily trafficked by obrunis, and the majority there were middle eastern this weekend, which was kind of weird. I haven’t seen any middle eastern people except for at that beach. It was nice to be able to relax, walk on the sand, and swim in the ocean. And, because it is an obruni beach, I did not have the pleasure of seeing someone defecating on the beach like I did in Elmina. Bummer.

Today, I got to work knowing that we were going to be going to some of the towns outside of Accra to interview cured TB patients. My coworker told me that we would leave around 12 and then get back into town about 6; a little late, but ok, fine. We didn’t end up leaving until around 2:30 and then got to our first destination at 3:30. We interviewed 5 people in Bortianor, went to Kokrobite to interview 3 more, and then Langma to interview the last person. I didn’t end up getting home until a little after 9. Most of the way home I was with my coworker, but then we got to a tro-tro station and he made sure I got on that safely, but then I was on my own to get home. I told the guy collecting my money where I wanted to stop, but the driver ended up missing it. I had to walk an extra block, which normally I wouldn’t mind, but it was dark and late and I was walking by myself. I had to walk under a bridge where people sleep and there were other people just hanging out and making me nervous. I made it home safely though, and now am so exhausted. I leave my house at 7:45, so being gone for 13 ½ hours is kind of a long time.

Luckily, tomorrow is a holiday so I don’t have to go to work! It’s African Unity Day, or something like that. It was started only a few years ago, so some people still don’t really know it’s a holiday. But at DIF, it definitely is and I definitely need tomorrow to recuperate from today. Maybe I’ll go to a market to buy some fabric and have some sweet clothes made…hmm…that would be awesome.

Shake That Booty That Jesus Gave You; Shake That Booty In the Name of the Lord.

That was perhaps the funniest Ghanaian gospel song I have heard since I’ve been here. I wanted to laugh so bad when I was in the taxi, but I didn’t want the driver to get offended that I was making fun of what might have been his favorite song.

Today, I began teaching in one of the primary schools near the office. I will be teaching in a total of 5 different classrooms about once a week about a wide range of health topics. Today we talked a little bit about self-esteem and the importance of loving your body so that you can take care of it and stay healthy. I had each student draw a picture of himself/herself with different parts of the body representing different things. The brain is something they have been thinking about; the eyes represent a dream or hope for the future; the heart is something you love; the stomach is something you are passionate about; and the legs are your roots or background. After they were done, a few of the students shared their drawings in front of the class. They were so cute and had such awesome things to share. One of the boys’ dreams was to build a house for his parents. I had a great time watching them write/draw what was really important to them and learned a lot. Afterwards, we went outside and took a picture of the whole class holding up their self-portraits. Their teacher even came for one of the pictures and wants a copy of the file so he can blow it up and hang it in the classroom. I am repeating this lesson next week in the other classes and have some tweaking to do as far as instructions go, but overall I think it went really well. It was nice to actually do something today that I was pretty comfortable with and made me feel like I accomplished something. With a lot of the other things I have to do at the office or am getting ready to do, I feel really inadequate and I think that my coworkers have overestimated my skills and experience related to public health. Teaching these kids, though, is something that I can handle. Here’s a picture of the class:

Another volunteer who is working for the Ikando website came to take pictures of what we do at DIF to put on the Ikando website. Basically, I’m going to be famous on the interwebs. Sweet.

From Now On, I'm Canadian

Pretty much any time someone finds out that I’m and American, they’re like, “Ooh, you can give me an invitation. Will you let me come visit you?” Seriously, I just met you five seconds ago, so I think not.

Apparently Melissa is an uncommon name, or I just suck at saying it so that they can understand it, so people usually think I say Millicent. I’m thinking of changing my name in addition to my nationality. When I come home, I will be a completely new woman. Ha, just kidding, I don’t think I could be Canadian…or a Millicent. However Millicent kind of reminds me of my childhood hero, Maleficent, so that could be awesome.

So, in my time here, I have grown accustomed to two things: car horns and hissing. I used to jump every time I heard a car horn, but if I did that here, it would look like I was constantly seizing. Sometimes people honk for no apparent reason or just because everyone else is honking. It creates quite a peaceful ambiance. I think when I go home I will be in shock at how quiet the roads are.

Ghanaians use hissing to get your attention. Passing street vendors, they will either yell obruni or hiss to beckon me over to look at their stuff. Most of the time I just keep walking. If I wanted to buy something, I’d stop. I have yet to hiss at anyone. I kind of want to because I think it would make my experience complete, but I still feel kind of awkward hissing at people.

The other day I went to a TB volunteer meeting where DIF was distributing materials and bikes. I had to read off the town names to hand out the materials, and it was really funny/embarrassing/everyone was laughing and talking about me in Ga and I had no idea what they were saying. I completely slaughtered some of the names and became fully aware of my whiteness. They were very helpful, though, and corrected my awful pronunciation. Every morning, I take a tro-tro from Nima market to Tema station, and then from there have to take another tro-tro towards Abgobgoshi. It’s always hard to find that tro-tro, so I have to ask around. Too bad they never understand what the heck I’m saying. When the driver calls out where he’s going, he ends up dropping most of the word and just says “Abgosh”. Yeah, completely different word.

Even though the official language here is English, I rarely hear it spoken unless people are talking specifically to me. In the area I work, most people speak Ga, and the other main language is Twi. Most of the time I feel pretty lost and sit there wondering what people are talking about. Especially in one of the slums I will be working in, a lot of the people are illiterate and don’t speak much English, so communicating my information to them will be quite interesting.

Wow, so I apologize that this post has been really random and disjointed. I can’t really think right now, and even though I get about 8 hours of sleep a night (which feels amazing compared to the 5 I’ve been getting for the past few years), I’m still always tired. The other day I fell asleep at 9 watching Arrested Development on my laptop. I think I might go to a beach this weekend and RELAX. I don’t know how many real weekends I will have in the future because I have to go to some of the villages for the TB program I’m working on. Sorry, more rambling. I’m really done now.

Cape Coast and Elmina

This weekend I took a little trip with three other volunteers to Cape Coast for the weekend. We got to go by air conditioned tro tro which was pretty sweet. Even though it was just one of those Ford 15-seater vans, I felt like I was in heaven because it was so different from what I’ve been riding in for the past week.

So, what is Cape Coast you ask? During the 1600s, the Dutch came to Cape Coast to trade with the Africans and built Cape Coast Castle. It became an integral part of the slave trade for decades after. We took a tour around the castle and into various slave cells and heard haunting stories of things that happened where we were standing. People taken as prisoners of tribal conflict, by European soldiers, and many others were taken from their homes in countries like Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and other mostly western African countries and were marched for up to two months until reaching Cape Coast. Upon arrival, they were branded and hundreds of them were crammed into small rooms with no light, no toilet, poor ventilation, and little food and water. Many people died. Many women were raped. They remained here for another three months until being loaded onto ships, known as floating coffins, destined for Brazil, the Americas, and other locations. They would exit the castle through what is known as “the Door of No Return”. In the 1990s, two coffins containing the remains of descendants of slaves were brought back to Cape Coast and through the doors from the sea to the castle. There is now on the outside labeling it “The Door of Return”. Here’s a picture for y’all:



We also visited Fort William, which is on a hill right above the castle. It had a wonderful view of the city and the castle down below.

The next day we went to the Elmina Castle and fort Jago, which are about 4 km away from Cape Coast. The castle was originally built by the Portuguese but was then taken over by the Dutch. After visiting these places, and seeing and hearing about the conditions in which these people had to live, it is hard to believe that all of it really happened for centuries and no one cared. Buying and selling people like cattle and treating them worse. Unbelievable.

Anyway, it was nice to get out of the city for a while. Cape Coast is a lot more relaxed and less busy than Accra. The weather was nicer too because it was right on the beach and there was a nice breeze most of the time. Here are some more pics from the weekend:

Obruni

This is the Twi word for white person, so I get called that A LOT. Just walking down the street people call it out. I don’t know how I feel about all this attention. Actually, I do. I don’t really like it. I like being able to blend in, but that’s not at all possible here, especially considering that I saw a total of 2 other white people today.

Today’s Highlights:

I am actually starting to remember the route to get to work. Getting home is the tricky part. It’s quite different.

I sat in a cab marveling that there are not more traffic accidents and dead pedestrians lying in the roads.

That same cab was rear-ended by a motorcycle.

I forgot to put sunscreen on my neck and got pretty crispy.

I walked through one of the slum communities I will be working in. It was definitely an eye-opening experience.

On my walk around the area, we made a stop at the courthouse and sat and listened for a while.

So, there’s this Spanish soap opera called “Tormento en el Paradisio” that is dubbed in English and aired here. Apparently, work stops when this show is on. One of the volunteers at a youth center said that the same thing happens there. It’s a pretty ridiculous show and the translation is really funny, but for some reason they are all enamored with it. I’m glad that even though I will be missing shows like Glee and Chuck this summer, I will have a telenovela to replace them.

I Should Have Brought A Sham-Wow

Seriously, though, it would have been really helpful. I had a teacher who has done work in South East Asia and he said that’s what he used for the sweat. And the infomercial man is really convincing (was that Billy Mays or the other guy?).

Last night I went out to dinner with the other volunteers because one of them is going home today. We went to this place called Ceslbridge, which is an outdoor pub. It’s hot even at night, but it is much more pleasant, especially with a breeze. Anyway, all of the other volunteers ordered their beers and other drinks. When the waiter came to me, I asked for a Coke and I think he was kind of surprised. I almost asked for water, because that’s what I usually get when I go out, but then I remembered where I was and figured that wouldn’t be the best idea. It was good though. Coke here seems to be less carbonated than in the States, which I kind of like. The food was good too. My first real meal in Ghana, and guess what I had…a cheeseburger and fries. Ethnic, huh? It was a good burger, but the ketchup tasted kind of funny. After that we all took taxis home. Even though I got in bed around 11, I could not fall asleep until around 1:30. I’m never taking a nap again…and I love my naps.

I started my internship today. I got an outline of the projects I will be working on for the next 12 weeks and I’m so excited, but there are some things that I’m not too confident about, even though it’s stuff I have done in school. It’s different doing it in the classroom compared to the “real world”. One of the projects I’m excited for is interviewing people who have been cured of TB and getting the story of their illness and the struggles they went through to be cured. These stories will then be put together into a booklet and hopefully used to reduce the stigma surrounding those with TB. For a few weeks, I will be doing reproductive health education in primary schools, which is pretty sweet. Hopefully I can use some of the things I’ve learned to contribute to the program. I have some other responsibilities, but I’m not sure exactly what they all entail. Today I met 3 of the people I will be working with, but tomorrow I will be going around to meet other volunteers and see more of what DIF does.

Today I also had my first taste of real Ghanaian food. For lunch I had beans with palm oil and this cornmeal-ish stuff (they call it red red), fried plantains that were spicy, and fried potatoes. It was pretty good, but tasted pretty different from anything I’ve ever had. I’m excited to try more stuff as I’m here longer. I have yet to have fufu, which I’m told is a must.

Since being here, I have never been so grateful for cold showers. They are truly magical after coming home from a long day in the sun. Water heaters here are highly overrated. Another thing that is magical – ceiling fans. I could sit under the one in our living room all day, but sadly I must go outside. It is always nice to come home to though. Magical thing #3 – sport sunblock. I have been out in the sun for hours at a time and have not gotten burned. Instead, I remain my usual pasty whiteness. Hopefully I will get a sweet tan before I come home and make you all jealous.

KA-POW! You have been humbled!

So today I had my orientation to Accra. Wow. That’s really all I can say. It was quite overwhelming to say the least, and we only went a few places. I hope they don’t expect me to remember how to get everywhere we went today, because I definitely don’t. It was fun though. I rode a tro-tro today, which is like a taxi, but it’s a van that they cram people into and is way cheaper than a taxi. We went through a market where they have tons of little stands selling clothes, shoes, cell phones, sunglasses, little toys, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Trish asked me about the smell, and there definitely is one. The sewer (or at least that’s what it looks like. Maybe it’s a rain ditch or something) pretty much runs along the dirt sidewalk, and I’m sure you can imagine what that smells like. After walking around a bit, we went to the supermarket. I’ve never felt so lost inside a store in my life. I wandered around the store for a while before picking anything up. I kind of wanted to cry, that is, if I was the type of person who cries, I might have. There were some familiar things, but they were all pretty expensive. For example, a box of cereal cost $11-13 GHC ($1 USD ~ $1.40 GHC). And I thought $4 was bad. Yeah, not going to be buying that here. I don’t know much about Ghanaian food yet, so I didn’t know what to buy. So, I stuck with easy stuff like pasta, ramen (which is also kind of expensive, at least compared to the States), and come fajita meat because that is one of the only things that actually sounded good to me. I haven’t been to the local market, where they have fresh fruits, vegetables, and other similarly magical things, but I hope that will make me more excited about going shopping here.

This may sound rather silly, but I have really come to appreciate WATER! You can always find someone selling little bags of water on the street and it’s a real blessing. I really hope I don’t die of dehydration. I mean, of all the things to die from, that would probably be the lamest. I would rather something much more exciting.

Tomorrow I start work at DIF. John (the Ikando volunteer coordinator and the man who so graciously replied to my incessant emails) said previous volunteers have really enjoyed working there, so I’m really excited. I’m trying not to have too many expectations of what I’m going to be doing, because in all likelihood, they would probably not be met. I do hope, though, that I’ll be useful in some way. I saw this quote on facebook and decided to make it my motto: Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value (Albert Einstein).

Oh, and in other news, I’m really glad I didn’t bring my straightener. My hair would have lasted about 2 seconds and then gone crazy, so I’m just going to stick with the crazy all the time.

That’s all I got right now. Sorry if I have bored you, but I was talked into this blogging business so this is what you get.

What I've Learned So Far

Even though I just arrived in Ghana a couple of hours ago (as of when this was written), I have already learned a lot. Here is a sampling of some of these things:

1. I don’t like lines. Especially short but slow moving lines that seem to take forever, followed by another line of the same type. At least by the time I got through all of these lines, my flight was boarding so I didn’t have to hang out in the terminal for too long.

2. I am not a fan of turbulence. I could not help thinking “we’re going to die!” throughout the whole ordeal.

3. It is very difficult to sleep on an airplane. Even though I was extremely tired and had more than enough time on my flight for a very long slumber, this did not happen. I probably only slept for about 3 hours, and much of that was interrupted.

4. I REALLY don’t like sitting next to people when they sneeze. Especially when their spewage gets on me and makes me want to vomit.

5. Ghanaians are very nice people. I sat between two Ghanaian men on my flight between Amsterdam and Accra, and they were both very kind to me. One did ask if I knew the phone number of where I would be staying…kinda weird, but I kindly told him that I did not know it yet, which is not entirely false.

6. Apparently I need to work on my diction. When I told that same Ghanaian man my name, apparently he thought I said Millicent, so while waiting to go through immigration, he shouted what he thought was my name until I turned around to see him wave goodbye. Oh, and I have really bad hearing. After every sentence, I’m like, “What?” This is going to be interesting.

7. I’m not very good at picking lines. Every line I picked (immigration, customs, etc.) ended up being the longest line and took FOREVER to get through.

8. Ghana is VERY humid. As I walked off of the plane, I was hit with a wall of sticky heat and instantly began sweating. This is going to be an awesome (read: smelly) summer.

9. Taxis are nuts. Now, this is something I’ve always known, but Ghanaian taxis take it to an entirely new level of scary. I thought we were going to die on the way home from the airport. But, alas, we made it home in one piece.

10. I don’t really have a good number 10, but I did discover that I like the bananas here. Quashie (the guy who picked me up from the airport) gave me all this food and a huge thing of water (for which I am very grateful, but I’ve probably already sweated out), and the bananas are very good. They have kind of a different taste than the ones in the U.S.

That’s it I guess. The other volunteers that I’ve met seem very nice. A couple are from Britain, my roommate is from Italy, and a couple others are from the U.S. Tomorrow I'm going on a mini tour of Accra and then hopefully will start working on Wednesday.

More to come as it happens...

I'm Going to Ghana!

So, after months of planning and an abundance of stress, I am actually going to be going to Ghana for 3 months. I will be interning as a Development Project Assistant for a local NGO called Development In Focus (DIF) through Ikando. DIF does HIV and tuberculosis education and prevention programs throughout Accra (the capital) and the surrounding area. I figure this fits in pretty well with my public health-ness and I'm so stoked for this experience.

As of right now, I'm pretty much completely packed, with the exception of a few small things that I have to wait to pack, and I really hope my bag is less than 50 pounds :/. I will be leaving on Sunday (I know, it's Mother's Day and I'm a horrible person) and going to Amsterdam and then on to Ghana. I will arrive there Monday night and then will have to deal with awesome jet lag. On Tuesday, I will be shown around Accra by a member of the Ikando staff, and it will be epic. Yeah, that's right, EPIC.

I really have nothing else that's too exciting to share right now. I will try to update with more information, stories, and pictures as much as possible. However, I make no promises. I'm new to this blogging thing and don't really know how I feel about it yet.

Peace!