spots, election, and no internet for a month.

so in case anyone was wondering what spots look like here in ghana, you are in for a real treat because they are quite amazing places... i would compare them to places like the W or eastside, but that wouldn't be fair... nothing can compare these places... the comfort, the nice breeze, the loud music.

so here is what a typical spot looks like. there is like a bar area where you get your drinks, sometimes its an inclosed area and other times its just a table. the tables are pretty fancy and the chairs are just the same. i'm not sure if you can see the speaker in the corner, but usually they have pretty heavy duty speakers and play the music really loud... especially if they have jams. when they have jams they sometimes extend their spot to the outside area. its quite special, you dance outside in the dirt road, with children, and men and women... and sometimes the women have their babies on their back. theres a spot nearby my homestay and whenever they would have a jam, i could hear the music from my house.

now this would be their great selection of alcohol. mmm, okay, so its not that great, they mostly have gin and gin. sometimes they will have vodka bottles, but inside will contain gin. so deceiving! i haven't really tried anything in those bottles except this strawberry one by accident... it tasted like strawberry syrup.

here is the amazing photo of the election poster that they have all over kukurantumi to encourage people to vote. i didn't think that it would capture all the greatness, but to my surprise it did! i'm not sure if you will find it funny... but i thought it was a bit amusing... i mean that guy in the motobicycle looks like he was pasted on... and i'm not exactly sure why hes so small compared to everyone else. but anyways, i laughed... maybe you will too?


so here was a rally for ndc. the guy in the car is doing the dance of "we are changing" there was so many people walking the streets... it was like a parade, full of all sorts of people. kids, men, women... it seems like kids get involved with everything here... like when they are like three they are taking the trash to the dumpster, cutting food with knives, sweeping the floor... they are more productive than me! anyways, the parade had like drums, trucks with huge speakers attached to them, and the whole shaaabang!



okay, so this is my last update for a while... there is going to be a runoff for the presidential election and so we aren't allowed to leave our communities from dec. 24 through the 2. and i'm pretty sure my community doesn't have internet... so i guess i'll have plenty to tell when i get back... like a whole months worth of goodness.

twi word of the day: yenko (lets go)

amusing or annoying, you decide.

So here are things in Ghana that I have either found to be amusing or annoying.

Little children: when you are walking down the street you hear a distant scream of “obroni obroni” (which means foreigner) and you try to locate where the yelling is coming from but can’t see any one. Then you look a little harder and you see a little child in the far bush. You can barely see them but they spotted you from 230948 miles away, their eye sight for spotting “white” people is amazing. Or you have children who are playing and then see you walking by and start to gather and chant “obroni koko machi, ya fey twe gongo”. Or little kids that come up to you while you are at a store and tell you to by them crackers, especially kids that you don’t even know. or little children that say "obroni bye bye" i guess the best thing about children here is that you can make them your b*tch. like if you are too lazy to do something, you can send your small child to do your dirty work; for instance, you can send them to fetch you water, wash your clothes, buy you food, carry your things, etc. you just have to be careful because the smart ones will run away with your money.

Adults: sometimes while you are walking there will be people that are sitting on a bench or by a store that tell you to come, and then when you come to them all they want to know is what your name is, or they tell you that you will take them to America, or that they want to marry you, or they ask where my husband is. Or the bazillion people who ask you where you are going every time you walk past them.

Disting: basically it’s a word that means this thing. Its basically a Ghanaian version of the word da kine. For example disting here is making the pot hot. At a cultural fair that we had there was a table full of different items and the category label was disting.

Political Parties: Ghana has a presidential election coming up and there are about 3 major political parties, CPP (Conventional People’s Party), NDC (National Democratic Congress), NPP (New Patriotic Party) Since dance is such an important part of culture here there is a dance association with the parties. If you do this dance people will understand which party you are supporting. NPP slogan is “We are moving forward” so they put their hands in the air and make a motion of moving forward. NDC is “We are changing” so they put their hands up and make like a wheel. But I was also told that CPP and NDC have the same dance so they are fighting over it. There is also this really funny poster telling people that everyone can vote… I will upload it soon, I’m sure you won’t find it as funny, but humor me.

Boys: Some of the things that they do are sooo funny. Like when we are watching a movie, a boy will be sitting on a chair with his legs spread and then another boy will sit right below the boy. Or they will walk the streets holding hands. Or they will lie with each other in a spooning position. Or they will play a game that I have called “The Cup Game” where they try to cup the balls of their friends. And when I say boys, I mean that they range from the ages of 15-24.

I’m sure there will be more to add as time goes on. So to be continued…

twi word of the day: aiekooo! (job well done)

pictures... yay!

here are more pictures for your enjoyment. i guess its a benefit to wake up early and use the internet... its damn fast.


i uploaded this picture before, but i wanted to upload it again, when i have the other pictures attached.

if you can see the black container that is where the sap is being collected... they never clean those containers because it helps the fermentation process. and those containers were probably used to hold gas/oil before they turned it into palm wine containers. but whatever, it still taste good.

here is a picture of the sap fermenting. it looks pretty disgusting... and well, to tell you the truth, when you drink palm wine it pretty much looks the same. sometimes you find black things floating around... but whatever, it taste good... and it comes out of a tree, what do you expect and plus, everybody in the the club get tipsy.

so here is the distilling process. and that coil that is hanging from the two containers is where the vapers travel through... um, i think thats all.
so this is where they get the apeteshi. i think they have that grass looking thing filtering it because they use rain water in the black containers and in the water there is all sorts of bugs floating around... so i think that the grass filters out the bugs.

this is our most common way of transportation around ghana. these mini buses are amazing. they fit like around 14 people sometimes more. there is a driver and a mate. the mate sticks his head out the window saying the destination of the tro. um, they look in pretty bad shape, but thankfully none has broken down on me. and they drive long distances too... like i've taken 4 hour tro rides to places. its not comfortable, but i don't think much transportation in ghana is comfortable. so yep!

here is my living room... its pretty furnished... like i said, the goooood. and my lovely candle on the table for my candlelight dinners. thanks mom for sending me pictures... my home feel better now that i have pictures up.

here is what you see when you first enter my room... yep, nothing real special. and yes, cup of noodles. thanks mom. but you can actually get ramen here... its called indomie. its good. and rawmen kind of taste like potato chips when you close your eyes... so its very gooood.

this is my little split... so my bed is right next to my living room... but its a nice little divided space.

here is the museum that i was talking about that is inside the visitor center in ntonso. it needs some work, but overall its very nice.

another view of it.

here is a picture of the bride and the groom. if you look closely you can see their wedding cake... i really wanted a piece but they didn't cut it. i was quite sad about that... i wonder what wedding cakes in ghana taste like. but its pretty fancy huh with all the ribbons and fake flowers and champagne glasses.

here is the pure mayhem that was the wedding. there was like bazillion kids around dancing. i had no idea what the heck was going on, but just watching in amusement at how good these little kids could dance. sometimes their dancing would not be approved by an 8th grade supervisor at a dance in america.


okay, i'm tired and the internet is starting to get hot... so i guess thats all for now.

xoxo.

twi word of the day: me pon (i'm finished)

Ntonso, my new home away from home.

The week that I have been waiting for since coming here has come and gone with some good and some bad. I finally got to meet my counterpart (the person that will help me transition into my new site and a member of the TMT) and supervisor. They gave me a Ghanaian name, so my name here is Ama (I have been using this name at homestay as well, but it basically means that I’m a Saturday born baby) Boatemaa (means captures victory, but I think I was given this name because my supervisors name is Boate so the female version is Boatemaa) Sakina (means brighter one, and my counterpart Adams is a Muslim so Sakina is name that I will use in the Muslim community in Ntonso).
Ok, so visiting my site (where I will be living at for the next two years) made me realize how spoiled I am at my homestay… and also, how much I’m going to miss living in Kukurantumi. I guess with all things in life, we must move on and deal. So my site is Ntonso which is about half hour tro ride from Kumasi, the second biggest city. The community of Ntonso is huge... the biggest of all communities that I’ve visited thus far. I live in a compound, similar to the one that I’m currently living in but the common area is a lot smaller. On the positive side, I have a bigger room… that might be the only positive that I see right now, but I’m sure it will all be positive in the end. On the negative side (where should I begin?!) I don’t have electricity (so I eat dinner by candlelight, its quite romantic), I have to use a latrine to take a poop/shishi, I don’t have a water hole in my compound at my disposal (they have a hole, but it wasn’t dug correctly so all they do now is put their trash in it), and I don’t live with people my age. I mean, my standards here have changed so much while being here (today, we ate off a “friends” plate because we were hungry… I say “friend” because we only met him once before, but we were hungry and waiting for our food to come and of course, no food here gets wasted, so we were just helping out.) but I feel like being able to poop comfortably and friends at home have helped me a lot with this whole transition. I’m sure much of this feeling is from me finally feeling super comfortable in one place and having to go through the whole process again in another place. Anyways, a retired teacher owns the compound that I’m living in and he lives there with his children, grandchildren and a few other people. His daughter is a bread baker so she has a huge clay oven which I was told I could use whenever she wasn’t making bread… so I might try to make some pizza or banana bread.
My site had a visitor center built about a year ago and it looks so out of place in the town. It was put up by the Ministry of Tourism and it has so much potential. It has a cafÈ that serves cold drinks (soon they are going to start serving alcohol), a clean bathroom, a little gift shop, and a museum. They are planning on extending it so that they can start serving food and make their own adrinka demonstration station. Basically right now when tourist come to visit they take a tour of the town, so they can see some of the cultural/historical places in the community and then see artisans at work, but sometimes this has been a challenge for tour guides because the artisans cause decide not to work when tourist come to visit. For instance, I was suppose to go on the tour of my attraction, but the morning of, the person that we were going to told us to come later on in the day so we waited around and then when that time finally came, they said that they weren’t working anymore. So basically the TMT wants to form their own demonstration center so that they don’t have to rely on the artisans who can be very flaky.
Speaking of flaky, I was suppose to meet the TMT, but just so happens that the day of our meeting there was a couple of funerals in town so no one came to the meeting. Funerals here in Ghana are huge, they remind me of wedding celebrations in the US. Loud music, everyone decked out in black cloth, (which is a huge plus for my site because the adrinka cloth is used for funerals and there is a high demand for it since there will always be funerals.) and a bunch of drinking. I actually hate when there is funerals in town because they have like 14 funerals at one time so there is a whole bunch of people and most of them end up pretty drunk and more obnoxious than normal.
While in Ntonso, I met a whole smorgasbord of people… it was quite crazy and I basically remembered no ones name. I went to visit the District Assembly, the Regional Manager for the Ghana Tourist Board, had some minerals with the sub chiefs of my community (there has been a chieftaincy dispute for the past 20 years, but I was told during my visit that they were finally going to have a chief by the time I get back to site), and met with most members of the TMT.
Then I did what I absolutely love to do on the weekends… I went to churches! Yes, churches… as in not just one. On Saturday I went with Prince (my supervisor) to his church, the 7th day Adventist. So I spent pretty much all day Saturday there! I left the house at about 9 am and went to the first church and met the pastors and introduced myself to the whole congregation and sat through some singing and prayers and then attended a little bible study session. After that we went to the new site of his church and took a tour of the new girls school and sat through some more singing, prayers, and what not. I guess the most painful part about churches here is that I don’t understand a thing of what is being said since all of it is spoken in twi, they have multiple collections being made throughout the service (on time at the Pentecostal church I swear they collected donations like 5 times), its usually uberly hot and uncomfortable, and did I mention that it last like at least 3 hours plus?! Anyways, church is big here, so its uber important to visit the leaders of the church & meet the members… so on Sunday, I went to more! I visited with the Roman Catholic, Methodist, and Assembly of God. I’m just happy that I don’t have a church nearby my house because sometimes they have all night masses where they use loud speakers and blast their music and sermon for all those to hear within a couple of miles.
I also got to attend two wedding ceremonies, actually I went to their receptions and not the actual ceremony… but it reminds me of a huge outdoor gathering with a gazillion kids around dancing and playing. One of them was outside in the middle of a street where they set up a couple of huge tents and the other was at their community center a bit like Manoa pavilion minus the roof and a bigger area. They also do the money dance here because they have the bride dancing in the middle of the tents with all different people and they stick money on her forehead, and then the groom comes out and they do the same. Then outside of the tents there was like a 2304802398 kids out and about playing and dancing, which sometimes created huge dust storms. It was pure mayhem. Its funny though because once the kids create a big storm, the security of the wedding would get a stick and start whipping it at the kids and they would scatter so fast! (okay, maybe not that funny at all) The other one was basically the same minus the dust storms because it was on concrete.
So I think that’s basically all that I did while on site visit… I can say that my visit was interesting and I’m getting more comfortable thinking of Ntonso as my new home… I mean, worse things can happen… like getting malaria. We had our first malaria victim… and from hearing his story, more than world peace I wish for no malaria.

xoxo.

twi word of the day: mepe baabi adwonso (i want someplace to urinate.)

randomness...

more pictures for your enjoyment... they are totally random, so sorry.


here a picture of the tafi abuipe communtiy... as you walk around their homes you see this everywhere... basically they set up their work outside their houses.

so here is a picture of palm wine that is being tapped... after they cut it down they cut a hole in it... the yellowish part is where the sap drips from and there is a whole on the bottom and there is a container at the bottom that collects the sap.

here is a kente weaver in tafi abuipe. it takes hours to finish the cloth that they are weaving and then they sell it for only $5.

this is my attempt to take a picture of the two falls at boti falls... and i guess in this picture you can see how dirty looking the water is... but it was sooo refreshing!

here is a picture of my brother steven, the little boy with his friend i can't remember his name but they were cutting the feathers of the chicken so that it wouldn't fly away. don't they look so happy?!


here a picture of the leklebi waterfall from a far... i think about where the bottom of the trees are is where we were standing when we took the group picture in front of the falls.


so i did the picture picking blindly... and i'm too lazy to make them organized. so until next time love!
xoxo.

twi word of the day: basa basa (crazy person)

everyone loves pictures

okay, so here in ghana everyone carries things on their head. and when i was leaving on my field trip, my little brother carried my bag to the bus. its actually really great. they can carry an amazing amount of weight on their head. like when i had to move into my new place these two girls carried my suitcase on their head! one of my suitcase must've weighted at least 70 pounds. and we walked for about a good 15 minutes to get to where the buses were. and guess how much they got paid for all that work? 1 cedi. i told my brother to teach me, so i tried to carry a empty water bucket on my head and it stayed up for about three steps and then fell. i'm going to work on it though, and when i get back i will have strong neck muscles.



here is a picture of boti falls. i tried my best to get a good picture of it, one that captured the two falls together but my camera was getting misted from the falls and i was a little distracted... i really wanted to get into the water. sorry, next time i will make sure i have my priorities in order.













here is just some random store sign. i thought it was funny and wanted to share. most of the store names here have something to do with god. like mama lucy clap for jesus. god saves us all. i'm drawing a blank... but you get the idea.









here is a group of us in front of the waterfall, the picture doesn't quite do the place justice... but there was so much mist from the falls that it was hard to get a good picture. i was pretty scared that my camera would not work after leaving there because it was so wet. the tall man in the back will be living in the community next to mines. he is extending for another year and speaks twi fluently. pretty amazing.

okay, i'm tired... so to be continued.
xoxo.

Okay, so a lot has happened since the last time that I was able to update. I never would’ve thought that Ghana would have so many waterfalls and places to hike, but I seriously have been hiking more in the past month than I had back home. Lets see, I went hiking at Likpe Todome, Boti Falls, Leklebi, and every time I go through the bush to get somewhere I feel like I’m hiking. So Boti Falls was a pretty cool place, it was nice to actually be able to swim there, especially since its been so hot and I have no ocean to turn to… all I can rely on is my daily cold shower to cool me off. The water looked pretty damn nasty, but I think it was well worth getting in the nasty looking water to finally remember how it feels to be cold and have chicken skin. Best of all, I am still alive with no worms or parasites! Hopefully it will stay that way for the rest of my time here. The waterfall was pretty huge, there was two of them filling into the same pond below. I wasn’t able to get a good picture, but hopefully you get the idea.

Then we went on our field trip. I almost feel like I’m in high school/college again with all these field trips, classroom sessions, home stay, and we even received some good reference books to rely on once we get to our site. So for our field trip we went to the Volta Region to visit current PCVs and various businesses and the local government assembly. This field trip was a lot like our vision quest, but we traveled in our group of SED volunteers. So I realize that sometimes you may not understand some of the references that I may make and the acronyms that I use, but PC loves to use acronyms and so I have gotten used to it as well. So SED=Small Enterprise Development. There are three different sectors in our group. There is SED, WatSan=Water and Health Sanitation, and Environment. So there is a stereotype that SED usually gets a better living situation than other volunteers, and I think I would agree, but that’s also because of the types of organizations/work that we do. The moral of this story is that on our field trip, we got hooked up (plus we got to basically be tourist visiting various attractions in Ghana because that is essentially what we are getting into). We stayed at a hotel for one night with a pool, at a mountain lodge, and at some rich Ghanaian house. The other group had to travel 18 hours on a tro on dirt roads to get to their destination, didn’t have electricity, and had no pool. The mountain lodge was absolutely amazing. Here is the link, check it out. Mountainparadise-biakpa.com They also had the best groundnut and rice ball soup that I’ve had since being in Ghana.

During the field trip they jam packed our schedule with many visits, some days we went to five different places… it was very exhausting. The first day we went to visit a PCV that lives in Leklebi, who is doing a tourism site dealing with a waterfall. The waterfall was absolutely beautiful. It was a pretty intense hike, but well worth the waterfall and the swimming area. So basically I decided that I don’t want to do any more hiking in Ghana unless it involves a swimming area at the end. If it happens to be something like Manoa Falls I will be truly disappointed. We got to eat some traditional grub from his area, dance with the natives and drink palm wine. So on our last night staying in Leklebi, the volunteer organized a bon fire with drumming and dancing. Imagine a bunch of Africans drumming sweet music and dancing crazy around a fire and some palm wine being passed around… it was a sweaty good time. I personally think it is unfair that Africans are born with a gene that makes them amazing dancers, but maybe it’ll rub off while I’m here. So basically we danced around the fire copying what the Ghanaians were doing, but at one point of the night we decided to teach them a few moves of our own so this one guy (who by the way is an amazing dancer and exceptionally funny) started doing the zombie and then breaks out the Elaine!! Watching him do it, plus watching the Ghanaians trying to follow such a strange dance was probably the funniest thing I have ever seen. I wish I had a video to capture it in all its greatness. By far the best night in Ghana.
The next day we went to visit the District Assembly to talk to them about their roles in the community, just so we could have a better understanding of what they do and how they can help us when we get to our communities. We also went to visit various businesses like batik dying, wood carvers, pottery makers, jewelry makers, and kente weavers. At the kente weavers, we went to this community called Tafi Abuipe. This is also a tourism site (I think my site will be a lot like this) where they have tour guides taking tourist throughout their community to tell them a little history and to show the process. At Tafi Abuipe, basically the whole community does kente weaving. So when you are walking around, you see all these kids slaving away to make strips of kente. What I find even more amazing is that these kids will start apprenticing at around the age of seven and then they start weaving about a couple of years later, but the designs that these kids weave is not documented anywhere… they do it all from their memory. Some of the designs are pretty damn intricate I’m amazed by how good their memory is. [in case you were thinking that this is some sort of child labor, you are wrong. These kids will go to school and then after they are finished with school they will slave away their afternoon making kente strips.] We also visited a pineapple exporting processor, who was also starting to expand and export mango and is working on juicing pineapple and mango. Then we visited with a micro-financing company and were able to visit some of their clients at their business.

So in case anyone is wondering what palm wine is, I actually did a project on it and was able to visit a tapper to talk to him about the process. Palm wine is the sap that is collected from a palm tree. The sap starts to ferment as soon as it is collected from the tree and within an hour or two the alcohol content is about 4%. It is very sweet when it is first tapped and as the day goes on it continues to ferment and gets stronger in content and taste. Palm wine only has a shelf life of 24 hours so most of the palms that are tapped get made into akpeteshi. So I was also able to view the distilling process of akpeteshi, which was pretty damn cool. It is very basic, but I’ve never seen anything like it before so I was pretty damn amazed. So basically they ferment the wine for 6-8 days in big barrels and then after it is fully fermented they fill half of another barrel with the fermented wine and put it to a boil. There is a coil tube that is connected from one barrel to another which lets the vapors travel from the barrel that is burning to the next barrel. The second barrel is attached to another barrel which then has a hole at the bottom which akpeteshi comes out of. I’m not the best at explaining, but maybe by looking at the pictures that I took, you will understand the process a little better. [also, I have decided that I want to have a palm tree, magic berry, cocoa tree, moringa tree, and plantain farm when I get back.]

Ps. I don’t want people to get the wrong impression that all we do on our free time is drink, because we simply don’t have that financial luxury. It is just nice to hang out and have something cold to drink besides water. I personally have started to like pineapple, grape, and orange fanta. They also have this drink called Malta which taste like liquid rasin bran, its pretty disgusting.

As promised i took some pictures, so this will be a picture entry. I will try to add more pictures when the internet lets me... it takes forever to load pictures. so please be patient.

PC sent us on a little quest to find things/places in Accra. We got assigned to meet with a coffin maker. His name was Hello. He made all sorts of coffins, like cars (which had back lights that actually worked) cameras, birds, bibles, pineapples, squash (as seen in the picture), and many others. The second picture is of his workers making the coffins. Also on this Accra quest, they basically gave us little direction, so we were pretty much lost the whole time. This coffin place was in Teshie, which was about a 45 minute trotro ride from where we started… we totally thought that we were going to the wrong place, but some how managed to get some guy on the tro to help us find Hello. Ghanaians are pretty helpful, reminds me of the Japanese.

so here is a picture of my living compound. the two doors in the front is the kitchen and the storage area. they do most of their cooking outside on the ground where there are a billion flies around. its actually very lovely sight. if you look closely you can see a some pots, probably that have stew inside of them. there are five rooms on the left hand side and then a big room on the right hand side. i live in the third room on the left side. the two rooms before me have 4 people dorming... in a room the same size that i'm staying in. they pack them in.


here is my room. is pretty boring, but i figured that i'm only here for a couple of months... i sleep under a mosquito net, which somehow i still manage to get bit every now and then. the matress is pretty uncomfortable and sinks in the middle, but somehow i still manage to sleep fairly well. the pillows here are worse, but i guess thats just how it goes. i still live out of my suitcase which sucks, but oh wells. mmm, yea, i don't spend too much time in here, but you get the idea.
this is some of the crazy rock climbing that we had to do to get into the caves. i'm not sure if the picture does it justice, but i was a bit scared... but thankful we had Boss there, so i felt uber safe in his care.

this would be one of the bat caves... its always appropriate to make like a bat while getting your picture snapped.

This was in Likpe Todomo on my vision quest. They had a nice little swing mid way through the hike, so it was a good resting area before we started to the bat caves and rock climbing. The second picture is the hole to the bat cave. There were so many bats inside the cave, it reminded me of Ace Ventura. As we got to the entrance all these bats started flying out, but Boss (our tour guide) told us that bats could smell humans, so they won’t bother you. I'm pretty sure that was a lie because ive heard stories of bats flying into peoples heads and what not, but thankfully we did not experience any of that.


There is a picture of Boss, with his machete handy. And those are some of the rocks that we had to climb in order to get to some of the bat caves. There were 7 total caves that we went to. Some of the stories that Boss told us about the caves were hard to believe, but maybe there were true. The brochure for these bat caves said that at the 7th cave the view is such that of the Grand Canyon in the US. I haven’t been to the Grand Canyon yet, but I’m pretty sure the views are not similar at all… but whatever gets tourist to come and visit right?

So here is something I have pretty often (there are really only 6 different dishes that Ghanaians eat. They can the same thing over and over and not get tired.) So this is boiled yams and some kind of oily stew. I’m not really sure what it’s called… its kind of spicy and really oily. The water bowl is to wash my hands because they don’t use utensils here, but at least most of them wash their hands before they eat. Then in the top right corner is a water sachet, basically what i drink all the time here. Water sachets are 5 peswas and most of the time a little chilled. sometimes they taste pretty nasty. I’ll try taking more pictures of my meals so you can see fufu and banku.


So remember how I said that I thought I had snail in my soup? Well, these pictures pretty much conforms that. They use snails in their soup. My brother said it’s very good… I mean I probably shouldn’t be shocked because people eat snails, but it’s still not something of the norm for me. Plus, these suckers are huge! And that’s my sister Patricia cracking the snails. Most of the food preparation is done outside and on the floor. I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten a few bugs that were in my food cause every now and then you’ll find some random crunchy thing in your rice or stew. It is not pleasant at all, but whatever, I’m sort of getting used to it. Also the amount of flies that are around when they are preparing the food is pretty disgusting, but somehow it doesn’t bother them a bit.




okay, i am uploaded up and tired. so that is all for now. i apologize for the randomness and unorganization of it all... next time i will try to make it more organized.


xoxo.

Kelli, PCT

Peace Corps Ghana

P.O. Box 5796

Accra-North

the start?... ahhh, yes, ghana!

So the beginning of my PC experience… so much has happened in the first two weeks of being here I don’t know where I should start. I guess I’ll start by saying that the flight over to Ghana was long and I got the aisle seat ): The movies were junk and the food wasn’t good either. I think the only good thing was they had cheese and crackers. Something I haven’t seen here yet, but I heard they have Laughing Cow. Anyways, after arriving in Ghana we loaded all our luggage into this huge truck and packed into a bus that was taking us to our “hotel” for the next couple of days. As we were driving (Ghanaians are crazy crazy drivers, but they are the really good at being crazy drivers. They are reckless but somehow are able to maneuver crazy pot hole half dirt half paved roads and get us to our destination safely.) the bus all of a sudden hits its brakes and swerves to the left. I just thought that maybe the car in front stopped a little too late, but as we passed, I see a motorcyclist on the road with his bike on the ground! It was crrrazy! Especially since we had only been in Ghana for like half an hour.

We stayed at the “hotel” for three days. I won’t go into much detail about this place because there isn’t much to be told. A lot of introductions, talking with current volunteers, hanging out, and trying different Ghanaian dishes. Oh yea, and waking up at 5:30 nearly every morning.

We also got to have a little party at the ambassador’s house. It was pretty nice. They had an open bar. So much for detoxing here… it seems like although drinking is looked down upon here, drinking is basically what pc people do in their free time. What makes it even worse is that it gets dark around here at 6 and since we don’t have cars and trotros can get quite costly or people don’t live close to each other, people start drinking here at like 12. They have this hard alcohol called apetechie and it is probably the worst alcohol I have ever had, but the Ghanaians drink it like water. They have like a glass of it, not a shot, but a glass… at like 3 in the afternoon when it is blazing hot outside. I’m amazed. Also, most people here drink apetechie instead of beer because of the cost. A beer here cost 1 cedi and 30 peswas. A shot of apetechie cost like 20 peswas, and apetechie is strong, I would probably compare it to like 151. You might be thinking at 1 cedi and 30 peswas doesn’t seem like much, but I only make 2 cedis a day here. So if I get one beer, I pretty much spent all the money I made in a day.

I also moved into my homestay house, which is not really a house but a compound. (think of a dorm and that’s basically what I live in.) I have a mama, a papa, 3 brothers and one sister, and many others. They have been really nice to me, but I think they get angry (well not literally) because I don’t finish all my food. But here in Africa, no food gets wasted… if you don’t finish your food, your brother or sister will finish it. And by the amount of food that they give me, you would never think that people are starving in Africa. They pile loads and loads of food on your plate. I also got lucky with my homestay, because my mama (Major, they pronounce it May-Jo) makes the best rice in my town. I’m not really sure if that’s true, but everyone says it, and it is pretty delicious, but I think its mostly because she has a stand called Major’s Rice. The dishes here have been pretty interesting. When I have the time I will try to upload some pictures of them. Most of the dishes are made with tomatoes, onions, and pepe. Then they throw in coco yam leaves, fish, chicken, random meat like bush rat, grasscutter, dog (sometimes I’m scared to ask what kind of meat it is because I think its best not to know.) I swear, one day I think I had snail in my soup! It looked like snail, but when I asked my brother told me it was chicken fat, but I’ve seen chicken fat before, and that definitely looked like snail! Plus, the other night, my brothers were roasting snails to eat… like the kind of snails that you pick up from the side of the road! I want to try it, sort of, but I also don’t want to have the shits all day. Btw, I think there have been some people in our group who has shat their pants. I hope to never join the group, but the way things are prepared here/the things they put inside, it might be a hard task. Plus, public restrooms don’t exist. People here also eat dogs/cats. Some volunteers have dogs/cats (I hope to get a little puppy once I finally get to my site) and I heard that some of them go on trips and they leave their dog/cat with their neighbor to take care of and when they come home they find out that it got sick and died… aka, they probably got hungry and ate it!


I also went on a vision quest (you basically spend four days with a current volunteer to see her living situations, her current projects, and a little more of Ghana and what your life might look like for the next two years) I went to Likpe Todome in the Volta Region. It was cool to see how she was living, but she had a pretty sweet deal because she was living at a guest house, had running water, electricity, and a refrigerator! She is doing Ecotourism and her primary project is working with her village to strengthen/attract visitors to their waterfall and bat caves. We went hiking up to the batcaves. First off, I want to give props to my rainbows. I didn’t bring any shoes with me on the VQ, so I had to hike and rock climb in rainbows (I’m pretty sure that those slippers are amazing, and I didn’t slip once… but that’s probably because I’m pro hiker! Ha, jk) But it was cool to go hiking up the mountain to the caves. I got to see Togo from afar, hang out with some bats, eat some medicinal fruit (Denise, I’m taking notes so I can report back and you can use them when you start making natural medicines), see a huge beetle, some tree flem, and get a little history about the caves/the area. Although I thought it would be cool to have an Ecotourism site, after visiting her and seeing how things were, I’m pretty glad with the assignment that I was given.

So after homestay I will be leaving to go to Ntonso in the Ashanti region of Ghana. I’m pretty excited about it because I will be working with the Kente and Adinkra Sellers Association to help them with marketing and how to capitalize on tourist that visit the area. Basically from what I’ve read about Ntonso, it’s a crafts town where Adinkra symbols (series of unique symbols representing various forces and powers in the world) and cloth dyeing originates. With all the good, there must be some down sides, so I won’t have any running water or electricity. Which isn’t that bad, because I did come in to Ghana thinking that I wasn’t going to have that anyways, but I think I’ve been spoiled since I’ve been here. Every place so far that I’ve been has electricity. I know that I will be okay without running water because at my homestay we have a bore hole which I fetch water from to flush the toilet, take a shower, and for drinking, but electricity is harder… but I’ll learn to deal.

I don’t really know what else to say… A lot has happened, but there has also been a lot of down time (I finished a two books, so if anyone has good books that they would like to send to a child in Africa, send away) For the most part my days are pretty much routine now. I get up every morning at around 6:15, but I really get up at like 5ish (most Ghanaians are up by 4, they start cooking, sweepings, and other crazy things) cause the roosters are crowing and they start to play their music loud, so its pretty hard to sleep when everyone else is up. I go to school, a full day of language/business training… they don’t mess around too… we have 2 four hour sessions of training, and for the most part, they like to use all the four hours. Then go home, eat dinner, and hang out with my brothers/sisters/dormmates. I think that’s about all for now. Ghanaian life is simple. So maybe I shall try and start a ruckus.

And just incase you guys decide to visit me here in Ghana, I will put a Twi pharse at the end of my entries.

Twi Phrase of the month: Wo hu te sen? How are you?


PS, anyone down for World Cup 2010, South Africa?

So I guess my break is over. (technically its not, because after this post I will be leaving for Ghana and probably won't have internet access for a couple of days. maybe weeks. maybe months. but whose counting right?) 

Anyways, I tried to hang out with my family/friends as much as possible.

and tried to eat as much bacon as one can consume without having a heart attack.

I think I did pretty well. 

So it finally hit me today at the end of our orientation that I'M FRICKEN LEAVING THE UNITED STATES FOR GHANA!!

but, I'm super excited.  

The group of people that I'm going with seem super awesome, we are all around the same age, they have a pretty good sense of humor, seem to be well rounded/educated, likes to party, and best of all... I'm not the only asian!!  

and yes Lauryn, us asians love to cling to each other. (:

jk, but seriously, I'm happy that I'm not the only asian. 

Tomorrow we leave at 6:30 to go to this clinic to get a shot for Yellow Fever. 

and we take our first dose of the malaria pills. 

then, we are off to JFK for our 11 hour plan ride to Ghana.

from then, I'm not sure what I'm expecting. 

maybe all hell to break loose? 

who knows.

all I know is... tonight is my last night that I will be in America for a while, and I'm glad that I got to have some tequila before I go... so much for detoxing right? 

the beginning of the end.

so i'm going to try my best to be faithful to you (my lovely readers) over the next 27 months. 

with that being said, i'm now going to be unfaithful to you these next couple of days to get these things accomplished:

a.) packing my life away.

b.) eating bacon. 

c.) seeing family/friends.

d.) repeating b and c.

xoxo.