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?