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.)