kelli poop in detox.

almost time to say obruni bye bye.

2010-09-06T16:53:00.000-07:00

Well, my time here is winding down, 9 weeks and 3 days to be exact, but who’s counting. Certainly not me.

So although I don’t know this for sure, I’m almost positive that the couple of days before I leave my town will be like hell. People wanting this, demanding I give them that, wait… you really want my old musty socks? Ones trash is truly another’s treasure; I of all people should understand this… I love goodwill after all.
I guess the whole thing that I’m put off by is the fact that these people will demand things from me rather than me decided that I would like to give it to them. After two years I shouldn’t be surprised. Why shouldn’t I give them these things, why shouldn’t they demand them of me. I am after all, one of them, family.

To some degree. Sure I still get cheated at the market, I still don’t quite understand why after a year you still love to stare at me as if I’m some foreign species, I can’t eat fufu like it’s a bacon wrapped wiener (oh man, I can’t wait for those!) but these people have cared for me, fed me, and treated me not like a stranger, but as a sister.

This reminds me of a time that I was out of money and on the football field with a whole bunch of kids. I really wanted a pocky (frozen ice pop). I saw some kid playing with 10 pesewa, flipping it up and catching it. For a long time I argued in my head about asking this kid for his money. Finally my craving for pocky made the part of me that wanted to ask him punch the lights out of the part that didn’t. I called the boy over and asked him for his 10 pesewa. The boy didn’t even hesitate with his money; he just gave it to me. Like the boy, I didn’t hesitate and I took it, and went straight to buy pocky. I gave the boy back his change of 5 pesewa to which he also bought a pocky. While I was enjoying this pocky all by myself, the boy who gave me his money was also sharing his pocky with 5 other small boys that came around. I wish I had the generosity to share my pocky, but I’m not as sharing and generous. (Not to mention all the germs that those small boys carry around; after a 7 months of being giardia free I’m not about to start again.) And to make sure you leave this entry not seeing me as a totally horrible person, I found the boy the next day thanked him for his generosity and paid him back with interest.

Anyways, that concept of extended family and sharing everything that you have has been somewhat difficult for me. ( after all, I’m the only girl and the youngest of three) And I’m not just talking about grandparents, and uncles and aunts; I’m talking my second cousin, cousin’s wife, brother’s daughter needs to go to school. So since I’m in a better position to help, I help. To the extent where I could be seen as this girls father. But no, I’m just somewhere related. Yet, family. Thus, I must help take care of the family.

So while I may not have been able to accomplish what I had thought I would, I did gain one big family here in Ghana… and for that I am forever grateful, and will try my best to do all that I can, no matter how far away I may be, to forever help my new family.

And with that said, I can’t wait to see my family. The one that lives on a little rock in the middle of the pacific.

support fair trade! these women in the upper east, weave these beautiful baskets! they are now sold at whole foods!

not going to lie... i think donkeys are my new favorite animals.

sirigu, upper east.

known for traditional pottery, architecture, and wall designs. super awesome.

these kids tried to sell me their bird for 10 cedis. and that bird cage was so awesome that i almost bought it. always hustlin.

pito. the beverage of choice in the northern regions of ghana.

pretty nasty if you asked me.

Sometimes things need to fall apart to be put properly back together.

2010-07-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

… or so I keep telling myself.

So things kind of fell apart. I partially blame myself. After things were working well, I left for about two weeks. We had a conference at an uber nice hotel (air condition, hot water, meat with every meal, swimming pool, hot water) to reconnect with other volunteers and learn more about HIV activities and things that we can do in our towns to educate people about it. It was nice to be with volunteers, hearing their stories and talking about future events to collaborate on.

And well, when I came back I found the visitor centre closed. I heard that it was maybe open for three days and then after that they just put a sign on the door. Its hard to be mad, I mean the people that are working on this project are volunteering their time. So they have other jobs, jobs that earn them an income, to attend to and can’t make this their first priority, but there are at least five of them where they could have worked something out. They could have talked to one of their nieces or nephews who are probably out roaming the streets because they have nothing better to do. Maybe even talked to the men and women who just sit at their house all day long. But instead, it was just closed. With a sign saying to call a guide. No good. At all.

On top of that, the Ministry of Tourism is just causing more problems than solving or helping. We have been fighting with them since November for the right to manage the facility. Sending them letters, seeing them in person, calling them on the phone, fighting, fighting, and fighting. But no deuce. They say they’ll call us back in a week after their meeting. No call. I visit them in Accra to see whats up and voice what I think needs to be done to make this project work successfully for Ntonso and you. They say they’ll talk it over and call me. I wait. No call. I call them. They are still discussing it. They say they’ll call me. Still no call. UGH. You build this beautiful building for what?!

Then out of nowhere this company, Ghana Tourism Development Company Ltd comes to Ntonso. They say that the MOT has requested that they manage the facility in Ntonso so they’ve come to introduce themselves and talk with the main stakeholders. Although I’m not happy about the idea that another company will come to manage the facility, I am hopeful. I think the members of the TMT can take the experience that they have had with FM24 and use it as guidance for their interactions with GTDC.

So I am hopeful. I feel that GTDC has the money to help finance things that would be beneficial for Ntonso to improve as a tourist destination. I am hopeful that they will work out a better deal for the people who will work for the project. I feel that if this doesn’t work out, then the tourism project will never work.

I guess now we will just wait and see. Either it blows up and everyone loses. Or they work out a good deal and Ntonso won’t know what to do with all the damn tourist and all that damn money.

Oh yea, on a side and happy note.
I finally, after 22 months, have gotten… wait for it… electricity. And its so so so amazing. As I am walking towards my house I find myself smiling like a little girl in a candy shop. I will miss my candle lit dinners and bucket baths in the dark, but I think it won’t be hard for me to adjust.

I love my life so much that another year here wouldn’t be so bad.

twi word of the day: awradE (oh god!)

shots shot shot shots shots shots shots!!

2010-04-18T00:55:00.000-07:00

everrrybodyyy.... love shots shots shots shots shots shots!

Easter weekend wouldn't be complete without a full on jesus walk. through the streets. and the grand finale of hammering him to the cross. with blood. INTENSE.

so the best thing about all these jams (aka street parties) is that there was an endless supply of kebab stands. sausage. chicken. gizzard. goat. suuuuper awesome. there was also some new drink called waikiki. it was cocopine and kinda tasted like malibu.

me and my man eddie getting ready to go. we did a little dance and then ran to jump jump jump off the cliff!

I finally did it... i made it upp upp upppppp in the air.

i went to visit my friend in the upper west. this was her market, it was pretty insane. it was fried food day for her. we ate all sorts of fried goodness. fried yams, koose (fried bean cake), and soya kebabas. it was yummm. but at the market there was all sorts of chop. i think they are pounding fufu. but i've never seen so many people pounding fufu before. dizam.

so, i'm not a huge spam fan, but i have eaten half a can of spam by myself with about half a cup of rice in one sitting. (yes, i'm a fatter ass than before) but funny thing about this is that my parents haven't sent me spam, nor has anyone else from home. i've collected spam from other volunteers whose parents send it to them as a joke. they never eat it, so figure since i'm from hawaii i would eat it. and so i graciously accept their kind offer. and boy is it delicious!!!

the new visitor centre. i will be posting better pictures soon, hopefully with the fully built demonstration centre that we've been hoping for since... forever. but kakra kakra. (:

went to farm with my friend akida (he spells it aqueeda, but i like to say akida.) it was a small town maybe like an hour away from ntonso. the guy that was looking after his farm lived in this mud house. the door on the right served as his kitchen and chicken coop. the one of the left was his room. i bet that his room is 1240358430852 times cooler than mines. (as in temperature. and now that i think about it... in looks too.)

so this embassy worker had two freezers. this one was just full of swiss rolls and reeses. the other one was filled with frozen pizza, frozen deli meat, frozen bacon, and other frozen goodness. we were in shock. and in awe. and yes, i took pictures. we are deprived! hahaha. jk.

the finishing touches. not bad right?

and scene. (: miss you all. xoxo.

kakra kakra

2010-03-08T11:01:00.001-08:00

I think that just might be my favorite word here in Ghana, kakra kakra. It means small, small. Like meti twi kakra. I know a how to speak a little twi. Or medi kakra. I eat a little. But ask me how the work is going here in Ntonso and I will say, kakra kakra. We are moving forward kakra kakra. (about damn time right?)

Anyways, I’m finally a bit excited and happy about the way things are going with the project here. It’s about the beginning of tourist season and we are going kakra kakra towards the directions of making this destination a five-star stop! (okay, we are still a long way… but a girl can exaggerate to make herself feel better.) Step one toward making it five-star… actually being OPEN! Check. We’ve been opened for just about a month now and have received about 65 visitors! I have a feeling now that we have been in contact with some tour guides and started passing out our brochures (Thank you Cal Lu Printing Services! You guys are awesome!) that more will start to come. Step two, bring artisans to come and work at the visitor centre… half-check. We have got a calabash carver to come and work at the visitor centre about a couple times a week and upon request when tourist come. We have kente looms and I think I’m going to start weaving soon! (usually only men weave, but I figure I have plenty free time, so I should weave too!) We are working on getting others to move, but no luck yet. The only downer part of this whole thing is that we are opened every day because I make sure we are open (not very sustainable, since I will be leaving at the end of the year… and for a month in june, but we’ll see how it goes). But I do think now that people within the Tourism Management Team see the potential that this place has to generate money for the community they are more committed to making it work. With that being said, we still have a lot of things to work out, but like I said kakra, kakra.

(can I get a hoorah!)

Mmm, so the other weekend was Easter weekend and although there was no Ho Easter (sad) Easter just might be my favorite time here in Ghana. Just for the fact that it always includes good friends, good food, and something exciting. This Easter it was something legen… wait for it… dary! (haha, sorry I’m like obsessed it everything Barney) Anyways, the Ghana Tourist Board puts on a festival in the Eastern Region for the Easter holiday which includes street jams, paragliding, lots of kebabs, and crazyness. (although, being here has decreased my crazyness… one night there was this music festival that started at 8 pm that we all wanted to attend, but when the time came around we were passed out. I woke up at like 9 trying to get people to go, but no one wanted to, so I just went back to sleep. I know, I’m uber lame now. Happy dad?) Anyways, back to the story… so I went paragliding!!! I jumped off a cliff and went up, up, and wayyy up in the air!! I was up there for so damn long that I felt sick at the end. Haha. But it was totally awesome and worth it.

I guess that’s about all for now, we are going to have an all-volunteer conference at the end of the month at an uber nice hotel. (wifi and pool for a week!) There is suppose to be a talent show (I was thinking about playing the harmonica) and a PROM! So all in all, I’m finally really happy with every day here… so happy that I’ve submitted a request to extend for a third year!!

(april fools… or maybe not. It would seem like a pretty good deal though, a year more I get to go home free for a month during the holidays and I get like 10G after I finish! JK, I can’t wait to come home and eat delicious food and go to Vegas! Oh and I guess get a job. And find my Honda! Oh and I guess hang out with all my family and friends!)

Okay well, miss you all tons back home… hope everything is going extra fabulous!!

Also why I kinda love being here… so today I was walking along and I see a group of kids with tin cans searching in the bush. They were all on the hunt for something, telling one kid who was under a log about where something was. I figured that they were finding those flying bugs so they could attach it to a string and play with it. So I continued on, went to talk to my friend and then started headed back in their direction, but they were off to a new place, looking under a tree… and so I’m really curious now as to what they are doing. So I peak into their cans and what do I find… lots of snails. So pumba and timon… sometimes I’m a bit jealous of the fact that they LOVE snails.

ps. internet is being stupid. so i guess i'll upload pictures later. and on another sad sad note... i have a fricken mouse again. and guess what it fricken ate... my blackberry track ball!!!! stupid stupid mouse. but i will get the last laugh.

i'm getting better at being faithful... sorta.

2010-03-08T11:01:00.000-08:00

hmmm, so whats new?

lots of stuff, but i really don't feel like typing... and we all know you hate to read. so pictures it is! (:

i started my world map project at my local market. basically you paint a map of the world on the wall to help increase geography literacy. i figured the market would be a good location to do it because a lot of people frequent the place to buy their groceries. (and by groceries i mean, onions and tomatoes. because thats all you can buy there. jk. but majority of it is onions and tomatoes.) but anyways, i decided to get the children involved thinking itd be a good idea. well, ha, baaad idea... well, first off. if you want an accurate map, you should only get adults with some what of a knowledge of the world to help. if you want new countries and seas to exist, your local children are good at that.

basically, at the end of day two of map work we had the united states of mexico annnd chargentina! also, the black sea became a country and so did some huge lake in canada. among other mistakes that i've found along the way. way to go children!

but on a positive note, the reason why i'm doing the map is so that they know that the united states does not extend to the east side of mexico, and so forth. and its somewhat working. today i was painting with a boy and playing wheres that country! he now knows where japan, china, russia, egypt, there is not an extended piece of land on the east side of mexico.

annnd, now that i've finished it my friend tells me that she sees all the children looking at it after they finish from school. wooot. success!

i've started feeding children. hahaha.

the kid that gave me skin diseases. no joke. i helped this small boy clean his hands... and after i finished he pointed to his hands and said something in his language that i didn't understand but i figured he was telling me about the disease that he had on his hands. annnd, now. i have those same bumps on my hands. ): last time i play with dirty small children. ps. we slept on the roof, behind. it was pretty damn awesome.

awesome signboard in tamale... thats right kids, it retards development!! fight, fight, fight!

ps. no matter where i seem to move electricity hates me ): i seriously am literally juuust outside from where there is electricity. it sucks. i have this beautiful house and the shack (literally a shack) that like 5 feet from my house has electricity.

twi word of the day: wo hu nu bruni won ka se bruni

(when you see a white person, don't say obruni.)

helloooo. hellloooo.

2010-02-17T14:01:00.000-08:00

hello faithful followers:

i apologize for my lack of blogging. i could give you a million excuses but i wont. i think i'll just show you pictures. i'm alive and well. and realized that i could live my whole life without running water and electricity and bacon (who wouldve thunk!) as long as i had a toilet to sit on.

so i finally moved from this little shindig. i miss these girls. a bit. but what i don't miss is their screaming, crying, and singing at 5am.

i wanted to be among.

there was a camp, i taught business and we made them run one. they sold juuuuice! it was a hit.

okay, internet won't let me upload any more.

more to come later. i'll be more faithful to you.

xoxo.

more more pictures!

2009-12-07T00:41:00.001-08:00

the final two teams, my team is in blue and my neighbors team is in green.

this man stole all the glory! so my town played his town in the championship match. our team was better but couldn't score. it went to shoot out, and we all know shoot outs are bullshit.

the senior high school drama troupe did two dramas... one on hiv/aids and one on tourism. this drama is on hiv/aids... about a pastor who helped a man after a car crash and contracted hiv. these students did an amazing job.

and of course we promoted tourism... so they brought their stuff to show off.

i'm teaching this small girl everything that she needs to know in the world. heineken is everywhere, but i can't seem to find americas king of beers. boooo.

and can't forget to teach her about my home country of asia.

long time friend.

2009-11-25T02:35:00.000-08:00

sorry for the delay, the two months after returning from america have been rough. every sickness/emotion that one person could have in their entire life i've had in two months. but don't you worry... i'm still alive. somehow. (:

Mephloquin, mice, and scorpion king:
So you all know that I’ve had a mouse problem for some time, but lately its been annoying. I know where it hides out, but don’t know what to do with it. Do I kill it? How will I kill it? But what happens if it jumps at me again and I get rabies? So, since I have no idea what to do and keep forgetting to buy the stupid mouse trap, I guess it will just be my annoying unwanted company until I figure out something.
Then one night, I saw a massive scorpion in my room. At first I thought I was hallucinating. you see, I take mephaloquin (its malaria medication) and it causes you to intense and crazy dreams. Which, I didn’t have at first, but now I’m having. If I haven’t seen/talked to you in the past couple of years that has all changed because I have done so within the past month due to this medication. Anyways, back to the story, so I woke up in the middle of the night because I had to pee, and then with my flashlight I see a HUGE scorpion behind my shelves. I didn’t know what to do and had to pee bad so I just left to pee, and when I returned it was gone. (thus why I believed I was hallucinating) so I just went back to sleep… actually I think I took out my “where there is no doctor book” and looked up scorpion bites, when I realized it wasn’t a huge risk to my life, I went back to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up, looked behind the shelf and saw nothing… that’s when I really thought I was going crazy. But luckily, when the night creeped around, it appeared and reassured me that I’m not crazy. I didn’t know what to do with it, like the mouse… so I poked at it a bit with a stick, and it went back into hiding. I played this game with it for about a week… poke it and hide. I was going to leave it for my friend to come and see, but good thing I didn’t because he didn’t end up coming. So one night, I was reaching for my toothbrush and something started to crawl on my arm. Of course, I screamed like a little girl (it was a dirty small cockaroach) and then the people outside asked if I was okay. I told them yea… and was like, well, I do have this scorpion inside my room. They were like scorpion?! And I was like, yeaaa! And so the lady came in with a broom and smashed it! it was pretty awesome, and I’m quite jealous that I never had the guts to do it.
So, scorpion down, mice still around… I guess we can’t have it all.

huge? i tend to exaggerate at times. especially when it comes to critters. that could potentially kill me.

Galla Galla Galla!!:
So my neighbor and I have been planning a football gala for sometime now, and yesterday it finally came! Of course like most things in Ghana, the event was suppose to start at 9 am, but we didn’t start until 10:30. But other than that, I think the event was pretty damn successful. We had education on HIV/AIDS and tourism during the halftimes and breaks of the games, the grand finale was a speaker who was living with HIV. Voluntary testing and counseling was also available at the event, they said they tested 200+ people which I was happy about because people kept telling me that no one would come because of the stigmatization that goes along with HIV. We just went to check with the district health services and found out that out of all the people they tested that day there were no positives, so thats a good sign, but still plenty education needs to be done to make sure that it is kept that way.

Motivation:
I’ve grown to HATE this word. Every time I went to the District Assembly to meet with the Cultural Officer to discuss the football gala with him, he kept telling me that I needed to motivate him. So I asked him one day what his job description was, and he said it was dealing with cultural events in the district, which includes anything dealing with kente, adinkra, woodcarving, etc, which includes tourism. This event was basically helping him do his job. Plus, all he does is sit on his ass all day and do nothing… and all the jobs we had for him to do, NONE got done. (causing much stress the day before, scrambling to find buses and security for the event) Then, after I paid the health worker for doing the testing at the event, she said it was too small (it was $15, which may seem small to you, but farmers who slave all day in the fields make $5 a day and I make $7 so I should’ve told her to shove it) and that I should add more to it. When I told her thats what the Head Nurse told me the fee would be, she demanded I give her toffee. So I just looked at her and walked away. Ugh, I can’t stand it sometimes. Everyone always asking asking asking for money. For toffee. For my bag. For my tshirt. For anything really. Kids I’m a little bit more understanding, but man, adults… especially the more educated one… I just can’t handle.

Peace and Unity:
I also started a club at the senior high school in the town next to mines (I wanted to do it in my town, but it was a Seventh Day Adventist SHS, and the headmaster told me I couldn't because I wasn't "one of them") Anyways, I haven't been able to meet with them weekly because of all the event drama, but I finally got to meet with them the other week. At first I thought it was going to be bad… when I first came to the school no one was there, and a teacher I ran into asked me if I reminded the students, kind of implying that if I didn’t they weren’t going to show up. I asked one of the girls who was standing around to look for the president, but when she returned, she told me he left for home. I was a bit disappointed, but thought I would hang out for a bit to see if anyone would show. Then a girl came in, and said that they were having classes or cadet, but said that she would go around telling them I have arrived and that they would be in shortly. And shortly, they started to come! The last week that we met we did the tangled arm spider web, and it was a complete failure. Half because they didn’t really understand my instructions, and half because I don’t think they are given enough freedom to make their decisions/problem solving. So when given a task where they have to make decision to help them get out of something, they are a bit confused. Its quite sad, everything is about memorization and you wouldn’t dare think about questioning or thinking for yourself. But this week, we tried again, and it was some what successful. I was sooo happy. Then we went to talk about capital for the company and splitting them up in different departments, like human resources, public relations, finance, production, and marketing. They've decided that they want to start a bead business, so once they've sold their stock and got money, we are going to buy beads, produce them, and start selling. sooo, anyone interested in beads? holla.

the cultural officer and the district chief executive talking to the players before the start of the match.

visual aids and lovely peace corps volunteers that came to help that day.

the speaker that we had for the event... he did an AMAAAZING job. more people were asking about being tested after he finished his speech... been living with HIV for 5 years now.

three generations of volunteers with mama major. and nana.

twi word of the day: mEhu wo kyea. (its been a long time)

***more pictures to come of the galla galla galla!!!

no longer clean. ):

2009-10-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

so in the spirt of being back to the dirtyness that is ghana. i've decided to express them in pictures.

haha, sorry, this is just a mockery of jessica simpsons twit picture. and for those of you that don't get it... sorry. there is one thing that i know about whats going on in america that you dont! whoohoo. point poop. but, i guess since its whats going on with jessica... it doesn't really count much. minus point poop.

and here is my N A S T Y latrine. if youre wondering what those white spots are on the inside of the toilet... well, they are maggots. yup, i barf nearly every time i have to go near this disgusting thing. oh wells. worse things could happen?!

also, people have been commenting on how fat i've become. here in ghana, if you are fat, you are happy. when i first got back to my site, my friends were like... you mustve had a good time with your husband... you've become fat!

then today, my supervisor was like, i don't even need to ask you how you are anymore... i can tell by just looking at you that you are happy. (so basically he said i'm really fat.)

i hope i just never get k-fed happy. cause that boy B L E W U P. like fat albert status.

okay, a serious entry to come... this one is just for shits and giggles. (:

xoxo.

no longer in detox.

2009-09-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

going on hiatus... see you suckas sooooon!!!

just kidding dad. (:

I play with sick orphan children in my free time, what do you do?

2009-08-16T02:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, true fact.

Julie and I decided to go to upper west to visit friends, play with hippos, find gifts and drink pito. Mostly everything on our to do list was unsuccessful; hippos don’t like to play in the rainy season, gifts were no where to be found (sorry folks back home, looks like your gift will just be me!!), and the pito was absolutely disgusting. So we decided that we didn’t travel 8+ hours for nothing, and went to our friend Adams site to eat his spam (yes, his parents sent him spam! And hes not even from Hawaii, but I guess thats what happens when everyone is broke… I even saw spam being advertised in an US Weekly magazine… damn… but sad story, we didn’t eat his spam.) and visit the clinic that houses sick orphaned children to spend time with them. Now, I’m not really a person who likes to touch dirty things (including beings) but these kids were just adorable. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

look, even the fob with the hat is special.

this is daniel, hes absolutely an adorable child... i have this awesome video of him saying ANYOUNGGG!!!

this bad ass is kwame. he has tb of the bones.

Also, I’ve started doing vacation classes with the children in my community. I somehow go tricked into doing it, but so far its been good and I really enjoy it. It’s a bit hard at times because the children that come to the classes are in different grades, but somehow it works out. The kids are really adorable… I’ve been having to travel a bunch lately so I have the classes whenever I’m at home, but as soon as the kids see that I’m back in town, they’re all like… will we have class tomorrow?! Sucks that I’ll be gone for three weeks.

Mmm, what else… So I went back to Kukurantumi to see the new trainees swear-in as volunteers! I didn’t really want to go at first, but I’m so glad I did… mostly because I got to visit my homestay family! I absolutely miss them oh so much. It was really cool because I got to meet the volunteer that stayed with Major the year before me as well as the one that was currently staying with her… and then she invited us all over for dinner. It was fufu with goat and fish, and it was absolutely delicious! Its weird that I like fufu, but I guess since I don’t get it ever when I’m in Ntonso its like a treat to have it.

Anyways, my countdown is now three weeks! Sooo excited. Not looking forward to basically traveling for two days just to make it to America, but it’ll be so worth it… as long as I get some delicious Mexican food and a margarita. Mmmm, yes, can’t effen wait!!

id be the worst housewife... i don't cook, i don't clean... but what i'm really good at is making other people do it for me!!! hahaha. we even enlisted the small boy to kill all my rodents, sweep my floor, and wash my tablecloth. gotta love free child labor!

apparently in the upper west, they like to cook their tasty meat in cement bags... mmm, delicious! extra flavor!

Twi word of the day: me di fufuo (I eat fufu)

OMG, don't you love him?!

more for your enjoyment.

2009-07-24T00:34:00.000-07:00

so this is lake bosumtwi. i went as a chaperone (sorta) with addae and her school.
the lake is really pretty. we went again on another day, a public holiday for ghana and it was like spring break cancun for ghanaians. i was pretty amazed. loud music, women in barely any clothes, men, and lots of boooze.

more deaf children. can't get enough of them.

yep, ghana is dirty.

these billboards were alllll over ghana. pretty awesome huh.

soooo, if anyone knows me, they know that i'm obsessed with bacon. and here, makes me think twice about eating pork in ghana. but i'm in accra again... getting my teeth checked (yea, peace corps gives you unwaxed floss... seriously, why even make unwaxed floss anymore, its horrible.) but anyways, i just had a bacon sandwich... mmmm, effen delicious!!!

a little something something.

2009-07-21T01:25:00.001-07:00

they wanted to see my tongue ring so they kept sticking out their tongues. hehe.

yea, ghana is a dirty trash pile at the beach, and little boys like to play in it... actually i think he was probably pooping.

the beach here is nasssty! and yes, they allow their children to poop on it!

bye bye ghana.

yes, i was mesmerized by him

a moment between president obama and president mills.

the three coolest asians in ghana.

Yea cause we are VIP... and youre just a... P.

Barack Barack, Barack Obama… com mek wi talk about Barack Obama. -Black Rasta

2009-07-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

it really is "com mek wi talk about barack obama" so no, i haven't forgotten how to spell or talk.

So Barack made his appearance in Ghana couple of days ago, and although it was only for a day, and there was no personal meet and greet with the big man like when President Bush came a year or so ago, it was still pretty DAMN awesome.

yeaaaahhhh boyeeeeee!!! VIP!

I went down to Accra the day before the big scheduled event just to make sure that I would be there in time; didn’t want to risk having my tro-tro break down and miss the Prez. So before I even talk about Obama, I want to talk about how AMAZING Accra is. I haven’t been to Accra since landing in Ghana because Accra scares me, anytime I hear stories of Accra it always involves robbery… by gun point, using machetes, or being dragged. Thus, I’ve stayed away… but I couldn’t miss this big event, so I stuffed all my money in my bra and off I went. So I guess Accra is just like any big main city in a developing country, but Accra is basically America. I walked into this place called Koalas, which is a grocery store, but I was just in amazement of all the things that they possessed inside… I literally stood with my mouth open drooling at their deli/meat department, their cheese aisle, and their bakery!! They have a coffee shop, casinos, night clubs, teppanyaki! a mall with a movie theatre, hot dog stands (unfortunately they didn’t have bacon wrapped hotdogs, I think if they did I would’ve died, literally.) and probably a million other things that I would consider amazing that you would just laugh at me about.

So Obamaaaaa!! We were to be at the US Embassy at 2 pm so we could get tickets to the event. [It was pretty cool because it was like a huge PCV reunion… seeing people from my group that I haven’t seen since training and meeting other volunteers.] Like most things in Ghana, there was a bunch of waiting; waiting to get our tickets, waiting in the bus outside the airport gates, waiting to go through the metal detectors, waiting for the big mans arrival, but seriously all the waiting, TOTALLY worth it. [Can I just add that everyone on Obama’s staff is ridiculously handsome… sure its probably their suit, seriousness, and the fact that they are secret service or something, but dammmmn. I can just imagine their pick up line… want to see air force one?] He finally arrived via helicopter and was put into a limo where he and the family made their debut!! And that’s not even the awesome part, in his speech he gave shout outs to peace corps volunteers!!

"I want to recognize our Peace Corps Volunteers who are here… you know Ghana, Ghana was the very first nation to host young people from the Peace Corps and for decades our two nations have formed vital partnerships & lasting friendships because of this program. So all of you in the Peace Corps you are doing an outstanding job & we're proud of you…”

“Young people of Africa… serve like these Peace Corps people, serve in communities, and harvest your energy & education to renew & build connections between the world.” -Barack Obama, July 11, 2009

Again, not even the awesome part… I got to see Obama and Michelle up close and personal! [And yes, he is so much more handsome in person and she is ridiculously beautiful as well!] I was too busy trying to get pictures that I didn’t even try to shake their hands, but I did try to get his attention by giving him the shaka… both unsuccessful because I was shaking so much that all the pictures are blurry and because I don’t think he saw my shaka. ): Oh wells, it was still a pretty damn awesome day and like my mom said my excitement for the year… unless going home for two weeks can upstage this?! but then again, i've matured and become a two beer queer... training for nothing... so i guess we shouldn't get our hopes up.

making their appearance, while dancers dance around them.

twi word of the day: mE ko mE shay OBAMAAA!! (i go to see obama!)

***more obama pictures to come once the internet gets faster.

in case you were wondering...

2009-06-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

typical shoutouts with strangers...

ghanaian: hello!
me: hello.
ghanaian: what are you, japan... china?
me: i'm american.
ghanaian: i've never seen such a short american before.
me: i've never seen such an ugly person before.

just kidding, i don't say the last part... i just say uhhh, thanks.

then yesterday i was talking with a teacher...

teacher: so what are you? chinese? japanese?
me: i'm asian-american.
teacher: so can you speak china? or japan?
me: i can speak a little japanese.
teacher: i can speak some too.
me: really... lets hear what you can say.
teacher: chingchongchong.
me: haha... uh, thats not japanese.
teacher: so there is this story that is being passed around... and the way you people get your names is by throwing a dish on the ground and listening to the sound. thats how you get your names.
me: haha, what... ive never heard such a thing.
teacher: yeah, just like how we have our day names and then our surnames... you guys throw things on the floor and listen to the sound to name your baby.
me: haahah. so i think when you have a baby you should throw a milo can on the floor and listen carefully and name the child that.
teacher: noooo... thats your tradition, not ours.

yeaaaa, fulfilling mission number 2 of peace corps... teaching host nationals about the culture of americans. or asian americans... i get yelled at in the streets... ching chong chong! alllll the time... i tried to tell the teacher that saying ching chong chong to us is very offense, like the equivalent to the middle finger... but i'm pretty sure i'll still get ching chong chong.

i'm contemplating asking my counterpart to be relocated. i think i can pretty much handle a lot of things, but my house SUCKS BALLS! i seriously wake up every morning wishing i was not living at my house.

okay, miss you all... counting down the dayyyyyssssss!!!
bacon wrapped hot dogs here i commmeeee!!!
xoxo.

good and the bad. at least no ugly.

2009-06-07T04:53:00.000-07:00

So good news, bad news…

Good news: Guess who is officially (I say officially because I’ve been saying this for about three months, but now I have ticket confirmation!) coming home in September for a good 20 days?! Hell to the YEAH!!! (btw, its me that’s coming home in case anyone was confused.) Ahhhh, I’m like so excited… every time I think about how close September is I almost want to poop my pants! Then every time I start to think about all the amazing food, liquor, and people I will get to see and eat my head starts to feel like its going to explode.

Bad news: Lola is back. /: After a long day of traveling back to Ntonso, I’m walking past my neighbors house and she stops me to say that my cat is at her house. (I kinda knew that it was there, but hoped that they would just take the cat in as their own as they have like 15 others… guess that didn’t work out so well.) So now the cat is back, still annoying and loud as when it first left… maybe there is hope for me as a mother after all. (in the sense that my children will return to me given that someone else doesn’t want them. Joke.)

Good news: Right now we are in the rainy season. I love the rain here in Ghana... the air is cool, everyone is in hiding so its quiet and peaceful, I get my water, when we are lucky there is some crazy lightning that strikes down, but mostly because it gives me a reason to heat up water and take a nice hot bath and I don’t go to sleep sweating. (double score if I don’t sweat while eating) Nothing usually gets accomplished when it rains (because apparently Ghanaians melt in the rain) but well, somehow its okay. At least they don’t have depression right?!

Good news: I can chop lola now!!

Bad news: The rain brings mosquitos paaaaa!! (pa=plenty)

Good news: The girl that come to visit me during her Vision Quest is still in Ghana, and didn’t die (or get the shits) from my cooking or from chopping in town. Apparently they’ve already had 3 or so people terminate their service and return to America. (we actually made really gooood stir fry one night, and I’ve been craving it every night since then. And also banana pancakes… soooo YUM!)

Bad news: my vision quester said I sometimes talked funny to her. So here, we talk Ghanaian English… and it sounds retarded as hell, and I don’t like talking to Ghanaians in Ghanaian English, but I guess sometimes I can’t help it. It is even stupider when Americans talk to other Americans in Ghanaian English. I think I’ve started talking to my gma and gpa in Ghanaian English… but I’m going to justify that by saying the connection is really bad at times and well, they’re a bit hard of hearing.

Good news: So Peace Corps gives you this amazing book called where there is no doctor, and basically if you feel like something is wrong with you, you look up your symptoms and try to figure out what you have. I recently determined that I had giardia /: and I cured it, and now I think that I can definitely go back to America and become a doctor.

Good news: i lied when i said ALL my pictures got delete... just all my cool fun pictures got deleted, booo. ):

this is elimina castle, one of the slave castles that were built by the portugese. it was first used as a trade settlement but then it got used to traffic slaves.

here is a room that they had to live in before getting sent away. those three small windows were the only source of light they had.

so here is what it looks like with the light turned on... but of course back then, there was no lights.

the door of no return... no explanation need. ):

Twi word of the day: ko bra y (go and come)

Adinkra Symbol of the day:

SESA WORUBAN

"I change or transform my life"

symbol of life transformation

This symbol combines two separate adinkra symbols, the "Morning Star" which can mean a new start to the day, placed inside the wheel, representing rotation or independent movement.

Shout Out: dustin for helping me, you da best! And to my favorite two people in the world… my mama and dada!!!

my life is a big blurrrr.

2009-06-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

So whats happening?

Nothing much to be honest. Somehow, things are happening, I’m going places, doing things, but I lose track of things and events and looking back on yesterday I can’t seem to remember what I’ve done. (and no, its not because I was drunk and in an obliteration of the days past although that would make more sense as to why I can’t remember anything.)

Cape Coast: Took a little vacation to the coast, got to see the slave castles, walk on one of the four canopy walks in the world (totally as scary as it looks), played with some crocks, feds some ostriches, got to swim in a pool, had amazing food and PORK!, and spend quality time with my favorite people. I would love to elaborate more and show you some pictures to go along with it, but some idiot deleted all her pictures trying to make space for more… so if I continue talking about it, I might just get crazy mad at myself and need to drink a beer. Speaking of beer, the visitor centre just got beer at the snack bar! Score!

NTMT: The NTMT has been meeting regularly and getting things done! Its absolutely amazing! I was quite scared when the assemblyman was voted chairman, but so far its working out quite well. He wants to see the project go well, and since he has connections with the district assembly we are working closely with them in hopes of getting some funds to build a demonstration center. Also, the other new members have been coming and contributing greatly to ideas and other things. I’m so happy. We’ve also started talks about doing a Kwabre District football gala. So basically they want to invite the craft towns in Kwabre to put on a gala while doing hiv/aids education and some tourism awareness.

ANYOUNG!!: So I’m not sure if any of you guys are Arrested Development fans, but since coming to Ghana I’ve become quite a fan of shows I’ve never even heard about in America… Arrested Development being one. Every time before when I would hear Arrested Development I would think of the song Mr. Wendall. Do you all remember them? Anyways, cool song, used to remind me of my brother, you know, wendall instead of kendyl?! (Haha, okay whatever, I was young and lamer.) anyways, in Arrested Development there is this Korean kid who only says ANYOUNG!! Haha. So anyways, since I got my uber cool phone number back, I still get all these annoying calls from Ghanaians. Which I have now decided that I’ll say hello at first just to make sure its not someone important that I know and if I don’t know them than after hello its just ANYOUNG! ANYOUNG!! ANYOUNG!!! Until they hang up and decide to never bother me again. Its absolutely great!

Kumasi Zoo: Took my favorite little kids to the Kumasi Zoo, which was totally not worth the 5 cedis I had to pay to get in, but it was still fun. I mean, they didn’t even have any elephants, or giraffes, or zebras! I mean, whats a zoo without those animals?! But there was once chimpanzee that totally made my day. He was absolutely adorable, so much that I decided to name him Pete. I hope to visit him again soon, if I can bypass the guards and sneak in that is.

Lola: So I think I lost my cat. My track records with animals so far hasn’t been good at all. (can you imagine what a great parent I will become?! Ha) But it was a pretty annoying cat, so in a way, I think its better that its lost. I mean, I was planning on chopping it and making cat kebab, so good thing she escaped. (oh yea, did I mention that the kitten pooped in my pot and the people at my house thought it was the funniest thing ever, and then it decided to poop in their pot and the lady thought that 5am was a great time to yell at me to tell me so) I wonder what pet I should get next? A goat? Grasscutter? Duck? Mmm, I wonder how many animals I will go through before my time here in Ghana is up. Maybe I should try growing some plants instead. Although while I was in Japan, I tried that… it died. /:

Okay and that’s that! Oh yea, 70 new peace corps volunteers are coming to Ghana in June. I get to host one at my site for like 5 days… can’t wait to scare the bejeezers out of her. Hehe. (: WELCOME TO GHANA! Haha.

Twi Word of The Day: me ru Efi (I can’t remember)

Adinkra Symbol of the Day:

OSRAM NE NSOROMMA
"The Moon and the Star"
symbol of love, faithfulness, harmony
This symbol reflects the harmony that exists in the bonding between a man and a woman.
Proverb: "Kyekye pe aware." (The North Star has a deep love for marriage. She is always in the sky waiting for the return of the moon, her husband.)

Shoutout: creators of earplugs!!! They are effen amazing. The first night I used them I slept in until 7:30, a Ghana miracle!! The other day I slept in AIR CONDITION, slept in until 10:30… amaaazing!

who reads now days anyways?!

2009-05-31T10:49:00.000-07:00

i know nobody really likes reading, although if you were stuck alone without a television and constant internet access you might, but since i know none of you people are dealing with that, here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure. enjoi. (:

crazy girls dancing. i have to upload a video sometime of them singing while making fart sounds with their armpits, its pretty amazing.

so took me and some of my little children to the kumasi zoo, which, they shouldn't even call a zoo because they don't have the main zoo animals that people go to the zoo for! ie. no elephants, no giraffes, no zebras... but plenty monkeys!

the only reason the zoo was worth the 5 cedis. ): this chimp was absolutely amaaaazing. i wanted to feed him bananas but the sign said not to, and i guess since i was with children i should follow the rules.

the long never ending dirt path that we had to walk to get out of the butterfly sanctuary, sadly no cars came by for us to hitch rides with. ):

an awesome tree at the bobiri butterfly sanctuary, where i saw maybe like two butterflies... but did learn a big deal about all the different trees growing and their medicinal purposes. i paid extra attention to what the guide was saying just for you denise! so apparently this tree, you cut off the bark and boil it and drink it to help with stomach problems.

she apparently likes my non-existing kitten as much as i did.

so my place is a mess, but letting in these little critters makes it even worse... but somehow it puts a smile on my face, so i deal.

*like my cool brass giraffe candle stick holders?!

i guess i'm just lazy.

2009-05-18T11:17:00.001-07:00

I’m a creature of convenience. I think somehow being raised in America, I got it ingrained in me to be a creature of convenience. (We are after all the country of 30 minute meals, microwave dinners, fast food, drive thru starbucks, those machines that clean your floors, etc.) Everything that we ne

ed is usually available and if its not, then it won’t be too far away. But here, things are quite the opposite… most things are not available, and if it is, its far away.

Maybe its not so much as convenience as it is me being lazy. I am the girl that will call my mom from upstairs to tell her I have something important to say only to tell her that I want the remote controller that’s on the other couch and I’m too lazy to stand up myself to get it. (this is a joke, I’m sure I probably did something to that sort during my years at home, but that is an over exaggeration. I’m not that lazy… or spoiled, despite what you may think.)

Like if I want to wash my clothes, its not as simple as gathering the dirty clothes and putting it in a washing machine and dryer. Here if I want to wash my clothes, I have to sit a

nd hand wash every piece of clothing… not to mention how hard it is to hand wash towels… I end up sweaty, wet, and soapy by the end of the two hour session. So while I realize that laundry in America takes a while too… but you can do things in the mean while when the machine is doing your work. ie, you can watch television, you can eat your lunch, you can go grocery shopping. It’s just convenient to throw things in and let it be until it beeps. I realize for those of you that have to use a laundry mat, its not as simple, but I’m sure its still better than having to hand wash all your clothes.

If I want water to drink, bathe, and cook with, its not as convenient as turning on a facet. More thought has to be put into what you’ll be doing for the week… I sometimes plan my meals around how much water I have left. If I use too much water to cook/wash dishes with, I won’t have any water to bathe with. And I guess for some reason, bathing has more clout than preparing my own meals. (I think this is the first time that food has come second to something in my life!) So if I do run ou

t of water, I either need to a.) find a lady or small girl to fetch water for me and pay her. Or b.) fetch water myself (which I had to do the other week… not an easy task and not something I want to do again) or c.) wait for the rain. Either way, I miss running water. I’m actually almost out, and scrambling now because my water lady has disappeared and it hasn’t rained hard in days… I avoided this situation by staying at a friends house, but now I need to figure it out before I have to bathe with water sachets. /:

The next thing is something I will appreciate more i

n America, but the convenience of having restrooms almost every where you go! Every time I leave my house I try to make sure I’ve pissed or pooped because I know that if I leave the house, my only other options are trekking back to the house, using the public restrooms (which aren’t bad, but no toilet paper or doors.), or finding a hidden place and pooping in a plastic bag.

Also, the convenience of having every food almost imaginable at your fingertips, or just a short drive away, or made in 5 minutes, or ready for you when you come home. I’m actually the luckier bunch of volunteers because I live nearby a huge city and can get most things that I wouldn’t be able to get if I had lived somewhere more remote… but its not like I have a food court of everything I could want; korean, pizza, taco bell, subway, hawaiian, sushi, curry! So if I want food, I have to walk a while and a journey that should’ve took me at top 15 minutes ends up being a 30 minute journey… stopping to greet strangers that want to talk to the foreign person. At least in America when you get stopped by people, its usually friends and a pleasant interruption on your quest for food. I also miss the convenience of having microwave pizza, cup a noodle, microwave bacon… or just having your awesome mom or dad preparing a dinner.

But like most things in life, its probably a good thing… it’ll make me less lazy and appreciate all the things that came so easily before. Plus, you adapt, you live, and you learn… and somehow, as much as I might complain, I love it.

Twi Phrase of the Day: enye easy koraa (its not easy at all)

This is a popular phrase here in Ghana… every time I talk to Ghanaians, they are like, here in Ghana things are not easy atalllll!

I was helping a man with his term paper and he was like “its not easyo!” in response to how long he had to stay up and all the work that hes been putting into getting it done.

Adinkra Symbol of the Day:

DENKYEM

"crocodile"

symbol of adaptability

The crocodile lives in the water, yet breathes the air, demonstrating an ability to adapt to circumstances.

lesson learned and pictures because my mom doesn't like to read.

2009-05-03T12:56:00.001-07:00

The other day I realized the importance of greeting in Ghana. So when you first come to Ghana our trainers would emphasize how important it is to greet others (including random strangers), because it is like you are acknowledging their presence. So when I first came, I would do it because… well, I was new and I wanted to make sure that I made friends in my community. But after a while, greeting every person you walk pass got pretty tiresome… so then I would just try to avoid contact or seem like I was in a hurry. (but seriously, who is ever in a hurry in Ghana?! There is no where to hurry to, nothing to hurry for) Even when you do these things, people will stop you and be like, “oh, why won’t you greet me?!” so then you have to back track, and greet them. So for the most part, I just greet everyone while I am walking to stop them from thinking I’m some rude small girl who won’t greet them. Yes, people actually call me small girl here, they’ll be like “small girl, come here.”

So also here, people tend to call out to you, in the streets while you are walking. They’ll either hiss, make a kissing noise, yell obroni, call you sweetie, or whatever else to get your attention. Most times its males, (who probably want to get my attention so they can tell me that they want to marry me… which by the way, if I had a dime for all the times I’ve been asked I would still have more money than if I had bet a million dollars in vegas on hard six and won.) (so its females as well, but they usually aren't as annoying as the males), so I just ignore them like I’m a deaf girl and continue on my journey. Anyways, the point of my story is… as I was walking to my tro tro station a boy called out to me and wanted me to talk to him, I kind of just waved and tried to board my tro. Then his friend grabbed my arm and was like, my friend wants to talk to you, why won’t you greet him. So I gave in, and went over to the boy. I greeted him, exchanged a few words and then went back to board the tro. Then the tro tried to leave the station, but the tro kind of died, so we all needed to get out and board another tro.

***By the way, chaos is how I would explain my tro tro station. If I get there at the wrong time, I wait like what seems like hours in the sun, in a line (which doesn’t even matter because once the car comes people from the back of the line run to the tro and try to get on), and then somehow still have to fight my way onto the tro. Most times, I just try to fight a little and then give up… I’m not nearly as big as those Ghanaians that I’m up against. Then, I continue to wait again, hoping that one will come soon. Sometimes when I’m lucky, there will be a Ghanaian that will help me fight my way on… sometimes I feel bad because they will be small boys waiting in line and don’t have a chance of fighting so end up waiting for the next tro.

So as people are getting off the tro, the ones that are still in line start running to the new tro, while the ones getting off are running as well to get their place in the tro. I was in the back seat of the tro, last person to get out, so I kind of ran a bit, but knew that my efforts were useless and I was going to have to wait again. But thankfully, since I greeted the boy, who turned out to be the driver, his mate saved me the front seat! He was kind of like, see, good thing you greeted me… ha, and lesson learned, greet everyone, including the annoying males.

so here is a picture of how some people get their water... from bore holes. i get my water for a well or from the rain, so i hope it rains hard soon! the man pumping is the assemblyman... i think he really likes pumping because one day we were talking and he was telling me how people don't let him pump water because hes an assemblyman. so even if he tried, they would push him away and pump it for him. they call him honorable. hehe. but hes a hardworking man... very respected, for good reason.

shaaabammmm, shaaabammmm! look at those awesome signs... hard ass work to put them up, but they look so niiiice!

yesss, ntonso is so sophisticated with waste bins!! haha.

my neighbor's town deals with kente and they just had a visitor centre built, so they had a grand opening celebration. here is some queen mother lady getting down!

the queen mother of the ashanti region... and her entourage! i think it must be pretty nice to be held like that.

check out all that blingggg!!!

thought this was pretty damn cool... they kids here amaze me with the toys that they come up with... so i don't know if you can tell, but the boy tied a flying bug to his string and was flying it around... it was pretty damn awesome.

here it is up close and personal... pretty awesome huh. yep, kids here are creative with what they got!

***just kidding mom, i know you love to read. (: and those kids aren't really ugly... it was joke, i think they are adorable, especially the small girl!

Twi Word of The Day: kyea me. (greet me)

shoutout: to my awesome brother! not telling which one... oooooh the mystery. ha. so excited... its better than a chanel bag... or a burberry cookie!! and to my other awesome brother, for just being amazing. (:

everyone loves pictures.

2009-04-30T05:23:00.001-07:00

signboard preview... pretty nice huh! i was quite happy with the way it turned out!

some of the deaf kids. lovely crazy bunch.

spots have the best art work on their walls.

here is bobble... actually, i decided to name her lola. shes small, and crazy, and to be honest, i can't believe i still have her... everytime i come home, i'm like... why i do have a cat?! but at least no mouse anymore! like denise said, dogs fo lyph!

here is the amazing easter spread!! check out all that food!! not going to lie, i helped make some of it... haha, actually they only let me chop the onions (oh yea, i got to mash the potatoes, heh, god, i'm awesome ha)... i was dealing with pros, i didn't want to mess up the fabulousity!

some of the ugly kids that i have to live with.

Easter, Bobble, and Trash.

2009-04-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

So whats happening in Ghana?

Ho Ho Ho Easter: So since PC administration does a pretty good job of “ruining” all the holidays that we’ve had in Ghana, we were finally happy that this holiday was PC ruining free! (I say “ruining” because the circumstances for them ruining our holidays couldn’t be helped, like they needed to help people set up bank accounts on thanksgiving, then Christmas and New Years we had standfast for our security in case there were any riots due to the election results.) So about 20 of us got together in the city of Ho, where my dear friend Ping is working. She is working with Village Exchange Ghana (look them up online!) and they have this beautiful house for volunteers that come to help, but since all of the volunteers were gone, we had the house to ourselves! The Easter dinner that was prepared was AMAZING! (and I’m not just saying that because all I have to eat at my site is the food I prepare, which is coming along, and Ghanaian food, but I don’t think I’ve eaten that good since… America?!) Although we slaved away in the kitchen for most of the day, it was so worth all the blood, sweat and tears because the spread consisted of baked chicken breasts (yes, they have this in ghana, expensive, but available), garlic mashed potatoes (with real potatoes, it was good but I think I need aunty jos recipe), salad, deviled eggs, macaroni and cheese, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry jam! Not to mention the yummy brownies we had for dessert. There was even skyy vodka. (: HEAVEN.

Bobble: So the tragedy that was Junji disappearing some how ended with me getting a kitten. /: So I’ve been having a mouse problem in my room for a while now, I bought a rat trap but somehow it disappeared (I think one of the boys took it) and I haven’t gotten around to buying another one. It hasn’t been so bad, but lately, the mouse has been waking me up in the middle of the night by making my dishes fall to the ground. It has also been eating my bread and bananas. (and for some reason I can’t seem to think its okay to eat bread/bananas that have been shared with a mouse… maybe I haven’t lived in Africa long enough. Bugs okay, mice somehow not okay yet.) So I decided to invest in something better than a mouse trap, a cat! I’m not a huge cat person at all, but this kitten is cute… so I think I can become a cat person. As long as I don’t end up like one of those cat spinster ladies, please don’t let me become one of those. Anyways, the name I gave this cat is Bobble. Well because I don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy. (I’m like the worse person at naming things... one time I told chimmy what I would name my daughter if I had one and he told me that if I gave her that name she would hate me and be single for the rest of her life; I mean in middle school I seriously thought the name abcde was totally acceptable for my future daughter. Ha. But then again, you probably did too.) Jess who gave it to me (who also doesn’t know much about cats) think it’s a girl, but when I did some investigating I questioned her by saying “isn’t that a penis?” Either way, it has a huge head, like a bobble head. But it’s a pretty kitten somehow. Not sure if I’m really sold on this whole cat thing, but at least I won’t feel so bad when I leave the cat alone for a couple of days. (Don’t worry, I’m still secretly hoping deep down inside that junji will just appear back at the house one day.)
Sidenote: Cats make strange purring sounds, makes me nervous.
PS. If anyone can give me tips on cats, that would be lovely. I tried to make a litter box, but cat poop smells so bad!! How do I get rid of that smell? It also likes to rub against my leg/foot… can I create something so that it will use that instead of me? Please help.

Wastebins and Signboards: So Ntonso has been fortunate enough to get wastebins and signboards from NCRC through the European Union. The wastebins are 23 in total, and will be spread across the community… which will hopefully help with the abundance of litter on the street. Been going to the schools to educate the kiddies about the new waste baskets. Which reminds me how crazy sad that kids don’t know what tourist attraction is in their own town. So at the beginning when we are introducing ourselves, the assemblyman asked the children, so what textile is Ntonso known for? And then kids say, kente, pottery, wood carving, kente, everything but adinkra! Finally after like 5 minutes of guessing someone finally comes up with adinkra. I find that a bit sad because nearly everyone in the community is doing something dealing with adinkra and the streets are filled with shops selling cloth with adinkra on them. I guess I should give them a little leeway since kente is done in the community as well, but still kind of crazy. Anyways, there will be six signboards that will be placed in the city and roads that will help attract tourist to our community. We’ve been meeting with the artist, so I’m really excited to see how these signboards turn out… will be even more excited when I’m in a tro passing the signboards. (: There is going to be a meeting this week with the district assembly and director of Ghana tourist board, so this should be good! Especially since I’m hearing rumors that FM24 is pulling out of their contract. I just hope that they pay Mavis for the three months that they haven’t paid her for.

That’s about all. Exciting life huh. Okay, hope all is well and wonderful at wherever you maybe!

Twi Word of The Day: Dayie! (good night)

Adinkra Symbol of The Day:

Shoutout: Creator of bacon bits… it really is like magic fairy dust to any bad meal you prepare! (not that I prepare any bad meals anymore… but if I did, shazam! Bad meal no more!)

ps. internet won't let me upload pictures, so you'll have to wait. want to return home before it gets too dark... since someone stole my flashlight phone today. ): yep, that means that my super awesome number of 0241333333 now belongs to some retarded ghanaian that steals! UGH!

Anasi

2009-04-21T04:01:00.000-07:00

this is the crazy huge ass spider that i have to deal with at times. /: its scary. harmless i believe, but scary!! especially when i'm searching for things in the dark and it just happens to be where i'm searching!!

Football vs. Football

2009-04-18T04:33:00.001-07:00

So I had the opportunity of attending a football match here in Ghana. After the game I got to thinking about which football game I liked better... American or European. I guess I can’t really compare them that much because my knowledge/liking of football only happened in the past year, (thank you eastside and colt brennan? Ha) but I will anyways.

Although I know everyone thinks football (which I will now refer to as soccer because I’m getting confused as I type, which probably means you will get even more confused.) is the most boring sport to watch… but since I grew up play soccer, I didn’t find it all that boring at all. I have secretly dreamed about attending soccer matches in Europe or someplace where the fans are as crazy about soccer as Americas are about their football teams.

So how was the game? Well… like most of you are probably thinking… it was not a total disappointment, but it didn’t live up to the hype I created for it. The whole field was blocked off with a hockey shield about 10 feet high (so no rushing the field after victories or streaking across the field butt naked), there was no one selling rip off beer/margaritas, there was no roasted corn ): and no newspapers to rip and throw when a goal was scored (of course right, such a waste of good toilet paper!). But, the fans didn’t let me down. They were still as crazy as I remembered them being on television.

I guess I can blame the disappointment of my experience on the performance of team. They just didn’t seem into the game, thus making it boring. The Black Stars scored a goal in the first minute and eleven seconds of the game… so I thought it was going to be good… but it wasn’t. Even when I talked to my Ghanaian friends the next day about the game, they were disappointed with how the Black Stars played. But I guess, at the end of the day, a win is a win… and since it was a world cup qualifier match, we’ll take the win… boring or not.

In conclusion, I think I'll pick American football over Ghanaian football. I'm pretty sure I'm picking it because although American football has roasted corn, beer, and newspaper confetti, no matter how boring a game is... the people that you go to the game with are what make it fun. basically its because you guys aren't here. ):

Here is a picture of the cops trying to regulate a fight of some sort. So apparently, Ghanaians don’t like it when you stand… like when they are almost scoring a goal and you stand cause you are excited, yea, Ghanaians don’t like that. So when people were standing they had the bright idea of throwing water at them, which the people that got water thrown on them didn’t appreciate so of course they threw water back with water bottles. Anyways, the cops saw this and tried to step in.

Here is the Benin mascot? Maybe their juju mascot? I don’t know what he is… since they are the Benin squirrels. But he was interesting looking… danced the whole game, had a huge ass, and went home a humbly defeated man. I got a video of him dancing… maybe I’ll upload it sometime when I have fast internet.

here is the stadium. They just remodeled it... it was nice. see that glass protectant thing? but look, they have clappers!!

Twi Word of the Day: yente so! (I won't reduce the price)

which reminds me... so do you think i should feel bad when ghanaians try to rip me off and then don't really know their math too well so i end up ripping them off. sometimes i feel like saying something, cause i am a "business" volunteer, but then again... serves them right for trying to rip us off!

Adinkra Symbol of the Day:

(if the internet won't allow me to post, just picture the target logo and you got the adinkra hene!)

Adinkra Hene
"chief of adinkra symbols"

greatness, charisma, leadership

This symbol is said to have played an inspiring role in the designing of other symbols. it signifies the importance of playing a leadership role.

ATTENTION ATTENTION!!!

my really cool awesome friend in ghana named adam aka. ah-dumb! is doing a xylophone project in the upper west region in ghana. he has made a video to help promote the project, soooo be a kind kind person and take a looksie!

http://www.vimeo.com/3515667

just saw some britney videos... heck yes to her comeback!!! i knew she could do it!!!

sad sad.

2009-04-09T11:41:00.000-07:00

junji has gone missing.

i'm lead to believe that he has been stolen by armed robbers.

who will probably eat him.

i'm sad sad sad.

[i guess this is bachi for laughing at my mom when kai was saying her last goodbyes. but i'm still sad sad sad, and hoping that he'll show up.]

maybe he just found a girlfriend? ):

other sad news.

my loving and faithful honda was sold.

if you see it on the road being driven by someone that isn't me,

give it the three honk salute.

shoutout to: wade, hoping that big bang theory will kept my mind off of junji being missing.

Magical African Remedies

2009-04-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

So lately the TMT meetings have been unproductive. ): unproductive in terms of people not showing up, or all they do is argue about the same things. But as of late, its been unproductive in terms of people not showing up. I think its been a month now. The first week, there was a Black Stars game (football match), the next week it rained so no one showed, the week after I had training but I heard they didn’t meet because everyone was out of town, the week after, some people showed but they just argued, and then this week, only two people came… so we decided to talk instead about magical african remedies! (try at your own risk)

This is probably my favorite remedy of all…

Breast milk in eye to cure eye infections!

So apparently, if you have an eye infection, you can get someone (I guess it can’t just be anyone for given reasons) to drop some breast milk in your eye and that will cure your eye infection! When we had a session about HIV/AIDS during training we were asked to write any questions that we had about HIV/AIDS that we wanted answered… and this was one of the questions. If someone that has HIV drops breast milk in your eye, will you get HIV? Of course since breast milk is one of the ways of getting HIV it was a valid question, but since none of us knew about this magical African remedy, there were so many thoughts about this questions that were running through my mind.

Alata Samina prevents skin infections!

So there is a soap here called alata samina, I believe its Nigerian soap. But anyways, if you use it, it cures skin infections! Like if you have a pimple on your arm, then you rub some alata samina on it and it will magically disappear! I have a story about alata samina!

So here it goes… I decided to make some soap, okay, technically according to Julie I didn’t make soap, I just put them all together. So I haven’t used bar soap in a really long time thanks to bath and body works, but I figured (when packing) that it would be best space/usage wise to take it old school and use bar soaps. I used to be so jealous of the people here when they were bathing because their soap would lather up so much in the shower (and no, I don’t watch people showering, its just that little kids bathe out in the open courtyard or showers are low and outside so you can see from the shoulders up) like how my bath and body works used to… and I could never get my bar soap to do the same, no matter how much soap I applied. So I decided to ask Steven (host-brother) what he used and he showed me a smorgasbord soap concoction that he made. I was so intrigued that I knew I needed to make my own, so the next day, I went to a shop and bought a whole bunch of different soaps. All the while Julie was laughing at me because she didn’t understand what I wanted to do, I barely understood what I needed to do to make this happen, and Steven was very vague in his directions. So I basically went out and bought soap not knowing if I was doing the right thing, but I figured if anything I could use it to wash my clothes or hands. When I came back he told me that I needed to cut the soap into little pieces. So cut I did. Julie asked him why they use all different soaps and his answer was we use all the different soaps because they all have different qualities about them, so together they will protect our skin from diseases. Then we sent our little boy to buy some Nigerian soap called Alata samina and then we rolled the cut pieces with alata samina into balls. Then we placed it in a container. I was pretty excited to bathe that night, more than most nights… and I was not disappointed. I think bath and body works has a new competition. Also, Julie who was laughing at me the whole time I was on my mission to gather the soap and while we were cutting the pieces fantasizes about the smorgasbord soap every time she bathes. [not to mention that she was so inspired by this soap smorgasbord that she decided to make it as her secret santa gift.]

Purple ink instant fix to all your cuts!

So when I first got to site, I would walk around my town and see all these little kids with purple lips. I didn’t know what it was and since so many of them had it, I figured that they all ate some candy that dyed their lips purple. Then later it dawned on me that their lips were chapped/cracked and they put the purple ink on it to fix it. Their purple ink was our chap stick! But not only do they put it on their lips, if they have cuts on their hand, leg, face, arm, anywhere… purple ink is applied! One day a boy showed me a cut that he had on his arm and I was “oh damn” that looks horrible… but then I realized it wasn’t all that bad… the purple ink made it look worse (like it looked bruised as well as a big gash). Another story about purple ink (there is actually a name for it, but I can’t quite recall it) so anyways, I decided to castrate junji. The experience was rather pleasant from what I expected it to be like, junji pissed on the table, but I guess it’s a step up from shitting on the table right? Anyways, I got the fortunate opportunity to hold down his legs/tail while the vet castrated him. While he was doing it, the other lady that was holding junji’s head kept asking if I was going to be okay (ha, I guess I looked a little queasy.) well, the point of this story was that I told my lady friend that I castrated junji and lifted up junji’s leg so she could see… and she was like ohhh, you should put purple ink on it!

ALCOHOL cures everything!

So maybe this isn’t necessarily African, since I know Japanese practice this as well, but I’ll add it anyways. But I guess its different in a way because they add “sticks” (I call it sticks because that’s what it looks like, but its some sort of herbal stuff) to their akpeteshi that is suppose to keep them strong. But anways, there was a man in my town that died from hernia, and I was told that to try and get better he refused to go to the doctor but decided that it would be better for him to drink akpeteshi. Okay, so I guess this is a bad bad example because it didn’t cure anything. Maybe it just works for Japanese? Can’t sleep? drink beer! Can’t think? drink beer! Sick? drink beer!

So that’s all I got for now… I’m sure there will be more, and I’ll make sure to inform you all about them. Never know when these remedies might come in handy. [I was trying to think of magical remedies that we have but I kept drawing a blank… the only thing that kept popping in my head was that if you have the hiccups you stand on one foot, bounce around in a circle, while closing your eyes and singing journeys don’t stop believin. Oh and of course my cold sickness remedy, flaming hot cheetos, cup of noodles, and oj! It’s a miracle worker, no joke!]

Twi word of the day: meyare (I’m sick)

Adinkra symbol of the day: internet won't let me post a picture. and i'm hungry, so i'm leaving you with no picture. google it. (:

SANKOFA
"return and get it"
symbol of importance of learning from the past

JUNJI!!! He's adorable right?! haha, caught him at the right time!

talked some small boys into bathing junji for me... he was not having it at all! and there were three of them trying. was funny to watch!

shoutout to: aunty karen... sent me homemade cookies!

2009-04-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

christmas in march?!

2009-03-30T12:12:00.001-07:00

So here is a picture of solider ants… they’re crazy scary. I’ve actually been fortunate to never get bitten by one or many before, but I’m pretty sure its not pleasant. Here is my little story regarding soldier ants… so Major used to call me lazy every Saturday because the family would go to farm, but I wouldn’t go with them because I had training. So one Saturday when I didn’t have training I decided to go with them to farm, and I kind of wished that I just sat around being that lazy American, because farm was farrrr, hot, and hard work. The trek to farm was a good two hour journey in the hot sun, passing the paths of several soldier ants and through a small stream. Then after I’m already beat from the trek, the actual work begins! They go to their farm and cut down plantains, weeds, gather contumere, and whatever else. (I think they actually felt bad for me because they could tell that I was tired and not used to the work, so they let me rest at their farm house while they finished the work) Then after all that work, they have to carry back a whole bunch of plantains, contumere, cassava, and whatever else that they needed from the farm. So I got to carry back the lightest bag of them all, but I was still dying on the trek back. I seriously don’t know how they do that every Saturday, but at least at the end of the day when we were back at the house, Major said I did well. (Ghanaians like to say “you’ve done well” or “you are trying”) Now she can no longer call me lazy, even if I didn’t do much at farm.

So you know, having electricity isn’t all that bad… somehow I’ve sort of adjusted to being in the dark. The only thing that I hate about not having electricity is when I come home and start searching for things in the dark and then somehow can’t find it so I have to use my flashlight (I have one on my phone, its awesome!) and then I find some huge spider by near where I’m searching. NOT COOL. The other day I found a scorpion near the shower room… my first scorpion ever! Now every time I got to the shower or walk outside at night, I’m so scared I’ll step on one. I really hope we’ll get some electricity soon.

This past week was basically the best week of my life here in Ghana. Who would’ve thought that a whole week of training would be fun, but it was awesome. It was like Christmas in March!! Minus the snow (which doesn’t even matter cause it doesn’t snow in Hawaii), carols, trees, lights, and everything… okay, so maybe it was like Packages Galore in March! So basically since a lot of people live far away from the Accra office where our packages get sent, they brought all our packages to the training we had this past week! It was like amazing goodness overload!! Someone got sent Joe Joes and they were pretty much the best thing that has been inside my mouth… well, besides bacon wrapped hot dogs. Joe Joes are like oreos with little candy cane pieces inside the filling… reminded me of Thin Mints! (I’m salivating right now thinking about how amazing those were.) Not only did we have all these snacks to munch on, but the catering that they have during training is pretty much awesome. During training in Kukurantumi I would look forward to Thursday and Friday lunch because it was catered. I think I must’ve gained at least ten pounds this week just gorging myself on all the tasty food.

So training was good, got a lot of useful information… got to talk with other pcvs and hear about their stories about their site and what else not. Everyone seems to be doing really well at site, so that awesome. It was also just nice to be away from my site, site can get a little overwhelming at times, so it was perfect timing. Because as much as I liked being away from site, now that I’m finally back its like ahhh relief. Kind of like that feeling when you finally get home after a trip. Only bad thing is that I got home and Junji was flea infested!! ): Not happy about that at all, and now for some reason he likes to roll around in dead things. ): My friend said that he is a hunter dog, so they roll around in dead things because it hides his scent? I don’t really understand, but hes so smelly now. ): I even gave him a bath this morning, and it lasted like an hour and hes a smelly Junji again.

But anyways, I’m going to continue talking about food, because well… I’m a fatty! So after training it was my friends birthday so we went up to this place called Sunyani, which is so out of place in Ghana because its like an American town. Went to this amazing hotel and ate sausage pizza. Mmmmm. It was amaaaazing. Then went to this bar and his friend in Sunyani had been marinating meat for the past two days, so they barbequed the meat… it like melted in my mouth. (okay, so it wasn’t a DKs/Ruth Chris or anything, but after eating shitty/questionable meat since coming to Ghana, it was basically like eating at one of those places.) It was actually kind of funny because we were like vultures around the meat stand, just waiting for the next piece of meat to be taken off the grill. I told my friend to go and check to see if the meat was ready, and then like five seconds later he texted me saying “Now…!” hahaha. I basically pushed everyone out of my way, kind of like that Seinfield episode where George pushes everyone out of the way to get out of the burning building. Joking.

two of my favorite people in peace corps. julie and i are in the same sector, and since we are asian they call us ping and pong. and they play that gong asian tune any time they see us. so culturally sensitive these peace corps people. anyways.

Then the eating frenzy continued when we decided to order double cheeseburgers with french fries the next night for dinner. But well, now I’m back at site, so its just Ghanaian food all day every day. Which is good, I think I must’ve ate a months worth of food in a week. But now the snacking frenzy will start because I got amazing packages filled with goodies. (: Pork grinds, cheez-its, arare, cheetos, oreos, bacon bits… Thank you!!!!

here is the picture that wasn't letting me post last time. intense huh the three rocks with the fire burning underneath!

Twi Word of the day: Mame! (I’m satisfied)

Adinkra Symbol of the day:

MATE MASIE
"What I hear, I keep"
symbol of wisdom, knowledge and prudence
The implied meaning of the phrase "mate masie" is "I understand". Understanding means wisdom and knowledge, but it also represents the prudence of taking into consideration what another person has said.

cooking update, marching, and junjiiiii. <3.

2009-03-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD?!

in case you are wondering... my cooking is becoming, uh... amazing! here i made some creamy italian disting. with potatoes! and meat! (okay, so the meat was already cooked from my kebab man, but i'm still quite impressed with myself! i also actually cooked meat one night, to add to my curry... but well... it looked gross, so i didn't actually eat it, it was a waste of money, but well, lesson learned.) even junji likes it!!! and i didn't get sick! whooohoooo. maybe i'll become a pro chef... the next rachel ray?

curious what african children do in their free time? well they cook. and they don't have those pretty little plastic play sets like in america, but they use like scrap food that their parents arent using and cook up something yummmmy! i told them i wanted to eat it, but they told me that i couldn't. booooo. ): i'm sure it couldn't be worse than my actual cooking.

photo to be added later... ): booooo internet.

they told me they were cooking potatoes! haha. it was pretty intense... do you notice the three stones holding up the tin can? well, theres a mini fire under those stones... they get small charcoal thats left over and use that, or they light fire to branches or small pieces of wood. can you imagine if when we were kids we started doing that in america... our parents would freak! i remember the time that we decided it was a good idea to empty out all the morning glory power and then start a huge fire. it was pretty awesome and then baba got her hose and put out our hard work. haha, it was amazingly fun though. i guess thats not really the same as a controlled fire like these kids are doing, but i thought it was fitting to this story.

so march 6th was ghana independence day. and what does that mean? picnics at the beach, fireworks, green yellow and red, hot dogs, hamburgers... mmm, god, i love africa. (: okay, so just kidding, basically it means... MARCHING!!! so kids, they march and march and march! these kids practice like a month before to march? i didn't quite know there was an art to marching, or that one needed so much practice, but well... i guess its true, practice makes perfect. or at least good enough. so i went to my teacher friends site and watched her students march. (btw, my teacher friend teaches art at a deaf school, super awesome but super crazy living situation since the kids are boarding and she lives on campus... so basically she lives with like 6464314 kids that are deaf... i guess my living situation ain't so bad?)

so this is her school marching. apparently they only have one deaf school per region. ive stayed at her house a few times, the kids are amazing... they always make the sign for short... because shes so tall. like when i leave they ask her where did your short friend go? so basically i can sign, hello, how are you, i'm fine, and short!

here is jess. she is super excited to be marching with the kids. so basically they all line up along the side of the football field and then each school takes their turn marching around the field. they stop infront of the tent in the center which is covering all the big men and important people. and when they stop, they salute to them. i wish i had one of those pictures on my flash drive to share, but well... i don't, so thats that.

since my mom keeps requesting the status of junji, here you gooooo!!! and junji is not africa, hes totally asian!! actually... he looks kind of scary, but well... hes not. hes adorable!

he totally likes to hump legs... especially with the brush in his mouth. doesn't my "house" actually look pretty decent?! i'm quite impressed... i moved things around and it feels so much bigger. yay! my landlord keeps asking if i'm going to castrate junji. that word castrate just sounds so horrible. /: he tells me that he knows people that live in zongo that castrate sheeps and goats, but i'm not quite sure thats the same as dogs... so i'm kinda scared. i also took junji to the "vet" and it was such a horrible experience. he pooped on the table and then screamed so much. i have to take him back... but i just keep putting it off.

Twi word of the day: fa mami bokiti. (go get me a bucket.)

adinkra symbol of the day: "no one should bite the other"
bi nka bi

symbol of peace and harmony

work?

2009-03-02T07:22:00.000-08:00

So you’re probably wondering what the heck I’ve been doing here in Ghana; well, besides playing li hing mui tricks on Ghanaians, trying my best to not shit my pants, detoxing (although some how I had one beer in a remote area not even in my town with a friend, and some how every one knew, I guess this is what Britney Spears feels like), playing with junji, and perfecting my cooking skills... and I can say that I honestly haven’t done much yet to save the world, or at least Ghana.

I want to give you a little background so maybe you’ll understand why I haven’t done much yet… but I know I have lots of work ahead of me.

Okay, so the Ministry of Tourism came and funded the building of the visitor center in Ntonso. (this was about a little more than a year ago or so) People in this community have been doing Adinkra stamping for many many years, so tourist have been coming here way before this visitor center was built. There is one family here in Apatem that has been doing the demonstration for the tourist (the family does it the traditional way using carved calabash, while most people now days do screen printing) but apparently members of the TMT has had problems with this family. There is also a chieftaincy dispute in my community; there hasn’t been a chief for 19 years; so we have a queen mother. I have yet to meet the queen mother because she lives in Kumasi and doesn’t like to come to Ntonso that often because people here will “attack” her because they want a chief. So apparently, people that oppose the queen mother dominate the TMT and the family that does the traditional printing is on the side of the queen mother. (are you confused yet? It gets better.) So after the visitor center was built the TMT wasn’t functioning properly for the Ministry of Tourism/Ghana Tourist Board to feel comfortable handing over the management of this new facility to the community of Ntonso, so they hired a private company FM24 to run the visitor center for 2 years.

Then, the TMT was given a contract with FM24, but it was never signed because the TMT didn’t agree with what was stated on it. (so I thought that apparently means that the contract doesn’t exist?) It was given to them on March 2008, and it still sits at the desk unsigned in its envelope. But then again, I guess since the “real” contract is with the Ministry of Tourism it doesn’t really matter. Once the community found out that the visitor center was handed to a private company, it was no longer solely a community based project. Meaning, that money generated from tourist, will be split between the private company and the community. Personally, I wouldn’t have signed the contract either. The community would/is basically making no money off of tourist coming here, sometimes even losing money. There was a part in the contract that stated that if tourist didn’t buy any cloth from the demonstrators that the TMT was to pay the demonstrators, which I totally agree with since the demonstrators aren’t paid and they should somehow be compensated, but the TMT isn’t making much money off of the tourist so having the TMT pay would mean that they are losing money by having tourist come here. The TMT makes .30 peswa off every tourist, if they don’t buy cloth they pay the demonstrators .50 peswa. Tourist pay $4 cedi if they are foreign or $2.50 cedi if they are Ghanaian.

Visitors are suppose to report to the visitor center and register (pay fees) and then they will get a tour of our museum with introduction about adinkra and then get taken to the demonstration site (Apatem) to watch the process of adinkra stamping. But like I said, the family has been doing demonstrations long before people had to register, so most tours know just to go straight to the demonstration site. (the family is suppose to tell them to come here to register if they just go their first, but they don’t tell the tourist, and seriously why would a tourist want to come to register if they know that they will have to pay something when they could get away with it?) My counterpart and I have been visiting the regional manager of the Ghana Tourist Board to talk to him about this problem, but hes told all tour operators that they must come to the visitor center, but they still don’t come. It sucks because I do language lessons and I’m friends with the people at Apatem, so I’m usually there in the mornings, and I see many tourist that come, and then when I head to the visitor center to see Mavis and ask her if people came she always says no.

Even when tourist come to the visitor center first to register, things are still not functioning properly to be worth coming to register first. There are two tour guides (well, really only one because the other one refuses to give tours because of FM24, although if they just come without registering he gives tours… because he knows that he’ll get money from it, while if they register he doesn’t get any money) who are suppose to get called when there are tourist at the center. Mavis apparently doesn’t like to call them when there are tourists here, so she gives them the tour herself. She gives a very brief information about adinkra, and then walks them over to the demonstration center and sits while the people at Apatem take over the tour. Since Apatem doesn’t like the idea of FM24 getting the money from tourist, they somehow are able to charge tourist as well. They let tourist stamp their own adinkra on a piece of kente cloth for 5 cedis. When tourist come to the visitor center to register they pay 4 cedis. I know that 9 cedis doesn’t seem like a lot of money (it really isn’t for foreigners, but for people living here/volunteers, it’s a heck chunk of money), but its fricken expensive for a half hour tour. (I recently found this out because a PCV came to my site to do the tour and told me, she also told me that right as they are about to stamp the cloth they are told about the 5 cedi)

The TMT wants to build their own demonstration center on the side of the visitor center and create a mini market of adinkra and kente (excellent idea I think). The TMT hasn’t seen a penny off the money made off of tourist coming to Ntonso, so there is no capital to invest in an extension. (well, that’s what they tell me, they’re always like FM24 has all our money, we haven’t seen any of the profits.) The land that they want to build on is part of farming land for some people in the community and although they have been told to uproot their crops, none of that has been done. The one bonus of this all is that the people at Apatem are working outside of their house, which is on school property (I’m told that they were asked to move, but nothing has been done of yet) so hopefully it will be easy to convince them to move if this demonstration center is built.

Since no one is happy about FM24 running the center, we are working on a letter to the Ministry of Tourism asking for complete ownership of the running of this facility. But we also need to make sure that the TMT is capable of managing the center if it is handed over, and make sure that is what they want to do. The TMT just finished writing their constitution and will hopefully go sometime soon to the District Assembly to register the TMT as a CBO (community based organization), and then start working on a short term/long term plan for this project. Start looking for agencies interested in African textiles to write proposals to so hopefully we can make this demonstration center/market area a reality.

So that’s kind of the situation in Ntonso, I’m still trying to figure it all out… everyday I seem to get a bit more information from people, but I hope everything works out. I guess its good that I still have pretty much two years to get shit done.

Wanna know something funny, Mavis hasn’t gotten money from FM24 for three months to pay the electricity bill, but somehow we still have electricity! Gotta love Ghana sometimes. I would love it even more if they put up free electricity in my house!

So in addition to my Twi word of the day, I thought I would add adinkra symbol of the day. (: enjoy!

Twi word of the day: me ko eduwamah (i'm going to work)

Adinkra Symbol of the day: Onyankopon adom nti biribiara beye yie

“by gods grace all will be well”

Literal Meaning: hope, faith, providence

the reason for my shits?

2009-02-26T04:18:00.000-08:00

And here comes the fooood!

Okay, so I don’t really have everything, but you’ll get the gist. I basically don’t really care for any of the Ghanaian food here, but I need to survive, so I eat. I guess if anything my favorite food here is coco yams and contumere. Here is a picture of contumere. It is basically coco yam leaves that are boiled with gari (grinded cassava) and tomatoes and fish and some other stuff. Its kind of like spinach I guess in some sort of way, maybe like lau lau. I actually think its kind of funny that I like contumere of all things, because it’s a healthier dish and I don’t usually do healthy… I guess now I can brag to my grandma that I eat greens!

Then here is fufu. You can actually make fufu, I hear there is an online recipe for it… you should try it one night, its mighty delicious! But anyways, uh, so fufu is boiled coco yams and plantains that are pounded, almost like how we pound mochi. You usually eat it with light soup and fish or chicken or beef or snail or grass cutter or bush meat. Speaking of grasscutters, I don’t have a picture of one, but I’m sure you can google it and find out, but it looks like a huge rat, and it tastes sooo good. It reminds me of pipikaula (I think that’s the right name)… like a smoked chicken/fish taste. I actually ate the meat before I got to see what a grass cutter looked like… I think if it was the other way around I probably wouldn’t have tried it.

Here is me trying to pound fufu… I don’t know if you can tell, but the small boy Yao is laughing at me… it was my first time pounding and so they all were laughing at me. Pounding fufu is hard work, and most families here eat fufu almost every day.

Here is a little story about my sickness and how it relates to food:

So the other week I got sick and tried to go to the hospital (I say tried because we went to the hospital, but because it was lights out; meaning no electricity, so electricity here even if you have it is very unreliable) but since no one was there they just took me home… which was totally okay because I was feeling better. But isn’t that reassuring to know that if it was an emergency I would’ve been shit out of luck?! Haha, jk… theres another hospital in our district capital which isn’t too far away, but this hospital was closer. Maybe I shouldn’t call it a hospital, maybe a clinic is a better term for it? Anyways, so my neighbors/tenants that I live with kept telling me that I need to start making my own food since I chop (buy food from street vendors) every day for all my meals. And how its unhealthy to buy chop, or how its unhealthy for me to eat so much eggs (and I don’t even really like eggs!), blah blah blah. So since I want them to stop telling me what to do and since the gas stove is up and working I started to make food (okay, so I really only made food a few times, but I don’t like cooking in the dark and its difficult cooking for only one person and I think more expensive too and junji doesn’t like my cooking)… but well, you see, here in Ghana at the market all you can get is tomatoes, peppers, onions, okra (grosss!), garden eggs (not all that yummy either), and eggs! The starches here are fairly easy to make, like rice, yams, plantain… and I actually like eating them, but I can’t just eat starch! (where is taco bell when you need it!) So hmm, what delicious meals can I make with that?! Oh yea, not to mention that I my cooking back home consisted of making deli sandwiches (not possible here, but I do miss my ham and turkey sandwiches...mmm, subway!), heating up pizza in the microwave (no microwave pizza here ): I might attempt to make pizza though, maybe later in the year when I’m more confident with my cooking abilities), making saimin (possible, theres this brand called indomie its Indonesian, but its too hot to eat saimin here, plus no kamoboko! But on a plus side, well, actually I don’t know if it’s a plus really, I rediscovered how wonderful raw saimin is… if I close my eyes I almost think I’m eating chips. I bought some generic brand of Pringles at this expensive obroni store, but basically ate it all within five minutes, not a pretty site at all. I feel sorry for the first person I eat a meal with when I get to America, I will probably embarrass you by a.) eating with my hands b.) stuffing my face c.) eating all my food, even the things I didn’t like so fast while making pig noises.), and mmm, yea, that’s basically where it ends! So I made a new years resolution to learn how to cook. I’ve started with simple things, tomato sauce with pasta and garlic bread and fried eggs. I now think its safe to say that I’m a pro at making tomato sauce and frying eggs… but then again, I think even a 3 year old could make it… so I guess it doesn’t count for much, but it’s a start and it just may be the first new years resolution that I might accomplish!

So if any of you have great cooking receipes that you could tell me about, tell away! Just know that what I have to work with is limited. I could get meat/chicken, but its like straight after its been chopped alive, so I think for now I would rather stay away from meats and be okay with just buying them from the vendors. I befriended the meat kebab man because I buy from him at least a couple times a week, he usually dashes me a kebab so I’m happy. My Ghanaian friend is suppose to teach me how to make emotou and nkatekwan (rice balls and ground nut soup), so I’m really excited about that… its my favorite Ghanaian food (okay, so I guess I have two favorites) and junjis too, but that doesn’t really count because junji eats everything! Except peanut butter… weird dog. I went over to her house the other day and ate fufu and contumerekwan (kwan=soup) and it was actually delicious! I guess I’m sort of liking Ghanaian food… never thought I would see the day… and its even weirder that somedays I’ll actually crave bayere Empesi and adua (and I don’t even like beans!)

that is rice balls and contumere soup

Okay, back to food pictures. So here is red red, its fried plantains and beans. I used to hate this, but some how I’m starting to be okay with it. I usually get it with gari, which I think makes it taste better. I usually get it when I want to feel cheap because its only costs me 30 peswas and it usually fills me up (I even am able to share with junji and still be somewhat satisfied).

This is what I usually get for lunch, its fried yams and chicken with shito. Shito is super yummy… its like this spicy fish sauce. Usually I get the fried yams with pepe sauce which is kind of like salsa, but not. We have a pear tree (they call avacados pears here) outside our compound, so I’m really excited about that. Makes some guacamole and salsa! Yummy!

This is a picture from homestay, so the orange/red mixture is shito in the making. And then the green leaves are contumere leaves.

Here is another picture from homestay, this night we had a feast! Well, not really, but it did seem like we had a lot of food. So there is kenke, which is maize and its absolutely gross. Its like eating sour gross sticky stuff? I don’t even know how to explain it, but I don’t like it at all. In the corner is an egg sandwich (what I usually eat in the mornings for breakfast) and then we have some fried chicken (I eat this pretty often as well) and then some kind of soup with meat… I forget what it was we were eating that night.

(internet won't let me upload last picture of the feast, so next time.)

Twi word of the day: wo noa da ben? what are you cooking?

by the way, i don't live at homestay anymore... those are just old pictures from homestay.

Shits, Junji, and Randomness.

2009-01-17T01:25:00.000-08:00

in tribute to the shits that i just had to deal with last week, i decided to inform you all about the lovely bathroom facilities of ghana. (i guess its not really necessary for me to share with you that i had the shits, but i share almost everything else so i thought eh why not!)

I will start off with my personal toilet. Its not really personal because I have to share it with my compound, but I think only a the adults use it because the small girls in the compound just piss in our courtyard and I’m pretty sure they poop in the bush. So during training I was fortunate enough to have a regular toilet and although I had to bucket flush it, it was still a regular toilet. This right here is a style of latrine, they are many different styles… its actually a pretty nice latrine, I’ve visited a friend of mines during home stay and had to use her latrine and it was fricken nasty… I almost didn’t want to use it, but if I didn’t I would’ve peed my pants. So basically they just dig a super huge hole and then you piss and shit into the hole until it fills up… and then when it fills up you cover the hole and build another latrine.

Here is the public restroom the community of old tafo, where some of the volunteers were doing home stay. You have to pay .05 pesewa to use it, and they don’t give you toilet paper… I think they may give you newspapers, but I don’t remember seeing any newspapers with the lady that was collecting the money. This was the first public restroom that I saw and I didn’t think it was all that bad. It didn’t really smell, but I also didn’t really get that close and wasn’t really trying to smell so yea.

Then here is a nice public restroom in kukurantumi. I didn’t actually go to see what the toilets looked like, but it had a running shower and a mirror, so I just figured that the toilets would be nice.

There is also just like a little box, where you go and just piss. Nothing really special… and you only piss in the box, if you want to poop I think you go and find a bush.

And my personal favorite… the bush! So basically you just piss and poop wherever you feel like! When we are traveling on the tro or on a bus, you tell the driver or the mate that you have to urinate and he’ll stop the bus and then pull over and let you urinate or poop on the side of the road. Women here are awesome at poppin a squat! Also if you don’t have toilet paper, newspaper, or prescription paper (my friend went to the hospital in his community and had to use the bathroom but they didn’t have any toilet paper so they gave him prescription paper to wipe with) then you introduce your butt to your left hand. So basically your left hand is considered filthy so you never eat, shake, or give anything to anyone with your left hand. Your right hand is for eating food, I didn’t realize how good food taste with a fork… that may sound weird but let me try to explain. So when I used to eat fufu or rice balls I would normally use my hand because I didn’t have a fork, but the soup would be so hot that it was hard to enjoy the food when my hand was burning. Then when we were at the lodge, we were given forks to eat rice balls and gosh damn, it was so good to just enjoy the soup without having to worry about my fingers being burnt by the end of the meal. You probably still don’t really understand, but maybe you should try to eat beef stew with rice or chicken noodle soup with your hands one night and maybe you’ll get the picture.

(so i never actually took this picture, but i'm assuming that pooping/pissing with zebras would be an ideal situation that i may be lucky enought encounter during my two years here.)

JUNJIIIII!!!! Isn't he fricken adorable? This was taken when I first got him, so now hes a little bit bigger, but still adorable. Hes sort of learning where he can poop, but hes kind of slow.

we took a little vacation to the beach... wasn't quite as lovely as hawaii, but it was sure nice.

here is our group at our swearing in ceremony.

Okay, so I decided to share some of my food with my friends here in Ghana. I think the best thing that I have shared with them is lihi mui, and when I say best I mean that I got a kick out of their reaction, so it was best for me and not for them. I didn’t exactly give them a disclaimer before letting them eat it, so some of them decided to stick the whole thing in their mouth... something that even I'm not brave enough to do. Just watching their facials reactions was classic. One of them told me that I spoiled their dinner, I think that was the best response. Then some of them said that they needed to wash their tongue. Then one of them was like “Oh, Why!” and put it back in the wrapper… he then said that he was going to eat it after he finished washing it. Most of them tried it and then spit it on the ground. It was a waste of my lihi mui, but I think it was worth it… probably get them back for all the bad things they’ve said about me in Twi that I didn’t understand. Heh. (:

(don't worry aunty jo, it wasn't the lihimui candy you sent me, it was ones that i brought with me.)

here is a picture of my homestay family... a lot of people were missing because by the time the photographer came to take the picture all the kids went to school. so, there is major, sistah diana, nana, and papa yao. and destiny (the dog). do you like my ghanaian shirt? major made it for me... it came with some awesome matching pants, and she wanted me to wear them together... but even though i'm in ghana and i don't really care all that much what i look like, i just couldn't pull myself to wear them together.

here is a picture of some of the little kids that i live with (i actually only live with two of them in the picture, but more aren't pictured) the girl off to the side, is a fricken brat. mom and dad, if i was ever ever like that (which i'm sure i was), please forgive me... i'm soo sorry. she makes me want to move... okay, i can't fully blame her as the sole reason me of me wanting to move, but shes a big part.

xoxo.

Twi word of the day: me yam keka me (i have stomach pains)

Christmas and Junji.

2009-01-12T04:23:00.000-08:00

Christmas in Ghana just seemed like any other day in Ghana. I thought there was going to be slaughtering of cows, chickens, goats, beetles, snails, frogs and what not, but it was pretty ordinary. Everyone was saying that because of the elections people aren’t really celebrating… they will wait until after the elections to celebrate. So all I did on Christmas was go to the tourist center to talk with Mavis and then walk around Ntonso a bit to find a good seamstress. I was later invited out to a spot with my counterpart and the assemblyman of Ntonso. While we were there talking they were explaining what they do for Christmas, so I guess on the 24^th families will go to the bush to cut down banana or plantain trees and bring it back to their house to decorate with flowers and balloons. I sort of half believe this because I didn’t see any trees up and decorated. They give gifts of biscuits, crackers, maybe sunglasses (I saw so many kids with new sunglasses that I figured they are sporting the new shades.) The 25^th is boozing day. So everyone gets drunk. And then the 26^th is chop day, so everyone will like eat fufu and chicken. Then on the 27^{th &}28^th people will go to church, the SDA’s at least and they will get decked out, fancy shoes, socks, dress, hats, handbags, and their new sunglasses, oh yea, and some will go get their hair did. So Christmas wasn’t really Christmas, but its okay, after a beer and some goat kebabs, it was still a good day in Ghana, so I can’t complain. (Although knowing that my family had a nice Chinese lunch made my mouth water… who knew after all those years of eating Chinese food for holidays and pretty much any gathering would make me miss it, but somehow I do.)

Oh yea, I also had an awesome dream that night that it was Christmas and new years and I was back home and I got to see everyone! So I guess it was kind of like I didn’t miss Christmas at home after all…

oh yea, i got myself a puppy! i named him junji and hes super adorable... kind of retarded like poki and kind of a brat but i'm really happy that i found him because its always nice to come home to him.

and yay for ghana for finally electing a new president! i thought the race for presidency would never end... because just when you thought it was over, one of the regions had a miss count or something and needed to revote... but finally, is over! there was a small fight in my town, its was exciting and then scary and then funny... it was exciting at first because they were celebrating and parading the streets, but then i saw all this dust flying and then people throwing rocks and then people running the streets with their machetes, so i got scared... but then it was funny because everyone was running crazy and i was a safe distance away. but everything is good now, so we thank god.

xoxo.

ps. i have a cellphone. so if you get a call from a number with a billion threes don't be alarmed... its just me wanting to say hello!

sorry no pictures, but it won't let me upload them for some reason, so i guess you just have to wait until next time to see how adorable junji is.

twi word of the day: afishiapaaa! (happy new year)

spots, election, and no internet for a month.

2008-12-12T07:48:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-12T07:34:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-05T00:57:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-04T05:38:00.000-08:00

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...

2008-11-30T07:01:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-26T06:47:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-26T06:44:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-10-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-10-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-09-28T21:01:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-09-22T01:01:00.000-07:00

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.