July 28th
28 Jul 2011 2 Comments
This week has been very full.
On Tuesday we did an outreach to the small village that Jordan teaches in called Beseasi. Population of about 400 people, if that. They are about 40 mintues out of town, and once you get dropped off, you have to walk into the jungle to get to the actual village. It’s a gorgeous walk and an amazing little village. All of the houses are made from bamboo and covered in red mud that has been mixed with rocks. There is no running water and no electricity in the village. It is very remote and there is almost nothing nearby. Everyone there just lives off what they have. We visited Jordan’s school, which is a one room building about the size of a small bedroom. There are 6 benches and a small square table for the teacher (nobody knows what his name is, so they all just call him “teacher.”) There is no chalkboard or anything except posters that volunteers have made. The ages of the students range from 3 or 4 to around 8.
After stopping by to say hello to teacher and the students, we went to another one room building to talk to some of the villagers who weren’t tending to their farms. We collected about 10 people, which wasn’t bad considering how hard it was raining. (People here hate leaving the house when it rains, so it usually means that everything is canceled. Imani talked about HIV/AIDS and I talked about general health and the importance of eating well, getting good sleep, and drinking plenty of water. I also stressed the importance of taking a sick child to a clinic or hospital, because they’re very susceptible to malaria and other illnesses that can be deadly if untreated. Then everyone wanted to ask me questions to see what was wrong with them, like I was a doctor or something. I used the knowledge I’ve learned in the hospital, from my dad being a nurse, and any health related classes I’ve taken to try and help people. One woman said she was very very sick. She said that she had a headache for the past 3 days and her urine was bright yellow, and she just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. I told her she was dehydrated and needed to drink water. She laughed, so I asked how often she drank water, and she said she never drinks water, only what she eats in her soup… I told her there was nothing anyone could do for her except for her to drink lots of water. One man was going blind and described cloudy vision. Just by looking at him you could see how cloudy his eyes were, so I told him it was probably cataracts and there wasn’t really much he could do about it there. One construction worker told me that he was very very sick because his whole body hurt after bending over and doing construction all day. I told him that was normal for doing hard manual labor, and that he should try stretching. So I showed him some stretches. Some people had things I’ve never seen before, so I had no idea what to tell them. I felt bad when I didn’t know what was wrong with people, but at least I tried.
Then after all the education and attempted problem solving, we tested people for HIV. Thankfully nobody was positive. I was very pleased.
When we were all done, we had to walk all the way back into town because no vehicles drove by in the other direction. We spent about an hour and a half walking up and down hills from the village all the way into the nearest town, where it was still a 30 minute drive home. I was totally exhausted by the end of the day
Then on Wednesday we did some clinic work, and I spent some time in town. I was looking for a scarf to wrap my hair like the Ghanaian ladies do here sometimes, so Jordan and I went to the market. I asked around and a few people kept telling me to “enter the market.” I was confused because I thought I was in the market, so I finally asked what they meant. A girl pointed across the street to a dark alley where a line of Ghanaians were walking. I grabbed Jordan and we headed inside. I was totally amazed. It was a secret market where we were the only white people. It was the REAL market where all the locals did their shopping. The market that we knew was a triangle of roads and on the roads were the shops. When you went in between the shops it goes into a whole sheltered market that is like a grid. It is in the space in between the triangle of roads. It was so awesome. Everyone was really nice to us, and I found my head scarf. I was really happy about finding that market, but sad that it was our second to last day here.
Today Imani and I went to the clinic to do some work and present the benches we had made, so that the pregnant women don’t have to stand while waiting for their appointments. We turned them over to the head doctor and all the midwives, and they were very pleased.
After work I met Jordan at the Rasta shacks to say goodbye to everyone. We hung out for a little bit and I learned how to play a Ghanaian card game with one of the Rastas. Right as we were getting ready to leave, there was some commotion across the street. Apparently one of the guys had been sleeping on a concrete wall, and he fell off and rolled down a hill. He was drunk, and probably just tried to roll over or something. A group of the guys pulled him up over the wall and then left him in the dirt and came back to the shack. I asked if he was ok and one of them said “no he’s not ok, he’s bleeding, so I had to leave. I don’t like blood.” I couldn’t just leave him there so I grabbed my water bottle and hand sanitizer and found some cotton, and went over to him. He had scraped large chunks of skin off all over his face and was really bloody. In all of his open wounds he had sand and small rocks and dirt. I used my water to clean the dirt out of the wounds and then used my hand sanitizer to try and clean it. It definitely wasn’t ideal first aid, but people here don’t ever clean their wounds and they get infected and nobody does anything about it. Once I got him cleaned up some of the guys helped bring him to a friend’s little restaurant, and they gave him some food. I’m sure he’ll be ok.
So, today is our last day in Cape Coast. I’m kind of sad about leaving all my friends I’ve spent the last 3o days with, but I’m getting ready to come home too. I miss my Columbia friends and my family. I’m kind of scared about coming home, because I feel like I have a new appreciation for a lot of things that people kind of expect to be around, like electricity. I hope that I can share my experiences with my friends and maybe I’ll be a little more conscious about how I use my resources. This is my last post here, I’ll try to post when I get to Belgium, even if it’s just to let family know we made it there safe. So long Cape Coast!
July 25th
25 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
This weekend has been adventurous. Sunday we went to a Batik workshop with few of our classmates. There was a woman who had been making batik for 15 years, and she was the one teaching us how to do it. We all got 2 yards of fabric and could choose what designs and colors we wanted to use. Somehow it took us 7 hours for 9 of us to make batik. The woman melted wax for us over a coal fire and dipped the design into it and pressed it into the white cloth. After the whole 2 yards was pressed with wax, we mixed dye the same way you do for tie-dye and soaked them. The fabric was folded in a way that made it able to be unfolded the way you turn pages in a book. We dipped and turned the fabric for 10-15 minutes before it was done. Then we let it to dry. For the people who wanted other colors, they stamped another wax shape and then re-dyed the fabric another color. I re-dyed mine a second time to deepen the one color I had. When we finished the dying and drying, someone cooked out fabric in a large pot of boiling water, and then washed it and rinsed it in 3 different barrels of water. Once everything dried, the fabric was ironed and beautiful. I was very pleased.
Between dying my own fabric and waiting for everyone else to do theirs, we had some free time. A few ladies that lived behind the building we were doing batik in invited another girl and I to come watch them make fufu. Fufu is a traditional Ghanaian food, which is served in soup and considered a delicacy. It is made from cassava and plantain. In a giant mortar-shaped bowl they pound boiled plantain into a gooey ball. Then they pound cassava with water into a ball as well. Then they combine them and mix and fold until it becomes one giant slimy mixed ball of food. Then they pour soup all over it. Lilly (the other girl with me) and I both helped them pound the cassava and plantain and it was really hard! The women here have a giant wooden pole with a flat bottom that is probably 5 feet long, and they use their left hand for pounding and the right one for folding the fufu. I had to use 2 hands because it was so heavy and you have to use so much force. After watching them make the fufu, they poured us a bowl with light soup that had fish that had just been caught and had been cooking all morning. The soup was really spicy, but delicious, and the fish was the freshest fish I’ve ever had. When you eat the fufu you use your right hand to pinch off a bite-sized ball, and dip it in the soup, and then just swallow it whole. It’s very interesting. Something that I find awesome here is that everyone will invite you to eat with them. If they bring out a dish to eat and you are standing nearby, they will tell you “You are invited,” and they actually mean it. I love it because the people here don’t have much, and food isn’t plentiful for many people, but anything they have, food or water, they will share with you because we are all brothers and sisters of God. It’s amazing to me.
After a long day, everyone was starving because nobody ate more than a piece of toast for breakfast. Dr. Foley took us out for dinner around 16:00 finally, and we celebrated her last night here and all of our hard work so far.
Then today we did an outreach at the same beach we did the beach cleanup. We walked around to find men working on the fishing boats and repairing fishing nets to talk about HIV and test whoever was interested. We followed all the fishermen that were pulling in the nets and got in and helped a little. It was the hardest work I’ve ever done. They all pull so hard and the ropes are thick and sandy and wet and rough and horrible. It gave me a new appreciation for what they do. Then when they finally got all the fish pulled in, we talked to them about HIV and did some more testing. There wasn’t really any good place to do it so we just plopped down in the sand under a palm tree and tested a bunch of sand-covered fishermen.
Later we went along to a little village and talked with some women and tested them as well. A lot of them were asking me other medical questions about their sicknesses. One women asked me why her belly was growing slowly after she had her first child, and when I asked her if she had a change in diet she said she loves food and eats a lot all the time ever since she gave birth… Diagnosis: She’s gaining weight. Then the ladies taught me how to make gyri, which is just another form of cassava.
Overall it was a very adventurous weekend and I learned how to do lots of Ghanaian things.
Ghana July 21st
21 Jul 2011 6 Comments
The past few days have been slow but pretty interesting. Our professor from MU showed up on Sunday and brought Snickers for everyone, which got eaten before I could snatch one. (I’ve still got my secret stash of Belgian chocolate though, so I’m not that sad)
Tuesday we went to the clinic for work and had a long, rough day. It was very busy and out of the 22 pregnant women we had, 4 of them had HIV. One of them was previously tested and had a positive result for HIV, and came back. She said that she had not gone to the hospital to get her medication yet because her husband won’t go get tested. It was upsetting because she’s putting her child at risk when there is a way to keep the baby from being born with HIV. It’s hard to get people to understand how serious HIV is sometimes, when they have never heard about it before.
After a long day of work we came home and relaxed a bit, and then around 18:00 one of the Pro World leaders named Lawrence came by to talk about witchcraft in Ghana. I’ve noticed that a lot of people in the communities ask about witches. We had a question during an outreach asking if a witch could curse you to have HIV. Many Ghanaians, especially in smaller villages, believe in witchcraft. Lawrence told us a well known story about how there was a mother who was a witch and assisted in the killing of many people. She foretold that someday she would have to pay so 4 other witches and herself would go and kill her most successful son. She told her son about this and said that they would be in the form of cockroaches. She told him the date and said between Midnight and 2 am, do not sleep because 5 cockroaches will come to kill you, they will be witches. Kill the first, second, third, and fourth, but I will be the fifth, so please spare my life. When the day came, sure enough 5 cockroaches crawled in from under his door around 1:30 in the morning. He killed the first through the fourth, and decided he wasn’t sure if he really believed in what his mother had told him. So, he decided that he would kill the fifth roach too, and if his mother was dead, then he would believe it. Then around 4 am he received a call from his father saying that his mother was dead, and so were 4 other members of the village. From then on, he believed in witchcraft. I’m not sure if I believe it or not, but it’s fun to tell stories.
Anyway, today Imani, Fati, and I went for outreach in a small village. It was about an hour out from Cape Coast. We had our condoms and our test kids and we went door to door to talk to people and test them for HIV. After that we found a big open area that they gathered the whole village. Everyone who we hadn’t talked to came to listen about HIV and ask questions. Then we started testing everyone who wanted to know. We tested about 50 people today, and 3 of them had HIV. We got their phone numbers and will be checking in with them later next week. It’s hard to describe what today was like because there were so many emotions. People were so excited to get tested and it was awesome being there to provide them with that service. They were all going crazy about the condoms too because when everyone is being handed them for free, the stigma about using them seems to diminish. Overall, it was a very rewarding day and I couldn’t be happier with how it went. Tomorrow we are going to the castle to talk to all the drummers that Jordan and Antaniece are working with about HIV and sexual health in general, before they leave for the US. I’m hoping it will go as well as today went.
Ghana July 17th
17 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
I’ve had a very busy and exhausting few days. Friday we didn’t have much work to do, so we decided to join another NGO for a beach clean-up. We got there around 10:30 and picked up trash on the beach for an hour. It was very hot (not as hot as Columbia apparently is though) We did a small stretch considering the length of the beach, but we picked up probably 10 wheelbarrows full of trash. A lot of water sachets, Styrofoam, and broken flip flops. After that we had lunch and then hung out at the office. At 4 we went to the university radio station and Fati and I talked about Needed Life, and why I came to Ghana. It was pretty awesome to talk about HIV on the radio because a lot of people who I’ve seen that don’t know anything about HIV said that they heard about it on the radio. That at least means that people are aware of its existence.
Then Friday night we all went out after dinner to a place called Tina Tavern. We all hung out and relaxed and then went to another place to go dancing.
Saturday morning we woke up and departed home at 0700 for our “Impact Project,” We bussed out to a very rural village, and did 2 different things. The first thing we did was, in a group of about 7 we made bricks from scratch. We measured and mixed sand and cement powder, mixed a huge pile that was as tall as me. Then we mixed it with water to make the cement. After we got all that mixed up we packed bricks into a mold and then let them dry in a nearby building. It was by far the hardest manual work I’ve ever done. Everyone who shoveled has blisters. We made two batches for a total of 90 bricks or so. Then I decided to switch it up and I went to where they were building a foundation for a building. There were bricks set up for a border, but one side of the ground was much higher than the other. Some people broke up the ground with a pickaxe, then others shoveled the dirt into buckets, and then others moved the dirt and spread it evenly on the other side. It was rewarding, but I wouldn’t want to spend more than a day doing it. We worked from 0800-11:30.
After the hard work we went to a nice beach resort and had a nice buffet. It had 2 types of foods I’ve been craving since the first week in. One was anything with cream, and they served giant penne pasta with alfredo sauce. The other is salad, and they had a huge bowl of coleslaw that was oil based instead of mayo based, with tomatoes and beans and all kinds of stuff. It definitely hit the spot. Then we hung out at the beach and played in the waves. The current at the beaches here is crazy strong, so we didn’t really swim, but we did play in the waves. We body surfed a little and jumped over crashing waves. It was a lot of fun. Once we all got out to dry in the sun, children started gathering from everywhere. They all loved Jordan would follow him and hold his hand wherever he went.
Then for dinner we went to a restaurant and watched Korye, the drum theater group that Jordan is working with. They were absolutely amazing. They have intense energy the whole time, and they danced and drummed for 2 straight hours. It’s no wonder they’re all muscle and no fat. After the show, a few of us hung out and relaxed on the beach.
Then today, we headed to a restaurant for our African drumming and dance lessons. The guys from Korye came and we each learned a whole drum song. It was so much fun. We learned different beats and we would take turns playing different parts at the same time for a whole sound. I had to concentrate pretty hard, but I had a blast. We did that for about an hour and a half, and then we learned how to dance. The dancing was where I realized just how out of shape I am. A few minutes in my muscles were already burning. I wasn’t nearly coordinated or flexible enough to move like the girl who was teaching us the dance. It was awesome though.
Then we had lunch and spent another day on the beach. 5 or 6 of us girls stayed and played in the ocean, and the current was even stronger today than it was at the other beach. A couple people got knocked over and washed up to shore, but nobody was hurt or close to getting sucked out. It was crazy how big the waves were and how quickly the tide came in. Towards the end we were standing in a place where the water would get sucked completely out so we were standing outside the water, and once the waves crashed the water would be up to our waists. After a long weekend I was pooped so Jordan and I went home and showered and we had black-eyed peas for dinner. It’s been a good weekend.
Got a few pictures up
14 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
Someone let me borrow her computer. Hopefully I can upload more pictures 
tomorrow. If not, there’s a bunch on my facebook.
Ghana July 13th
13 Jul 2011 3 Comments
July 13th written at 18:47
So a couple of days ago I started to get kind of homesick. Since I’ve never been away from home for so long before I started missing the things I’m used to. I also started realizing what I take for granted at home. I wanted to make a list of 10 things I’ve taken for granted.
1. Hot showers: After walking for 20 minutes in the blazing sun, a cold shower is nice and refreshing. But when it’s only about 75-80 degrees in the evening with a cool breeze coming at you through the window, it gets pretty uncomfortable.
2. Cleanliness: People in the states always complain about how certain big cities are so dirty. They have no idea. The biggest problem I see here is the trash. There aren’t trash trucks or trash dumps anywhere. People burn the trash they can, and the rest lays in the streets, bushes, and sewers. There are many schools that have giant dumpsters in the back and children will play in it and hunt for food. Also, all the sewage systems are open and along the street. And children play in those too, hunting for “mudfish.” The places that do have a bathroom to use usually don’t have toilet paper, some don’t have flushing toilets, and some also don’t have toilet seats at all. And you aren’t supposed to flush any toilet paper, you’re supposed to throw it in the trash can. And I’ve only seen soap in one bathroom.
3. Salad: I’ve just been craving and dreaming about salads for days now. The closest thing I’ve seen to salad is coleslaw, which I’ve started craving too.
4. Not having to use bug spray and sunscreen all the time: I tried to go to bed without putting on bug spray one night and got bit by an ant and a mosquito. It’s a new morning ritual along with teeth brushing and putting my contacts in; applying sunscreen to every teeny bit of skin that isn’t covered by clothes, and then once that dries, putting on a thorough layer of bug spray.
5. My bed and my pillow: I’m thankful to have a bed to sleep on here because I know many families sleep on thin layers of foam on the floor. However, I do miss my own fluffy wonderful bed and my down comforter and my perfect pillow. We finally figured out that if you cut open the pillows here and de-stuff them, they’re actually useable.
6. Ice cubes: We have cold water here which is more than I had expected, but sometimes I like an ice cube in my coffee to bring it to the perfect temperature. Instead I just have to be patient and wait.
7. Sense of urgency: Nothing comes fast here. I started out as a very impatient person. I want everything to happen immediately. It’s been a slow process, but I’m learning to accept it. At a restaurant that already knows your order 3 hours before you show up, it takes 2 hours to get your food. The internet takes like 5 minutes to load one page, if it even works at all. There is a lot of waiting here.
8. Washer and Dryer: Jordan and I washed our clothes for the first time a few days ago and it was way harder than I expected. We used 2 buckets of water; one for washing and one for rinsing. We used a bar of dial gold soap and scrubbed all the dirtiest parts of every piece of clothing. Then you have to scrub again in the rinse water to get all the soap out. Then the wringing part… You have to wring your clothes out hard enough that no more water drips out, because the humidity makes it hard to dry things. It took us 2 days for our clothes to dry, even outside with a breeze.
9. Being treated equally, everywhere I go: The locals that I have met here are good to me and make sure I get treated as an equal, but the others who don’t know me personally see me as the obroni. A lot of people tend to think that any American here is ridiculously rich, and not only that, but they don’t have to do any work for their money. Therefore, we get taken advantage a lot. I have to take a taxi to work and back every day, and each time it’s a struggle getting them to charge us the price everyone else gets charged. Today we took a tro-tro to a main junction and decided we wanted to take a cab from there home, even though it was only about a 20 minute walk. We had been charged 35 pesewas (cents) a person the previous time we went, and a cab driver wanted us to pay 2 cedis (dollars) a person. He wouldn’t drop the price to what we knew it was, and it seems like from what I can see, locals don’t even negotiate prices for cabs, they just know what it is and pay it. Sometimes we go through 5 or 6 cabs in a morning trying to find one that will charge us the right price.
10. Privacy: I’ve never lived in the dorms before, so living in a house with 2 bathrooms and 15 people is not something I’ve ever experienced before. I don’t mind it because it’s nice to have someone to talk to all the time, but I like my alone time every once in a while too. The bedroom I’m in has 4 bunk beds and only one top bunk is empty. I feel bad sometimes if I end up coming to bed later than others because I have to climb up to a top bunk and get situated, trying not to wake anyone up. Sometimes if you go to bed early you have to fall asleep with the lights on because nobody else is in bed yet and they still need to get changed and cleaned up. It’s kind of nice to just go to bed when I want and turn out my lights when I want.
There are also a lot of things about Ghana that I love, so I’m going to list 10 things I love about being here, that I know I’ll miss when I go back home.
1. Friendly people: Everyone here is so friendly. You can say good morning to every person you walk by and they will return the greeting with a smile. If you say anything to a local in their language they all laugh and look very happily surprised. Children swarm you when they see you and they want to know your name and they want to teach you Fante. And everyone here is beautiful, especially the children. Many women and young girls here have shaved heads, but they have such feminine features that they are beautiful without makeup or hair or anything materialistic. Even though most here are poor, everyone is happy. Children are always smiling and babies rarely cry. People here appreciate what they have and they seem to cherish every moment that makes them happy.
2. The beach: Since I grew up in Hawaii as a kid, I always get excited about the beach. I love the sound and the vastness of it. It’s nice after work sometimes to stop by the beach and just sit and watch and listen.
3. The food: Even though I’ve been eating rice or yams for just about every meal, the food that is served with it is always amazing. The woman who cooks us dinner makes delicious red sauce to put on whatever starch she serves. The fried plantains are probably one of my favorite things to eat here. And redred. I had it once the first day I got here, and I’m excited to have it again. My favorite thing here food-wise is the fruit though. I’ve never eaten a sweeter, juicier pineapple in my whole life. And the mangoes here are the size of a cantaloupe and sweet and juicy and perfect. I’ve been eating pineapple and mango at least 2 times a day. People just go into the rainforest and come out with all these fruits that grow naturally. No added anything. I’m definitely going to miss the fruits.
4. Sachets of water: I love that everywhere you go there are people selling these 400 ml bags of filtered water in big buckets on their heads. You buy one for 5 pesewas (the equivalent of 2 pennies or so) Sometimes people keep them chilled, so it’s perfect for walking around at the market on a hot day.
5. Tropical plants and animals: I love the flowers here. Jordan was telling me that giving someone flowers here is rude because they’re so abundant that it’s like handing someone a weed. I’ve never seen more vibrant amazing colors in my whole life. Some of the leaves and flowers I’ve seen here are so vivid in color it almost looks neon or like they’re glowing. There are also these small vine-like plants that look like tiny ferns, and when you touch them, they close up. I used to play with them in Hawaii as a kid and I haven’t seen them since. They’re still as fun to touch as I remember. There’s also a ton of lizards everywhere. They range in all sizes; I think the biggest one I’ve seen was about a foot long. I’ve seen them outside the house, in the market, and in the clinic I work at too. There are also the smallest frogs I’ve ever seen. I found one hiding in a shirt when I was doing laundry and I caught him to get a closer look. He was about the size of a penny and could jump really far.
6. The weather: I expected it to be blazing hot here all the time, but since it’s still considered the rainy season, we’ve had beautiful weather. There always seems to be a comfortable, cool breeze even when it is a hot day. I’ll admit, the hot days are pretty hot, especially considering we don’t have any air conditioning and only one fan in each room…but I heard that it was in the 100’s in Columbia, so I definitely can’t complain. I don’t think it’s been hotter than 90 here. And it always cools down at night.
7. Street markets: I’ve only seen one actual “grocery store” where you can buy odds and ends that people don’t sell on the streets. But for the most part, you can buy anything you could ever imagine off someone’s head or out of a wooden stand on the side of the road. It’s awesome. And everything is pretty cheap, except nutella and cheese. Yesterday the cab driver paid a guy on the street to punch new holes in his belt, while he was pulling out of the taxi lot. You can find candy, soda, shoes, dresses, fabric, rope, tools, water, ice cream, and plantain chips! If you’re at the market and you get hungry for a snack, you find someone walking by and just buy it from them. It’s so convenient.
8. How laid back everything is: Although it’s frustrating at times, I’m starting to get used to and learn to enjoy how slow things go here. Nobody rushes anywhere. Everyone gets where they need to go at the pace they want to. Restaurants don’t rush, clinics and hospitals don’t rush, everyone works at a comfortable pace. Everyone has time to stop and have a conversation with you, no matter where they’re going. I feel like everyone here lives a very low stress job, and it’s really refreshing compared to what I’m used to in the states.
9. The culture: I learn something new every day. Whether it’s a new word or phrase or someone’s name. The culture here is so different that there are still things that happen that surprise me and make me excited. Last week as I was walking down the street I saw a group of guys getting coconuts down from a palm tree, using machetes to husk them, and then finding a large stake to slam them on to break them open. Every day on the way to work I see the fishermen out working. They make their fishing nets and their fishing boats by hand. When the fishermen that use nets are reeling them in they all line up and pull and then have someone wrap another end around a palm tree and pull on the other side as well; a pulley system. It looks like such hard work, but it’s just what they do. Then they bring the fish in and the women sell them off giant platters on their heads at the market.
10. All the friends I have made, and have yet to make: I’ve already become close with just about everyone I’m living with, and I’ve gotten to know some locals as well. I’m greeted by the Rastas when I go by the castle, and one boy gives me a hug every time he sees me. It’s nice because they don’t harass me about buying stuff anymore, they just greet me and want to chat. I’m excited to keep making new friends and to become more involved with the people here. I’m also excited to keep getting closer to all my roommates.
