Somehow, going home really hit me with about a month to go. One month. It is going to fly. I think about what I was doing one month ago, compared to what I will be doing in one month (San Francisco), two months (Boston), three months (New Orleans), six months (graduating and moving home). It is kind of a lot to handle.
I have grown to know this country, love this country, be comfortable here. It would be presumptuous of me to say that this is now my home, but it feels like it a lot of the time.
Some of my favorite moments are just walking down the street on my way back from AMIS. It takes about forty minutes from where I get off the tro-tro coming from Nima, walking all the way back to my dorm. I smile at strangers and often surprise them. Obrunis aren't very friendly. It isn't necessarily our fault, it is just what we are used to in the US. When you pass people on the street, you ignore them unless you have a reason not to. Smiling is something done carefully, with a thought to the potential consequences of unwanted attention. Not so here. I smile at everyone. Every stranger is a person. Every person has the potential to change your world and blow your mind, alter your perspective and take your breath away. I have learned to try to see past each face into each story.
I think in Boston a little more than San Francisco, the different meaning of "stranger" will get to me. I can understand why stereotypes build based on cultural values. White people aren't rude, they just don't take the time or don't always recognize the need to ask how the person next to them is doing today.
Travelling to Ghana and being asked questions about the US has made me realize how little of the US I really know, and I think I been to a fair amount of places for my years. I have gone up and down the West Coast, I have road tripped through the Southwest, visited family in New York my whole life, vacationed in Alaska and Hawaii, seen Jeannette at University of Oregon, attended a funeral in Florida, attended a wedding in New Orleans, spent summers and winters in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, gone as far from home as possible for Northeastern in Boston.....and yet there is still so much more to see.
My friend Erin told me about an adventure her sister just went on. Some friends came together, bought a schoolbus, installed bunk beds in the back, and drove around the country for a month and a half. They picked some people up along the way, dropped some off elsewhere, and had some people there for the whole trip. So inspiring! I want to do something similar, and having people to visit from my semester here makes it so logical and possible.
Even within California, there is so much that I want to see, and this summer I hope to make a large dent in that on the John Muir trail. Dad questioned my ability to forego hot showers and varied food for the few weeks I would be backpacking, so clearly he hasn't fully comprehended what it is like to be in Ghana. I can more happily get by with the basics.
This Saturday, CIEE took us to the Volta region, which is the far East side of Ghana, on the other side of Lake Volta. We went to a monkey sanctuary first. We held bananas in our hands, the monkeys scurried over, peeled the banana, and ate a chunk before scurrying away again. Then we drove to Wli Falls, the tallest waterfall in West Africa. I can't even begin to describe the beauty, especially since we are usually surrounded by the less pristine city scape of Accra. But better than looking at the cascades of water coming down, was wading through the pool at the base, shielding our eyes from the stinging spray, and forcing our way under the falls itself. At first, I was led by a Ghanaian guy who was eager to show us few brave girls the way. He held on to me as we made our way step by step through the powerful waters. My sunglasses helped block the water from blinding me, but he had to walk backwards. While standing underneath some of the water towards the front of the falls, I asked if we could go all the way back and touch the rock wall behind us. We forced our way and the feeling was so incredible. I have never felt so cleansed. The power of the water prevented me from even thinking about anything else besides where I was, who I was, who I was sharing the experience with, and how lucky I am. Eventually we made our way out of the waterfall, emerging through the mist to the more timid bathers on the outside. Ezra had been trying to find his way in but couldn't, so I led him back to the wall, resisting the ripples pulling me out. The glasses were long gone, a casualty of a particular wall of water. While under, I thought to myself that I can honestly say it was the coolest thing I have ever done. Money can't buy you everything. Sometimes you just need a waterfall to make you happy.
One of this trip's surprises is that going to this dry, equatorial place has made me feel infinitely connected to water. The ocean is such a force in my spirit, and any body of water just puts me in a good place. I realized I will always need to live by the ocean to feel complete. My name coming true I guess.
Getting back to the original topic of this post, challenges going home:
1. Everything is going to be extravagantly expensive to me.
2. I won't legally be allowed to drink.
3. Fruit just won't be as good.
4. I have to quit my friends here cold turkey.
5. I have less of an excuse to travel every weekend.
6. It will be freezing to me.
7. I won't know any current music, movies, news, gossip, slang, or basically any pop culture.
8. Lily may not recognize me.
9. I will have real classes with real assignments and real expectations of me.
10. I will have a job. Could be a good thing and a bad thing.
11. The speed of the internet might give me ADD after adjusting to the way it is here.
12. I'm just going to want to go abroad again.
But, even so, I can't wait to return and share everything with everyone (pictures, stories, souvenirs, galore!).
Love from Ghana,
Mara
Monday, November 16, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
It's November Already?!?
October was incredible, but I can't believe it is over.
First weekend, Bojo beach. Reggae Night the first Wednesday. Thursday took off for Green Turtle (see last post) for the most relaxing weekend ever. The next weekend was the CIEE trip to Kumasi where we saw the Ashanti Manhyia Palace, Kejetia the largest market in West Africa,a Kente weaving village, and Lake Bosomtwe. While there, Ghana won the under 20 world cup, so we went out "jubilating." Working at Anani was improving and I started going more frequently, sometimes after class in the morning so that I was only there for the afternoons which are much more mellow.
Saturday the 24th, I went to Mr. Anani's sister's engagement party/wedding ceremony in Agboba. I went with Levi, the other CIEE student at AMIS, and we were the only ones there who were not family. We met Mr. Anani's mother, his many siblings from his father's many wives, a his many nephews. It was so nice to just sit on a couch in a real house and watch TV and talk to his family. Eventually the family of the groom arrived and the ceremony started. Brides family on one side of the room, groom's on the other, couches in the middle facing each other. Bride is hidden. Groom's family presents bride's family with a briefcase full of items requested in advance. He has had time to prepare, so really the engagement has been unofficial for a while. Representatives of both families went into another room to inspect, and eventually the bride's representative said that everything was in order and wonderful. Praying, singing, dancing. Then the presentation of the gifts. Fabric for the bride's mother. Something for the eldest brother since the father is deceased. A bible for the couple. A ring. With each gift, blessings were sang and prayers were shouted(almost all of this was in Twi, but I was able to understand the context of things. Finally, the bride came in and more singing and dancing, then blessings over the ring, blessings over the bible, blessings over some oil they poured on their hands, blessingblessingsblessings. Mr. Anani sat between Levi and myself explaining as we went along. My favorite part was Anani's mother getting up and dancing and people throwing money at her. She is ancient, but she was so happy and into the whole thing. On the way back we walked through the University of Ghana Botanical Gardens which are gorgeous and a little hidden hideaway right next to campus. I could easily and happily spend a whole day having a picnic there next to the pond under the trees. That night, we went out dancing at a nightclub and had a blast. We have been going to bars often, but it is more of an effort to rally people into going to nightclubs.
Tuesday the 27th, I went to drumming class and saw Treza and Lindsay(homestay girls) who were heading to Kokrobite Beach for the day with the sons of their basket weaving teacher (Paul and Dominic) and some of their friends (Kweku and one other). I was easily convinced to skip Xylophone in the afternoon and decided to join them for a relaxing day of sunshine and sand and sea. After a long tro tro ride there, we set up camp. Kokrobite is just past Bojo, but not as secluded. We pay 5 cedi to get into Bojo and it is clean and there are lifegaurds who watch people swim in a flagged off area. When people get pulled to one side by the current/undertoe, the lifeguards whistle and you get out of the water, walk along shore, and re-enter in the proper place. There was no such set up at Kokrobite unfortunately. You also have to be more careful at Kokrobite of people taking your stuff while you are in the water, so I volunteered to stay with the towels and bags while a bunch went to swim. A while later, I couldn't see my friends anymore because half my view was blocked by a fishing boat on the shore. I noticed people standing up on the beach and looking over in that direction, so I looked too. Everyone I was with except Dominic were in the water pretty far out. They had been swept sideways, without realizing that there was a ledge and suddenly they couldn't reach the bottom. That made it easier for them to be swept out away from shore. They all tried to head in, but Paul and the other friend got really flustered, panicked, and realized they couldn't make it on their own. They called to Lindsay and Treza to help, and not knowing any other option, they turned around. When each girl got to a guy, he did what any drowning person will do: try to climb on the person saving you. They realized that not only could they probably not save the guys, but they might go down with them. Kweku managed to alert people on shore and an off duty lifeguard ran out, saved the guys, then gave Treza the extra push she needed to get to shore after exhausting herself trying to save the others and herself. Such a close call. Terrifying. They all came back to our stuff and passed out on the sand for a while, catching their breath and thinking over what had (almost) just happened. After some much needed Italian food nearby, we went back to Legon.
The next night, my normal girls (Annie, Erin, Lissy) went to Reggae Night with one of our only Ghanaian friends from ISH. Lloyd drove us with a bunch of his friends, some who we had met before. We met up with my Rasta friend Sowah at the beach and all sat around hanging out for hours. It had been frustrating and disappointing for me that I didn't feel I had made Ghanaian friends, but talking to these guys just made us all so happy. Every person is a person, and it is nice to be nice.
Thursday night we went to Jerry's for Treza's early birthday and had a wonderful time. Friday, I went to AMIS during the day, then one of our favorite spots in Osu at night for Treza's real birthday. Of course the last stop was a chicken kebab before heading home.
Saturday we forced ourselves to wake up early, pack lunches, and hop on a trotro to Boti Falls. I have been wanting to go here since the very beginning and it is one of few day trips that you can take from Accra. We spent hours getting there, met some British volunteers on the last leg of the trip. Boti is inland from Accra and the mountains are gorgeous and lush. Accra is so much more developed, but it is a crowded bustling West African city, not a tranquil rural mountain feeling. Boti was amazing. There are two waterfalls right next to each other and trees all around. We weren't allowed to swim in the pool at the base, but we waded up to our knees and took pictures. Then one of the British guys walked around the edge to get to the back of one of the waterfalls, and I quickly convinced Ezra to come with me and do the same. It was slippery climbing on the rocks to get to it, but it was incredible. I literally was standing in a rainbow as the mist drenched us. Then actually behind the falls, looking up at the water coming down...so beautiful. Annie snapped some pictures and they came out really nicely. I am going to try to put some up soon, possibly on here. After eating on the shore, we wanted to leave and ended up hitching a ride in a flatbed truck with the British folks we had met earlier. It was so nice to be out in the open air, travelling through the mountains and the villages, everyone smiling at us (screaming "obruni" and waving excitedly). When we got back to ISH, time to prepare for Halloween Ghana style.
At first I had no costume ideas whatsoever, but Wednesday I had the idea to be FanIce. This is vanilla ice cream that comes in a small plastic bag/pouch about the size of a king sized pack of M&Ms. People sell them on the streets and in small shops. To eat, you tear a corner with your teeth and suck out the ice cream through the hole you made. It's cousins are FanYogo (frozen strawberry yogurt) and FanChoco (frozen chocolate milk). Part of why FanIce etc are so wonderful is that they are one of very few things that you can buy cold. And there just isn't creamy food in general here. So when at a market in the heat that swallows us or walking miles accross campus, it hits the spot. Problem is, just like with the pure water bags that fill the gutters and beaches and streets, no one throws the wrappers out. They are everywhere. On my walk back from AMIS on Thursday, I realized I could collect enough wrappers to make something out of them. So Friday, I did. I started walking from my dorm to Shangri La instead of taking a trotro because it took forever and I am just not pushy enough to force my way into the ones that pull up with one or two spots open. Then I take a trotro from Shangri La to Nima where the school is. It takes about 40 minutes to walk. During that walk, shielded by a plastic bag on my hand, I collected 46 FanIce wrappers and 38 FanYogo wrappers for Annie. After washing them in the launry room, we soaked them in a bucket of water over night. Saturday when we got back from Boti, we went to work assembling. They were surprisgly easy to tape together, so Annie made a Fanyogo belt for her pink dress, cuffs, and a headband. I made enough "material" to cover one of my skirts, then safety pinned it on. I used markers to draw the label onto a white shirt. Treza came over in all brown, ready for a FanChoco bowtie. Lissy was toilet paper/a mummy, Erin was a whiskey coke, Ezra was superman. The homestay girls were also in on the Ghanaian foods theme. We had banku, tilapia, and pepper. Levi and Kyle were schoolboys. We took off from ISH, went to Osu, started at Epos, ended at Mirage (same nightclub as last weekend). Everyone had tons of fun.
Sunday we slept in, barely left ISH. I did a hot compress and face mask with Annie and I am hooked. She has to do them daily because she has problems with her eyes, but I just want to do them all the time now because they feel so nice. She is leaving for London to visit her boyfriend so soon, and I will miss her a lot while she is gone.
When she gets back, it will be time for us to do all of our travelling around during the finals period. So far on our list of possibilities:
Togo and Benin
Cote d'Ivoire
Burkina Faso
Mole National Park in the very north
back to Green Turtle for at least a few days
Just a little about AMIS:
I have embraced my role and become more realistic with what I do there. I am not really a teacher. I play with the kids, stop them from beating each other, sing their songs, help them write on little slates, eat lunch with them, sit and read while they nap, then go home. I guess that is what being a preschool teacher is like here, but I don't feel very productive or helpful most of the time. Some kind of entertaining and kind of sad mistakes by the teachers:
Fisch=fish
Peer=pear
Sheep=ship
Brusch=brush
Octbre=october
The water pipe project is going to start soon hopefully, because fundraising has begun. I am hoping that Mr. Anani is right that it will be done before I leave, but this is Ghana time we are dealing with. We shall see.
Other news of the day: I just booked a flight with Ezra from Boston to New Orleans for Mardi Gras in February. We will visit Annie, Lissy, and Erin at Tulane and see the parades and everything. So excited.
Overall, Ghana is great!!! Everything is so wonderful. I am incredibly happy here. Genuinely truly content and enthusiastic and jubilating all the time. I think for a while I convinced myself that I liked it more than I did, but now I really really really do. It is going to be tough to leave, and not just the friends I have made, but the country. I keep half joking that I will need to be re-socialized. I think reverse culture shock might be more obvious and harder to push aside than culture shock.
The Aya Centre is closing, and Terrific Tuesday calls again, so I will stop writing this much too long post anyways.
Last thing: I lost my phone on Saturday and have a new number. You can reach me at +0233-27-216-0982.
First weekend, Bojo beach. Reggae Night the first Wednesday. Thursday took off for Green Turtle (see last post) for the most relaxing weekend ever. The next weekend was the CIEE trip to Kumasi where we saw the Ashanti Manhyia Palace, Kejetia the largest market in West Africa,a Kente weaving village, and Lake Bosomtwe. While there, Ghana won the under 20 world cup, so we went out "jubilating." Working at Anani was improving and I started going more frequently, sometimes after class in the morning so that I was only there for the afternoons which are much more mellow.
Saturday the 24th, I went to Mr. Anani's sister's engagement party/wedding ceremony in Agboba. I went with Levi, the other CIEE student at AMIS, and we were the only ones there who were not family. We met Mr. Anani's mother, his many siblings from his father's many wives, a his many nephews. It was so nice to just sit on a couch in a real house and watch TV and talk to his family. Eventually the family of the groom arrived and the ceremony started. Brides family on one side of the room, groom's on the other, couches in the middle facing each other. Bride is hidden. Groom's family presents bride's family with a briefcase full of items requested in advance. He has had time to prepare, so really the engagement has been unofficial for a while. Representatives of both families went into another room to inspect, and eventually the bride's representative said that everything was in order and wonderful. Praying, singing, dancing. Then the presentation of the gifts. Fabric for the bride's mother. Something for the eldest brother since the father is deceased. A bible for the couple. A ring. With each gift, blessings were sang and prayers were shouted(almost all of this was in Twi, but I was able to understand the context of things. Finally, the bride came in and more singing and dancing, then blessings over the ring, blessings over the bible, blessings over some oil they poured on their hands, blessingblessingsblessings. Mr. Anani sat between Levi and myself explaining as we went along. My favorite part was Anani's mother getting up and dancing and people throwing money at her. She is ancient, but she was so happy and into the whole thing. On the way back we walked through the University of Ghana Botanical Gardens which are gorgeous and a little hidden hideaway right next to campus. I could easily and happily spend a whole day having a picnic there next to the pond under the trees. That night, we went out dancing at a nightclub and had a blast. We have been going to bars often, but it is more of an effort to rally people into going to nightclubs.
Tuesday the 27th, I went to drumming class and saw Treza and Lindsay(homestay girls) who were heading to Kokrobite Beach for the day with the sons of their basket weaving teacher (Paul and Dominic) and some of their friends (Kweku and one other). I was easily convinced to skip Xylophone in the afternoon and decided to join them for a relaxing day of sunshine and sand and sea. After a long tro tro ride there, we set up camp. Kokrobite is just past Bojo, but not as secluded. We pay 5 cedi to get into Bojo and it is clean and there are lifegaurds who watch people swim in a flagged off area. When people get pulled to one side by the current/undertoe, the lifeguards whistle and you get out of the water, walk along shore, and re-enter in the proper place. There was no such set up at Kokrobite unfortunately. You also have to be more careful at Kokrobite of people taking your stuff while you are in the water, so I volunteered to stay with the towels and bags while a bunch went to swim. A while later, I couldn't see my friends anymore because half my view was blocked by a fishing boat on the shore. I noticed people standing up on the beach and looking over in that direction, so I looked too. Everyone I was with except Dominic were in the water pretty far out. They had been swept sideways, without realizing that there was a ledge and suddenly they couldn't reach the bottom. That made it easier for them to be swept out away from shore. They all tried to head in, but Paul and the other friend got really flustered, panicked, and realized they couldn't make it on their own. They called to Lindsay and Treza to help, and not knowing any other option, they turned around. When each girl got to a guy, he did what any drowning person will do: try to climb on the person saving you. They realized that not only could they probably not save the guys, but they might go down with them. Kweku managed to alert people on shore and an off duty lifeguard ran out, saved the guys, then gave Treza the extra push she needed to get to shore after exhausting herself trying to save the others and herself. Such a close call. Terrifying. They all came back to our stuff and passed out on the sand for a while, catching their breath and thinking over what had (almost) just happened. After some much needed Italian food nearby, we went back to Legon.
The next night, my normal girls (Annie, Erin, Lissy) went to Reggae Night with one of our only Ghanaian friends from ISH. Lloyd drove us with a bunch of his friends, some who we had met before. We met up with my Rasta friend Sowah at the beach and all sat around hanging out for hours. It had been frustrating and disappointing for me that I didn't feel I had made Ghanaian friends, but talking to these guys just made us all so happy. Every person is a person, and it is nice to be nice.
Thursday night we went to Jerry's for Treza's early birthday and had a wonderful time. Friday, I went to AMIS during the day, then one of our favorite spots in Osu at night for Treza's real birthday. Of course the last stop was a chicken kebab before heading home.
Saturday we forced ourselves to wake up early, pack lunches, and hop on a trotro to Boti Falls. I have been wanting to go here since the very beginning and it is one of few day trips that you can take from Accra. We spent hours getting there, met some British volunteers on the last leg of the trip. Boti is inland from Accra and the mountains are gorgeous and lush. Accra is so much more developed, but it is a crowded bustling West African city, not a tranquil rural mountain feeling. Boti was amazing. There are two waterfalls right next to each other and trees all around. We weren't allowed to swim in the pool at the base, but we waded up to our knees and took pictures. Then one of the British guys walked around the edge to get to the back of one of the waterfalls, and I quickly convinced Ezra to come with me and do the same. It was slippery climbing on the rocks to get to it, but it was incredible. I literally was standing in a rainbow as the mist drenched us. Then actually behind the falls, looking up at the water coming down...so beautiful. Annie snapped some pictures and they came out really nicely. I am going to try to put some up soon, possibly on here. After eating on the shore, we wanted to leave and ended up hitching a ride in a flatbed truck with the British folks we had met earlier. It was so nice to be out in the open air, travelling through the mountains and the villages, everyone smiling at us (screaming "obruni" and waving excitedly). When we got back to ISH, time to prepare for Halloween Ghana style.
At first I had no costume ideas whatsoever, but Wednesday I had the idea to be FanIce. This is vanilla ice cream that comes in a small plastic bag/pouch about the size of a king sized pack of M&Ms. People sell them on the streets and in small shops. To eat, you tear a corner with your teeth and suck out the ice cream through the hole you made. It's cousins are FanYogo (frozen strawberry yogurt) and FanChoco (frozen chocolate milk). Part of why FanIce etc are so wonderful is that they are one of very few things that you can buy cold. And there just isn't creamy food in general here. So when at a market in the heat that swallows us or walking miles accross campus, it hits the spot. Problem is, just like with the pure water bags that fill the gutters and beaches and streets, no one throws the wrappers out. They are everywhere. On my walk back from AMIS on Thursday, I realized I could collect enough wrappers to make something out of them. So Friday, I did. I started walking from my dorm to Shangri La instead of taking a trotro because it took forever and I am just not pushy enough to force my way into the ones that pull up with one or two spots open. Then I take a trotro from Shangri La to Nima where the school is. It takes about 40 minutes to walk. During that walk, shielded by a plastic bag on my hand, I collected 46 FanIce wrappers and 38 FanYogo wrappers for Annie. After washing them in the launry room, we soaked them in a bucket of water over night. Saturday when we got back from Boti, we went to work assembling. They were surprisgly easy to tape together, so Annie made a Fanyogo belt for her pink dress, cuffs, and a headband. I made enough "material" to cover one of my skirts, then safety pinned it on. I used markers to draw the label onto a white shirt. Treza came over in all brown, ready for a FanChoco bowtie. Lissy was toilet paper/a mummy, Erin was a whiskey coke, Ezra was superman. The homestay girls were also in on the Ghanaian foods theme. We had banku, tilapia, and pepper. Levi and Kyle were schoolboys. We took off from ISH, went to Osu, started at Epos, ended at Mirage (same nightclub as last weekend). Everyone had tons of fun.
Sunday we slept in, barely left ISH. I did a hot compress and face mask with Annie and I am hooked. She has to do them daily because she has problems with her eyes, but I just want to do them all the time now because they feel so nice. She is leaving for London to visit her boyfriend so soon, and I will miss her a lot while she is gone.
When she gets back, it will be time for us to do all of our travelling around during the finals period. So far on our list of possibilities:
Togo and Benin
Cote d'Ivoire
Burkina Faso
Mole National Park in the very north
back to Green Turtle for at least a few days
Just a little about AMIS:
I have embraced my role and become more realistic with what I do there. I am not really a teacher. I play with the kids, stop them from beating each other, sing their songs, help them write on little slates, eat lunch with them, sit and read while they nap, then go home. I guess that is what being a preschool teacher is like here, but I don't feel very productive or helpful most of the time. Some kind of entertaining and kind of sad mistakes by the teachers:
Fisch=fish
Peer=pear
Sheep=ship
Brusch=brush
Octbre=october
The water pipe project is going to start soon hopefully, because fundraising has begun. I am hoping that Mr. Anani is right that it will be done before I leave, but this is Ghana time we are dealing with. We shall see.
Other news of the day: I just booked a flight with Ezra from Boston to New Orleans for Mardi Gras in February. We will visit Annie, Lissy, and Erin at Tulane and see the parades and everything. So excited.
Overall, Ghana is great!!! Everything is so wonderful. I am incredibly happy here. Genuinely truly content and enthusiastic and jubilating all the time. I think for a while I convinced myself that I liked it more than I did, but now I really really really do. It is going to be tough to leave, and not just the friends I have made, but the country. I keep half joking that I will need to be re-socialized. I think reverse culture shock might be more obvious and harder to push aside than culture shock.
The Aya Centre is closing, and Terrific Tuesday calls again, so I will stop writing this much too long post anyways.
Last thing: I lost my phone on Saturday and have a new number. You can reach me at +0233-27-216-0982.
It's November Already?!?
October was incredible, but I can't believe it is over.
First weekend, Bojo beach. Reggae Night the first Wednesday. Thursday took off for Green Turtle (see last post) for the most relaxing weekend ever. The next weekend was the CIEE trip to Kumasi where we saw the Ashanti Manhyia Palace, Kejetia the largest market in West Africa,a Kente weaving village, and Lake Bosomtwe. While there, Ghana won the under 20 world cup, so we went out "jubilating." Working at Anani was improving and I started going more frequently, sometimes after class in the morning so that I was only there for the afternoons which are much more mellow.
Saturday the 24th, I went to Mr. Anani's sister's engagement party/wedding ceremony in Agboba. I went with Levi, the other CIEE student at AMIS, and we were the only ones there who were not family. We met Mr. Anani's mother, his many siblings from his father's many wives, a his many nephews. It was so nice to just sit on a couch in a real house and watch TV and talk to his family. Eventually the family of the groom arrived and the ceremony started. Brides family on one side of the room, groom's on the other, couches in the middle facing each other. Bride is hidden. Groom's family presents bride's family with a briefcase full of items requested in advance. He has had time to prepare, so really the engagement has been unofficial for a while. Representatives of both families went into another room to inspect, and eventually the bride's representative said that everything was in order and wonderful. Praying, singing, dancing. Then the presentation of the gifts. Fabric for the bride's mother. Something for the eldest brother since the father is deceased. A bible for the couple. A ring. With each gift, blessings were sang and prayers were shouted(almost all of this was in Twi, but I was able to understand the context of things. Finally, the bride came in and more singing and dancing, then blessings over the ring, blessings over the bible, blessings over some oil they poured on their hands, blessingblessingsblessings. Mr. Anani sat between Levi and myself explaining as we went along. My favorite part was Anani's mother getting up and dancing and people throwing money at her. She is ancient, but she was so happy and into the whole thing. On the way back we walked through the University of Ghana Botanical Gardens which are gorgeous and a little hidden hideaway right next to campus. I could easily and happily spend a whole day having a picnic there next to the pond under the trees. That night, we went out dancing at a nightclub and had a blast. We have been going to bars often, but it is more of an effort to rally people into going to nightclubs.
Tuesday the 27th, I went to drumming class and saw Treza and Lindsay(homestay girls) who were heading to Kokrobite Beach for the day with the sons of their basket weaving teacher (Paul and Dominic) and some of their friends (Kweku and one other). I was easily convinced to skip Xylophone in the afternoon and decided to join them for a relaxing day of sunshine and sand and sea. After a long tro tro ride there, we set up camp. Kokrobite is just past Bojo, but not as secluded. We pay 5 cedi to get into Bojo and it is clean and there are lifegaurds who watch people swim in a flagged off area. When people get pulled to one side by the current/undertoe, the lifeguards whistle and you get out of the water, walk along shore, and re-enter in the proper place. There was no such set up at Kokrobite unfortunately. You also have to be more careful at Kokrobite of people taking your stuff while you are in the water, so I volunteered to stay with the towels and bags while a bunch went to swim. A while later, I couldn't see my friends anymore because half my view was blocked by a fishing boat on the shore. I noticed people standing up on the beach and looking over in that direction, so I looked too. Everyone I was with except Dominic were in the water pretty far out. They had been swept sideways, without realizing that there was a ledge and suddenly they couldn't reach the bottom. That made it easier for them to be swept out away from shore. They all tried to head in, but Paul and the other friend got really flustered, panicked, and realized they couldn't make it on their own. They called to Lindsay and Treza to help, and not knowing any other option, they turned around. When each girl got to a guy, he did what any drowning person will do: try to climb on the person saving you. They realized that not only could they probably not save the guys, but they might go down with them. Kweku managed to alert people on shore and an off duty lifeguard ran out, saved the guys, then gave Treza the extra push she needed to get to shore after exhausting herself trying to save the others and herself. Such a close call. Terrifying. They all came back to our stuff and passed out on the sand for a while, catching their breath and thinking over what had (almost) just happened. After some much needed Italian food nearby, we went back to Legon.
The next night, my normal girls (Annie, Erin, Lissy) went to Reggae Night with one of our only Ghanaian friends from ISH. Lloyd drove us with a bunch of his friends, some who we had met before. We met up with my Rasta friend Sowah at the beach and all sat around hanging out for hours. It had been frustrating and disappointing for me that I didn't feel I had made Ghanaian friends, but talking to these guys just made us all so happy. Every person is a person, and it is nice to be nice.
Thursday night we went to Jerry's for Treza's early birthday and had a wonderful time. Friday, I went to AMIS during the day, then one of our favorite spots in Osu at night for Treza's real birthday. Of course the last stop was a chicken kebab before heading home.
Saturday we forced ourselves to wake up early, pack lunches, and hop on a trotro to Boti Falls. I have been wanting to go here since the very beginning and it is one of few day trips that you can take from Accra. We spent hours getting there, met some British volunteers on the last leg of the trip. Boti is inland from Accra and the mountains are gorgeous and lush. Accra is so much more developed, but it is a crowded bustling West African city, not a tranquil rural mountain feeling. Boti was amazing. There are two waterfalls right next to each other and trees all around. We weren't allowed to swim in the pool at the base, but we waded up to our knees and took pictures. Then one of the British guys walked around the edge to get to the back of one of the waterfalls, and I quickly convinced Ezra to come with me and do the same. It was slippery climbing on the rocks to get to it, but it was incredible. I literally was standing in a rainbow as the mist drenched us. Then actually behind the falls, looking up at the water coming down...so beautiful. Annie snapped some pictures and they came out really nicely. I am going to try to put some up soon, possibly on here. After eating on the shore, we wanted to leave and ended up hitching a ride in a flatbed truck with the British folks we had met earlier. It was so nice to be out in the open air, travelling through the mountains and the villages, everyone smiling at us (screaming "obruni" and waving excitedly). When we got back to ISH, time to prepare for Halloween Ghana style.
At first I had no costume ideas whatsoever, but Wednesday I had the idea to be FanIce. This is vanilla ice cream that comes in a small plastic bag/pouch about the size of a king sized pack of M&Ms. People sell them on the streets and in small shops. To eat, you tear a corner with your teeth and suck out the ice cream through the hole you made. It's cousins are FanYogo (frozen strawberry yogurt) and FanChoco (frozen chocolate milk). Part of why FanIce etc are so wonderful is that they are one of very few things that you can buy cold. And there just isn't creamy food in general here. So when at a market in the heat that swallows us or walking miles accross campus, it hits the spot. Problem is, just like with the pure water bags that fill the gutters and beaches and streets, no one throws the wrappers out. They are everywhere. On my walk back from AMIS on Thursday, I realized I could collect enough wrappers to make something out of them. So Friday, I did. I started walking from my dorm to Shangri La instead of taking a trotro because it took forever and I am just not pushy enough to force my way into the ones that pull up with one or two spots open. Then I take a trotro from Shangri La to Nima where the school is. It takes about 40 minutes to walk. During that walk, shielded by a plastic bag on my hand, I collected 46 FanIce wrappers and 38 FanYogo wrappers for Annie. After washing them in the launry room, we soaked them in a bucket of water over night. Saturday when we got back from Boti, we went to work assembling. They were surprisgly easy to tape together, so Annie made a Fanyogo belt for her pink dress, cuffs, and a headband. I made enough "material" to cover one of my skirts, then safety pinned it on. I used markers to draw the label onto a white shirt. Treza came over in all brown, ready for a FanChoco bowtie. Lissy was toilet paper/a mummy, Erin was a whiskey coke, Ezra was superman. The homestay girls were also in on the Ghanaian foods theme. We had banku, tilapia, and pepper. Levi and Kyle were schoolboys. We took off from ISH, went to Osu, started at Epos, ended at Mirage (same nightclub as last weekend). Everyone had tons of fun.
Sunday we slept in, barely left ISH. I did a hot compress and face mask with Annie and I am hooked. She has to do them daily because she has problems with her eyes, but I just want to do them all the time now because they feel so nice. She is leaving for London to visit her boyfriend so soon, and I will miss her a lot while she is gone.
When she gets back, it will be time for us to do all of our travelling around during the finals period. So far on our list of possibilities:
Togo and Benin
Cote d'Ivoire
Burkina Faso
Mole National Park in the very north
back to Green Turtle for at least a few days
Just a little about AMIS:
I have embraced my role and become more realistic with what I do there. I am not really a teacher. I play with the kids, stop them from beating each other, sing their songs, help them write on little slates, eat lunch with them, sit and read while they nap, then go home. I guess that is what being a preschool teacher is like here, but I don't feel very productive or helpful most of the time. Some kind of entertaining and kind of sad mistakes by the teachers:
Fisch=fish
Peer=pear
Sheep=ship
Brusch=brush
Octbre=october
The water pipe project is going to start soon hopefully, because fundraising has begun. I am hoping that Mr. Anani is right that it will be done before I leave, but this is Ghana time we are dealing with. We shall see.
Other news of the day: I just booked a flight with Ezra from Boston to New Orleans for Mardi Gras in February. We will visit Annie, Lissy, and Erin at Tulane and see the parades and everything. So excited.
Overall, Ghana is great!!! Everything is so wonderful. I am incredibly happy here. Genuinely truly content and enthusiastic and jubilating all the time. I think for a while I convinced myself that I liked it more than I did, but now I really really really do. It is going to be tough to leave, and not just the friends I have made, but the country. I keep half joking that I will need to be re-socialized. I think reverse culture shock might be more obvious and harder to push aside than culture shock.
The Aya Centre is closing, and Terrific Tuesday calls again, so I will stop writing this much too long post anyways.
First weekend, Bojo beach. Reggae Night the first Wednesday. Thursday took off for Green Turtle (see last post) for the most relaxing weekend ever. The next weekend was the CIEE trip to Kumasi where we saw the Ashanti Manhyia Palace, Kejetia the largest market in West Africa,a Kente weaving village, and Lake Bosomtwe. While there, Ghana won the under 20 world cup, so we went out "jubilating." Working at Anani was improving and I started going more frequently, sometimes after class in the morning so that I was only there for the afternoons which are much more mellow.
Saturday the 24th, I went to Mr. Anani's sister's engagement party/wedding ceremony in Agboba. I went with Levi, the other CIEE student at AMIS, and we were the only ones there who were not family. We met Mr. Anani's mother, his many siblings from his father's many wives, a his many nephews. It was so nice to just sit on a couch in a real house and watch TV and talk to his family. Eventually the family of the groom arrived and the ceremony started. Brides family on one side of the room, groom's on the other, couches in the middle facing each other. Bride is hidden. Groom's family presents bride's family with a briefcase full of items requested in advance. He has had time to prepare, so really the engagement has been unofficial for a while. Representatives of both families went into another room to inspect, and eventually the bride's representative said that everything was in order and wonderful. Praying, singing, dancing. Then the presentation of the gifts. Fabric for the bride's mother. Something for the eldest brother since the father is deceased. A bible for the couple. A ring. With each gift, blessings were sang and prayers were shouted(almost all of this was in Twi, but I was able to understand the context of things. Finally, the bride came in and more singing and dancing, then blessings over the ring, blessings over the bible, blessings over some oil they poured on their hands, blessingblessingsblessings. Mr. Anani sat between Levi and myself explaining as we went along. My favorite part was Anani's mother getting up and dancing and people throwing money at her. She is ancient, but she was so happy and into the whole thing. On the way back we walked through the University of Ghana Botanical Gardens which are gorgeous and a little hidden hideaway right next to campus. I could easily and happily spend a whole day having a picnic there next to the pond under the trees. That night, we went out dancing at a nightclub and had a blast. We have been going to bars often, but it is more of an effort to rally people into going to nightclubs.
Tuesday the 27th, I went to drumming class and saw Treza and Lindsay(homestay girls) who were heading to Kokrobite Beach for the day with the sons of their basket weaving teacher (Paul and Dominic) and some of their friends (Kweku and one other). I was easily convinced to skip Xylophone in the afternoon and decided to join them for a relaxing day of sunshine and sand and sea. After a long tro tro ride there, we set up camp. Kokrobite is just past Bojo, but not as secluded. We pay 5 cedi to get into Bojo and it is clean and there are lifegaurds who watch people swim in a flagged off area. When people get pulled to one side by the current/undertoe, the lifeguards whistle and you get out of the water, walk along shore, and re-enter in the proper place. There was no such set up at Kokrobite unfortunately. You also have to be more careful at Kokrobite of people taking your stuff while you are in the water, so I volunteered to stay with the towels and bags while a bunch went to swim. A while later, I couldn't see my friends anymore because half my view was blocked by a fishing boat on the shore. I noticed people standing up on the beach and looking over in that direction, so I looked too. Everyone I was with except Dominic were in the water pretty far out. They had been swept sideways, without realizing that there was a ledge and suddenly they couldn't reach the bottom. That made it easier for them to be swept out away from shore. They all tried to head in, but Paul and the other friend got really flustered, panicked, and realized they couldn't make it on their own. They called to Lindsay and Treza to help, and not knowing any other option, they turned around. When each girl got to a guy, he did what any drowning person will do: try to climb on the person saving you. They realized that not only could they probably not save the guys, but they might go down with them. Kweku managed to alert people on shore and an off duty lifeguard ran out, saved the guys, then gave Treza the extra push she needed to get to shore after exhausting herself trying to save the others and herself. Such a close call. Terrifying. They all came back to our stuff and passed out on the sand for a while, catching their breath and thinking over what had (almost) just happened. After some much needed Italian food nearby, we went back to Legon.
The next night, my normal girls (Annie, Erin, Lissy) went to Reggae Night with one of our only Ghanaian friends from ISH. Lloyd drove us with a bunch of his friends, some who we had met before. We met up with my Rasta friend Sowah at the beach and all sat around hanging out for hours. It had been frustrating and disappointing for me that I didn't feel I had made Ghanaian friends, but talking to these guys just made us all so happy. Every person is a person, and it is nice to be nice.
Thursday night we went to Jerry's for Treza's early birthday and had a wonderful time. Friday, I went to AMIS during the day, then one of our favorite spots in Osu at night for Treza's real birthday. Of course the last stop was a chicken kebab before heading home.
Saturday we forced ourselves to wake up early, pack lunches, and hop on a trotro to Boti Falls. I have been wanting to go here since the very beginning and it is one of few day trips that you can take from Accra. We spent hours getting there, met some British volunteers on the last leg of the trip. Boti is inland from Accra and the mountains are gorgeous and lush. Accra is so much more developed, but it is a crowded bustling West African city, not a tranquil rural mountain feeling. Boti was amazing. There are two waterfalls right next to each other and trees all around. We weren't allowed to swim in the pool at the base, but we waded up to our knees and took pictures. Then one of the British guys walked around the edge to get to the back of one of the waterfalls, and I quickly convinced Ezra to come with me and do the same. It was slippery climbing on the rocks to get to it, but it was incredible. I literally was standing in a rainbow as the mist drenched us. Then actually behind the falls, looking up at the water coming down...so beautiful. Annie snapped some pictures and they came out really nicely. I am going to try to put some up soon, possibly on here. After eating on the shore, we wanted to leave and ended up hitching a ride in a flatbed truck with the British folks we had met earlier. It was so nice to be out in the open air, travelling through the mountains and the villages, everyone smiling at us (screaming "obruni" and waving excitedly). When we got back to ISH, time to prepare for Halloween Ghana style.
At first I had no costume ideas whatsoever, but Wednesday I had the idea to be FanIce. This is vanilla ice cream that comes in a small plastic bag/pouch about the size of a king sized pack of M&Ms. People sell them on the streets and in small shops. To eat, you tear a corner with your teeth and suck out the ice cream through the hole you made. It's cousins are FanYogo (frozen strawberry yogurt) and FanChoco (frozen chocolate milk). Part of why FanIce etc are so wonderful is that they are one of very few things that you can buy cold. And there just isn't creamy food in general here. So when at a market in the heat that swallows us or walking miles accross campus, it hits the spot. Problem is, just like with the pure water bags that fill the gutters and beaches and streets, no one throws the wrappers out. They are everywhere. On my walk back from AMIS on Thursday, I realized I could collect enough wrappers to make something out of them. So Friday, I did. I started walking from my dorm to Shangri La instead of taking a trotro because it took forever and I am just not pushy enough to force my way into the ones that pull up with one or two spots open. Then I take a trotro from Shangri La to Nima where the school is. It takes about 40 minutes to walk. During that walk, shielded by a plastic bag on my hand, I collected 46 FanIce wrappers and 38 FanYogo wrappers for Annie. After washing them in the launry room, we soaked them in a bucket of water over night. Saturday when we got back from Boti, we went to work assembling. They were surprisgly easy to tape together, so Annie made a Fanyogo belt for her pink dress, cuffs, and a headband. I made enough "material" to cover one of my skirts, then safety pinned it on. I used markers to draw the label onto a white shirt. Treza came over in all brown, ready for a FanChoco bowtie. Lissy was toilet paper/a mummy, Erin was a whiskey coke, Ezra was superman. The homestay girls were also in on the Ghanaian foods theme. We had banku, tilapia, and pepper. Levi and Kyle were schoolboys. We took off from ISH, went to Osu, started at Epos, ended at Mirage (same nightclub as last weekend). Everyone had tons of fun.
Sunday we slept in, barely left ISH. I did a hot compress and face mask with Annie and I am hooked. She has to do them daily because she has problems with her eyes, but I just want to do them all the time now because they feel so nice. She is leaving for London to visit her boyfriend so soon, and I will miss her a lot while she is gone.
When she gets back, it will be time for us to do all of our travelling around during the finals period. So far on our list of possibilities:
Togo and Benin
Cote d'Ivoire
Burkina Faso
Mole National Park in the very north
back to Green Turtle for at least a few days
Just a little about AMIS:
I have embraced my role and become more realistic with what I do there. I am not really a teacher. I play with the kids, stop them from beating each other, sing their songs, help them write on little slates, eat lunch with them, sit and read while they nap, then go home. I guess that is what being a preschool teacher is like here, but I don't feel very productive or helpful most of the time. Some kind of entertaining and kind of sad mistakes by the teachers:
Fisch=fish
Peer=pear
Sheep=ship
Brusch=brush
Octbre=october
The water pipe project is going to start soon hopefully, because fundraising has begun. I am hoping that Mr. Anani is right that it will be done before I leave, but this is Ghana time we are dealing with. We shall see.
Other news of the day: I just booked a flight with Ezra from Boston to New Orleans for Mardi Gras in February. We will visit Annie, Lissy, and Erin at Tulane and see the parades and everything. So excited.
Overall, Ghana is great!!! Everything is so wonderful. I am incredibly happy here. Genuinely truly content and enthusiastic and jubilating all the time. I think for a while I convinced myself that I liked it more than I did, but now I really really really do. It is going to be tough to leave, and not just the friends I have made, but the country. I keep half joking that I will need to be re-socialized. I think reverse culture shock might be more obvious and harder to push aside than culture shock.
The Aya Centre is closing, and Terrific Tuesday calls again, so I will stop writing this much too long post anyways.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)