Fun Pictures

Haha before making clay wood-burners, I was running around with this kid and this sweet old woman came by and tied the child on my back with her shawl. Since there are no strollers here this is how they get their kids around.

This is me meeting my counterpart, Suali, for the first time! We get along so well :)

 Ahaha. Yes I took a picture of a picture but this was hilarious. The 13 of us in Masse are waiting for our luggage truck to come and get all of our things to bring to Kumasi. This car rolls in and crams our things into the car. They then next drive to the next town to collect the luggage from the 12 other PCT's. Since they ran outa room inside the car they just stacked it on top of the car. Ghanian style.

I knew I wouldn't be able to get a picture of it since I didn't live in the other town so I got my friend to take one instead!

My beautiful family from L to R back to front: Deborah, Papa Seth, Mommy Aggie, Sammy, Deborah's daughter, Martha

Haha everything here has a biblical reference. It's guaranteed that you'll find a store with some type of reference to the bible down any street here.

Boti Falls. The locals believe this is a god. Cool stuff man.

Day 25

How can it possibly only have been 25 days!? Really I'm always so shocked when I relearn what day it is.
Language class is going well. It's a challenge to learn the distinct sounds of Dagbani but we're all (the 3 others in my class) working on it. We had our last day of language class for the next 4 weeks and are about to begin our purely technical training.
It was sad for me to have to say bye to my family here for the next month. I can't stress how much Ghanians will treat you like family. I love telling people that this amazing African lady is my mother. She definitely treats me like her daughter. My Dad here is super cool too. Shoot it's just a really good experience. Have I stressed enough how friendly everybody is?
We are staying at Kumasi for the next few days and we're currently in this hotel (Wadona Royal) that is ridiculous. I mean AC, a shower, a toilet, just holy shoot! This is as opposed to bucket baths and a pit toilet.
But hey, the last few days have been really nice. I had a few moments of anxiety but my days are definitely filled much more with awesomeness.

 This is the group and our wood efficient stove! My hair is getting long! I plan on growing it out once more (at least at the moment I do)

Day 19

Hey everybody! Back at the internet cafe.
So new updates... I'm still learning Dagbani and it's not nearly as fun as Twi. Probably because the region I'm living in is a Twi speaking area so I have nobody to practice with.Our days are pretty packed here with language for 6 hours then 2 hours of technical training. My day starts around 5am (I've gotten use to sleeping through the chickens that wake up at 3:30am) when the birds start chirping. Then normally I'm back by my moms store around 5pm and I eat dinner. Then I get swarmed by about 10 children and I run around and play with them. It's a good system so far but I'm always wiped by the end of the day.
One week ago I went to church with my family. Slightly awkward because I stood out RIDICULOUSLY. Plus the whole thing lasted for 9 hours... I went when they were having a special 18th year thing. I think I've gotten my fill of Jesus for a little bit.
So yesterday I made my host family dinner. I made eggs and tomatoes and then cabbage with chicken. They totally didn't like it! They kept saying that they had never had anything like that before. Haha. I tried to pick something I thought they would like too... ah well back to the fufu and banku.
We also made a clay oven for a family in town yesterday. That was really fun. We ended up making little faces on the stove for decorations with the extra clay which the family ended up taking down because they were scared of it. Oops.
Friday night my friend, Ran, and I went to this religious festival in town. It was totally awesome. The religious festival is how raves go down here. We didn't stay long though because we stand out way too much. We left after these people finished running in circles and they were starting the sermon. This is a crazy 3 day long event though. These people were up when I woke up for school the next day. Rave on.
Today we visited Boti falls and Akaa falls. It was really pretty! We were not allowed to swim in the water though because they were worried we would get parasites. Nobody argued. I had a ton of fun running around looking at everything.
I still can't believe I'm in Africa.
I'll post pictures when I can!

First packed lunch in forever. Haha. My Mom packed it for me.

Keneshi market adventure

Day 11

Today we figured out where we will be stationed for our 2 years. I will be at Yapalsi in the Northern region of Africa. I've been learning Twi (pronounced ch-wee) and I will be learning Dagbani soon. Things are really cheap here. about 5 cents for an orange FRESH from a tree. A 20 minute car ride costs like 75 cents. Flip flops, 60 cents.

The kids here all scream "obroni obroni" still as I walk by haha. Oh well. I guess it would bug me more if I was...? Either way the kids are still ridic cute!! They're happy with the littlest things. Rolling tires with sticks is an interesting game they play.

I'm doing well with the bucket showers and the food here I'm no longer a vegetarian (It was a fun 1+ year), but the farm animals here all run free, the country isn't destroying the world with pollution, and I'm feeling pretty healthy. So my reasons for remaining a vegetarian no longer apply to myself here.

My host family is super nice. My mom owns a convenience store (in the background of the picture) and my dad is a taxi driver and minister. He has told me he wants to "help me find jesus" several times. Haha. My sister is super cool. So all the women here are beasts. They do manual labor here and they're all jacked. I thought I was in shape.... not so much here.

OH! You'll all be pleased to learn that I've worn a skirt everyday but 1 since I've gotten here. They arn't as bad as I recall... 1 day in Ghana feels like an entire week. I feel like I've been gone for 3 months!!

I love the way PC is organized. I feel like they got their system down. I feel very energized and I want to do everything I can while I'm down here.

So far, so good.

First and Second week

Oct 8^th

The last couple of days have been a roller coaster. Been trying to get over my jet lag. It’s blurry with me though, is it jet lag or is it just my self-diagnosed narcolepsy?  Either way today was definitely the day that woke me up. I am in Ghana. I am in Africa.

To get us to integrate with the country the 26 of us picked groups of 3 or 4. Then we all had different tasks we had to complete. My group (Richie and Britney) had to get to Keneshie market in Accra. From where we are staying at (which is Valley View University) we had to take two tros tros (pronounced tro-tro),  one that got us to Medina and the other to take us to the market.  Tros tros are like bare vans that fit anywhere from 15-20 people. In one I could see the road through the floor but beggars can’t be choosers and these vans fill up.

I can say that Ghanians are some of the nicest people I have ever met. They must be for the PCVL to let us loose without being able to speak a word of Twi. Several times when we asked for directions Ghanians would stop what they were doing and actually walk us to where we needed to go.  They stop what they are doing and completely go out of their way to help us. The tros tros don’t try to rip us off and other passengers will actually make sure we get our change correctly and help us get off at the correct stop. Kind kind people.

The market sells everything you could imagine, except one thing- cigarettes. I find it very impressive that the Ghanians have socially banned smoking. I’ve yet to see a single Ghanian smoking and the only place Richie could buy cigarettes was in some really shady alley.

People try to sell you everything through car windows! The people (mostly women and children) will walk around and carry huge amounts of things on their heads. These women will be carrying bags of water on their head and go chasing after a van without dropping anything.

Oct 10

We went to the assistant ambassadors house today, Julie. It was a really fun evening filled with drinks and laughs. Wore a dress and everything. I’ll definitely be more “girly” by the time I make it back to the states.  Ghanaians (ga-ni-ans) place really high value on being dressed in a presentable manner. When it’s 95+ degrees out you will see Ghanaians walking around in pressed pants and a long sleeve dress shirt. The streets are littered with trash and public urination is socially acceptable.

Being a vegetarian has not been a problem at all. Everybody at VV is super accommodating. I did however find my first [live] bug in my food yesterday. I think it just crawled in there and by luck of the draw that scoop ended it on my plate. I wasn’t too hungry after that.

This is our last night at VV and it was definitely nice to be able to hang out here and get use to Africa a little at a time. Host family here I come!

Oct 11

We are now in Kukaruntumi. Tomorrow we meet our host family! Can’t wait. I’m really excited and looking forward to living in a very small community. You guys wouldn’t believe how NICE everybody is here. The culture is amazing. Their smiles are unguarded. The children will run after us shouting “obroni obroni” meaning “white person.” Guess I’m considered white here! Haha.

Day 2

I’m sitting in the JKK airport. Yesterday I flew into Philadelphia and went through the staging event. There are 26 of us total. We all learned a lot about what to expect and about each other. It’s so unreal to finally be moving about and getting everything underway. It still hasn’t fully registered with me that I’m about to leave for Africa. Maybe it will while I’m on the airplane.

Everybody has been a ton of fun hanging out with. We've got an eclectic awesome group of people.

Oh and when did I finish packing? 3:30am. I left for the airport at 4:15 haha.

3 Days

What an unexpected turn of the weather! Under normal circumstances I would have been sad/annoyed that it was so chilly in Ohio (45 degrees!), but right now I am loving it. This is going to be the last time for a while that I get to walk around feeling the bite of the air on my face.

My phone is getting turned off on Oct 6th. How strange it will be to not have a cell phone... looking forward to it!

So packing. I should reaaalllly get started... but first I'll go watch Planet of the Apes (it was my brothers choice).