Day 3 - The Card Game

Monday, March 14 – Day 3

Everything is wonderful thus far (surprise, surprise, I know). The country is beautiful, my fellow volunteers are friendly, our meals are delicious, everything is cheap, and the weather is warm sweat-inducing hot.

I’ll begin with the people. Evans and Jonathan (same pronunciation as in Hebrew: YO-nuh-tahn) met me at the airport and drove me the half hour to our volunteer compound. (All the houses here are inside walled compounds. Ours shares its space with two smaller family homes.) The house is great. An all-purpose living/dining/office/family room serves as the hub. It has the IVHQ staff work desk with two computers and a printer, a television always playing American movies and shows via a cable hook-up, a rotating fan (essential), a table surrounded by plastic chairs, and a dartboard. The bedrooms are simple: four bunk beds and a ceiling fan in each. The bathroom area has a sink and mirror outside two rooms, one with the toilet, the other the shower. The kitchen is standard – sink, stove, countertops, and fridge. We mostly only use the fridge, where all the communal purified-water individual sachets are stored, as it’s really Haaj’s domain. Haaj prepares all the meals and she does an amazing job with them. Breakfast was the amazing crepe pancakes I loved in Uganda with nut butter and jam. We had our first traditional meal, red-red, for lunch. Red-red is a spicy bean dish (kidney beans, it looked like) with fried plantains. Ghanaian cooking is typically quite spicy.

So who is this “we”? There are six volunteers living at the house right now: Lucas, Sharlene, Domenica, David, Nora, and me. Lucas has been around for the longest (“forever”, according to Sharlene), six months last year then five this year. He’s just finishing up these 5 months and will be heading back to the States this week. Sharlene is a New Yorker who’s here for the hands-on element of a Northeastern co-op program. She’s been around for one of her four months already, but is finishing up an unplanned stay at the house recovering from malaria. She’s our resident expert on the programs and where to spend the weekends. She says all the volunteers at the pink program where I’ll be (all the IVHQ Ghana programs have color-identifying names) seem to absolutely love it. Good stuff.

Domenica, David, Nora, and I are the new volunteers here for tomorrow’s orientation. Two more volunteers arrive today for the once-every-two-weeks orientation opportunity. I love the volunteer culture. We’re all into travel, adventure, and new experiences. Domenica and David are traveling as part of their public-health master’s program in California. After two months in Ethiopia, they’re here for two weeks. Nora, our resident English volunteer, is here for two weeks after six weeks in Uganda and two traveling through Ghana with a friend.

Our hangout time included last night’s epic game of Hearts. Sharlene had only played the similar game of Spades, but David supplied the explanations and cards and a couple of practice rounds had us ready to play. Nearing the end of the game, I had 27 points, David 50, Domenica 60-something, and Sharlene 94 when I got stuck with the queen of spades. The final round began with me at 40, David at 51, and Sharlene at 99. David and I passed across to each other, both knowing that I would likely win the game – he gave me a 98% chance – unless I was stuck with the queen for the second time in as many rounds…and all game. As you may have guessed, I ended up with the queen. She was passed to me and I had few other spades so I had to play her early and get her right back.

At this point, I had two options: 1) hope David eventually gained control and try to dump two or three hearts on him, or 2) attempt to shoot the moon. Go big or go home, I figured, and stated that I might as well try. Miraculously, my mediocre hand had just enough high cards to match everyone else. Holding the four of hearts until everyone else had mercifully depleted their supply of the suit, I managed to shoot the moon and win big. Kinda awesome.

At that point, it was 10 PM so we all went to bed. I enjoyed a lovely first sweat-reducing shower. The clean feeling lasted a whole ten minutes before the sweat picked up again.

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Yay new friends! Our newest volunteer, Niki, is also going to the pink project : ) Niki’s 18 and from Auckland, New Zealand. She’s here for three months (or potentially more) on a gap-year break before Uni. We’ve already discussed traveling together on weekend free time. Fun!

Life skill I have yet to acquire: balancing a basket full of fruit on a towel on my head. This is an incredibly legit skill that every woman here seems to have. Of note, the bowls do seem to have head-sized dimples in the bottom for this purpose.

I love that our house is a no-shoes-please zone.