Bad Me

Sorry folks, no Ghana post tonight.

In good news, I might actually have a spot in an AmeriCorps position when I get home at the rate I'm going.

Real Madrid won 1-0 over Barcelona last night. The locals weren't happy, but some of the older boys in Ghana were. I tend to side with them : )

Gooooooooooooooooaaaaaaal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh hey!

This is to inform you, the loyal reader, that I won't be posting about Ghana tonight because I'll be off with fellow travelers watching the Barcelona-Real Madrid football game at some fine establishment.

More tomorrow!

Espana

All my posts may be about Africa, but I'm actually in Spain right now, as you may recall. Barcelona is big and entirely different from Dodowa, but also beautiful and full of life and energy. This morning, I toured a chocolate museum with three other girls from the hostel, one from Taiwan and two from the north of France. The entrance ticket was a chocolate bar and two of us enjoyed a hot chocolate drink at the end that was basically still-warm melted chocolate. Fantastic.

Fun fact from the chocolate museum: There's a huge tradition of giving mona (from Arabic munna, a type of gift) on Easter Monday (next Monday) in Barcelona. The mona is a cake the godfather gives to his godson every year up to his first communion at age 12. The cake is topped with one hard-boiled egg for each year of the godson's life. It seems that the tradition has evolved into families eating cake on Easter Monday. Between Mom's arrival and Valentine's Day on Saturday, tennis finals and Easter on Sunday, and Easter mona cakes on Monday, I don't know how I'll stand all the excitement. It's going to be a fabulous week.

In other news, I took a two-hour nap today. Reminded me of Ghana.

Day 6 - 37 Hospital

Thursday, March 17 – Day 6

I am in the hospital.

Don’t worry, I don’t have malaria or typhoid or any other ailment of which I’m aware. Emily, Tamar, and I are here at Accra hospital with Bismark and Joshua because Joshua broke [Note from the future: badly sprained] his wrist last night playing football (soccer). The older boys play football on the field every day after school. It is their sport and their passion.

Joshua broke the same wrist he had broken back when he was eight years old and somebody hit him or pushed him down. (Physical violence is common here to teach respect and many of the WORCSA children have difficult pasts, some including abuse.) Sara, Niki, and I met him last night en route from the house to the orphanage. We had been headed up to tutor but Niki and I offered to walk Joshua’s health insurance card back to the volunteer house. Two of the older boys escorted us.

Joshua getting his wrist checked by Michelle.

Volunteers handle all the kids' medical matters, including dispensing medicines for a fever or even malaria, deciding when hospital trips are warranted, and trying to figure out when the kids just want attention or the candy-sweet medicines.

Health insurance, unsurprisingly, is different here. Take Joshua, for example. Joshua, like all the kids at WORCSA, gets insurance for 4 cedis per year (paid by volunteers). His most recent health insurance card for his annual renewal has yet to be delivered from Accra by the health insurance man who comes once every three or so months. The temporary card he has expired yesterday. Even with the health insurance card, which has 15-year-old Joshua’s birth year as 1996 but his age listed as only 11, we paid an 8-cedi registration fee when we checked in at the hospital. Before the insurance man delivers the good-for-one-year card, the insurance place in Accra takes four months (of that one year) to process it. It’s a long, drawn-out affair.

This is a country of hospitals and clinics rather than primary care physicians so Accra’s 37 Hospital is full of people. X-ray sent us to the full-to-the-brim clinic waiting room to get a referral. The clinic shifted us (before we waited in any line, fortunately) to registration, where we got Joshua a patient card and paid the 8-cedi fee. After registration, Tamar and Bismark asked around for where we should head next. Someone at the clinic said we should go to the trauma & surgical ER and someone else said we should go to the clinic; we headed to the ER to avoid the long clinic line. There, we met the super-helpful older entry nurse who green-lighted us through the consultation and referral process after having a younger nurse do a basic blood pressure / pulse check right there at the wooden entry table. All the nurses wear blue-and-white or green-and-white versions of the stereotypical World War II nurses’ uniform, complete with pinned-on apron and stiffly folded three-sided white cap.

Day 7 - A Very Good Day

Friday, March 18^th – Day 7

Today was my best day here yet, I feel comfortable saying. Above all else, it was filled with high-quality one-on-one and small-group time.

I helped Beauty, the second youngest to Godwyn, get ready this morning then carried her to the bus stop. Three of the youngest – she, Godwyn, and Chicababy – are sponsored to attend Word of Faith Christian School along with all the oldest kids Word of Faith is infinitely better education-wise than the local Methodist school which the younger kids attend. It also costs about $700 US per year. On a plus for Beauty, who was badly abused until her arrival at WORCSA and still lashes out, Word of Faith was established by two American women and does not use caning as a disciplinary tool.

I walked Beauty then stood at the bus stop holding her, then, at one point, her in my left arm and Godwyn in my right with Chica hugging my legs from the front, watching the kids interact. One of the boys not from WORCSA walked to the stop carrying the remainder of a loaf of bread, about 3 pieces, in its bag. He handed chunks around generously, including one to little Godwyn. I started home shortly before the bus arrived and enjoyed watching the older kids help the little ones board the trotro-sized bus.

Though everyone agrees that Godwyn is two years old, the teachers at Word of Faith say he's close to three based on his development. He's smaller than my 17-month-old niece due to a severe protein deficiency when he was young, which, as they learn in school, leads to a condition called Kwarshkior. Playing with a plastic bowl in the corner, he looks like the quintessential African orphan baby; he's actually incredibly lively and adorably sweet.

Highlight of my day: the afternoon. This afternoon started slowly enough. It felt like there were fewer kids out-and-about than usual, even compared to the standard quieter atmosphere between the time the Methodist school kids get out around 2:30 and the Word of Faith kids’ bus drop-off at about 4. I spent quite some time sitting outside the boys’ room with Tamar, Niki, Joshua (who had stayed home from school due to the pain in his injured arm), George (the oldest, who was playing DJ on a cell phone that had a few stored African songs), Bismark (the third oldest, he’s George’s younger brother and co-leader at the orphanage), and ever-shifting combinations of younger boys dancing to the music. The oldest boys (George included; Bismark will transfer there from Methodist after Easter break) weren’t at Word of Faith because they’re studying for exams.

Later, when the WoF kids arrived, I spent some more time carrying around Beauty and allowing children to take pictures with my camera. George called me over and said he’d heard I’m good at maths. He absolutely must have heard this from Bismark, with whom I had a conversation in the hospital registration waiting area during which I pledged my love of math and tutoring math (without introducing the foreign concept of ‘tutor’) and offered my willingness to help him or anyone else in search of math-improvement help.

George, age 18

I affirmed for George that I know and love math(s) and he asked me to help him. We spent the next hour one-on-one in the otherwise-deserted classroom working largely uninterrupted on finding solution sets to inequalities involving a variable and some fractions (e.g., 5/3 x – 4/3 > x + 11/12). Lucky came in twice to try to run off with my camera case, but George handled him beautifully, making a game of chasing him under the desks until he rescued my case from now-shrieking-with-laughter Lucky.

Lucky (school name: Daniel), age 6

George and Joshua voluntarily walked me home after the study session, though it was not yet dark. George, who’s 18, wants to go to an American university in three years after he graduates Word of Faith, then continue on to medical school and become a doctor. His favorite class is biology. Joshua, who has years to decide his future, gently and super-sweetly coached me on the appropriate proximity (within about a yard) at which to extend a greeting to people who are passing. As greetings are essential, I very much appreciated the unprompted etiquette lesson.

Most of us returned to the orphanage after dinner (fried rice with a token smattering of vegetables) for the Friday night dance party George had told me on the walk home would occur if we showed up. Though Niki and Tamar got their groove on, many of us just sat and held kids. I held Kujo, then sat him on my lap as I read to him, Kwame, and Eto. Kwame had found two short kids’ books, one a Winnie-the-Pooh story about fall, and I read each aloud two or three times. The boys were much more patient than in daytime.

Afterwards, I walked a crying Lucky around to calm him then sang goodnight-circle camp songs to him and Kujo while sitting between them as both fell asleep with their heads in my lap. I eventually carried Kujo successfully to bed (a corner of a rug on the floor in the boys’ room – none of the youngest children have bunk beds), then chatted with Eto and Samuel about football and music before the latter fell asleep with his head in my lap. It was a peaceful night.

In other events, I took my first bucket shower today (so easy) and Tamar and I walked the five minutes to the salon this morning to get our hair braided. Even with three or more women working on it at all times, mine took nearly two hours to braid. The price? Ten cedis (about $6.50 US). I tipped two cedis to bring the total to a whopping 8 USD. Things are different here.

Dodowa vs. Barcelona

As it turns out, there exist some differences between a village in Ghana and a bustling city in Spain. Here are five differences of note from the past two days:

1. Fruits & vegetables - Out of the typhoid, malaria, et al. zone, I've immensely enjoyed getting to eat fruits and vegetables that can't or shouldn't be peeled in uncooked form again. Selections from the past 48 hours include pear, apple, plum, pepper, carrots, and zucchini. Yum.
2. Running water - I found that I use water differently now that I'm so used to bucket showers. It no longer makes sense for the shower to run for five minutes straight or for the tap to run for the ten seconds it takes me to apply soap to my hands. Once you've had all your water carried to your house in buckets (note: I tried it; water is heavy) by small children for a couple of weeks, every drop has a lot more significance.
3. Electricity - The power is on right now. It was yesterday and will be tomorrow. Nice but vaguely unsettling in its surety.
4. Greetings - Everybody greets everybody when passing on the street in Ghana. If you're within two feet of another person, it's considered rude not to say "good morning", "good afternoon", or "good evening". People in big cities tend to give you strange looks when you offer a simple "hello" ("hola") or even make eye contact. It's very different.
5. Walking in groups - Yesterday, I was walking with another girl and we passed a pair coming from the other direction. She went around them to the right, I to the left. In Ghana, we would both have passed to the same side of the other group. It's believed that when you cross members with another group in passing, your luck crosses with theirs. You may get good luck, but you'll also get their bad luck. Crossing paths with another group is thus avoided.

So yes, I'm readjusting to walking down streets and the constancy of electricity in the Western world. That's an aftereffect of a month in Ghana for you.

Accra Pictures

Pictures tend to make foreign (literally) concepts easier to visualize and comprehend. Also, they're pretty. In upcoming times, I'll post more pictures of adorable and energetic orphan children, but here are a couple from the first days in Accra to begin:

The IVHQ Ghana volunteer house (left) & compound

A first impression of Accra (uh-KRAW), the big city

 

 

Day 4 - It begins.

Tuesday, March 15 – Day 4

Happy Ides of March?

Today was my first day at the volunteer house in Dodowa and at the WORCSA orphanage at which we volunteer. Life has shifted rather a lot in the past 12 hours since our morning IVHQ orientation. We start our day at just past 5:30 tomorrow morning, so I’ll keep it short.

The kids are challenging and attention-deficit and engaged and fantastic, often all at the same time. Peter, one of the older boys, might have malaria, according to fellow volunteers Michelle (who was a nurse for years back home in England) and Tamar (who started this morning with Niki and I after a month on a medical project through a different program). Tamar, by the way, unconcernedly has typhoid; apparently the shot is only 85% effective. Lucky, who has special needs, clung to my back for much of an hour this afternoon. Kujo, who’s maybe 3 [note: he’s 5], fell asleep in my arms briefly before an orange-drink snack was brought out. I helped Eto and Elizabeth and two others with math homework, a highlight of the day. Eto was working on basic multiplication (e.g., 5x6), the girls on expressions such as 2a[(3x+y)+4(2a-b)].

Friendships and comfort zones can form and shift quite quickly. Everyone being new together shifted in a ten-minute transitory period to 3 of us rookies being surrounded by 11 veteran volunteers, coming to live in their house and join their project. Three are living this week, which creates an atmosphere of reflective farewells. It’s an odd sensation to be thrown into the challenges and critiques as well as the positive energy about the kids that these seasoned volunteers have developed over 2 or 4 or 8 weeks. I know the house will shift, amoeba-like, to welcome us.

Day 5 - 5:30 AM & Evening Rain

Wednesday, March 16 – Day 5

One advantage of waking up at 5:30 AM is that you’ve already done a-million-and-a-half things by mid-morning. By 11 AM, I had spent an hour at the orphanage helping “the littlest ones” get teeth brushed, clothing on, and otherwise school-ready, walked some of the younger ones to school (Lucky held my hand and a giant empty vitamin bottle much of the way), returned to the house for our breakfast (porridge, white bread, and mango – I had delicious nut butter on the first two), chilled with the other girls for awhile, fallen asleep during the chill session for an hour-long nap, and played a game of cribbage with Tamar. After being up for an hour around 2 AM due to the discomfort of the heat rash that stretches all down the front of my neck, the nap was essential. Fortunately, a coating of Neosporin and a dose of Advil did enough that I could eventually sleep again. Better heat rash than typhoid (or any one of the multiplicity of significant infections and illnesses the volunteers here have had). [Note from the future (April 17^th): When traveling to Africa, BRING NEOSPORIN. ALWAYS.]

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This is African rain. African rain is that summer-warm rain that soaks you to your very core in two minutes flat. African rain is like the rains of New Orleans, but it easily lasts half an hour, not five blissful minutes. African rain cleans your body and your spirit, refreshing you outside and in. African rain leaves your hair soaked and your feet muddy. African rain is too much for any single towel or line full of drying clothes. African rain sends you scampering for shelter or committing to a fully-clothed shower in a lightning storm under the banana trees. African rain washes away the dirt and grime, momentarily frees the mind of lingering heat rash and other discomforts, and cleans both the earth and the spirit. African rain is a beautiful thing.

After a cleansing shorts-and-a-tank-top shower in the rain (Jess and I avoided our planned bucket showers), I feel clean and refreshed and peaceful. This rain reminds me what I love about Africa, why I came to Ghana: the warm people and the extremes of weather. Some of the children still at the house joined us in the rain while other volunteers and children sat on the porch and watched us wash off layers of dust and stand and dance. We all got to simply be. As much as I love rain, I LOVE African rain.

Epic World Travels of the Service Sort

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you truly are." - e. e. cummings

Ghana Ghana Ghana!

It's true, I'm alive!

Where in the World update: I've survived an amazingly fantastic month in Ghana and arrived today (via a transfer through Cairo last night) in Barcelona, where I'll be for the next three weeks. I'll spend at least this week trying to share with you some of the awesomeness that was my five weeks in Ghana.

Yes, I'll be actively posting for the next week. If you have lots of time, you can read every day about my adventures in Africa. If you don't have lots of time, you can curse me for posting days out of order to better cater to my everyday readers. Or you can use what little time you do have to read about adorable African orphans - it's up to you.

To tempt you into the latter use of your precious time, here's one of my favorite pictures from my trip. This is Beauty, who's two years old, at the bus stop before school:

 

Don't you want to read about African orphans now? You can't say no to that face.

More tomorrow!

Day 1 - In Which the Learning Begins

Saturday, March 12, 2011 – Day 0 1

I felt like I was already on Ghana time during the flight down to DC from Boston. It’s barely past 9 PM but 5 ½ hours of sleep last night combined with the vague stress of packing for the next three months of my life(probably high-stress by my standards) has taken its toll and now I’m mostly hoping to sleep well on the flight.

I arrived in DC to find the airport filled with college students (seemingly mostly from UConn, including the men’s crew team) celebrating spring break in typical shorts-and-t-shirt style. My favorite was the pair of guys in matching khaki-shorts/navy-blue-shirts ‘uniforms’, one shirt proclaiming “Obama ‘08”, the other “Huskies”. My walk from gate D3 to C14 gave me time to begin processing that 90 degrees is much warmer than 30s and 40s. It’ll be a hot month.

I reached the gate and found the seats already mostly filled, not surprising for an international flight. Here, I was struck by a realization. (I blame the sleep deprivation and distractions of packing for some of the lag time on these now-obvious thoughts.) Whether it matters to me or not, race will matter in the next month of my life. At the gate, I sat down by the window, already aware by the time I reached my seat that I was one of three white women in the crowded boarding area. The sole white male was the older man, who works for United, who has been circling through the area offering jovially to check any and every bag. He’s also making sure we’ve all had our documents (passports and, for US citizens, visas) checked at the desk in preparation for boarding.

Race will matter in that I will automatically stand out by the color of my skin. I remember the Ugandan women’s rugby team telling us [the Brown women’s team] they were surprised how small we were, that they expected us all to be fat from fast-food hamburgers because we’re from America. The IVHQ Ghana pamphlet has already offered a warning of sorts that “fat” is used in a complimentary tone in Ghana. Don’t, it advises us, be offended.

According to the display monitor, it’s partly cloudy and 84 degrees in Accra right now. It’ll be an amazing month.

[Note from the future (April 17^th):

It’s true: race did matter and fat was good. On the race front, I heard “obruni, obruni!” more times than I could count, mixed in with the occasional enthusiastic “yavoo!” (obruni is Twi for foreigner, yavoo Ewe; Twi is the primary dialect of Dodowa, Ewe the Volta region).  My taxi driver on the way to the airport yesterday told me that the country in the world he would like most to visit is America because there are “many blacks” there. As for “fat” compliments, the kids happily told multiple volunteers that they were getting fat as their stays progressed into the second and third months. Obolo is a compliment because higher weight signifies access to adequate food. Wives should be plump to show that they are well cared for by their husbands. Our staple foods of white bread, noodles, and white rice seemed to seek to contribute to the goal of fattening us up. It was nice to be in a country with a concept of beautiful so opposite from the skinny American ideal. I think the American approach to moderation and weight control probably serves health better in the long run, but the body image issues sidestepped by the Ghanaian view create a much more positive overall image atmosphere.]

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Anybody who’s flown with me (cough cough, Melissa, cough cough) knows that I like to make friends on planes. This particular flight is no exception.

I reached my row towards the end of boarding only to find that my beloved aisle seat was occupied and only the window seat next to it was vacant (pro of international flights: no middle seat by the windows). Unfortunately for my neighbor, I didn’t submit to the aisle-window swap; I would love to acquiesce, but movement and freedom are essential aspects of my long-flight experiences. I’d rather not submit a seatmate to my stretch-time needs. Fortunately for me, not swapping didn’t seem to harm our long-term interactions. I helped with her Ghana entrance form (she’s from Accra so the form was straightforward, but trying to read the small passport font without reading glasses was proving difficult). I thought I was going to settle in to watch Due Date once we hit cruising altitude (Robert Downey Jr. was good in Ironman, so why not?), but I was mistaken. It turns out, I ended up watching one-minute segments every five or so minutes broken up by questions about where I’ll be in Ghana (Dodowa) or comments on how big the mountains in Colorado are or how sugary American food is (her proclamation: way too sweet). I finally gave up on having even one earbud in towards the end, at which point she suggested that I switch my screen to the map because I wasn’t really watching the movie anyway. Oh goodness : )

We now arrive at our first two lessons of the trip:

Lesson #1:  I have an accent. You have an accent. We all have accents. This much we know. But did you know how challenging it can be for someone from another English-speaking country to decode our accents? Very. (For example, I was giving my seatmate the flight number – UA 990 – and we went through a long time on “UI” with a brief stopover at “UL” before hitting “UA”.

Lesson #2:  I admit that I had been warned. Personal-life distinctions in conversation, the IVHQ booklet said, are very different and you may find your relationship status (especially if not married) at the center of a conversation. I didn’t realize this meant I would be getting marriage advice on the plane. Specifically, when my seatmate found out that I’m 24 and unmarried, there was the characteristic two-minute conversation break, then she turned to me and said, “You should get married in the next couple of years.” This led into us talking about appropriate marriage age. Take the ages at which Americans typically marry. Cut those numbers in half. Twenty-four starts to look much older, right? This may be one of the few areas of life in which Americans move slower than any non-negligible portion of everyone-else-in-the-world.

Day 2 - On the Plane

Sunday, March 13 – Day 2

I changed yesterday to day 1 because there is no epic adventure without that initial step out the door. Choose your beginnings with care then enjoy the awesomeness that life holds.

About ten minutes after writing about race (again, pre-jetlag lag time), I was washing my hands in the airport sink and realized that race mattered as much or more in Baltimore or New Orleans as it will these next five weeks. Quite possibly more. [Note from the future (April 17^th): True.] There, it’s a daily, in-your-face tension point. If you’re white in certain neighborhoods of Baltimore, you’re either a police officer or a census worker. Chances are good that if you’re not a police officer, the “po-po” will keep tabs on you until you head back to safer streets. I may notice how much more I stand out in some parts of the world (city or continent) than in others far more directly now that I’m not protected by the group anonymity of my khaki-and-grey team, but we as a collective unit stood out as much then. This is one area in which, for me, being in a group bred complacency and singularity breeds awareness.

On a cheery note, I don’t anticipate having to knock on many doors this time around.

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Let’s say it’s a very good thing that bananas were my next food challenge. Breakfast on the flight: blueberry yogurt, European biscuit-crackers, a “mini banana bread loaf,” and a banana. I am proud to say that, in a complete reversal of years of (carefully cultivated!) banana-avoidance practices, I ate the entire banana. I mixed it in with the yogurt; it had been refrigerated for storage, which helped the generally-questionable banana consistency. I never would have chosen a yogurt,-banana,-and-orange-juice breakfast three years (or three months) ago. We are more capable than we think. We may veil our capacity for change in an attempt to avoid the work of changing, but it is there and it is immense.

In other accomplishments, I miraculously slept nearly six hours on the flight. I never did watch the other 80% of Due Date.