Goats in cars, only in Ghana

10/17/07 Wednesday

Tip of the day: When washing your laundry in a bucket, prepare to have bloody knuckles. Seriously, this is truly a painful exercise.

Also, in an attempt to share a little insight on Ghanaian nutrition, or lack there of, I need to share an experience from the market today. While walking through, I saw cucumbers, bell peppers, cabbage, giant carrots, big green beans, egg plants and beautiful zucchini. My mouth was hanging wide open in disbelief that these vegetables are available in plentitude with no one to purchase them. You might be scratching your head as I was thinking, Oh they must be too expensive, but no, I assure they are not. And why do you ask are they not eaten, simply because of perception. They are perceived to be meaningless. So instead, every night, Ghanaians gorge themselves full of fufu, which is just mashed potatoes and soup and continue to live malnourished with big bellies and skinny arms. Its insane to me. Luckily, one of my objectives in the north is to teach nutrition.

Lastly, I have been inspired by my friend Sydney, to start a pen-pal project. I will begin this once I move, so my target date is the spring. I will match Ghanaian children and American children as pen-pals. This will allow me to teach English grammar and writing to the Ghanaian children as well as enable me to fulfill part of the peace corps mission: to teach Americans about Ghana and Ghanaians about America, ultimately to allow for a cross culture experience. I’m so excited. Also, today I got to teach a class to 6th graders about Water Born disease, Personal Hygiene, and Hand washing. It was awesome. Love you guys.

10/16/07 Tuesday

I’m listening the Balfa Brothers sweet Cajun lullaby as I sit and type this to you tonight. Ah the sounds of home are so sweet.
The strangest thing just happened, I walked to my room from the bathing area and everyone was asleep on the porch. My entire host family. The dad passed out on a bench, the mom sleeping on the steps, the little sister on a blanket on the concrete and the little brother, well actually, I don’t know where he was. I only went to bathe 10 minutes ago. It was eerily quiet when I stepped out and then I just was so surprised to find them all sleeping so early. Usually, I am going to sleep and they are still up and about outside, laughing and playing and running around and entertaining and me, the American is barely trudging back to my room, so exhausted from the day. Hmm, who knows.

Now, I have some funny occurrences from the last few days and as my dear friend Liz often says, “Can I tell you a story?”

Ok, so one day last week, I found myself in a taxi, a small four door sedan, with 6 Chanaians, myself and a goat! I couldn’t stop laughing inside. It was just really so funny to me. The goat was in the front seat on the floor board between the mans legs. When the other Ghanaians saw my expression, they laughed at me. At me, not at the goat!

That was the beginning of an odd weekend that included losing my wallet, getting very little sleep and going on a hike that almost shut down this operation due to the near death of several PC trainees. Ha, I’m totally exaggerating, almost.

Now, before I begin, I need to pause and give you a taste of traveling in Ghana… First, you set out walking beneath an unrelenting sun (everyone just sweats all day and night and I think I’m getting the hang of it) walking through the village, (don’t forget, we must say the entire greeting to everyone we pass along the way so add more time = additional sweating) and finally arriving at the taxi stop, which is basically an oak tree in front of the chief’s palace, which is actually, not a palace.
Then you ask where they are headed, which is invariably Techiman, because there’s no other place to go from my village, but you go through the whole greeting/ question/ answering session anyway. Then you sit in this hot taxi and wait for it to fill up, which means four in the back, and two crammed into the front passenger seat. Sometimes, the driver (pronounced deerivah) is even nice enough to put on extremely loud early 90’s hits for you to listen to while waiting, which makes thinking out of the question.
This is where the real fun takes place. As the car fills, and everyone greets everyone, we begin to fly down these beautiful hills at lightning fast speeds in these tiny little cars no bigger than a Civic, with the windows down because AC does not exist and so everyone’s faces are contorted from the wind and hair is flying everywhere and we’re all inhaling tons of dark, black smoke because cars here use diesel, not gasoline, and somehow, even with the wind, everyone’s perspiration is mixing with everyone else’s and you become aware of the realization that now you are just one of the Ghanaians.
Now, the experience of arriving in Techiman must be described. I want you to think about what it feels like to be in the middle of a conversation and someone yells your name just at the moment that you hear a crash in the same second that someone grabs your arm. Are you starting to feel it? Its just insanity mixed with noise and sweat and dust and smoke and sounds and smells and yelling and grabbing. Obruni, Obruni! This is what white people are called. So, they are yelling Obruni and sometimes men grab your arm or a woman asks for you sunglasses or even better, your shoes! (This happened to me the other day, a young girl that I met asked for my shoes as we were parting ways. I was shocked and just mumbled that I only had one pair. She was barefoot, I felt so powerless.) Ok, this is almost over, I know your tired, but you’re only reading it.
So, then, once I arrive in Techiman, I have to walk from one station to the other to then do this whole thing over again, but on a much larger scale because now I’m in the city and the station is actually a giant dirt parking lot and everyone is trying to hustle and get you to ride in their taxi and you don’t always know who to trust so you have to be tough, but I’m not tough, I’m scared but somehow, it always works out and everyday it gets easier and so now, I’m waiting to ride 30 minutes to Nsuta, for language. I do this commute twice a day and it takes an hour or so each way.

Ok, back to the story. I set out Saturday morning for language class full of excitement and anticipation because I planned to sleep at the Dery hotel that night. Ah, thoughts of resting cooly under a fan and taking a real shower! I could barely contain myself. Language turns out to be a field trip to a restaurant where we learn about food and plants that are native to my site in the Upper West. Here, I should mention that language classes are no larger than four students. The Peace Corps’ approach to language is awesome, we get great exposure and one on one time. So we finish up the field trip with a great lunch and I head over to another village, Arowa for football practice. On the way, I stop at the Dery, get a room, drop off my stuff. It begins storming, leaving the soccer field a big wet mess and making our practice resemble video footage seen on America’s best bloopers. We look like much older, out of shape, non-atheletes, slipping and sliding all over the field, running into each other, falling, missing the ball, I could go on and on. Needless to say, we all laughed pretty hard that day. I arrive at the Dery, filthy and sweaty, with 7 others who are also staying for the night. After showering and eating dinner, we are told, by PC staff, that we can’t stay there due to Peace Corps policy. Well, I will spare you the details, but basically, we can no longer stay away from home stay due to some recent occurrences of safety and security and so we all had to go home and I didn’t make it there until 11 pm and in the midst of all of the confusion, I lost my wallet somewhere, either in the taxi or at the Dery. So typical of me.

Next morning, I have no clue my wallet is gone, I wake tired and hurry to Dery for the Bat Cave excursion. We are set to leave at 7 am, so everyone is busting it to get there on time, but of course, we are on Ghana maybe time, so we finally pull out after 8 and drive 10 kilometers in about 30 minutes.

Now, this day was amazing. We set out walking through beautiful farm land, countryside. I kept lifting my head in awe of the scenery surrounding me. The rocks and trees magnificent, but nothing prepared me for the forest. It was breathtaking. I took pictures that don’t do any justice to what my eyes beheld. At one point, I thought, I must remember these images for eternity, and I must have said Thank You a hundred times. The caves were cool, dark, musty, damp with beautiful rays of light shining down through openings from above containing ancient rope like tree limbs that the natives used for many years to climb in and out of the caves. We walked and walked, and walked, and walked more. We were all exhausted. Some people began to feel ill, one person vomited everywhere and had to be driven away with several others who were over heated or over blistered or something. We all barely made it. That’s all I can say. The hike kicked our hinds, big time. Every age, every body type, we all suffered. We walked all day until nearly 4 in the afternoon, where we finally collapsed into a few taxis and made our way to our villages. Then I realized that I had no wallet and then I remembered that I didn’t have it all day, and that it must be at home, but at home there was no wallet.
Here’s the funny thing, that anyone who knows me will read with out surprise: First, I haven’t even done anything about it yet, I think it will make its way back to me. Second, I had half of all of my money in it, which was about 10 dollars, so I’m on a tight budget this week. Third, I recollect praying to learn how to budget myself and live bellow my means. Ha! Boy, did I get what I asked for or what?!
All said, I think next entry will probably titled, I got my wallet back!!, what do you think?

Whew, that was a lot to get out. Good night, all my love, Erica