Hello interested readers. Hahahahahaha. I am just writing this from an internet café in Mampong Ghana. NBD. So here’s a quick run down of what I’ve experienced so far.
Ghana is freaking hot, and freaking humid. It took a while to adjust, but I’m just approaching week 2, and I don’t mind the humidity anymore. My skin finally doesn’t feel sticky ALL the time anymore.
For our first week we didn’t have permission to go to the deaf schools yet, so we just kind of sight saw the close towns around us. EVERYONE here is SUPER friendly and wants to be your best friend because you’re white. All the little kids, and some adults yell “Obruni! Obruni!!” when we walk by. Which just means white person. Then we always yell back “Obibini!” which means black person. They get a kick out of it. Neither of them are offensive. But basically everyone comes up and talks to you. Everyone here is also SUPER nice. I feel more safe here than I do at home, and that’s the truth.
The water isn’t safe to drink out of the taps, so we have to buy purified drinking water. It comes in little 18 oz plastic bags that you just bite off a corner and drink out of. All the food is just sold on the side of the road, and it’s all safe to eat. They have the BEST bread. And we discovered this AMAZING thing call Ballfloat (pronounced bo fruit) which is kind of a mix between a donut and a scone, more like a scone. But they’re SOOOOOO good. Every night for dinner we eat rice or pasta with some type of spicy sauce, and some type of meat (fish, chicken, goat). And fruit. Their fruit here is the BEST. I’ve tried a lot of weird foods like Fufu and Banku, which are both just mush that you eat with your fingers. I’m gagging just thinking about it. But really, I’m getting fat here. The food is so good, plus I have SO many snacks. We all joke that all we ever want to do is eat.
I got my hair braided in rasta braids, and I wish I could post a picture, because it’s freaking sweet. I love it so much. I want to grow dreads when I get back. Getting the braids was the MOST painful thing I have ever experienced and I would never do it again! It took 5 hours with 3 women working on my hair the whole time. First you choose the color of fake hair you want, then they start braiding it into your hair. It’s super long too. Then after they finish that (about 3 ½ hours) they snip up the edges of each braid and cut off any stray hairs (even if it’s your real hair). Then they take a TORCH and burn up the braid to burn off the rest of the stray hairs. Then they dip the ends in the STEAMING hot wax/water stuff. It’s quite the process, and SUPER painful. Not only that, the braids add about 6 pounds to your head. The first day I couldn’t hold up my head without the support of my hands. But eventually I got used to that. The biggest problem is that they’re SO itchy. You can’t get them wet, because they’ll never dry and then they’ll start to mold. So it’s really nice not to have to do my hair, but I’m definitely not going to do it again. It’s not worth it. I’ve had it in for a week tomorrow, and I think I’ll try and keep it in for another week, but my real hair is already sprigging out everywhere. But it looks so cool.
We started at the school a week ago and I LOVE those kids, so much. They’re the cutest things I’ve ever seen. I seriously want to take them home with me. It’s REALLY hard to understand them. The signs are more different than I expected them to be. I can understand older people fine, but I teach younger kids and it’s really hard understand them. That creates a problem with trying to teach. It gets really frustrating. It’s also pretty sad, because most the kids in my class are 10-14, but they have a reading level lower than my 5 year old niece Aubree. The last week I’ve been trying to teach them multiplication, but it’s really hard when they don’t even know the difference between adding, subtracting, and multiplication.
There are 11 people I’m here with, all girls. And I LOVE them all. 3 are deaf, and the rest are hearing. My roommate’s name is Brittney Ruesh (you can facebook stalk her). She’s SOOO beautiful and she got engaged a week before we came here. I love her so much. We’re becoming really good friends. And then of course there’s Katie Pendleton that I knew before I came out here, basically us three just hang out a lot. I love them both so much.
When it rains here, it RAINS. It’s crazy!! There are ants everywhere; we can’t eat in our bed rooms because of the crumbs. It’s funny because in America if ants got in my food, I would throw it away. Here I just pick them out and keep eating. Happens with almost every meal. There’s frogs, lizards, and chickens everywhere. And HUGE spiders…and that’s about all the exotic animals. I saw a pet monkey, but no wild ones.
We have to do our laundry by hand and that’s by FAR the worst thing I’ve ever done. Seriously, all who are reading this APPRECIATE your washers and dryers. It’s so hard to wash clothes by hand!! Especially in 85% humidity where you have to wring them out like CRAZY or else it won’t dry, and then get stinky and moldy. Our hotel worker Theophilus (Tio-fee-los, but we just call him Tio) is our good friend and I’m learning a lot about the culture from him. He asked us what we use to wash our clothes in America and explained how washers and dryers worked. It’s crazy to me that he’d never even heard of one.
Some other short facts…we take taxi’s everywhere….or walk. Or if you have more people than can fit in a taxi, you get a tro-tro which is like a 15-20 seater van. It’s Ghana’s ‘bus’. They cut the grass by hand…by machete. It’s super hard, I tried it. Everyone speaks at least a little bit of English, but they all speak Twi, which is a mix between English, French, and their own dialect. I’m learning a little bit of it. I can say Thank you, Come here, Good morning, Good afternoon, Good evening, and God bless you. Everyone greets each other with Good morning, afternoon, or evening. Instead of saying “I’ll be right back” or “just a minute” or whatever you say to excuse yourself for a minute they say, “I am coming”. It’s funny. Me and Katie like to practice our accents. A typical day for me is to wake up around 6:30, shower and get ready (showers are ICE cold. But everyone once in a while you get a warm one) and walk to the school by 8 (about a mile walk). Then we teach till 2. Then we can do whatever we want, sometimes we sleep or read, or go to town, go to the internet café, whatever. Dinner is at 5, then we go back to the school after dinner to play with the kids more. On weekends we have some sweet things planned. I’m excited.
Church is freaking awesome. I can’t wait to go every week and get to know the members better. The church is the same everywhere, people. It’s amazing. It’s about an 1 hour tro-tro ride to the closest LDS church, so be thankful for a church on every block in Utah.
I've rapped and dance with some pretty awesome people here. EVERYONE here is so great at dancing. It's great.
I'm sure there's more I want to talk about, but that’s all I can think of right now.
