"Please, I am coming."

The title of this blog is what everyone says here in Ghana when they mean like "wait a second" or "hold on". I I've started to say it. think I might have already said that in my blog, but I thought it was appropriate for this blog because, I am soon coming home.

So, this week has been so fantastic! Well, just this weekend. BEST WEEKEND YET. Seriously. So, Katie went to high school with this girl who came to Ghana on a  humanitarian trip, fell in love with a Ghanaian and after a series of events, came back and married him. So now, while waiting for his visa to process, they are still living in Ghana. There are a lot more details to the story, but I don’t super feel like typing those right now, but really, it’s just as crazy as it sounds. ANYWAYS, Katie, Brittney, and I went and visited her this weekend. It was SOOOO fun. They live in a town called Hohoe, and it took us about 5 ½ hours to get there from Mampong. But that wasn’t just driving time, that was like…transferring cars, waiting for tro-tros, you know, the works..So it was probably like a 4 ½ hour drive. Anyways we left Friday morning, so we got there Friday afternoon. We haven’t been in a typical Ghanaian home yet, so we were pretty excited to see what kind of house they live in, but I don’t think Paul’s house was really ‘typical’. It’s really nice for Ghanaian standards. Annie and Paul live with his parents, and his parents are the NICEST human beings ever. So is Paul. Seriously, Paul and Annie’s relationship makes me want to marry a Ghanaian. She definitely chose the right Ghanaian to marry. 

Anyways, when we arrived Friday afternoon, they had and loaf of bread and apple juice for us. It was divine. Seriously. Then after getting acquainted with them, Paul drove us in his car to a deaf school in Hohoe (ho-hoy). We just talked to the Headmaster for a minute, then went and talked to the kids. It was pretty fun. Then we went to Annie’s orphanage. When she originally volunteered here two years ago, she came to this orphanage, and now because she’s living here, she goes there everyday. It was really fun just because I love kids, but it was also very sad. The conditions were pretty awful. It was very eye opening. At the orphanage there were 15 girls and 30 boys. All 15 girls share one room, and the boys have two rooms. All of their English was AMAZING. They have a ton of volunteers constantly coming and going, so they know English and not their local dialect (which is Ewe). Also, they are very malnourished, so you’ll see a baby who looks like she can’t be older than 2, and she’ll be 5. I took a video of this baby…seriously looks like he’s 2 years old, dribbling a basketball like a pro. He’s really 4 years old, which is still impressive. After the orphanage we went and ate dinner, which Paul’s mom, Mary, made. She is a really good cook. I didn’t love the dinner because it had fish in it, but it was good. Then we just chilled with Paul and Annie. We watched a movie on Annie’s macbook, which is was I have wanted to do this WHOLE time, so it was super fun! 

Saturday we woke up and they took us to the biggest waterfall in western Africa called Wli (Ve-lee) Waterfall. It was really cool. And huge. Paul bought us mangoes to eat; he really is just the sweetest guy ever. Also, Paul knows EVERYONE. And if they don’t know Paul, they know Paul’s dad. Annie told us they are pretty well-off. His dad is a regional accountant and owns some farms, and Paul owned a taxi business, but just sold it a couple weeks ago. Then we went back to the orphanage, called Eugemont, and played with the kids more. We tried to play cards with them, but it was just really chaotic. All the babies were crying. After the orphanage was the BEST part!!!!! We went to the monkey sanctuary!!!!!!! It was one of the coolest things EVER! So at a typical monkey sanctuary you go pay an entrance fee, then the park people will take you to wherever the monkeys are that day, and you can feed them. When we went there, we pulled up right next to the front office and the monkeys were right there!! There was a group of about 80 monkeys just jumping around EVERYWHERE. It was SO cool. So after we paid, the woman working there gave us a banana to feed the monkeys with. You hold it out and like 3 or 4 monkeys will climb up your body and on your arm to eat it out of your hand. They really are just jumping everywhere, on your head, on your arms, climbing up your legs. It was seriously so cool. We were afraid it would hurt, but they just have little paws, no nails, so it didn’t hurt at all, but they were really dirty. So afterward my arm was covered in dirt. I would drive the 5 hours again JUST to go to the monkey sanctuary. SO worth it. 

After that, Paul drove us back to Hohoe (the drive was about 45 minutes from Paul’s house) and we made homemade banana bread. It was SOOOO good. We went to the market where they have all the cooking supplies for sale. It’s really interesting how it is set up. Everything is in plastic bags. They have big bags for flour and sugar and stuff, and tiny little bags with only like a couple tablespoons for spices and baking powder and things you only need a little bit of. It was really cool. So we bought all the ingredients we need and went back to Annie’s house and just made it in a pot. We didn’t have measuring cups or anything; it was definitely cooking ‘African style’. But it was SOOOOO good. AMAZING. Also when we got home, there were FIVE PINEAPPLES, about 45 BANANAS, 3 APPLES, and 9 DRINKS in our room as a gift from Paul’s dad. What did I tell you…the NICEST people ever.  That night we just hung out, played cards and stuff. I really love them so much.

On Sunday we drove to Ho to go to church. It is almost 2 hours away from Hohoe, but it is the closest LDS church to Annie and Paul. Paul owns a car, and it was SO nice to have him drive us everywhere. It was so nice of them, and saved us TONS of money. Church was…interesting. At the other wards we’ve been to I’ve felt right at home, and the church building has been really similar to an American church building, but this ward was just renting out the building, so it wasn’t really a typical church building. And it was just really chaotic. Sacrament meeting was good, but I felt like no one took Sunday school or Relief Society seriously. In Relief Society the lesson was on the Law or Chastity, but basically the whole time they debated about whether you should bathe with kids over 6 years old or not. Just a really big tangent and not at all related the point. Then Paul and Annie drove us to the tro-tro station. It was really sad to say goodbye. I wish we could have stayed longer, or been able to visit them twice. I love Annie so much. She is so strong and independent. And Paul is just the greatest person ever.

This week at school is a sports tournament. School is cancelled Tues-Thurs and 2 other deaf schools come to our school to play sports. They are competing in soccer, volley ball, track, ping pong, and net ball. Today all day at school we just cleaned the grounds around the school. I’m super excited to watch them. Friday (July 1^st) is a holiday here, so school is cancelled. We’ve seen signs for tons of parties and celebrations going on, so it should be good. So basically since there is no school this week, we only have one more week with the kids. I’m getting really sad. I love these kids.

My birthday is in one week, and we get home in two weeks! Be sure to send me a text on my birthday so I can feel loved when I get home! I love you all!

"I love my life!"

Hello hello hello!!!

The name of this blog is a Ghanian song that is played SO much here.

Here I am…typing on a super slow computer with an even SLOWER internet connection in Mampong, Ghana. This week has been great. We took a weekend trip to Cape Coast this past weekend, it was great. It’s about 4 hours (give or take 30 minutes, depending on traffic). So kind of like driving to St. George.

The hotel we stayed at was in the middle of a lake/pond that had crocodiles in it. It was kind of scary! There was this little dirt hill that they would come up on, and we could go walk by them and take pictures. It was super scary. But it was a really cool set up. It even had a pool!!! When they put us in our room…it was LITERALLY a jail cell. White walls, with 3 twins beds with white sheets, concrete floors, and one small light in the corner of the room. The bathroom was a community bathroom, and it was outside around the corner. BUT our key broke (they only use the big old fashioned keys here) and they had to switch our rooms. Which was a freaking blessing from heaven, because our other room was 1000x better. It had carpet and real windows and decorations and drapes. And a small TV and fridge and a bathroom connected to it. So that changed the trip from bearable to enjoyable. If you compare anything here to American standards, it looks like crap, but for Ghana, it was really nice.

All Saturday we toured around and did different things. First we went to a rope bridge. It was pretty cool. There were 7 different bridges that were about 120 ft in the air. The set up was very similar to a zip line through the jungle you’d do in Hawaii or somewhere, except instead of zip lining you were walking on scary rope bridges. It wasn’t actually scary though. But it was fun! 

Then we went to a slave castle. That was a really cool experience. I’d honestly never really thought about like…where all the slaves came from and stuff. It was just really thought provoking. The chambers they kept them in were pretty small….maybe like smaller than the size of the family room in my Heber house. And they’d keep 200-250 slaves in each one. They were never allowed out, so they pooped, peed, threw up, and ate in there. They said each floor had about 3 ft of waste on the bottom of it. The only ventilation they had were 3 super small windows at the top of the chamber, where the rain was supposed to come in and wash away all the waste, but it never did. In the girls’ chambers there was a bigger window so that the English people running the castle could choose which women they wanted to rape. It was sickening to think about. There was a “Door of No Return” where the slaves would walk through it, and get put on boats so they could be sold to the Americas or Europe (recall the Triangle of Trade from your history classes). They said over 2 million slaves passed through that door. They was completely crazy to me, because that was just one slave castle, there are tons on the coast of west Africa. And that was just the slaves that didn’t die in the chamber (they said they kept them in the chamber for about 3 months.) Then the conditions on the boat were so terrible that 1 slave made it to America for every 4 that died. It made me think about how many of there names were probably lost/how many people’s temple work we’ve done. It was really…sad and interesting to learn about.

Then we went to the beach. We went to a resort on the beach, where we also used their pool and ate dinner there. It was really fun. It was pretty over cast, so I didn’t get in the ocean because I would have NEVER dried if that happened. But we sat in the pool for a minute, and then just laid by the pool. It was fun. Dinner was also nice. After dinner we ordered ice cream…which was SUPER expensive. They always only give us 2 spoons, but there’s 3 of us (Katie, me, and Brittney) so we have a nice system down where we take a bite and pass the spoon. It works like a charm because there are two spoons going around so by the time you’re finished swallowing, you have a spoon again! Don’t worry, we filmed it. Then we decided the ice cream was so good we had to buy another one. 

Today we just went back to the daily grind. When we went to school, three of the boys in our class were mad at me and Katie (I team teach with Katie) because we didn’t come to school Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. We had to write an apology on the board for them to even look at us. It was funny. I really do love these kids.

 Here's a fun fact about Ghana, there are NO public bathrooms anywhere here. Everyone just pees on the side of the road. It’s pretty funny. So you just have to hope ALL day while you're out, you won't have to go to the bathroom, or make the walk back to the hotel. Also if you happen to find a place with a public bathroom, it's usually so disgusting you can't even walk in it, and there's never toilet paper.

We only have 3 weeks left, we’ve been talking a lot about going home and just like…what time we need to leave for the airport and stuff. It’s weird it’s so close. Three weeks exactly! I seriously feel like I have only been here a week. Every once in a while I get a glimpse of what I’m going to feel like when I really have to leave the kids, and I’m so sad. It’s going to be so hard to leave them. 

So…I realize 2 months it no where near 2 years, but I feel like I’m serving a mission or something. Here are the similarities. Foreign country, email once a week, knee length dresses and modest shirts….which leads to severe farmers tans. That’s about it. But really, I’ve never had a farmers tan in my life, and I had one within the first 3 days of being here. It’s disgusting. That’s about all. After you get passed all the lifestyle differences here, my daily activities are pretty boring. I hope all is going well with you. I’m just as interested in your lives as you are mine. Send me an email!!!

28 down, 28 more to go!!

Well, tomorrow is the half way mark. I've been here for 28 days and it has gone by SOOO fast. It still seems like we have a while still, but thinking back to the first day, I can't believe it's already been a month! I love it here more and more everyday. There's still things that I miss, but I love it here. I think I could last here a lot longer than some of the other girls here. Have I already said that?? I really love it here.

We did laundry today, I have blisters on my hands from scrubbing and wringing. I have a new appreciation for washers and dryers. I think that's the appliance I miss most. Doing laundry here is seriously so hard. I can't
believe people do that here their whole lives. And I have all really light weight things. They wear jeans and suits and all these things that I could NEVER wash.

This week we went to the Accra mall and had American pizza, french fries, ice cream and brownies. It was SOOO good. Please appreciate the food you have available to you. I miss real meals. I feel like everything I eat is a snack...which is basically is...Breakfast we have bread with peanut butter and honey, for lunch we have the snacks we brought from home, and dinner is a real meal, but they definitely DON'T have a balanced diet here. We have almost all carbs, fruit if we're lucky, and some type of meat, but you know how I am with meat. I barely eat it at home, let alone when you know it was just slaughtered and skinned out back. I haven't had any dairy here, except the ice cream from the mall, and...no vegetables.

Then after we went to the mall we went and did baptisms for the dead in the Accra, Ghana temple.
It was really cool. Different from home, but at the same time very similar. Every temple does things differently though, so it's just like going to a different temple than you normally do. All the members here as SOOO accommodating. For example, after we finished, we were asking some of the temple workers the best way to get to a ward in Tema. In like two minutes people found the temple president to come talk to us, who got us another guy from Tema who was able to give us all the information we need. He was more than willing to give us his cell phone number, the bishop in Tema's number, the temple president's number. They're just willing to do anything for us. It's so great.

What else...I don't know. Life is good here in Ghana. That's all there is to it. Oh, I took out my braids last Thursday. I had them in for two weeks. I wanted to keep them in longer, but you can't get them wet and we were going to do baptisms, so I figured it was worth it. I don't know what else to write and I only have 10 minutes left on the internet.

Have such a lovely week. It's weird to me that it's summer at home now and everyone is out of school. I'm sad I'm missing all the partying, and baby Ellie, and everything else that comes with summer. I love you all!!!!!!

Black! Black! Black!

Ghana is as great as ever. Just going to the school everyday. I love the teacher I’m assigned to, Eunice, and the class I have. I know all the kids names, and I’m really growing to love them. I just understand them A LOT better than I could the first week. But I just LOVE those kids. They really are sooo cute, and they would do anything for me, and they are soooo nice and caring. Here is a list of the kids in my class:

Eric (he is my favorite, I want to adopt him)

Afaribe

Jamal

Solomon

Isaac

Ali

Enock

Aidg

Vanilla

Frimpong

Patrick

Patrick

Razak

Richmond

Jennifer

Yarly Fynn

Barnor

Ruth
Bismark
Tetteh

They all have an African name, and a more American name. Those are there more American names. Eric and Ali are my little managers. When I show up to school and to play with them at night, they take my backpack and flashlight and carry them for me. They just take care of everything. They push kids off me when I am getting mawled, they tell me where to sit, when to take out and put my camera away, and they are ALWAYS by my side. It’s so cute. Also Frimpong is everyone’s favorite person.  He has a deformed ear, and just has a little bit of a different look about him, so he’s really easy to remember. All the volunteers I’m with know who he is. And he’s hilarious. He acts so mature and just so…knowing. Like he’ll just look at me and nod, as if he knows and understands exactly what I’m thinking. It’s great. The kids I teach are 10-14 years old. At the school I’m constantly being hugged and touched and everyone just is fighting for my attention. It’s great.

Last Saturday we went to Accra (which is the capital of Ghana) and went shopping and stuff. And I accidentally went CRAZY. I spent a lot of money ...I only have $280 left for the whole trip. And I started with…$657. (that’s Ghana cedis, not US dollars). But don’t worry, I set a strict budget for myself for the rest of the trip. I’ll be fine. Food and transportation take up a lot more money than I expected it to. Well, that’s a lie. I didn’t even think about paying for food and transportation, so really it just takes up money I wasn’t expecting it to take up. But really, I’ve just spent money on a lot of souvenirs. 

Oh, there is a real live mall in Accra that we went to. It’s like, real live American. Air conditioning, American food, movie theater, and really nice stores. Some of the stores were like…designer names. More expensive than I would even buy in the states. It was cool to see. We went and ate there. We had pizza and ICE CREAM. That was the FIRST dairy I’ve had since I came here. We’ve been in a couple grocery stores and their “Wal-Mart” and NONE of them have a dairy section. No milk or cheese or yogurt, or anything of the sort. It’s kind of crazy. But also in the mall the power goes out like every 5 minutes, for just like…2 seconds. It’s weird. I don’t know why it does that, and why it comes back on so fast. But I guess that’s a little different than America. ALSO, the prices are SOOOO expensive in real stores and grocery stores. Like a normal pack of Crayola crayons is $10 cedi ($7 USD) and…a box of cereal is also $10. Crazy prices!!! I’m glad we can buy stuff off the street here. 

We went to the LDS ward in Madina this week, and we met a former teacher at the deaf school name Marco who is a member, but doesn’t have an interpreter for church. He usually just shows up to church, doesn’t hear a thing, then goes home. What amazing steadfast faith that man has to be able to go to church each week and never hear anything. He said the only time he has an interpreter is when Signs of Hope (the group I’m with) is here to interpret for him. There were 4 of us who went this week, and we all tried interpreting for him, and we all weren’t very good. I did better than I thought I would. It was a good experience. We are going to continue interpreting for him each week and see if we can do something about getting him an interpreter after we leave. He’s a really nice guy. 

I bought fabric to have some clothes custom made for me! I’m so excited. That’s what everyone does here. They have sewing shops on every corner. You just go pick out your fabric and then take it to a shop and tell them what you want, or they have designs you can choose from. And they take your measurements and it is really CUSTOM made for you. Fits perfectly. But I got fabric for a pencil skirt, and a vest in the same material. I probably won’t wear them together, but just so you get an idea of what kind of material it’s made out of. Like…gray pin stripe. And then I bought some material for another cute skirt. Then I bought some crazy African material to make some parachute pants out of!!! I drew all the sketches out of exactly what I wanted, and it reminded me of the days when I wanted to be a fashion designer. It was so fun. We took them to the seamstress today and  I’m so excited!!!!! I also want to buy some crazy African material to make a quilt when I get home. I think that’s be cool. Oh, so the prices are super cheap too. The fabric is about $5 cedi a yard (about $3 USD a yard). And for a skirt you need 2 yards. So that’s $10 cedi, (like $7 ish USD) Then the actually sewing is like…$6 cedi for a skirt, $8 cedi for pants…you get the idea. So altogether a skirt will cost me $16 cedi, or about…$12 USD. And It’s tailor made. Amazing isn’t it.?

Brittney, Katie, and I made a list of all the things we take for granted in America, and we’re still adding to the list. There are SOOOO many things that we have in America that we could completely do without, but they are there just to make our lives easier.

I love it here so much. It’s so fun. I also love Katie and Brittney so much. If you don’t remember, Brittney is my roommate and Katie is the girl I knew before I came out here. We are becoming REALLY good friends. I’m so glad I have people here I am friends with. It would be hard if I didn’t. Anyways, that is all for now.