My intro to Ghana

March 11, 2012

So, leave it to me to be the ULTIMATE procrastinator. I have been in Ghana for OVER a month and am just now creating and starting a blog. I am a winner!

There is so much I could and should update on. Such as, my first impressions of the country, the people and the food? To start off with, I STILL make comparisons to Namibia almost on a daily basis. There were things to me that just weren’t as shocking for me as I think they were for my fellow trainees. Things such as women carrying anything and everything on their heads. Eating soup or stew with almost every meal. 

The people of Ghana are so incredibly welcoming and open to the O’Bruni’s (Us white people). They will stop everything they are doing to give you directions, maybe even walking you to where you need to go to verify you get there. They are so great. We did an activity in the capital, Accra, on day 3 where we had to get ourselves to different locations in our groups of 3, and get back. As a group there was definitely uncertainty beforehand. For ALMOST all of us, we came back feeling great about our ability to get TroTro’s (The public transportation we will commonly be using) going where we need to go. For the group that had a hard time, well, they’re doing well a month in so they’re really not any worse for the wear. On the TroTro’s, they are very interesting. They aren’t all the same, but this first one we took was very cramped. I don’t know how someone taller than me could sit in it. My back was flat against the seat and my knees were jammed into the seat in front of me. I have never had the happen to me. I am comfortably short, I never have knee issues. Even if I put my seat all the way forward in a car so the person behind me can have leg room. It just does not happen to me! It was crazy! I have learned since then they are not all like that.

We were only really in the Accra area for about 4 days before leaving for homestay and training. My hostmom, oh my hostmom, when we first got our families I was one of the only people who had only one person there to get me. Then I found out it is only my mom in the house. There is no way I could have known right then HOW MUCH I would love this woman. She turned 70 February 6 (The day I left home!) and she is amazing. She owns her own shop, she owns the house, and has spare rooms that she rents out. She watches music videos until she goes to bed. She loves it when I dance, and yes, she will start dancing with me. She is amazing! I will genuinely miss her when I go to cite.

Now, to start telling you about the food. I love it most of the time. I love riceballs and groundnut soup (peanut butter soup), rice with stew, spaghetti (because my mom does make it for me!).  Boiled yams and plantains with stew is getting a bit old but that is ok. My mom is a good cook, and she doesn’t use as much oil as a typical Ghanaian would cook with, so my intestines and I are both very much appreciative of that.

I think I may be the one odd ball out that doesn’t enjoy eating sugar cane or coconuts. We have discovered Fan Ice and our lives have all been better for it. It’s like a popsicle in a bag. They have Fan Ice vanilla flavored (It’s like eating frosting..) Fan Dango which is like orange, Fan Yogo which can either have Choco or Strawberry (It’s a lot like eating a partially frozen strawberry yogurt). We hit up the shop for one of these flavors multiple times a week. I eat a lot of biscuits (Americans would say crackers). I have discovered a kind that is like a vanilla flavored cracker, and it has strawberry filling that reminds me of strawberry milk. Which, yes, I do still enjoy as a 23 year old. There is a sucker that a lot of people in my group enjoy. What I enjoy about them is watching my group members struggle to get the wrappers off. It is soo comical! There have been times I have kicked myself for not recording it.

We live in a medium/large village, by American standards it is a very small town. There are about 2,000 people who live here. Greetings can be my favorite or my least favorite part of my day, depending on my mood. When we walk to school, home for lunch, back from lunch, and on our walk home at the end of the day we greet every person we see. It helps the village get to know us, and it helps us get more comfortable speaking. I’m living in a community that speaks Twi (pronounced Chwee) but am learning Dagbani. So that can be hard. I walk with my “sister”/”cousin”, Jen, everywhere because it is what our parents want us to do. She is learning Twi, so when they ask us something other than where we are going she can respond and I can’t. My common defense is throwing my arms up in my “I don’t know” pose and say that I am learning Dagbani. Sometimes people get it, sometimes they don’t. There are two people on our walk that Jen and I look forward to greeting every morning. One is Emma, she is a very happy, enthusiastic old lady. Another is a village elder. If either of them are not there at any part of the day (particularly the morning) or their moods are off, we notice and generally say something later. I hope they know how much we like them.

So my life here is pretty busy. I have language class everyday for a total of 6 hours, and technical training for 2 hours. We have class from 8-5 Monday – Saturday. Thursday we have to travel to another town for training, and there are different sessions but that is our language free day. It is also the day we typically get American lunches which is ohh so loved! After school I like to spend some time with my mom. I also have to do homework/study. It makes it hard to learn how to cook the traditional dishes, because my mom always has them cooked before I get home. Our free days are generally Sundays, unless of course the Peace Corps schedules something for us. If they schedule something for us, our next day off is the next free Sunday.

I have a really great language teacher and group. As I stated I am learning Dagbani. My teacher is Mutala, and we love him. He has such interesting stories, and we commonly ask him to tell us stories about his life. Then we joke that we know more about him than he knows about us. I’m horrible, I tease him that I will use some of the info against him when I’m up in the North, or Tamale his hometown (Which is where my closest sub-office will be). There are three of us students, Molly and Seth Roby and myself. I’m really lucky, because Molly and Seth are fantastic. I am catching on the slowest of us three but they are so patient. Seth will bust out his teaching skills and restate something so that I can understand it better. They really are fantastic. We have class in the old Methodist church, which is small and doesn’t have as much natural air movement but we have ceiling fans so it all works out. We also have a pet chicken. For a few days we had to keep chasing this stinking chicken out of our class. Then one day when we were at lunch it got in and laid eggs. A few days later the eggs and the chicken were missing, I guess it’s owner took it home and probably tied it to something so it couldn’t get away. Ever since then we love talking about the “noyoli” (pronounced no-you-elly) which means crazy/stupid chicken. It’s just a running joke in our class.

So yes- Dagbani. Molly, Seth and I are the only ones in our group who are going to be placed in the Northern Region. The girls learning Dagaare, Kasim, and Ryan learning Awe know our region. The Twi-ers have no clue. Twi is spoken commonly in the more southern regions of Ghana, so nothing has been narrowed down for them. Contrary to their popular belief, it doesn’t really mean anything to me to know where I’m going yet. It’s not like I get to go to the north sooner than they will go to their regions. I’m also a person who loves surprise, so I think that element of the process would be really fun. Oh well.

OK, I have to get going but I will continue to update next time. And there will be more stories. I will try not to be such a procrastinator on typing everything out. I wrote this for a week in my head and waited until the night before going to the internet to actually type it out. You live