Boom.

Letter to the assembly members. With my signature.

'Nuff said. I love my job.

Yen koh!
Ekuwa

The Ants are Out for Blood

I’m actually serious about the title. Ants eat blood. They crave it. I’ll spare you the details on that one.

So, I did go to Eguafo on Saturday and it was good to hang out with my friends there. They’re all doing fine. I husked corn with one of my best friends there for a long while, as she explained to me how she would end poverty in Ghana if she became president. She’s so smart, she really is. Then I talked with some of my other friends and they gave me some food called ampesi, (sorry for butchering the spelling on that one), took a walk around the farm and garden – I got to see some cassava plants that I helped plant last year… they’re big now! – then talked with my brilliant friend again and then I went back to Cape. I had been feeling a little bit depressed before, but going back there and just having a change of scenery made me feel a whole lot better again. The daily grind, you know? Gotta switch it up…

By the way, if you’ve ever been to Eguafo and worked at Sankofa, the kids remember you. All of you. They remember your names and what you did and how you treated them and everything. Maybe this makes you feel really good, and it should because it means you meant a lot to them. But it also means you meant a lot to them. One of the boys said to me, “The white people… whenever they come here, they go. If I ever go to the U.S., I will never come back. Except on Christmas. And to get my sisters if I get enough money.”

My fertility beads became untied and fell off my waist. Good riddance. They were beginning to remind me of somebody irritating to me.

And now I have to tell you this story:

It’s Saturday evening. We’ve finished dinner and Emily (one of my housemates) and I decide to watch a movie on her laptop. Usually we leave the light on in the living room all night, but today we turned it off to see the screen better. Around 9 pm, she gets tired and goes to her room to sleep. Then I decide to take the laptop into my room to finish the movie in bed. As I’m leaving the living room, I notice Emily’s tablet charging and lying on the ironing board. I turn off the switch on the outlet so that the tablet doesn’t charge all night and get overheated, then I go to my room.

The movie is over so I call my parents. Then Kayla comes home from the village on stilts trip around 10 pm, so I hang up and listen to her talk about how it was. Then she goes to get ready for bed and I call my parents back. I go to sleep around 10:45 pm. By 12 am, all the lights in the house are turned off.

In the morning, Emily asks where her tablet is. I say I last saw it on the ironing board. Some of the things that were also on the ironing board are gone too, so maybe our host sister moved them or something. So Emily goes downstairs and asks has anyone seen her tablet. Our Auntie and two host sisters look at each other.

There were marks all over the wall outside, like dirty fingers trying to climb up. The screen on one of our windows had been sliced through. Someone had broken into our house and made off with the tablet and charger.

But we were lucky in a lot of ways. First of all, nobody was hurt. Second of all, Emily and I were sleeping with our doors open, so if the person had wanted to, he/she could have crept into our rooms and taken other things, or potentially even kidnapped one of us if you think about it. Good thing I had brought her laptop in my room, because they didn’t go in there. Emily even said though that she’s almost glad that the tablet was out in the living room. Because what if it hadn’t been? Would the thief have left empty handed, or would he have entered one of our bedrooms? She actually took the whole situation really well. She went to an internet café and changed all of her passwords, so at least the thief can’t get onto her email etc.

There have been other nighttime robberies in the neighborhood, too. Our Auntie is installing an electric fence today. And you know that we’ll be putting all of our things in our rooms from now on… and keeping our doors locked when we sleep.

Despite this scary event, I still have to say that I feel very safe here and in my homestay.

I finally got some fufu. I practically had to beg for it, but I got some. My host mom said that the soup would be too spicy for me. Maybe it was a little. But fufu is so worth a runny nose and tingling lips.

In other news, you can’t gossip here. Even though you know people are talking about you behind your back, you seriously can’t say anything about anybody, even if you aren’t saying something you intend to be mean. If you aren’t saying something 100% nice about someone, don’t say it. The person will find out and take offence. I guess that’s a good rule in general to follow, no matter where you are.

I bought a really nice painting today from one of my favorite vendors. He’s really chill and a Rastafarian. He has pet cats that walk around his shop. And he doesn’t try to pressure me or hurry me to buy something. So I like buying paintings from him.

And so now, my dear readers, I will leave you with four quotes that have been on my mind recently:

“Life is what you make of it” (My Auntie)

“If not me, who? If not now, when?” (On a poster I saw at a boba shop once)

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now” (An African proverb in one of the books I read for my Early African History class)

“So long, and thanks for all the fish” (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film)

PS: At the present moment, I am eating pancakes that I bought off a woman's head. I couldn't be happier. 

Yoh, yen koh!

Ekuwa

I Haven't Been Smiling as Much (Mini Post)

I could sit here and type about something new that happened to me or something that you might not know about Ghana or what I ate for dinner but I really don’t feel like it. I think I’ve done enough of that. Instead, I’m going to talk a little bit about me.

I’ve felt a very small amount of anger for a couple of weeks now. It’s sort of just always there, lurking. I couldn’t really figure out why, but now I know, and this next example might give you some insight into my internal struggle.

This Saturday, a big group of Proworld volunteers is heading over to the famous village on stilts, quite the tourist attraction. It takes 4 hours to get there and 4 hours to get back. I will not be going with them.

The not-too-fond-of-tro-tros part of me says, “Why would you want to spend 8 hours travelling on a bumpy road, just look at some houses and lie on the beach?” The anti-tourism part of me says, “What, you’re going to go into someone’s backyard in a canoe, stare at them, and then leave? If you’re going to go at all, don’t go with a huge group of tourists, at least”. But the anthropologist in me is screaming, “Go there! Go now! See how other people live on the water, you will literally die of happiness!”

I’ll be going to Eguafo instead. I haven’t been there for like, 2 weeks and I really need to see everybody. I’ll have all day.

I just feel really conflicted. I don’t think I’m getting as much as I could out of this experience as I did last year. Maybe I came in with inflated expectations. Maybe part of it is being in a city, where you don’t talk to everyone you see. Maybe part of it is that I have internet almost every day. Definitely part of it is that I’m not taking enough initiative to try new things. And part of it is that…

I spend almost every waking moment with at least one North American person. Almost every day, somebody mentions something she misses from back home, like steak or … whatever, mostly steak actually. I think that this is part of my anger. Because I agree! I miss steak and my leggings and cars not honking and the plethora of clean public toilets. But you can’t just compare countries. You need to look at them in isolation.

Why can’t we talk about the good parts about Ghana? LOOK UP! Don’t you see the beautiful lights and colors and smells and swirling ocean of bobbing heads as people jostle down the narrow roads of El Mina? Don’t you see the way the rain soaks into the wood of the road shacks and the way the taxis pop against the gray sky? Aren’t you in awe as you see a mother and her children eat dinner outside in pitch black darkness, only by the light of a kerosene lit flame?

Unfortunately, I see most of this while sitting in a tro-tro, driving past, never interacting with any of these people, as I head towards some expensive restaurant that really only tourists eat at.

The point of me saying all this is that… I’ll get to the stilt village eventually, just not on Saturday.

Last semester I wrote an ethnography as part of my Methods in Cultural Anthropology class with one of my best and favorite professors. When I was close to being finished, he asked me if the experience was worth it. I said, “Yeah, I definitely think it was worth it, but I also think I will never do it again.” He informed me that every person who writes their first ethnography swears, “Never again”. He went on to tell me that ethnography is “not something you do. It’s something you are”. Then he offered me an understanding smile. And I felt trapped. I still feel trapped; even more so now that I think I might have an ethnographer’s soul in me. A very timid, naive ethnographer's soul in a very confident and mature Emily. 

PS: I've realized recently that I often think that my way is the right way. 

Yen koh,

Ekuwa

Talk about Karma…

On Sunday, I was forced to practice open defecation. On Monday, I got typhoid, a fecal-oral infection. So, there you have it. (It’s not bad though. I went to the clinic. I’m already feeling better.) I’m also slightly anemic. And I had a fever. And a cold. I’m taking meds for all of that.

It’s the rainy season. The torrential rain swept our trench chickens away.

My Auntie has chosen a boyfriend for me. I haven’t agreed to this. I haven’t met him. But I have met my “in-laws”. I guess I’ll meet him sometime, though.

Speaking of boys… I haven’t been on a date in 3 years. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever really been on a date with someone who wasn’t my boyfriend, or, at least, I didn’t consider it to be a date even though the other person did. There are two main reasons why I don’t go on dates:

1.     I’m not very good at it.

2.     I’m not particularly fond of it.

So, as much as I would like to tell you that I’m only 90% sure I went on a date this week, I’m afraid I have to say that I’m 100% sure. And as much as I would like to tell you that I’m 100% sure the date went badly, I’m afraid I have to say that I’m only 90% sure. We ran out of things to talk about ¼ of the way through, but I still got an “I love you” text at the end of the night. If you want more details about that, text me, because it’s a somewhat interesting story. At the end of it, though, he asked me if I wanted to pay for his dinner. No, no I do not, seeing as I paid for you last time when we were just friends, and I know that men are supposed to pay on dates in Ghana. I had to text him back saying I didn’t love him. I just wish all this would stop.

You want to know why? Because I’d rather be looked at as a piece of meat than a stack of money. Might sound horrible, but it’s true. Actually, if I could pick, I’d rather be treated like a fun and worthwhile person. And, if I tell someone to stop touching me, I’d prefer it if he backed off, instead of getting offended and mad and trying to assert his power by brushing my face once more before leaving.

On Sunday, the girls I live with and I all went to Accra. We had to wake up at 4 am so that we could get to the bus station to get the earliest one and beat the traffic going in.

When we got there around 7:45am, we called a taxi driver that Proworld had suggested to us who agreed to kind of be our chauffeur for the day, for 20 cedis each (not bad at all).

We first drove for a little while, and the driver showed us the University of Ghana campus. It’s huge! And it’s really nice. And you can learn anything there.

The first stop was the Kwame Nkrumah Museum, which was … AWESOME! I got to see everything I’ve learned about in my studies on Ghana. I even got to see Nkrumah’s inaugural chair! He actually sat there in 1960 when he became the very first president of Ghana! And, I got to see these heavy iron bangles that the early Portuguese conned the early Africans into thinking that they were highly valued currency in Europe, so the Portuguese just bought everything in Ghana for super cheap. But the bangles were actually used as currency in Ghana for a while. I love that story.

As we were driving away from the museum, we passed by the President of Ghana’s house. It looks like a temple, and it’s maroon and gold colored and very intricately designed with metal. And we passed by this arena that the President gives speeches in. Weird, because I had déjà vu again when I saw that arena, because I remember it being in on of my dreams once, except for I was sitting on a pink cloud.

As we were driving, I was noticing all the billboards on the side of the road. The messages are really clear and easy to interpret. You can look at a billboard and immediately think to yourself, “Okay, so if I buy this brand of chocolate milk, my child will be energetic, happy, good at soccer, and will thank me for being his mom”. What I mean is, although all advertisements are really selling you a way of life rather than a product, it’s a lot easier to decipher those messages the way the advertisements are here, the clearest example of this being the slogan, “It’s not just water… it’s life”. Plus, although I’d say that most of the billboards do portray women, they are hardly ever sexualized. The only example I could find was one for Bailey’s, in which the woman was looking sort of seductively out at the traffic. But that was the only one. The rest of the women were just… happy people, not objectified at all, and in fulfilling relationships with their partners and families.

It’s enticing because there seem to be two standards of female beauty here. I know I already mentioned being “big”, but there are also women who are skinnier and wear more Western style clothing. Both types seem really confident and both look nice. I just wonder how one would go about choosing which body they wanted. The process is reversible, I guess, but it would take a while if you changed your mind… Well, as I was people watching with two of my co-workers, they pointed at an overweight white woman and said, “She’s fat. She’s obese.” I asked if that was a good thing and they said absolutely not. So I’m confused. One of my friends suggested that maybe the point is to be curvy but not fat.

Anyway, we also went to the Accra Mall. I was shocked. I felt like I was in the United States. The shops were similar, the atmosphere, AND… nobody yelled out “Obruni” when we walked by. There were Black people, White people, Asian people, Middle Eastern people… I don’t remember seeing any Hispanics… but anyway, a lot of Chinese people live in Accra. I know a little bit about that but not a whole lot so I won’t go into that here…

The taxi driver decided to introduce us to his aunt, who is one of the most fascinating people I have ever met, plus she once went to my hometown in California so that was super exciting. She also has an amazing house - it’s gorgeous.

Well I guess I don’t have a whole lot more to say, except for that some kids tried to run me over with their bike the other day. And some little boys decided to hit me. I figure it’s just because of my color, which doesn’t make it any better. I’m being bullied by 4-year-olds. What’s that all about?

Also, the drivers here are amazing. I mean, they are really good. Do I feel like my foot will be run over every day? Yes. Do I feel like I’ll be in a car crash every time I get in a taxi? No, but sometimes I do. But that never happens; these guys have quick reflexes! They have to, since people cross the street whenever and wherever, the roads aren’t always super wide, and there aren’t many street signs or lights around.

Well, I guess I’ll just end with what I’m doing at work these days. My boss has deemed me to be is SRA (Senior Research Assistant) which means I had to go through all the flat files on NGOs and write down their names and mission statements. This is so that we can go through and find the top 5 missions of NGOs in the Cape Coast Metropolitan Area, which we will present to all the Proworld volunteers and staff pretty soon, then we’ll have a discussion about what’s working and what more could be done. We’re also writing an outline for a meeting of assembly members that will happen soon so we can try to motivate them to adhere to our new bye-law on day-cares and to see what they think about it. We’re also still trying to think of how to make the attendant training a little more interactive, which is not particularly easy.

Well, it’s about that time again to say,

Yoh, yen koh!

Love, Ekuwa

Wait, PS, I love the dubbed TV shows here. They’re so dramatic. 

Abena

My boss said something the other day that I really liked. He said, “Relationships overpower materials”. You should always care more about other people than your own wealth, because in the end, that’s what will really matter, for both your happiness and your reputation.

I’m just going to jump right in. Welcome to a typical morning for me:

I wake up at 6:30 am. Then I turn on the spigot in the bathroom to fill up the water buckets so that we can have water for our toilet and baths. Then the volunteers eat breakfast together, which consists, without fail, of white bread. And groundnut (peanut) butter, jelly, chocolate spread… sounds Dutch, doesn’t it? Well, the jelly actually is Dutch, but the bread is different, it’s denser and more thickly cut. Well, then I go switch out the water buckets, plug in the iron, wash my face and brush my teeth, iron my clothes, unplug the iron, switch out the water buckets, get dressed, clean my room, turn off the spigot, get my things together, and then just kinda chill until 8:15 when I head to work.

Cleanliness seems to be of the utmost importance here. All clothes have to be clean and ironed. If your cup makes a ring of water on the desk, you better clean it up right away. Try to remember to dust off your chairs and tables frequently, especially before sitting down to work. Put on your shoes before you step out of the house. It’s common for people to shower two, sometimes three times a day, and it’s normal to see people up at 4 in the morning sweeping their floors.

Speaking of floors, a lot of the floors in houses and offices look really nice, like tile or wood or pebbles, but then you realize that they are completely smooth. I have dubbed these “fruit roll up floors”, because you can buy large sheets of rolled up plastic off the street and then unfurl them in your house to make a very nice looking floor for cheap. It’s a pretty neat idea if you ask me, except they can break easily, and they’re slippery if you spill water on them.

I learned that even I can be surprised by people who look different. I thought I had seen it all, but even I did a double take the other day when I saw a little boy sitting on a step with his head in his hands, looking somewhat miserable. He wasn’t an obibini (black person) and he wasn’t an obruni (white prerson)… he was an ofri, an albino person. And I felt bad for looking at him in surprise, because I know how that must feel.

Now, where there might be a sidewalk in the U.S., there are open sewers here in Cape Coast. I know what you’re thinking, and they’re really not that bad, they’re just big trenches with water flowing through sometimes and some garbage thrown in. But in one of the trenches that I walk by on my way to work, there lives a small family of chickens. Two little chicks that are far to small to hop out of the trench, and a mother that lovingly stays in there with them, searching for a spare corn cob or opened package of crackers to eat. They sleep together there, too. Kayla and I call them our trench chickens, since we pass them twice a day. They remind me of the dead duck, which you might remember if you read my Netherlands blog.

So it’s 9:30 pm on Tuesday, and I’m sitting in my room, writing a presentation I have to give at the Day Care proprietor meeting on Wednesday. I was really tired and had just gotten off the phone with my parents and was determined to finish the presentation before I went to bed. Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door. Kayla comes in and this is what she says:

“A woman is giving birth, do you want to come?”

Of course there is only one correct answer to this question, so down the road we sprinted, flagged down a taxi, and got to the clinic she works at just in time to send a few text messages.

Wait, what? Yeah. Doctor-patient relationships work differently here, so while this woman was in labor, the nurses were in another room, texting, chatting, waiting. I think they gave her some ibuprofen or something before we got there, but that’s it. She was alone, since her husband was in Accra, and her friend had brought her to the clinic and then left.

Eventually, the woman was told to walk down the hall to another bed, (yeah, she’s in labor and still walking) where she started bleeding. I thought I would be sick for sure. Kayla, a future nurse, was worried about the blood, but the nurse said that this was normal. After that was over, she had to get up and walk again a few steps to the birthing room, where they put an IV in her and told her to stop moaning so much. I would like take this moment to point out that there was no privacy in this situation, seeing as I was allowed to in the same room as her, even though nobody there knew who I was.

Anyway, around 11:00 pm, we saw the head. The birth was surprisingly fast; under 2 minutes. I watched the whole thing, too. The nurse cut the cord, grabbed the baby, and put it on something like a changing table. The baby was there for some time while the nurses were taking care of the placenta and all that, so Kayla and I just stared at her in awe.

Abena. Girl born on Tuesday. Right in front of my eyes.

This might sound fake, but the very first thing I thought while I was taking a look at her was, “She’s perfect”. She really was, too. 4.6 pounds, pink, lots of hair, long fingers and toes… she even opened her eyes a little and started sucking her fingers and cried a bit. The most amazing thing to me was that she could breath. Might sound obvious but think about it – she’s 4 pounds! I’m 30 times that big and I can breath, which makes sense, but she’s not even as long as my calf and she has lungs that work, can you believe that? All those little tiny organs in this little tiny girl. She was so beautiful, and so helpless. I’ve never seen anything so helpless in my life.

The nurses tied the cord, and believe me, she’ll have an outie belly button, like everybody does here. Then they cleaned the baby with baby oil and what was essentially a maxi pad. With one hand she grabbed the baby’s wrists and held her up for the mother to see. The woman didn’t even know it was a girl until 15 minutes after she’d given birth. Kayla congratulated her and showed her some pictures she had taken. She told me that the woman was gone by the time she got to work the next morning.

Well, now that that awesome story is over, I’ll try to speed through some random observations:

Posters and guidelines are really to the point and intense here. In my office, there are posters describing the HIV chain, domestic violence, etc. with very graphic and clear pictures that anybody could understand. Also, in one of the day care attendant guidebooks, they describe strangulation as being hanged by the neck with a noose. While I agree that is one definition, I’m not sure that’s something that is a real concern for a day care attendant. Another section in the guidebook was about fair discipline. It said things like, you know, time outs are okay, or taking away a privilege… and then it said, but do not “place ginger or hot peppers in a child’s private parts. Do not place a child’s hands in boiling water, hot oil, or fire”.

DID THIS REALLY HAVE TO BE SPELLED OUT? I’m not trying to sound offensive here, I realize that different people have different cultures and all that but in my opinion, this is going a little far. (But all that happened in the past, you know? Even caning in the schools is being looked upon negatively in modern times.)

So some girls came to visit us on Wednesday at the house and they asked us to tell them what was different between the U.S. and Ghana. We literally spent 2 hours on the subject, it was incredible. Here are two of the funniest ones:

“Nobody can carry things on their heads in the U.S.; nobody even knows how. When we buy food, we put it in a shopping cart. It’s basically like a big box on wheels and we put the food in it and then push it along.”

“One of our holidays is called Halloween. There are haunted houses where you go in and it’s dark and scary and people chase you with knives. And you pay like, 20 to 40 cedis to get in. Just to be scared.”

I have never laughed so hard at American culture. Some things just sound so ridiculous when you put them into a different context. I can’t even imagine a shopping cart in Cape Coast. And really, why pay people to chase you? I also think it’s funny that one of my favorite words in Dutch is “winklewagon” which means shopping cart, so for some reason, I always find a way to laugh about that object.

Speaking of culture differences, I was watching TV with my host sister once, and a woman appeared on the screen while the narrator introduced her and said, “She has the body every African woman wants”. This woman was huge. I mean, yes, she was very beautiful, I’m not making fun of her at all. It’s just that in the states, all the “beautiful” women that you see in magazines are barely even there. The media between African and the U.S. portray the exact opposite standards of beauty. It’s intriguing.

Okay, almost done. I’ll mention just four short things before I go.

I wanted to clarify that at my internship, we aren’t actually creating a new law, per say. I was confused about that, but really we’re making a bylaw, so it will only affect the Cape Coast Metropolis and the hope is that other regions will adopt our model to eventually revise the national law. But for now, we’re starting small.

Also, there’s another Ghanaian girl living in our house now. She’s very sweet and a bit shy and I’m not entirely sure about what her situation is, but I get the feeling that our Auntie is taking better care of her now than she was getting before.

I have a rash on my face, on my jaw line. I’ll be fine, it’s just itchy, so I should stop touching it. But it’s itchy. So that’s hard.

Lastly, on Wednesday we had one of my favorite dinners, groundnut soup with rice balls and chicken.

Oh and I almost forgot, my presentation went fine.

P.S. please remind me to take pictures, as I have only taken one so far, and that was of a funny sticker on my desk. I’ll get pictures from my friends, but I should really start taking my own I just always forget to.

P.P.S. I already know someone who has gotten malaria last week, and one of my friends at work kept saying she wasn’t feeling too well, until she tested positive for typhoid. A lot of computers keep breaking, too, probably because of the higher electric voltage from the outlets here. Well, here’s hoping that my computer and I stay healthy for the next 6 weeks!

P.P.P.S. the only side effect of my malaria medication is that it gives me really fun dreams.

P.P.P.P.S. I met a woman who works for AFS at the Coast to Coast restaurant. Small world, huh?

Yoh, yen koh!

Ekuwa

Finally

Ok, so this is going to be a long one. A lot has happened in the last week and a half, and I really haven’t had a chance to post until now. So go get a snack or a cat to pet because this might take a while.

So after orientation we all got picked up by our host mothers. So another girl and I got in a cab with our Auntie and drove to the house. When we got there, two other girls who have been here for a month greeted us. So there are four of us, one host mom, her daughter, and a friend that visits almost every night. We sleep in the upstairs, and the family sleeps downstairs, and we eat separately also. But everybody is really nice and fun to be with, so even though we’re literally detached, it’s all okay. Plus, the location is great. We’re smack dab in the middle of downtown, so I can walk to work, to the castle, to Melcom (the closest thing to a Wal-Mart in the area), to the ATM, to the El Mina taxi station, anywhere. Woah, right now I just had déjà vu, isn’t that weird? Like somehow I know I would be in this house writing this? Well, even if that is the case, I don’t remember the poorly dubbed Mexican soap opera playing on the TV, or the vanilla cookie I’m eating, so never mind I guess.

Anyway, so I’m interning at the Department of Social Welfare (DSW), Cape Coast District. There are three other interns in my office, but I work in partnership with only two, since the other girl lives with me and has been here for a month, so she already has her own project. The three of us had an orientation with our boss, and he told us about what the office does and everything. Actually, there’s only 4 people who work there currently, and only two that I see there all day long. In fact, our boss started working there in February this year, and he hasn’t been paid once! That’s happening a lot right now, nurses, teachers, a lot of people aren’t getting paid by the government. Yet, people are still showing up to work and still doing their jobs. What else are you going to do?

Man, the soap opera keeps cutting out. Oh well.

Okay, so this is what happened:

My two office partners and I were given a document called “Children’s Act 560: Section II: Day-Care Centres”. It is all the laws set by the DSW governing the operation of a day-care in Cape Coast, such as the qualifications of the attendants and the necessary equipment like a first-aid kit and drinking mugs. The Act hasn’t been revised since 1979. Yeah. That’s like, 30 years. So we took it upon ourselves to rewrite it to better meet today’s standards; our boss gave us until the end of the week.

Wait, sorry, what? One week for three American interns to rewrite a set of Ghanaian laws that haven’t been considered for 30 years? You betcha. And we did. It’s finished now. We even wrote up eight example forms for the centers to refer to, forms like medical and personal records, attendance sheets, examples of a daily schedule and nutritious meal ideas, and a visitor sign-in sheet. But there’s still a lot of work to do. We have to get this new version put into law. See, the original issue was that the right people haven’t gotten together to review this, and I think a lot of different branches need to take a look and sign it for it to be passed. So we need to make sure we get all of them on board, which probably entails a lot of phone calls.

Also, more immediately, we need to take a look at the day-care attendant training manual written by the DSW. At least one attendant at a day-care must be trained by the DSW to perform childcare. Our boss tells us that the current training model it’s too lecture intensive, so it’s kind of boring, and that he wants us to try to incorporate the same material into a more interactive and activity based way so that the sessions are more engaging. He said we could look up some ideas online, so that shouldn’t be to terribly difficult… until we need to start training the attendants ourselves! (Which is optional, the interns don’t have to, but we indeed might end up doing it.)

Tuesday I got sick in the morning. Probably my fault. I couldn’t sleep so I decided to just eat some wafers instead, which sort of messed with my stomach, but the point is that after that and only one hour of sleep, I couldn’t go to work. Too bad, because I really wanted to. The other interns got to visit two day cares and do an inspection, like looking around at the facility to see if it was properly ventilated, that the children had enough space and all that, and they got to ask questions to the proprietresses to make sure they were doing everything necessary. Then they wrote up a report about what they saw, and made suggestions about how to improve the day care. These reports were official and the DSW is going to do another check in the future to make sure that the improvements have been made. So basically, we are doing really cool and important stuff.

Well, by the time I had gotten some sleep and felt better, I called in to see if I should come to the office, but they were just writing the report and said I didn’t need to come, so I took the opportunity to head to Eguafo. For some reason, I have always been miserable at trying to get a taxi, even though it’s pretty easy here, but anyway, I paid a ridiculous price because I didn’t really feel like waiting around for a better deal and risk getting lost or getting home after dark, so whatever, the point is I got to Egaufo. And I learned how to take a taxi by myself since then so I should be good on that from now on.

I had seen the director of the Sankofa orphanage in the streets of Cape Coast on Monday, which was really exciting, and I told him that I would come to Eguafo Tuesday. So, some of the kids knew I was coming and some didn’t. For those who didn’t know, it was kind of fun to see the looks on their faces of shock and then smiles to see me again. And it was so good to see all of them again. A boy I volunteered with last summer came back for the third time this summer, so I got to see him, too! But I have to say, you can’t repeat the past. It was a little awkward, you know? Because I’m not living there, I’m not working there, so what am I really doing? Hanging out? I haven’t been there for a year, and a lot has changed, so it’s sort of hard to know what to talk about. But all of them are doing well, which was good to see.

Thursdays are intern dinner days, so all the Proworld interns (there are volunteers and interns) get together to talk about sustainable development, how things are going, go somewhere fun, and generally just hang out. Nothing much to say about that, just thought I’d mention it.

Do you remember “Obruni”? Kids call this to me in the streets. It’s kind of cute… well, it was cute when I thought it meant “foreigner”. But one of my self-proclaimed husbands has informed me that actually, it means “white person”. Okay, I’m not really offended by it, but I already stick out, and that just makes it more obvious. And, strangers actually refer to me as “white person”. Example: I was getting out of a trotro (taxi-van), and I think what happened was that while I was hopping out, a taxi was trying to go by on the narrow street and I had “gotten in his way”. Well anyway, whatever happened, I didn’t see or hear him until I was walking away and the taxi driver yelled, “HI OBRUNI HI! DO YOU WANT TO DIE?!” Translation: Hey white person, stay out of my way or I’ll run you over. Lovely. Although I do have to admit that even if a Ghanaian had done the same thing, she probably would have been treated somewhat similarly. But let’s be real. I’m not a huge fan of my neighbor standing outside my window and looking in while I’m in my underwear, then when I duck out of the way, calling, “Obruni obruni”, as if that’s going to make me come back to the window instead of army crawling across the floor to my suitcase to find pants. Which is what I did.

Another point about my color: I passed by some little girls on the street and they said the usual, “Obruni, good morning”, then one of them sort of grasped my arm, then said to her friend, “I touched one!” See, this is what I’m talking about. That’s what makes me feel so alien… “I touched one”, like I’m a sting-ray at the aquarium or something. It doesn’t help that some babies literally cry when they see me, or if I try to bend down to say hi, they pull away in fear. To be fair, I’d freak out too if some human shaped being that looked like her blood was drained and her life was sucked out of her body suddenly approached me. We’re talking ghosts here. So I understand… Besides, little kids in the U.S. are told to be quiet about race, so we repress the obvious, which only makes it worse. Here, it’s out in the open, there’s no real tension about it besides the stereotype that white people have money which causes little girls to gang up on you in the street, surround you and try to open your bag until you have to shout “JAI!” (stop) in mispronounced Fante, only to leave them behind in a confused stupor. So there you have it. 1 and a half sentences of pros, 2 full paragraphs of cons for the word obruni. From my perspective.

In other news, Ghana is a great place to come if you want to be sweet-talked. Seriously. Here are some examples:

Man1: “Ekuwa! Hahaha, my chosen one! I am Ekuwa’s husband!”

Me: “Ok.”

Man1: “Hold my hand! Hahaha!”

Man2: “You have agreed to marry my son.”

Me: “I don’t think I did.”

Man2: “Yes, you did. I have told him about you, what you look like, that you’re from America. And he said okay.”

Me: “Have I ever met your son?”

Man2: “No.”

Guy1: “You have a pretty face.”

Me: “Thank you.”

Guy1: “I gave you all my love and you have disappointed me.”
Me: “Oh. Sorry.”

Guy1: “No, I was translating the lyrics of the song that’s playing.”

Me: “So many guys propose to me here, but nobody ever did in the United States.”

Man3: “That’s because your love is in Africa. Don’t you see? It’s a sign from God; God is wonderful. Do you know why you are proposed to so much here?”

Me: “I can guess. Probably because I’m an obruni.”

Man3: “NO! Don’t say that! Haven’t you seen mixed couples before?”

Me: “Yeah.”

Man3: “It’s not that. It’s because you are beautiful, and your love is in Africa.”

This next conversation took an hour, but here’s a summary.

Guy2: “Emily, I love you. I really love you.”

Me: “I don’t think you love me. You don’t even know me.”

Guy2: “If we go out, then you will get to know me.”

Me: “How about the other way around?”

Guy2: “I really need you in my life.”

Me: “You don’t need me. You don’t need anybody.”

Guy2: “I want to marry you.”

Me: “I can’t cook. I can maybe make toast.”

Guy2: “I will cook for you. Please, I love you.”

Me: “Well I’m not interested in being your girlfriend. Or your wife. Or you fiancé. I just want to be your friend.”

Guy2: “I hope you will change your mind as we spend more time together.”

You might think that this is all very flattering, but it’s not. Well, maybe it is a little. Okay, it’s like this: I like the culture of calling here. I think it’s nice that guys call me once, sometimes three times a day just to say, “Hello, good morning, how are you? Are you fine? I am so happy to hear that. So what are you doing today? Okay, good. See you.” Right? Like, if I called someone in the U.S. just to say that, they would say that I’m wasting their time. But people make time for each other here, which I think is great. However… the reason that attention from men isn’t all that nice here is that you KNOW that they’re saying the EXACT same thing to LOTS of other women. They have practice. And they steal each other’s lines. I learned that last year when two guys gave me the same spiel about their families’ acceptance for their natural attraction to white women, word for word. So… ladies, don’t be naïve. There are good guys out there, but they probably won’t start a conversation with you with, “Hello, I like everything about you. You are special.” My advice is to take the compliment and be on your way. I actually find that I like the ones who don’t propose to me better than the ones who do. And of course, I like the women, too.

On Friday, all the Proworld volunteers/interns went to Kakum National Park, which is a short hike and then a canopy walk, which is a series of shaky bridges 40 meters high, above the trees. That was really fun. Then we ate lunch at a hotel that has seemingly very heavily sedated crocodiles that you can touch and pay if you want a picture with one. Sorry, but any picture of me with a crocodile is going to have to be when we are both conscious. The birds there are beautiful though, small yellow ones in spherical nests, and big white ones in regular nests, with little babies crying out for food. One bird “fell out a tree and broke both its legs” which we figured meant that it was a sacrifice to the crocodiles. (What fully-grown bird just falls out of a tree…?) Well, I’ve done both of those things before (Kakum and the lunch spot), but in the afternoon we had a drumming and dance lesson. I’m awesome at drumming, but I am a sad excuse for a woman when it comes to dancing. Anyway, then I met up with one of my friends that I met last year, and we hung out, ate dinner (fried plantains, fried plantains!!) and then the Proworld peeps met up again at Goil.

Goil? Oh, it’s a pun, like, Go Oil. Goil. Your next question might be, “Why did you all meet up at a gas station?” to which I answer with another question, “Why does a gas station also serve as a bar and club?” Yes indeed, the party was pumpin’ (I deserve a pun prize for that one) with drinks and music and dancing and no shortage of men seeking to procure a dance partner and a phone number. One of the volunteers saw me suffering from this and offered his assistance by claiming to be my boyfriend of 3 years, asking if everything was okay or whether he should get jealous, kissing me on the head and walking away. Well, that didn’t much change anything, but I guess the gesture was nice.

On Saturday the Proworld peeps went over to Assin Manso, the place where the slaves were brought from the North to have their last bath. It was basically a river, but we also saw a ball and chain that was used when the slaves were chained together and forced to walk there. From there they had to walk to Cape Coast Castle, which took over a week, 36 miles I believe. We also saw the castle, which I could go to again and again, it’s so fascinating. Did you know it’s the youngest of 19 slave castles along the coast of Ghana?

After a long day of trapsing around and working and touring, trust me, a bucket bath is a blessing. I’ve always liked bucket baths, but I preferred taking them outside instead of inside, where it’s cooler. Not that our house is cool at all. We don’t have fans. As long as I keep my window open, though, I can hope and hope for a breeze to come, or for it to rain.

Speaking of which, on Sunday we were supposed to go to church with my host mom, but it was drizzling a little in the morning so we didn’t go. Ghanaians don’t want to go out when it’s raining. I mean, people at roadside shops still work, but if you’re at home and you were planning on going out, you just don’t. You wait for the rain to stop or you just cancel your plans. However, in the afternoon we went to a soccer game – Cape Coast vs. Takoradi – and halfway through it started raining. I was sitting under an awning, but nobody stopped playing, nobody ran for cover, everyone was still really into it. Soccer doesn’t stop for rain, I guess. The game was really lively and fun, although one girl stood up to cheer, sat back down, and found her iPhone missing. Nobody took my hat when I left it on a bench, though. Cape Coast Dwarfs won 3-1! (Yes, I spelled that right.) It was a great game. Basically everyone from Proworld met up there, but I went specifically with my housemate Kayla, who has announced that we will be friends forever, and a cool guy from my office, one who hasn’t proposed to me.

Pretty sure I’m sunburned… definitely tanner.

I already bought a gift for my sister and my mom, and many for myself but I’m still looking for one for my dad. I got some fabric to make more clothes and some fertility beads and a carved map of Africa and a painting. I regretted not buying paintings last time, so this time I’m stocking up. Also, randomly, I really want to buy a whole cocoa pod, not sure why, just to see what one looks like inside. And maybe more sandals…and some shorts. Yeah, I’ve been buying a lot.

Kinda running out of steam here, but here’s an amusing anecdote: on Sunday I ordered a cheese “beef” burger at one of my favorite restaurants and was definitely served a goat sandwich. 100% goat. It was like, fine, but it was also like, goat. Not beef. I did see some cool cows though! They had humps! And big horns! They were just taking a stroll along the side of the road.

One last thing. City life. It’s completely different from village life. Of course you didn’t need me to tell you that, but it’s something that I’ve experienced firsthand now. In Eguafo, we went into town one, maybe twice a week, and every time was an adventure. Now, I eat, sleep, work, and relax in the city. I can buy whatever I want, whenever I want, and I can do anything I want. Last year, I was so deprived of chocolate that I started mixing cocoa powder, sugar, and condensed milk together to make pudding. When we finally did acquire bars of chocolate, we set them in the fridge and saved them for the 4^th of July as a very, believe me, very special treat. You can’t even imagine how elated I was to have something that so many people have available all the time (oh my gosh I sound like Charlie Buket). Toilet paper was more valuable then. Good food was more appreciated. Bread was more sacred and people were more important. Now I can walk to the corner and buy kettle corn. Or a giant bottle of pure water. I could even buy fried chicken and rice if I wanted to (but I don’t want to – not from the street). Now, when my work is through, I can choose to go home and stop socializing if I want. Last summer, there were kids coming in and out of our house as they pleased. I’m not saying one is better or worse. Really, I’m not. The two are just different. Maybe I was a little more… delighted each day last year, but I was also volunteering, not working, and everything was so new and magical. Even if I went back to live in Eguafo, though, it wouldn’t be exactly the same; we were all younger then. And I am very content and grateful to be in Cape Coast. I feel extremely fortunate.

I’ll leave you, faithful readers, with something nice: I’ve been keeping myself very busy, as you can tell, but I also have time to relax at home with my three friends and my host sister. All of us and our Auntie went out to lunch and it was a blast. I generally just feel happy and relaxed and safe when I’m in Ghana, and whenever I’m talking to Ghanaians I just feel so accepted and happy, so maybe Man3 had a point. Well, if someone’s being too pushy or kind of creepy then that’s not fun, but in general Ghanaians are the nicest. My smile is also bigger and brighter whenever I’m here. I can tell in pictures and see it in the mirror. I just smile better here.

Thanks for being so patient,

Yoh, yen koh!

With love,

Ekuwa

P.S. I visited Eguafo again on Saturday and brought my good friend S a teddy bear, some headphones, some chemistry and anatomy sheets, a necklace, and my old laptop and charger. I’m teaching her how to use the computer herself.

Meh Moah Ajo

"Good evening".

Since I last posted...
Flights were smooth like butter.
Bag got to the terminal on time.
Met up with other Proworld volunteers and organizers.
Spent the night in Accra.
The other volunteers are so cool and funny and nice. Love them already.
Ate toast for breakfast over horrific flight stories and getting to know others.
Toast is not a very filling breakfast.
Hung out, waiting for the van to arrive (Ghana time is kind of like island time).
Got in the van for a 5 and a half hour long ride to Cape Coast. Ate some fries.
Taught some Fante to the others.
Got to the Proworld house in Cape, met more volunteers/interns.
ATE A BIG DELICIOUS DINNER OF GHANAIAN FOOD THAT I'VE MISSED SO MUCH.
Played cards.
Took a shower.
Now I'm typing this.
Just made some funny faces at my homestay mate.

So, I know that my host family is a single mom with two children, and that at least one other Proworld girl will be living with me for 3 weeks. Not sure if there are other volunteers already living with this family, though, or who might show up later. But the girl is energetic and funny and will be volunteering at a medical clinic.

I'm planning on going to Eguafo the first chance I get, which will probably be Monday or Tuesday. Until then I have to do orientation, get picked up by my host family, and start working. Well, more like learn what it is I'm supposed to be doing exactly, since I still don't really know. I've heard from one girl that I might be doing "everything" and may never really know what my job exactly entails.

In other news...

I'm gonna wear my pretty white Ghanaian dress tomorrow!
I'm gonna eat Ghanaian food tomorrow!
I'm gonna walk the Ghanaian streets tomorrow!
I'm gonna converse with Ghanaian people tomorrow!
Tomorrow! You don't know how long I've been waiting for you!
And tomorrow, I won't be Emily anymore.

Tomorrow, I'll once again be...

Ekuwa
(Girl born on Wednesday).

Not sure about the internet situation, but will keep you "posted" hahahaha oh my gosh, mi ni koom, "I'm tired", but you have to admit that was a pretty good pun...

Yoh, yen koh (da)
Alright, let's go (to sleep)

Emily