Pronounced "edge yow ma". Means cat. I've made friends with a cat, which you're not supposed to do. Rabies.
I'll cut to the chase. My new host family is great. Everyone is sooo nice (and I use my o's sparingly). Technically the family consists of a husband and wife and their friend and the friend's daughter. But the couple stays out on the weekdays with school/work, so I'll be mostly staying with one woman and the young girl. The neighborhood seems nice and the food is good, too :)
So I don't know if you know this, but when you get a taxi, most of the time it's a "share taxi". That means that anyone the driver can find that is headed in the same general direction will get in the car with you. You get to see some new areas. You can't really specify where you want to go, though. Like, you say "Abura" and the taxi will take you there but not right to your house or wherever if it's not right on the main road. If you want a car all to yourself that will take you right to your front door, you have to get a "drop taxi". You also have to pay extra, since the driver is losing potential customers as he drives you alone.
A taxi driver one time said to me, "Black people don't like space". Huh? At first I thought something was wrong with him. I still don't agree with this blanket statement but it got me thinking... The radio is almost always on in taxis. The Tv is almost always on in homes. Music is almost always playing in loud speakers outside. And the people here are very social and it's crowded. Once I started thinking about what he said, I began to realize what a comfort it is to walk somewhere alone and still feel that people are always around.
Also, random fact, I live in my Tevas. Those sandals never leave my feet. Seriously. I brought my other shoes for naught. I have the tan line to prove it.
I can't even begin to describe the fact that I only have 3 weeks left. Even though so much has happened this last month, and I feel totally comfortable here, I can't believe I'm more than half way through. I'm not ready to go home. The theft was the climax of a somewhat bad experience, staying at the Proworld house was awesome, and being with my new host family feels like home. Reminds me why I came back to this country.
Kenkey. Well, it's a ball of fermented corn that you eat with stew or sauce and maybe some fish, too. I'm convinced that it's a drug. One of my Ghanaian friends wolfed some down and then kept walking in and out of the room, saying sequentially, "I feel dizzy... I'm burning up!.... I feel goooood..."
The Proworld volunteers/interns made a soccer net out of water sachets. They are like plastic bags, and you just have to wash them, flatten them, cut them, fold them, and tie them a certain way and you can make a big chain to use for a net. It actually looks pretty cool. Apparently a Peace Corps volunteer came up with the idea. Ours is going to a community about an hour away from the Proworld house.
Guess what? I get cold here now. Yup, whereas in the beginning I was always sweating, I actually feel cold now. In like, 80 degree weather. Brr... So I put on a long sleeve shirt in the day and wrap myself in a sheet at night.
Work has been more frustrating now that I lost most of my work from the last month and I am so much less efficient without a computer to type on. And we have a meeting for the assembly members on Wednesday which is stressing me out. Slash, there are three more interns at the office so it's pretty crowded.
If you don't floss, and I know a lot of you don't, I am sorry for you because floss is the best invention ever. Especially of you have food in your teeth.
Also... You might not expect this coming from me, the girl who used to take shots of half and half as a child, but there is such a thing as too much condensed milk. Yes there is... Yes there is. I would much rather eat my oatmeal than drink it.
I realize that this post is not very coherent, but I'm just writing notes that I've thought of along the way. Also, when I'm waiting for something to happen, I just sit and write.
So I have a small balcony outside my room just above the treetops. I can see plenty of birds from there. It's nice to write there and listen to music and watch them fly, puff out their chins, or shove each other off the roof. Big ones, small ones, little tiny birds, too. There are some nests in the ceiling of the balcony, and the birds freak out and scurry away when I come outside. There are a couple of broken egg shells on the floor. On Sunday, though, I was on the phone with my mom and I saw a newly hatched bird lying on the ground. My mom told me to get some cardboard paper and place it back in a nest. So I named it Herb the bird, scooped it up while it tried to squirm away out of fear, and put it on some leafy branches, which is the only nest-like thing I could reach while standing on my chair, and hoped for the best.
Herb is dead.
Well, so is the goat we ate for lunch. But infant mortality seems a little more sad, especially because I tried to help it but failed. The goat was a goner. So are some of the bugs that try to climb on me. I guess I'm both a cold-hearted murderer and a mourner of death.
Time for a happier random segment. I took a walk with my host sister. This girl can talk! It's great, she has a lot to say and her life and future are so interesting. She wants to take walks with me more often. Good, because I want to take walks with her, too.
Oh, but I haven't even told you about Emmanuel TV yet. It's on all the time at my new house. Sometimes it's enlightening, sometimes it's scary. Well, that's all I have to say about that right now.
Last night there was a football (soccer) match on TV. Nobody told me, and in fact, I was in bed before I even realized it was happening. So how did I know there was a game? Because the whole town explodes when their team scores a goal. If you stan on a hill overlooking the town, you get inundated with an enthusiastic uproar.
Enough for now. My host family calls me Ekuwa. So...
Yoh, yen koh!
Ekuwa
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