getting back

so the Accra airport is pretty....well it is a bit confusing at first but not a very difficult or particularly crowded airport to get though on a friday night.
the atrium is strange, because the check-in desks are right there but you have to go over to customs first, which was laughably simple; just lug a bag up and they chalk it without even looking through
I looked pretty bewildered and had my most very innocent face on, so everyone was pretty nice. Regardless there were a couple of pat-downs and multiple drug swabs of my luggage and carry-ons etc.
I have not really experienced much jetlag before, the furthest away I have been before now was California, and i never really adjusted to the time there anyways
I did find this time manageable; I was tired, and crashed pretty hard, but could remain conscious until like after midnight the next day with just napping on the planes
but maybe that is just my sweet college schedule training
I never had a  problem with not bringing my WHO card with my immunizations, which I worried about the first day
with a passport with a good visa and the credit cardholder who bought the ticket(what I forgot) you should be pretty good from my experience getting there and back
alright, so that is about it
comment me absalutely anything you want to hear about, and I can post about it
thanks for tuning in :)

Surprise!

it isn't a fun-filled ac-empty outreach with northwestern if it does not come as almost a complete surprise!
so on monday morning we found out when the van got there that we were going on ANOTHER outreach, I mentioned this was a possibility earlier, but since no one had confirmed that we would be leaving for four days we sort of assumed we would just be doing daily outreaches this week
wrong
also, it was kind of stupid because the outreach was until Friday, but the two of us leaving friday had to come back today to make our flights....so it would have made far more sense to leave us here and we could both do outreach today with crystal and northwestern would have a full number of volunteers thursday and friday
but whatever
so we were whisked away to the eastern region, which is mountainous and more agrarian than the central region. It is basically full of green jungle-covered hills. I really love mountains, so the winding drive up through the hills, with the gigantic views of the flattened landscape we were leaving mostly made up for not staying behind with crystal and the telecentre.
it is quite strange preparing to leave, celebrating the last of every day of the week before we get to return home the last outreach was yesterday, today is the last thursday.
I will miss it, being here. Not particularly the food or the heat or the twi or sticking out like a pale freckly thumb, but the endless landscapes and the intense greenness and the fruit and the freshness of everything.
this past week went by in a flash, and it is incredible in retrospect that I have been here so long. I guess in the beginning I hardly believed I could.

Back in Accra..for good

So today was a bit insane, we woke up early, drove back to accra, went to arts market and was hassled and haggled quite a bit for souvenirs/gifts/a replacement bag, then hung out with the other accra volunteers and went to dinner, taking a cab meant for four with seven people in the pouring rain. This was more of a problem than you might first imagine, because when it rains/torrentially downpours, much of the roads become rivers/ponds, or large mud holes. Basically my sneakers and socks were destroyed, laundry day tomorrow! It is a lot different being with more volunteers after three weeks of a small group of four on outreach, but it was a lot of fun. Yet again I am the youngest by a landslide, which can be odd but is alright, the people here are pretty fun. Anyways I will be able to post directly now that I have the unreliable but moderately speedy free telecentre internet. Yes, it is very exciting. Also, I now really regret going to the first couple of craft shops at the kumasi cultural center, because the deals at the arts district here are so much better.

the past two weeks...

banku?
Yeah so, I have never really been one for spicy food, and one of the really nice but sometimes aggravating things about the clinic staff is that they always want us to try the food. This is not bad, I mean we all do want to try the food for the culture and he experience and such, just they can get very insulted/pushy when you don’t like, for example, Banku, and find it hard to hide.
It wasn’t the banku that was the worst, it was the spicy soup mixed with the sour banku, which looks like dough btw.
Okay, I feel kind of bad, I just am bad at trying new food, just like I am at packing. Basically it is now just the running joke here that I hate Banku and it was kind of funny but pretty embarrassing and a bit awkward.
Also I have no idea if I am spelling Banku right.

Theatre
So, the theatre is where they do all of the cataract and terygium surgeries. Originally we thought that it was part of the Charity Eye Center building, but is is actually a house in a different part of town, it is pretty large; the downstairs is where the waiting room and operation room is, as well as some rooms for the nurses for storage/paperwork etc, and the upstairs is where the patients stay after their surgeries, it is just a big room with lots of mattresses.
So today I left at noon and went to the theatre, we saw about 25 surgeries, and then documented them. The key to the best experience is striking up conversation with the doctor. The surgeries can be really interesting, but there are so many that after a while it starts to drag, and in the end just watching the removal of 20 something cataracts, with varying levels of bloodyness, can be exhausting.
Like most all of the other volunteers here, we ventured to the monkey sanctuary/waterfalls on our saturday off. Surprisingly, it is an unfortunate 3+ hours away. So we wound up spending more time in the van than on location. The monkey sanctuary is pretty crazy; there is a whole village inside, that lives in a kind of harmony with the two monkey populations. There is some cool lore behind the place; the villagers agreed to treat the monkeys as people, even burying them in coffins in a cemetery, along with the bodies of the priestesses that apparently communicated with the monkeys. I just kept thinking about how it would be wicked sweet to grow up in a village in a monkey sanctuary, it would make an interesting book probably.

Research
Can be exhausting, and frustrating. I go to the outreach, but I do not have a regular station because I can be called away at any time for a patient, so I typically help with one station and am always running back and forth, then after outreach I have to input data for about half an hour each day.

more more more
outreach. Wednesday I found out that 1. I am going on outreach with charity eye center next week for four days and 2. that apparently I’m also going on outreach the next week with north western AGAIN. The first news was good; I am honestly getting a bit tired of being here, it is annoying to be 15 minutes outside the city, and two weeks was enough for that. But I am not excited about going on the same outreach I did my first week again; I have been really looking forward to living at the telecenter for a couple of days; they have faster, free internet and are in the city, walking distance from everything. Of course, I know that the scheduling for that is flexible, originally I was no scheduled there the first time, but I also know that some of the volunteers who flew in the 20th have already been there, making it unlikely that we will be swapping to stay. At least now I can pack well for outreach, and next week will probably only be bringing my backpack and small suitcase. My sidebag broke in a couple places so I might just use my backpack for outreach next week.
*correction- it seems like now I will probably be staying at the telecenter next week, doing daily outreaches with Northwestern instead of an extended stay, this is a relief, the Telecenter is really nice and has a good location
Quirks
-Kate Memorial
Our room has no outside windows, but all of the food is 5 ghc regardless of the listed price(which is at fist quite alarming, but volunteers apparently have some sort of “deal” with the hotel). Also, before today we were almost definitely the only people staying here, which gets a bit unsettling, since there are only four of us, but it is nice. Things can get boring, because we are such obvious outsiders that going on a walk means we are almost guaranteed to be stopped every couple of feet, which can get old very fast. I brought with me eight low-budget sci-fi movies I got as a gift, as well as bridget jone’s diary 2, and have in two weeks seen all but four of the sci-fi movies. I really recommend bringing lots of movies and at least one game, though of course it can be really hard to fit, especially with the glasses volunteers have to bring.
Also, there is a beautiful porch hidden away on the 3rd floor, I had a watermelon and banana picnic up there yesterday, it is very nice.
-Gates
there are an unbelievable amount of gates here, they are actually really pretty and sometimes very intricate, but they are sold about once a mile around the city on the main roads, it is kind of crazy. The same thing kind of goes for columns, especially around Accra.
-Graves
the funeral process here appears to be way more complicated, long, and public than in the US. Funerals are posted on billboards, posts, and on TV. There seem to be about 4 different events associated, and the grave markers are body-length. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but it seems like funerals are some sort of status symbol.
Sometimes it does get ridiculous how elaborate and festive funerals are here, from our perspective at least. There were cards for one, like for a birthday or house party.
-personal space
Ghana is not a place for people with large personal space bubbles or germaphobics; what would be considered boundary invasion in the USA ranges from extended handshakes/holds by acquaintances or friends to vendors grabbing your arm in the market. People trying to sell you things can get very aggravating after a while, and them grabbing you is rude, so a good yank away is not uncalled for in most situations, on the other hand, while at first a bit uncomfortable of alarming, it is pretty easy, at least for me, to get used to, for example, clinic staff holding onto my hand, especially since it is easy to see all around you that there is nothing to read into it or worry about, friends hold hands here.

today was a really strange day; We woke up late(830-9ish), expecting a shortish day starting at 10am in the theatre, witnessing surgeries. apparently the doctor was sick, so the surgeries are postponed, and the day was wide open. It is also the last day for half of our motley crew, so I guess it is nice that we get to spend the last time together, but it got kind of boring fast since we had nothing planned except for dinner at the sunset hotel, where they have pizza. My roommate and I went to get a pineapple, for another fruit picnic on the balcony after yesterday’s watermelon. The short trip down the road took at least an hour as we were unexpectedly called into a hair salon where, after a lot of excited twi/english, azita wound up getting 5ghc of braids and myself 2ghc in an updo with one braid and a hair clip. The women there were very excited about our hair. It is truly an experience, exhausting but fun, to be a “obruni” in Ghana.

It is always sad when friends leave, worse yet when the people who have spent every day with for the past 2-3 weeks leave, with no confirmation that you will ever see them again. Saturday was rough; it was just the two of us left, wandering around Kate Memorial missing two and nervously expecting two more volunteers. On Monday we will be leaving for the outreach at 530 in the morning, which is not very exciting, it will be good to go somewhere new after two weeks strait at kate memorial, especially now that half our group is gone, and the place feels awkwardly silent without them. We plan to take the new volunteers to the cultural center in Kumasi, where we went on our first day as well
on another note, after three weeks my skin tone seems to have finally changed a tiny bit, and my arms no longer glow palely in the light(as much). It would have bordered on absurd if I did not return home with a bit of a tan, but it took so long because every weekday is spent in an outreach church, thankfully away from the blazing sun, if not always away from the heat.

Yeji
So today we arrived at outreach in Yeji, a town by the edge of Lake Voltic. We left at 5:50AM, in a rush that proved unnecessary to get to the patients in time to see them all.Apparently last time they came here there were too many patients for them to all be screened in the time available, that was not the case today. We got to the hospital, and the eye center we were gathering the patients in(not a church :O) and there were six patients, today we screened eight people total. Apparently it was market day and there was a problem with the notifications/the local volunteers so basically we only had an hour max of work today, and then went back to our lodgings. There is air conditioning, and the location is great. The rent is pretty good; 12.5 ghc a night for a smaller room with one bed and no fridge, and about 17.5 ghc for a bigger room with a fridge and twins. Unfortunately, the first room has a broken tv and the second has roaches, and apparently 5pm is too late to order dinner, but we can walk to good cheap food(rice or pasta with chicken for lunch for 2ghc) so in the end it is definitely alright. The lake is about a 10-15 minute walk through the market/main road. It is pretty busy but, as I said, it was market day. I do like the location far more than Kate Memorial, which was far on the outskirts of the Kumasi area, several townships over actually.

food
Alright, here is the low-down on the food situation in Ghana, from my experience so far. It is mostly rice and meat or, preferably(for the general public consensus) doughy balls(which come in three varieties: fufu, the most common, has not that much taste and is made out of, I believe, pounded yams; Banku, which I have mentioned before, is I think fermented casava?; and Rice balls, which are kind of salty but...yeah they are balls of sticky rice) with meat and preferably(ditto) a spicy soup made with palm nuts or preferably(you get the picture) meat which is most likely goat. It is not bad, and I would enjoy it a lot more if I did not have an aversion to spicy things.
Besides the main dishes, there are some things that I really enjoy here; the spring rolls can be really good, especially those sold in random bakeries or stands, the fried plantains are delicious, though salty(and can be bought on the side of/in the road in many places) the cakes and baked goods are generally very nice, fried dough or baked cakes; it is usually simple but filling and sweet. The fruit is also very good; the bananas are sweet and very cheap, the watermelon is a bit less sweet, but a bit more real than the seedless back home, and the pineapple is to die for. I know someone who got sick from one of the small mangoes that are really popular everywhere, but I have had one of the bigger ones and it was really very good, just make sure it is ripe. Basically all food can be found on the side of the road, at stands or on someone’s head, usually both. If you can not get it while still in your car, walking down the street can find you most of them, in the right area. Even at Kate Memorial there was a fruit stand five minutes walking distance.
Bicycles and motorcycles are very popular out here in Yeji, far more than in Kumasi and Accra. They are easier to navigate on the small dirt roads, which often have trees in/around them and quite a few large puddles. It is actually pretty tricky getting the van down the short road to the hotel. Outreach today was in town, with far more people than before; over 100 by the end, and it took almost eight hours. It was more difficult than usual because a lot of the older people do not speak twi. For a few of my subjects, I needed two translators. On that note, I am now up to 91(:O) patients in my research, including the thirteen from today.
Today we left at the ungodly hour of 6am to dive two hours to outreach. Side note: breakfast here is SO GOOD: 2 ghc for fresh toasted bread with pineapple jam and laughing cow cheese, fried egg with onions and tea, when i leave I will really miss that jam :). Anyways, when we arrived at the big, rural church it looked like a short day, with only about 12 patients there. By the end we had seen over 100, referred at least 20 for surgery next week and interviewed another 10 patients. Tomorrow we will be back in the hospital in Yegi and then driving back to kate memorial, chilling there friday and driving back to Accra Saturday. I am really excited to get home, even though that is still more than 10 days away. More on the side: I have finally and thankfully been usurped from primary entertainment officer of the volunteers, once one of the two newbies has movies on his computer, it is pretty sweet since they are actual good movies I have not seen yet.
“I need an african man, I need a strong black man”
-Song that is on the radio quite often here
“hello bruni, how are you/ I am fine, thank you”
-every child in Yegi, often in chorus

this is way too difficult so everything is going up at once

To begin I do again promise to upload pictures when I get to some good wifi, this might be on my layover in Atlanta, or back home. But when I’m done there will be so many pictures you wont even be able to handle it :P

Telecentere/Accra

Of course the Telecenter was not exactly the heavenly palace we had idealized it as while in the central region with North Western Eye Centre, but it had AC, refrigeration, juice, and corn flakes so it was definitely good enough. I even got a few minutes of internet connection, so that was exciting. Sadly, our group of five volunteers was mixed up, with two of our number staying in Accra with Crystal Eye Clinic, and three of us, along with my new roommate, setting off for Kumasi to work with the Charity Eye Clinic there.

On  the night before we left, conveniently the night after we arrived, we wandered around Accra a bit in a group of eight volunteers, the only time everyone in the program was together. We went to basically the first place we found selling food at 8pm, there were not that many especially around the Telecentre where we could sit. In the spirit of adventure we had burgers. They were alright, there was a bone still in my chicken but as far as i know no one got sick :). Overall it was pretty fun and it was a good outing for meeting those I had not spent time with before and saying goodbye to those I had lived with for four days.

Accra is insane, basically. The roads are confusing there are packs of stray dogs and puddles that boarder on ponds in the road. The drive out was chaotic as best; between the venders walking the street and the pushiness of most all of the drivers, well, as I have said before, I could never ever drive there, I have enough of a time as a passenger.

I blame “Underneath The Turban” for my rating basically everything by how much I want to snuggle with it. This includes a very cute mountain outside of Accra, which I wanted to snuggle with desperately. There is not much else to say about the trip to Kumasi, it was long, at least five hours, and basically I just read.

Kumsi is very nice, it has a large market called the Kaygetia(not sure on the spelling, that is how it seems to be pronounced), far nicer roads than Accra(mostly paved, with signs), and some nice trees and scenery(giving it the name “the garden city”). The Kate Memorial Hotel, where we are staying, is pretty nice. It is has a bit more of a professional, clean feel than the Telecentre, AC, fridges, TV, and one computer with internet connectivity you pay for. You have to tell the manager when you want to use the water for a shower most of the time and when you want to use the computer. There is a restaurant and a bar on the property, the prices are not cheap but not too ridiculous. Our room has windows that do not lead outside, which is annoying when you get up at 6am or want to know the weather(oh wait, hot and sunny, maybe partly cloudy), but at least we weren’t woken up at 5am on Sunday by the church next door like the other room.

Culture Shock

Go figure, Ghana is a lot different from Connecticut or New Hampshire. The language, the “white” or “outsider” status we receive here, everyone speaking Twi, it wears on me. It doesn’t help that I miss people back home so much it hurts some times. The training modules gave us EXTENSIVE review on culture shock, so I do understand it. But that is little solace when in Kumasi in a huge packed amphitheater, and the moon comes out(and for once I need it to fall). So sometimes it is difficult to deal with. A lot of the time I wish i was staying for less than a month, or that I had been able to bring someone with me.

Day Off(socks and celebrities)

The most insane day of my life. Sunday, our real day off since the previous one was spent driving. We had decided to go to the market and to the cultural center. We got a ride from the hotel, of course were severely ripped off, and were downtown in about 15-20 minutes. Immediately on exiting the van, the people around the vender stands started talking loudly and looking at us. Apparently they instantly zoned in on my mismatched red and white socks. This is something I always wear back home and I was unduly surprised at it’s impact. Anyways, We went into the market, strait into the fish and meat section, and the one thing worse than tons of dead fish is tons of dead cow parts, it was not awful but the smell and some of the sights were disturbing. The market I would not recommend to the browser; there is a lot there but it was kind of awkward and troublesome since we had nothing specifically to buy. The cultural center is perfect for tourists, There are craft shops at the relative front with masks and other souvenirs. However, keep walking and there are actual shops where people are making drums or welding trinkets and suck out of bronze. The prices are better here, and best if you can haggle, unlike me. Still I did alright and we all had some nice keepsakes by the end. There is a large amphitheater and we found out that there would be a music and dancing show at 4pm, we decided to wait until then and wandered off to find some dancers in intricate costumes being filmed in the lawn, they insisted that we join them...and now the four of us should be on TV here in two months doing a shuffle dance, with varying amounts of success. lunch was fine, the fish here is alright but I wouldn’t get it again, they come whole and do not have that much meat for the hassle of digging around for it and taking out the bones. Anyways, skip to 4pm, we get back to the amphitheater, expecting a smallish crowd of mostly tourists. SO wrong. The place was packed, not a touristy group in sight. We sat down anyways and saw two hours of inexplicable shouting in twi, people who were probably celebrities and other people throwing cedis at them. If that was not strange enough, an announcer rand up 10 rows at least to come ask us down to the stage. Apparently being awkward white kids made us celebrities, and before I knew it we were on stage. Of course I was the one asked what I thought about the show, and stammered something I’m not even sure what, trying to not offend their twi screaming show. Then we danced to some music and some people threw money at us, then I finally found out what was going on; we had wandered into a record premier/charity show(possibly for some charity called “wind” I’m still uncertain) anyways then we watched the rest of the show from the second row in chairs, with commentary from the nice guy in front of us; apparently the king of the Ashanti region(where Kumasi is) was there, and a lot of other famous Ghanian singers. It was a thoroughly bizarre experience. Oh and there were over 3,000 people there, nbd.

also, the internet is allways difficult here
and ddinner is ready :)
after a wait...welcometo "elastic time"

Wherever, the Central Region

So, I spent the last 3-4 days in the central region of ghana, we stayed at the "Royal Hotel"
there was no ac or wifi
but it was pretty sweet, I went to three outreaches, they were in churches
things you may not expect;

a goat(not shown: all the other goats everywhere)

-the goats crossing the main road/being generally everywhere
-the chickens, also everywhere
-the public urination/breastfeeding
-the large amount of jesus/christian billboards/gigantic car stickers
-the predominence of hilarious soap operas
-how annoying/repetitive/common the roosters are
SO ANNOYING
anyways im leaving accra again in less than an hour
and I need to get to an ATM
pics when i have more time

Getting There

when flying into Ghana, or really anywhere abroad, one should not forget-proof of immunization
-phone numbers and addresses of places you are staying
-to print out basically everything you need, including copies of surveys if needed and copies of everything important
i forgot some of these things
but, I still made it and everything is fine!
the trip was kind of insane, the flight was long and we walked out to a sunny morning after not long enough and definitely not enough sleep
I realized quickly that I should never drive in Ghana; the roads are chaotic and there are often people walking in them and little to no traffic signals. It is a bit frightening at first but the drives seeme to know what they were doing.

what a snazzy dirt pile in the road :)

as you may guess, large muddy lakes take over the road when it rains

0.0

Tonight we went out to dinner, it was good to get to know all of the volunteers who I will be with for at least a week and up to a month!
the Telecentre guest house is nice, the internet is fine and everyone is very nice here

and be sure to check the voltage capacities on all of your plug-in electronics, even circuit breakers!