January 31, 2009
Another successful week of classes! I have Twi class Monday through Thursday for an hour and a half and one additional class every day. I am taking Gender and Reproductive Rights, Regionalism and Ethnicity in Ghanaian Politics, Penology and Human Rights in Africa. The class sizes are HUGE and the professor is hard to understand/hear most of the time. It is a completely different lecture style than at Morris, the professor reads from his notes and everyone copies exactly how he says it, word for word in complete sentences.
I am volunteering at an orphanage 4 blocks from my home stay since I have most mornings free. My first day was Thursday morning and I helped some children write the alphabet. There are about 30 kids at the orphanage, from 3 months old to 10 years old.
Friday night some friends and I went to a Lebanese restaurant – it was delicious. It was also really nice to not have a variation of rice, chicken and plantains! To get to the restaurant we had to take a 2 tro-tros, the way there was no problem at all. On the way back was an adventure! The place where we switch tor-tros is a station with about 100 tro-tros dropping and picking people up and also a market. We had no idea what tro-tro to get on so all these men were trying to help us (10 white people) and then it started to rain. The vendors at the market were running around trying to cover their things while people on tro-tros were yelling at us to get on. Finally some really nice man walked us exactly where we needed to go. By this point it was raining pretty hard and then I realized the seat I was sitting in had a broken window and I couldn’t shut it. Needless to say my left side was soaked. The mate (person in charge of money on the tro-tro) gave me a rag to hold over the window. It was definitely an adventure!
My dad found a high school friend whose sister lives in Accra, Ghana and works for the United States Treasury department. Her driver offered to give us a tour of Accra, it was so nice to learn about Accra and see so many different areas. We went to the National Museum (one of the two museums in Ghana), Nkrumah Mausoleum (the first President of Ghana), to the National Cultural Center (an art center with a lot of vendors) and some other places. After the tour they brought us to their house and we had potatoes, salad (with Ranch dressing!), broccoli and ribs with Famous Dave’s sauce. The leafy salad and broccoli was amazing, the only vegetables we can find are yams. It was interesting talking to them about working with the Foreign Service and all the countries and experiences they’ve had living abroad.
One thing I have noticed repeatedly in Ghana is the God references everywhere. For example, “In God’s Hands Hair Salon” and “By His Grace Fast Food”. Also, the woman and men carry so many things on their heads. There was a man carrying a box of chickens on his head, the picture won't upload because the internet is too slow, but I will try another time.