some reflections post-ghana

I don’t think I can express in words how grateful I am for the chance to go to Ghana for four months. I got to actually see and experience so much of what I have learned about during my time in college. I value the relationships I made while in Ghana and already miss being with my roommate Seguah, Laraba & Ruth at the Night Market, and the girls at Street Girls Aid. I also miss the friends I made who are not from Ghana- my lovely Canadian friends as well as girls from Elon and other students from across America. Each person I met taught me so much and I have found myself looking nostalgically at pictures. I have learned so much about myself, what I care about, and what God cares about. I have learned more about what God has called me to (although I still have a lot to learn) and have even more of a passion now for social justice, just international and national policies to be implemented, a holistic gospel, and Christians caring about the poor in tangible ways.

I did not experience too much of reverse culture shock upon returning to the US. A few things have stuck out to me – everything looks so plastic and shiny (walking into Target for the first time was extremely overwhelming), everything is SO clean, and you can go for so long without actually having to speak to anyone. Now, I am sure that is true for many cultures, but it is strange spending so much time alone here…alone in my car, in my room, having so much space when I am food shopping or anywhere in general. It is just very different to the chaotic busyness and closeness of Accra, where people are just jam-packed everywhere.

I was talking with my friends Nina and Lonnie right before Lonnie left for Canada about the ways we want to change after this experience and how so many people claim to care about social justice but do not reflect that in their lives. I fully admit that there have been - and are - many things in my life that go contrary to what I proclaim is just. I believe that these things in my life are wrong and I really want them to disappear. I have committed to myself and God to uphold the following items: whenever I get a new piece of clothing I will give away one piece of my clothing to stop the massive accumulation that occurs all too quickly (thanks Jo!), to use air conditioning sparingly (when it is under my control), and to be more careful about how I am voting with my dollar – both in terms of food items by purchasing local and organic produce and in terms of other goods by shopping almost exclusively at Goodwill or secondhand stores. I thought it was important to set these guidelines in place for myself because I know that it is far too easy to forget what I’ve seen…and I don’t want that to happen.

postscript: I know that these past few entries have been posted several weeks after I’ve returned to the US….sorry for the delay! The last few weeks in Ghana were crazy with studying for finals and having all of those “lasts” that are always inevitable when you leave any sort of long trip. However, I wrote all of these blog entries (or at least parts of them) while I was still in Ghana, and wanted to share them with you faithful readers :) I really appreciate you taking the time to read about my time in Ghana. Thank you so much – or, as they say in Twi, medase-pa!

more on street girls

Every day I was in Ghana I looked forward to when I got to take the tro tro from Legon to Abufo first junction to the Street Girls Aid Refuge House. The girls were so fun and so sweet....they were incredibly thankful and had amazing strength. I just want to share some of the great memories I have of being with those girls...

One time I brought some other international students with me to the refuge house with backpacks and laptops in tow. The majority of the girls had never used a computer, and so I wanted them to get the chance to experience that. The previous Wednesday the girls had all written sentences about themselves in English – their names, ages, hometowns, the foods they like, etc -- and so then they had to type their sentences on Microsoft Word. They loved getting to learn how to use a laptop, and were so excited when I brought the printouts of their sentences back for them the following week.

Shaylin (from CA) with Ivy (R) and Mary (L)

Everyone on computers in the Literacy Room :)

My friend Courtney – a Californian who also lived in my hostel – had started leading a Bible Study for the girls, and so I was able to help with that. She brought Bibles for the girls who could read English, and we covered all sorts of topics – the importance of prayer, how Jesus covers our sins, how we should treat our enemies, and so much more. One of my favorite things was praying with them – I think one of them energetically yelled ‘Amen’ in their Ghanaian accents every two seconds :)

One day we played Pictionary with the girls, and it was absolutely hysterical! They LOVED it…we played on a big white board that they sometimes used for school. They were all practically falling over because they were laughing so much! Courtney and I were on different teams, and we competed against each other for the winning team – and my team won when I drew a picture of fufu, a traditional Ghanaian dish!

Fufu with fish... yum?

Through the financial support of many different people, Courtney and I were able to help several of the girls. Two of the girls – Dorothy and Rosemary – will be supported until they become hairdressers. The way it works in Ghana is that you pay the salon in order to be an apprentice, and after they think you have mastered the skills (which could take anywhere between 1-3 years, we were told), you automatically become a full-time hairdresser at that salon. We will continue to support the girls so they can pay to be apprentices as well as pay for their living expenses for however long it takes them to complete the training program. My friend Joanna – who is also from Elon – also was able to do a lot with a girl named Mina. Mina had learned how to make different types of jewelry at CAS – a Catholic NGO also in Accra that serves as a day shelter for street children, and where they can go to learn skills such as jewelry-making – and really wanted to start her own business after leaving Street Girls Aid. Joanna, Mina, Gifty (another one of the girls), and I went to the market one day and bought TONS of beads and various other materials that Mina needed to make jewelry. She was also given the funds to pay for a table and chair to set up her business outside of her grandmother’s house, where she would live after leaving Street Girls Aid. I have since talked to her -- and she has moved to her grandmother's house and told me that she's already sold some of her jewelry :)

On Courtney’s and my last day, we had a party for the girls – and oh my, it was fun! We had asked the girls what kind of food they wanted for the party, thinking that they would ask for ice cream or cookies or something. What did they ask for? RICE! Fried rice and jollof rice….I couldn’t believe it. I have yet to meet a Ghanaian who isn’t in love with rice. Anyway, we did bring rice – lots of it! – along with salad, chicken, biscuits (the equivalent of American cookies), Tampico (the most popular fruit drink), Coke, and Milo (the equivalent of American hot chocolate, although you can also drink it cold). After eating, we danced, gave them a bunch of clothes and things we had collected from our international friends…

Mauwsi eating her rice

Since I’ve been home I have repeatedly looked at the pictures of the girls or watched the videos they took on my camera of them dancing or doing other random things. I have also talked to many of them on the phone – two of the girls have cell phones – which has been so great. It was really hard to leave them because I knew that I will most likely not ever see or talk to them again. Once the girls leave Street Girls Aid, they usually live in slums in Accra (which do not have postal addresses) or sometimes move back to their villages (most of which are remote and in the northern areas of Ghana). The majority of the girls don’t have cell phones and therefore I have no way to contact any of them besides Gifty and Mina, who are the girls who own phones. 

I think the hardest thing about leaving them was that I know there are not a lot of options for them, especially those who have not been to school. I don’t know if they will have the money to send their children to school – and if they don’t, the cycle of poverty will most likely continue with their children. When I’ve talked to people – Ghanaians, Americans, and Canadians – I have often received the response that these girls should just work really hard to save up so they and their kids could go to school, or buy lots of things to sell, or somehow find a better job. This pattern of thinking – that the poor can lift themselves out of poverty anytime they want to – is a huge issue that greatly affects the way in which we relate with the poor and the governmental strategies we support that affect the poor. I saw this issue being played out right in front of my eyes every time I went to Street Girls Aid or the slums. The issue is that you can only make so much selling things on the sides of the road – which is the main profession of the poor in Ghana due to the lack of education and skills. Yes, it is true that sometimes people inflict poverty on themselves through bad decisions, but that is not always the case. Most of these girls were such hard-workers and genuinuely wanted to make better lives for themselves and their chidren, but just didn't have the resources to do so. I am so thankful that these girls opened up their lives to me and that we danced together, ate together, learned together, and laughed together.

Little Lizzie...so cute!!!!

i have learned...

• It is possible to live for a month without a cell phone (what I did after leaving mine in a taxi by accident)
• People who live in slums are not just statistics. They are REAL people with emotions, hardships, relationships and love just like you or me
• The Bible verse that says that when we give to the poor we will be repaid in their thanksgiving and prayers for us is so, so true  
• It takes work to live simply
• It is actually possible to live without A/C in a tropical climate
• Ghanaians, for the most part, have no idea how to read any sort of map
• Taxi drivers will always tell you they know where you want to go even when many times they have no idea
• Changing your accent slightly to mimic the local English accent really helps others understand you
• Although I don't like ignoring people, sometimes it is worth it....like when Ghanaian guys stand off their balconies yelling “I need a white lady to be my wife, will you take my number?” … uh, no.
• That practically everything can be carried on your head...refrigerators, beds, live chicken coops (I think this will always mystify me), books, baskets of food, etc
• Ghanaians believe that putting a tiny piece of cloth on a baby’s head will stop them from hiccupping
• According to Ghanaians, blowing your nose in toilet paper rather than a tissue will worsen your cold
• Ghanaians LOVE having their pictures taken -- pictures that are printed out are very special because they are expensive
• Pharmaceuticals come into Africa to test drugs on poor people that have not been FDA-approved without telling them the possible physical effects of such drugs (thank you to my Canadian friends for educating me about this issue)
• For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment
• It can be really hard to be an African-American traveling to Africa...a good place to go to understand this perspective is Maya Angelou’s autobiographies -- the one I read was All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
• Many Africans believe that America is better than China – most who are politically aware realize that both countries are screwing them over, but also think that China is doing it in a really sneaky way whereas America just does it outright
• The only thing you can’t be late for in Ghana is class (if you’re a student) or a business meeting, everything else is fine
• I hate bargaining and am horrible at it 

"i close my eyes and try to see the world unbroken underneath"

Being in Ghana is hard because you are not sheltered from the seemingly never-ending physical hardships present in the world. In many ways, I feel like it is easier to distance yourself from the problems of the world when in America (NOT that America doesn’t have its issues, but just that poverty is often more easily hidden there, especially in the circles I usually travel in). Every day here, you will see or walk past people begging for food, malnourished children, and row after row of shacks. I have seen people bathing in the sewers and eating out of the garbage.

Seeing things like this so often has made me really question what is wrong with the world today. One day, one of my professors remarked about the fact that famine is not a physical issue of not having enough food, but rather a STRUCTURAL issue -- there is enough food on the planet, it's just not being distributed fairly. Evidence points to this unequal distribution present in many other areas of life – clean water, housing, and health care, just to name a few.

The title of this post is from a Jars of Clay song called ‘Waiting for the World to Fall.’ That line – “I close my eyes and try to see the world unbroken underneath” always REALLY hits me. This is what I so desperately want to do -- see the world unbroken…without poverty, without injustice, without sin. In conversations with people here, I am often told (from my self-proclaimed pessimist and realist friends) “Amanda that sounds nice, but it will never happen.” Even though I know that is true, it is just so difficult to know about and see such horrible things and to feel as if things will never change. God has been teaching me something important lately – that it is necessary to enter into the suffering and brokenness of the world in order to be a transformational agent in the world. That, yes, it is important to be hopeful, and I am hopeful that things will change because I believe in a God who is over the whole world. However, to always be optimistic and not see the world in its true state – brokenness – does not allow us to truly understand the reality of the state of our world.

Throughout my time here there have been specific points where I think God has given me eyes to view the world the way He does. One such time was when a girl Ayisha left Street Girls Aid. She is from Cote d’Ivoire, and I spent more than a month teaching her how to read and write in French. Along the way, I gained her trust and started learning more of her story. She grew up in the slums of Abidjan, the former capital of Cote d’Ivoire and the current largest city, located along the coast. She went to a few years of school, but then was not allowed to go anymore because her mom needed her to help her with her market stand. For reasons that I am still unsure of – all she would tell me is that she didn’t want to be around her mother – Ayisha ran away at the age of 16 and crossed the border into Ghana without any identification by telling them she was 12 years old and forgot her identification papers. She worked for several years there before she got sick, was taken to a hospital, and due to being unable to pay hospital bills, ran away to Accra to try and find a new job there. She got pregnant and had her baby on the streets of Accra, and was later referred to the Street Girls Aid refuge house after some agency worker had found her and her malnourished baby on the streets. When I said goodbye to her, I gave her my contact information but received nothing in return, because as a slum-dweller, Ayisha has no address. She also does not have money to buy a cell phone and has no email address or access to a computer.

The day after saying goodbye to Ayisha, I sat in my room at the university and cried for hours. She is a beautiful woman who has been trapped by the cycle of poverty. She is incredibly intelligent – she speaks four languages and is somewhat literate in English and now French. Her dreams included finishing school and being a seamstress -- but Ayisha knows, just as I do, that the possibility of these dreams being fulfilled is slim to none unless she has outside assistance. She will most likely always be poor.

I am not trying to condemn her to a life of poverty, but to open my eyes - and yours - to the reality of the situation of many of the poor throughout the world. Ayisha will sell items at a market stand, which will probably earn her the bare minimum needed to feed herself and her baby Christiana. I cried because I would most likely never see or hear from her again. I cried because I wanted a life for her where her and her child could be adequately fed, where Ayisha would be able to pay the school fees needed for Christiana to go to school, and where Ayisha would be able to finish school and learn how to be a seamstress. I cried because it is unfair that I grew up and have always had a wealth of opportunities at my feet while Ayisha grew up in a slum with little to no opportunities. I cried because I was angry at globalization and international policies that have, in part, created or exacerbated poverty in the world. I cried because some have more than enough food to feed their families and Ayisha didn't. I cried because the world is broken. And I cried because it is hard to face reality and see the world as broken as it is.

Yes, I cried for Ayisha and I know will continue to cry for her and the plight of the poor and disadvantaged in the world. But I am thankful that God has taught me the importance of facing reality, the necessity of calling sin for what it is, and the value of being broken for the things that also break His heart. And though I know I will continue to cry for the broken state of our world, I know that there is a God who is big enough to still be good even in the face of all that is bad. I also know that there are still glimmers of hope that illuminate the darkness -- and that I have the ability to choose to be one of those glimmers of hope every day.

Ayisha & Christiana

i will miss...

• The girls at Street Girls Aid...seeing the smiles on their faces and receiving big hugs when I walk in, hearing them call me ‘sister Amanda,’ their awestruck faces upon seeing my innie belly button and what they described as ‘golden’ arm hair, seeing their smiles when they learned something new, hearing Rosemary tell me that she prays for me, hearing them say ‘ey! ey!’ in disgust everytime I describe American food, seeing Ayisha’s shy smile break out every time I told her how smart she was, talking with Mina, and having Bible study with them
• International students bible study in Zac and Leah’s room
• People hissing at me to get my attention
• Little children yelling out ‘obruni’ when they see me, waving excitedly, and running over to touch my white skin
• Riding tro-tros around
• The way the mates pronounce Madina (which is my favorite place to get on a tro-tro to just because of the way it's pronounced)
• The chaotic frenzy of markets
• Everyone making fun of me for thinking every food is spicy….it IS!
• Ghanaian theater…so priceless
• The people at the Night Market…getting a hug from Laraba every morning, opening my door to see 10-year-old Ruth standing there with a smile, bringing snacks to my favorite rice ladies at the “Flavour of God” ricestand and seeing their excitement, walking up to Margaret’s bean stand and her knowing exactly what I wanted since I got the same thing every night
• Cold showers after a long day out in the heat....glorious!!!
• Walking into the slums where Comfort, Ata, Afia and Adua live to have them run towards me and give me hugs
• Biting the corners off water sachets or ice creams or yogurts…or at least attempting to
• Sitting in my room never knowing what song will be blasting out of the Night Market next
• Hanging out with my lovely roommate Seguah…. trying to imitate her accent, locking her out of our room to annoy her, receiving her disapproving looks of my pile of dirty dishes, her laughing hysterically at me when I danced, and her face of disgust when I made her smell my closet full of dirty clothes (can you believe that she still loves me?! :) )
• Waking up to Celine Dion or the Backstreet Boys blasting out of the Night Market
• Seeing people carry ridiculous things on their heads….like chicken coops with live chickens in them!

northern ghana & burkina faso

The last trip I took was to Northern Ghana and Burkina Faso with my friends Nina, Courtney, Jon, and Emily…It was definitely the most interesting trip of all the trips I’ve been on in my time here. I've recapped some of the highlights...

Nina and I first went by ourselves up to Wa, which, from Accra, took a total of 19.5 hours. We arrived in Wa at 1:30am in the pouring rain, only to ride around in a taxi until 3am because there were no hotels with open rooms or whose reception people would wake up. We ended up “sleeping” on the bus we had taken there to lasting Bob Marley music until 5:30am when they kicked everyone off the bus.

Nina thought it was hilarious to snap a picture of me "sleeping" on the bus

Nina sponsors a girl named Eng-Tiyieng, who lives outside of Wa in the Upper West region. I got to go with Nina to meet Eng, who is 10 years old, and her whole family at her house. It was really special seeing Nina meet Eng and talk to her. We had translators from World Vision and got to see all of the development projects that are occurring there.

Nina & me with Eng-Tiyieng's family - Eng is in the pink dress :)

Later that night, we met up with our other friends Jon, Courtney, and Emily, only to find tha they had taken the overnight bus to Wa during which Jon had to make the driver stop many times to vomit – he had food poisoning. I think we should have known at this point that our trip wasn't exactly going to go as planned :) The following morning, we crossed into Burkina Faso at the obscure Hamale border point, which was a HUGE mistake. After arriving there, we found out that we had missed the ONLY bus that went through there daily. We spent several hours at the border, trying to figure out how to get out of there – the town, we were told, only had one hotel and did not have any electricity or water. After a very long argument and yelling match with Burkinabes in French, we finally managed to get to Gawa, our destination.

We found a great restuarant in Gawa...I think we were slightly loopy by that point from all the bus rides!

The next day, we went to the market in Gawa and then tried to get to Banfora, our next destination. Unfortunately, there was another argument in French as the bus drivers tried to charge us more for our bus fare than everyone else…we definitely created a commotion as all these Burkinabe’s just keep coming to watch the white people…On the 5-hour drive, our bus got a flat tire, and so we stopped in a random village so they could fix it. The 5 of us walked out, and all of the village children screamed and ran toward us – but they were too afraid to get close to us! It was adorable. If you look closely in the picture out of the back of the bus, you can see all the children waving bye to us.

The next day, we got on another bus to Bobo- Dioulasso, where we first went to a really cool museum. We got to see life-size replicas of traditional Burkinabe housing (which varies by ethnic group throughout the country). We later got a tour through the oldest part of Bobo, and the got to go inside a mosque constructed in the 16th century!

We then traveled to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, later that night. The following morning, Nina, Emily and I woke up extra early to go to a French patisserie (pastry shop). It was an amazing break from traditional African food – and delicious!

Please note the two giant pastries in front of me :)

Later that day, we crossed back over into Ghana, and RAN to hop on the busses that went straight to Accra. The five of us got split up, and I ended up traveling the 14 hours by myself. I sat next to a Burkinabe who was traveling to Accra to buy things to sell back in his market…He only spoke French, and after we traded our respective currencies (I love having money from other countries), I translated many of the Ghanaian movies into French for him. I decided that no Ghanaian movie is complete without either having an exorcism or an affair somewhere in the plotline. My ride wasn’t as exciting as Nina’s, Emily’s, and Courtney’s – they had the privilege of sitting right next to two ladies who kept throwing up everywhere and peeing in bottles in the aisle of the bus. The most exciting part of my ride was when we stopped in Tamale, which is the largest city in northern Ghana. I got in line to pee in these shacks, which I then realized were directly overtop of the deep gutters that line all of the roads in Ghana….the same gutters that overflow every time it rains. I mean, I guess exciting isn’t the word for it, but it was certainly a reality check about the need for a better sanitation system in Ghana!

generous giving

Through the generous giving of many, some great things happened in Accra over the past few months...


14 women who live in the slums were given a bag of rice that will last them for about 2 months

1 woman was given the money to buy fruit to sell to support herself and her child

2 children were given the supplies and money needed to go to daycare so their mother would be able to sell water for profit

1 little boy with cerebral palsy was given a refrigerator, lots of food to help him gain weight, and lots of multi-vitamins and diapers. Him and his father have also been able to get National Health Insurance for a whole year – meaning they’ll be able to go to the doctors and have most medicines paid for

1 woman was given the funds to expand her market stand so she could better care for her handicapped grandson

Several children who live at the Night Market - which is a market right on campus - were given school supplies

3 young women were able to return to their hometowns (with babies in tow) to start their own businesses. They were also given baskets of clothing and items such as toothpaste and soap.

1 girl who lived at Street Girls Aid was able to begin her own jewelry business through the purchase of beads, other jewelry materials, and a stand to display her work

2 other girls at Street Girls Aid were given/will continue to be given the funds to work as apprentices at hair salons for 1-3 years until they learn the trade and can work on their own

1 elderly woman who cannot walk was given the funds to be able to receive medical care (which she has not been able to for some time, and has gone blind as a result of not getting the proper care she needs) as well as large quantities of food since she is unable to work

togo & benin

Day 1: Lonnie, Nina and I arrived at Circle (the place where we would get the bus to Lome) around 2pm, and pulled out of the chaotic bus station that is Circle approximately 30 minutes later. The three of us dozed in and out of sleep as the bus moved slowly through traffic, until we noticed – about an hour and a half later, might I add – that we were just passing by the university. We have no idea why the drive that usually takes 20 minutes took five times as long…Oh, Ghana. We were told that the drive to Lome from Accra would take about 3 hours, but we ended up at the border in almost double the time. I got excited as we neared the border to start speaking French again – while getting our visas at the Togo border, I married off both Nina and Lonnie to one of the security guards, who also wrote down his number for us and told us to call him. Good times. We made it to our hotel and then wandered around looking for a place to eat, after which we crashed into bed to try and get some sleep

Day 2: After leaving our not-so-lovely hotel room, we had an amazing breakfast of omelettes and our first moto ride of the trip along the coast of Togo…it was awesome! We wandered through the market in Lome, and after deciding that markets in West Africa pretty much all look the same, headed to the fetish market. The fetish market is where people who practice voodoo go to get their medicines…it was certainly an interesting experience. We met the son of the fetish market chief and saw how many stones/animal parts/random stuff was used to do voodoo, and then got to walk around and take pictures of all the musty dead animals.

As Nina put it: “Thank God for the World Wildlife Federation.”

After we had enough of snake skulls and horse heads, we got a taxi to Togoville, the village that the whole country is named after. We took a pirogue ride through Lac Togo to the village, which boasts of the voodoo religion (stone statues of gods were everywhere) and the place where the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared in the 80’s (the pope even visited Togoville after that happened). We then pirogue-d it back to the shore, which was a memorable ride as Lonnie met another future husband and an old man blessed us about 50 times…pretty sure “God Bless You” was the only thing he knew how to say in English. We crossed into Benin in the afternoon, and made it to Ouidah in what we thought was a too-full taxi with 4 people crammed in the back. Little did we know what was to come….anyway, we made it to Ouidah, which is a small town with a Portuguese fort, slave history and a museum full of snakes (but we stayed far away from that!). Our hotel was blue bungalows right on the ocean…amazing! We had a lovely French dinner, laughed when the power flickered on and off numerous times, and swam in the saltwater pool.

Day 3: We first walked to the Door of No Return, which was located pretty close to our hotel and then took a motorbike into town…with all THREE of us, along with our backpacks and purses, behind the driver…it was crazy. We took a tour of an old Portuguese slave fort, taxi-ed to a bank in Cotonou to take out money, and took a moto ride to Ganvie, the largest stilt village in Africa -- It is comprised of 4 villages that total around 80,000 people. They even had two hotels you could stay in and a gift shop, where the store owner outfitted Nina like an African woman which was pretty funny. We then headed north to Abomey in a shared taxi, walked around a little bit in search of French food, only to realize that Ghana has a disproportionate amount of street food compared to Francophone West Africa. We pulled out the guidebook and found a place that sounded good, found it and sat down to learn that they had no menus (we are used to only getting one menu per group, but no menus??) and that they were only serving rice and meat. Since I don’t eat meat and Lonnie and Nina were rice-ed out, we decided to give up on and head to our hotel, which turned out to be a great idea. The hotel was very cute and despite the lack of running water, we had a great dinner and lots of fun hanging out there.

Day 4: In the morning we visited the palace that used to be where the chiefs of the Abomey people lived – now it has been turned into a museum. The whole thing was so interesting, we saw many of their religious practices, the uses for the various compounds within the palace, and heard how all Abomey kings had more than 1,000 wives -- whenever one king died, the next king inherited all of the previous king’s wives! After our tour, we went to the bus station only to find out that there wasn’t another bus going to Natitingou (where we wanted to go) that day. We accepted an offer to ride up on what we thought was going to be a tro tro the whole way, only to find out that was NOT the case. Here ensued the hilarious events: from a squished tro-tro, to taxi #1, which included me straddling the stick shift, 4 people in the front row and 8 in the backseat, which is a total of 12 people, then taxi #2, which had three rows – 4 people in the front, we think 8 in the middle, 4 in the back (that’s where we were), 1 in the trunk and 1 on the roof for a grand total of 18 people. This was a seriously hilarious experience…we bonded with the Beninois people in the car, and I got to play with a little girl who was adorable. One of the guys in there (the one who was at first on the roof, but then came in the car when it started raining) spoke a little English and said “See? Africa no good. In America, this not happen.” He was laughing about it, but it’s true. I don’t know whether there is a shortage of taxis in Benin or that people don’t have enough money to pay for a reasonable number of people in one taxi, but it is so unsafe. Then, we were dropped off again to taxi #3 which I thought was the most uncomfortable. Lonnie and Nina were jammed in the front with the driver and another lady, I was in the middle with I think 7 others, and 4 guys were crammed in the trunk. We went through a police checkpoint….our driver bribed the officer to let our way-too-full taxi through with a bag of pure water. We finally made it to Natitingou around 10pm, found a hotel that had the friendliest workers ever who helped us get a guide for our SAFARI the next day!

Day 5: AFRICAN SAFARI! We rented a truck and a guide for the day, which turned out to be a great idea. We left our hotel at 5:30am and returned back at 5:30pm….it was amazing! We saw lots of elephants, crocodiles, monkeys, hippos, wildebeasts, gazelles, warthogs, monkeys, baboons, birds, antelopes, turkey-looking things and many other animals that we had no idea what they were called. We got to ride on the top of our guide’s truck….we felt like we were in the Lion King and so sang a lot of Lion King songs throughout our drive  After our safari, we took a tro tro through Benin into Togo which was amazing. The ride was beautiful and we saw so many interesting villages. One of the funniest parts was the “border” between Togo and Benin…it was literally a tree log. Since we didn’t get exit stamps, the three of us never actually left Benin, according to our passports. We stayed overnight in Kara, a city in the far north of Togo, at possibly the worst hotel I have ever been in in Africa…and that’s saying something!

Day 6: Travel day! We took a bus from Kara to Lome, which surprisingly left on time and got to our destination on time! From Lome (which, fun fact, is the only capital city in the world that is also a border town) we went through the border with no issues and then got a tro from Aflao back to Accra. We were so happy to be back in Ghana! As the three of us were sitting on the tro with people surrounding the bus trying to sell items, two ladies in the tro yelling at each other over something or another, and being able to use our beloved cedis instead of confusing CFA, Lonnie said, “I never thought Ghana would feel so much like home!” So true :)

a typical week in ghana

Whenever I read people’s blogs, I always wish I had an idea of what they did every day…maybe it’s just the American in me, but I LOVE when things are in chronological order. So…here is a short recap of a typical week here in Ghana throughout the past 3 months – but keep in mind that nothing in Ghana can be called ‘typical’…

Monday: I usually wake up debating whether or not I should go to the Urban Development class that I’m auditing. If I decide to go, I’ll leave the hostel around 8:50am, which gives me enough time to order an egg sandwich at the night market and walk to my 9:30 class. During class, I write notes and look around when the professor makes jokes to try and figure out why everyone is laughing. If I don’t decide to go, which has been the case recently, then I wake up later and head straight to my African-American Literature class that starts at 11:30 (which, unfortunately, is the same time that my first class ends…why they don’t add more time between classes is a mystery to me). But it’s okay because I’ve always made it there before my professor, an African-American, arrives. During this class I have the luxury of being able to stop paying attention periodically because I can easily understand what the professor is saying. I get out of this class at 1:30, and either get lunch at one of the nearby eating places (all of which are inside the individual dorms/hostels) or back at Night Market which is right next to my hostel. I usually arrive at my 3:30 class, Africa and the Global System, only to wait for my professor to show up 30 minutes later. At 5:30 I am very happy to be done with classes for the day, and usually head back with my obruni friends to grab my usual dinner at the Night Market – beans, white rice, and plantains. At night, we’ll hang out, get stuff made by the seamstress, watch movies, go to a movie at the mall, whatever.

Tuesday: Up at 9am, I will usually get oatmeal or waffles at Tasty Treats (the eating place inside of my hostel), which can take from between 10 minutes to an hour to receive. I always bring a book out there to read while I wait, but inevitably I will end up talking with the other international students waiting for their food. Until around 2pm, I will either read for class, go online, write blogs, read one of the many books I brought here and am trying very hard to finish, or hang out with my roommate or other people. I then usually go to meet Rebecca, one of the social workers from Street Girls Aid, at Tema Station – which is right in the middle of Accra. The ride from campus to Tema Station takes about 30 minutes, depending on the traffic and the number of people getting on and off. After meeting Rebecca, we walk to the slum where Comfort, Ata, Afia and Adua live (or lived, since Ata and Afia are already back home trying to start their businesses!) and visit them and the others who lives there. This often ends up in me taking a million pictures of everyone, or in us walking to a nearby (well, nearby according to them, but not really by my standards!) pharmacy or market to get them either medicine for their children or something they need. I always love visiting them and seeing their smiling faces. I then travel back to campus, usually get stuck in a ton of traffic and laugh at the insane drivers until I get back to campus. Back at campus I then grab dinner – you guessed it, rice, beans and plantains from the Night Market – and then eat quickly before heading to our International Students Bible Study, which is held in the hostel right next to mine.

Wednesday: I’ll wake up at 8am to get ready, grab breakfast and go to Street Girls Aid – a process that includes a walk to the tro-tro stop at the nearest junction, a tro-tro ride past the main gate of the university, a wait at the tro-tro stop outside of the main gate for a tro to La Paz, the tro ride to La Paz, and then a few minute walk to the refuge house. I usually arrive there by 10am, and start doing school with the girls. They break for lunch at noon, during which I’ll go and sit with them and ‘be invited’ to all of their meals (Ghanaians say “you are invited” whenever they are eating and are trying to tell you that you can eat their food with them). Afterwards, we usually go upstairs to their room and hang out, talk, dance, be silly, take pictures, whatever  I’m always sad by the time I have to leave at 2:30 to get back to campus for my class at 3:30. I go to my Strategies of Development class where almost half of the students are international. One of my friends re-named the class “International Students against Professor,” which I think is pretty accurate, given that our professor does not always have the strongest or most valid explanations for things. I then trudge to my 5:30-7:30 class, Geography of West Africa with special reference to Ghana, where my friend Maggie from Elon and I sit in the front next to our friend, Pounds Sterling (yes,that is his name). He is really nice and very helpful in decoding the Ghanaian English spoken by our professor to us. By 7:30 I can’t WAIT to eat beans, plantains and rice and so we speed walk back to the hostel to get some food!

Thursday: Nina and I walk to tutorial for our Strategies of Development in Africa class which consists of an hour of discussing the topics covered in class more in-depth (which only sometimes happens since our teaching assistant really likes to hear himself talk), and then usually grab lunch at Tasty Treats or an egg sandwich at the Night Market. Sometimes I would go again (often Nina comes with me) to visit Comfort, Ata, Afia and Adua, or little Jon with Rebecca in the afternoons. At 6:30, I go upstairs to Selma’s room for my Ghanaian Bible Study, which is an outgrowth from a local church. I really enjoyed my time listening to Ghanaian perspectives and getting to know more Ghanaians here. They were all very welcoming and nice.

Friday: On Fridays I try to sleep in as late as the blasting music from the Night Market will permit, hang around doing random things in the morning, and usually leave to head to Street Girls Aid by noon. On Fridays I do different things with the girls, sometimes school, sometimes creative art-type stuff, and once I had my international student friends come in with their laptops so the girls could learn how to use computers! It was awesome watching them – they were so excited.

The weekends really vary, but if I’m not traveling, it will often include a trip to a beach or a pool, a movie or play being showed on campus, going to the mall to get pictures printed of the girls at S.Aid or getting on the super fast internet at the Apple store, watching movies and hanging out, going out to dinner anywhere that does NOT serve Ghanaian food, or exploring Accra.

jon

This is Jon and his father Charles. Jon is two years old and is thought to have cerebral palsy, although he has never been officially diagnosed. He has no control of motor functions and spends everyday lying on a mat inside his house. His mother left when she realized his condition. There is a social stigma against people with such disabilities in Ghana. Rebecca, the social worker, explained to me that many people used to believe/still believe that people have disabilities either because of something bad the family has done (so the person with a disability is bringing a curse upon their family) or because of some evil spirit. For this reason, Jon has spent most of his life indoors because a lot of people fear him. Fortunately, the people who live around Jon have started to become used to him, which has allowed the father to bring him outside more often now.

I first met Jon about a week ago. I sat next to him and tried to hold his hand. His whole body continually twists around, including his head, but he kept trying to look at Rebecca and me. He often looks directly into your eyes and it is clear that there is some sort of recognition there. I think he is pretty high functioning for a child who has not had much stimulation. Jon is also extremely malnourished, currently weighing about 14 pounds. His arms and legs are stick skinny. You have to be really careful when you hold him, because his head is too heavy for him to hold up (partly due to the malnourishment and partly due to the CP). He is malnourished because his dad can’t hold a job because taking care of Jon is a full-time job.

Unfortunately, there are not any government services to help provide for Jon's needs. He is in need of several things, including a proper diagnosis from a medical facility, a treatment plan that most likely will include medication, fees for an orphanage to help improve his condition, and immediate food to feed both Jon and his father. Rebecca has found an orphanage that helps children with special needs that will be able to take Jon in for a few years if funding for this can be procured. She believes this is necessary because it is the only way his father will be able to find a job that will hopefully enable him to take care of his son. The goal for Jon is to be able to live independently, so hopefully the orphanage will help get Jon to that place so that his dad can continue working after Jon returns home. Charles, Jon’s father, was at first very reluctant to part with him for a little while, but knows he has to in order to help him. Everyone is hoping that Jon will only have to be in the orphanage for less than five years.

Jon’s smile is contagious. Whenever I go and visit him I can’t stop smiling either. Watching him and his dad together is the most amazing thing…it is so evident how much Charles loves his son. Everytime Jon looks at his dad, a huge smile spreads across his face. If anyone would like to help Jon and his dad out, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I can assure you that any support would go directly to Jon and can even be specified to wherever you would want to contribute, whether it would be for food, orphanage fees, doctors fees, or medication.

Charles & Jon in front of their house

Comfort, Ata, Afia & Adua

Top row (L to R): Comfort and baby Bright, Afia and 4-year-old Comfort

Bottom row(L to R): Adua and baby, Ata and baby Vanessa

They told me that I was the answer to their prayers. I almost started crying when they said that to me. I’m not any better than them. They work harder than me, carrying babies on their backs and heavy loads on their heads for hours a day. They sleep on a hard concrete floor in a small shack with all of their babies. They do not have running water, and often eat one meal a day. Their babies have one pair of clothes each. They drink out of dirty containers and go to the bathroom out in the open. Their belongings are few and their lives have been hard and most likely will continue to be hard. All four of these girls are 20 years old. They are my age, and yet I can see in their eyes that they are much older. I have never gone hungry so that my child may be fed. I have never slept on a hard concrete floor or known what it is like to live in a shack that crumbles each rainy season. I have spent my years growing up going to school, and not just primary school but secondary school and college. Only one out of the four of them can read (although not very much); the others are illiterate. I have a world of opportunities at my feet and they do not. It is not fair. They want to go home to their rural villages for a number of reasons, one of which being that the government is about to bulldoze their slum in order to build a high-rise hotel.

I was first introduced to these girls through Rebecca, one of the social workers who works at Street Girls Aid. Two of the girls, Comfort and Ata, lived at the refuge house for several months until they had to leave because there needed to be room for other pregnant girls at the house. The other girl, Afia, is 20 years old and has a four-year old daughter. She has been on the streets for years now, and has gone home once, only to return to the streets in Accra because she could not make a living in her village. The Bible study I’m in on campus, which consists mostly of international students from Canada & America, has decided to send these girls home and try to help them have a sustainable life at their home villages. Ata is going to have a hairdressing and manicure/pedicure business, Afia a hairdressing business, and Comfort a manicure/pedicure business. To do this, we are providing them the money for the structures of the shacks where there businesses will be, as well as tables and chairs for inside and the necessary supplies (nail polish, hair extensions, etc) to enable them to run their businesses. We are praying that each of them will be successful and that they will be able to support themselves and their children through their businesses.

My heart breaks because their story is not the exception, but the norm. Most of the 60,000 street children in Accra come from poor rural villages where they have no access to education or any means of generating income with the perception that they will have a better life in the city. One-sixth of the world’s population - 1 billion people - live in slums just like Comfort, Ata, Afia and Adua. One-half of the world - 3 billion people - lives in poverty. Statistics like this often don’t faze us anymore because we hear them all too often and they don’t affect most of our everyday lives. Or maybe they do pull on our heartstrings, but we don’t know what to do about it because the problems are just so overwhelming. When I come into contact with such dire poverty, when I walk into the slums where these girls live, my heart is heavy. Often I wonder where God is in any of this. Many verses in the Bible promise that God is on the side of the poor and the oppressed, that He hears their cries and is working for justice for them. A lot of times I doubt that any of that is true. The suffering in the world just seems too great, almost unbearable. But then I think back to the fact that they told me I was the answer to their prayers. Things like that fill me with hope because then I see that God is working through people. The fact that you or I could be the answer to someone’s prayers is humbling and amazing. I think all it takes is our hearts being open to God and the needs around us.

Ata and Afia are going back north to their villages this coming Thursday. Comfort is waiting to sell the last bit of her candy before she leaves, so she will probably be leaving in about two weeks. We are praying that they will be able to support themselves and their children when they go back to their villages. Please join us in praying for these beautiful girls and their children.

destination: cote d'ivoire

Purpose: Eat French baguettes, renew our Ghana visas (they were only valid for 60 days so we had to leave and re-enter the country), have an adventure!

Language: French and other local African languages

Currency: CFAs (1000 CFAs = 3 cedis = $2 USD)

Day 1
Left the university: 5 am
Arrived in Abidjan: 9 pm

Nina, Arsalan and I started out bright and early in hopes of catching the bus that went straight from Accra to Abidjan because we figured that would be the easier way. When we arrived at the STC bus station at 6:30 am, however, we found out that the bus had already left two hours before. So, we found a tro-tro that would take us to Elubo (the town in Ghana closest to the border). We arrived in Elubo at 2 pm and walked off the tro-tro, only to be swarmed by taxi drivers who wanted us to take their taxi to the border and men who wanted to exchange our money into CFAs. Thankfully we had made a friend on the tro-tro who was from Cote d’Ivoire, and so we stuck close to her, her friend, and their huge pile of luggage to get to the border. We had absolutely no problems at the border, although it did take awhile. After several more tro-tros and numerous stops at police checkpoints, we arrived in Abidjan around 9pm. The cousin of a girl who lives in our hostel, Jean-Claude, met us and helped us find food and a hotel for the night.
Most important thing learned: Smiling at police officers and responding positively to winks will help you not have to pay any bribes

Day 2
The majority of our day was spent in Le Plateau, the commercial district of Abidjan. We stopped for a look at the one of the largest Catholic cathedrals in Cote d’Ivoire which has beautiful African-themed stained glass all throughout it, and the Museum of Civilization, which, unfortunately, turned out to be a museum about Jewish history with posters from National Geographic hung on the walls (??) In addition, we walked around several shopping areas that looked very European, ate many pastries and baguettes off the streets, saw a mosque, and took a water taxi. We also randomly met Jean-Claude’s brother, who works with the military, on the street, and then were invited to hang out with the Ivoirian military at their compound. So random…but still fun! We also had ice cream…and not the Ghanaian version of ice cream, but ice cream that tasted like American ice cream!! It was so great. We also got to try some Ivoirian food, including ‘acheke.’ So good!!
Most important thing learned: Finding a giant menorah and a large elephant skeleton next to each other in a museum is not considered strange in Africa

Day 3
Our guidebook told us that one of the most interesting sites in Abidjan was an outdoor laundromat, apparently the largest in the world, where men could be seen furiously washing clothing in a river on old tires and rocks. After some confusion, we made it to the place, only to find out that all of the people washing clothes are from a nearby slum and wash their clothes there because that is the only place for them to do their wash. We had to pay the ‘security guards’ there money in order to take pictures, and later found out that the people washing clothes never actually see any of that money. Sigh. We then traveled a few hours with Jean-Claude to his village outside of Abidjan, called Bonn. The village is named after Germans who came there and built wells for the community so they could have a water source. The kids in the village were enthralled by us foreigners, and often followed us around. We took a tour of the village, walked through a savannah and were fed an incredible dinner. At night, drummers came and everyone got together and danced. Little children taught me how to dance…it wasn’t very successful, but I had a great time!
Most important thing learned: I will never be able to dance

Day 4
Early in the morning we walked around the village to say our goodbyes. Little children started following us around, and before I knew it, there were children all around me, touching my hair, rubbing my arms, and holding onto all of my fingers. It was adorable. We traveled back to Abidjan, and then went to Grand Bassam to go to some of the markets there. Marcel, Jean-Claude’s brother, went with us and was extremely helpful when we were bargaining. The best part was our taxi ride back to Abidjan… we were on a two-lane highway, and there was a ton of traffic on our side of the road. Our taxi driver got annoyed, and so started driving in the other lane. When cars started coming at us, we went for a little off-roading adventure on the opposite side of the road we were supposed to be on. Then, our taxi breaks down. Arsalan and Marcel get out to push the car, but it won’t start because we are stuck on rocks and dirt. So, we had to wait until cars weren’t coming to push the car on the road, where, after a little while more of pushing, the car started again. We finally got back into our proper lane…Would you think that the taxi driver would stay in that lane? Of course not…so we went off-roading again, this time at least on our side of the road. What were Nina and I doing this whole time? Laughing hysterically, of course. When we got back to Abidjan, we went out for French dessert and then went to a club. When they played some popular American songs, Arsalan, Nina, and I got up and did stereotypical American moves…the Ivoirians were all laughing and videotaping us on their phones.
Most important thing learned: I LOVE taxi rides and dancing very embarrassingly in public

Day 5
Left Abidjan: 9:45 am
Arrived at the university: 10 pm

We woke up and found the most incredible food on the streets…on our last day! A French baguette with hard boiled eggs, avocado, beans and other vegetables…a vegetarian’s dream! I think it was the best thing I’ve eaten since I’ve been here. The ride back to Accra was similar to the ride there, although we did encounter far less police checkpoints on the road which was nice.

All in all, we had a great time and no problems considering we were in a politically unstable country with no real government and a dissolution of the peace process just a few weeks earlier.

street girls aid

Accra, the capital of Ghana, has a population of around 3 million people. A recent study estimated that there are 60,000 street children in Accra. Since I’ve been here, I have had the privilege of working with an NGO called ‘Street Girls Aid.’ This is a non-profit organization which houses girls who are pregnant or have children. There are 10 social workers employed with Street Girls Aid, and each of these social workers is assigned to a particular part of the city. Each night they go out to their field area to meet street girls, educate them on health issues, tell them about services offered by Street Girls Aid, and try to earn the trust of the street girls. I have gone out with several of the social workers to their field areas in the city. At night it can be easier to meet girls as they are often done their work for the day and congregate in areas to eat and sleep. The social workers often try to educate the girls about basic health concerns, proper maternal care, and the dangers of the streets. They often talk to the girls about returning to their villages, especially if the girls have children who they are unable to care for properly while living on the streets.

In addition to the social workers who go to the field, Street Girls Aid has a refuge house which gives pregnant girls and girls with young babies a safe place to stay. Every Wednesday I go to visit with the girls. Most days I help teach English or math. The majority of the girls cannot read or write; I have taught several girls how to write their names. One of the girls is from Cote d’Ivoire, and so obviously speaks fluent French. She does not know how to read or write in any of her three languages (French, English, Twi) and so I have the privilege of teaching her how to read and write in French. She is so smart and is catching on so fast. She really, really wants to learn.

Most of these girls come from rural areas in Ghana. Life in villages is hard, as there is often not enough food or any way to get an education. Most girls believe that coming to Accra will bring them economic opportunity. Unfortunately, most of them end up living on the streets. Many of these girls turn to prostitution in order to survive. Others opt for selling various items, such as water or food items, or working as porters carrying bags for those who come off buses. I have been told that neither of these jobs bring in as much money as prostitution. Many of the girls are sexually abused, some are raped. Many have more than one child. They do not have adequate sanitation, access to clean water, enough food to eat, or money to pay for hospital fees or medicine if they are sick.

For more information, check out http://www.said-ghana.com/

random things about ghana

Here's a list of a bunch of things that I've learned since being here...hope you enjoy it!

• Catching a tro-tro going in the correct direction requires that you understand the hand motions and strange pronunciation of places such as ‘Madina,’ ‘Accra,’ and ‘Circle,’ none of which sound as they should when being yelled by the mates (the person who collects the money and directs people on and off the tro)
• Ghanaian men are very forward, so knowing how to deal with marriage proposals is a great skill
• When telling a creepy Ghanaian man that you are already married, you must have the story about your ‘husband’ already prepared…or else he will not believe you and will continue to pester you. However, even when you do tell someone you are married, be prepared to answer why you don’t want a Ghanaian boyfriend
• Ghanaians respond to both good and bad things with the saying “Oh, Ghana”
• Greet people with ‘hello, how are you’ before asking for anything – if you don’t greet, you will not receive the answer you need
• The thought of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are repulsive to virtually all Ghanaians
• Ghanaians express their dislike for something by making a clucking noise with their tongue
• “Ey! Ey!”—commonly used words to express excitement, anger, surprise…you name it
• Ghanaian theater is very interactive – don’t be surprised to see African dance incorporated into everything and people carring things on their head any time there is any sort of street scene. Even when the play is Beauty and the Beast. 
• Americans talk extremely loud. Ghanaians talk quietly.
• Honking is a necessity and can be used in pretty much every situation….to alert others cars, people and animals on the road that a car is coming, to say hi to another taxi driver or someone they know on the side of the road, to replace a turn signal, to express anger at another car/tro-tro/truck that has cut them off...
• Learning even a few words in the local language, Twi (pronounced chwee) makes Ghanaians so happy. Even though they laugh every time you say something, they really do love it
• There is a special Ghanaian handshake where you shake hands and snap your middle fingers together as you are pulling your hand away
• Most Ghanaians ‘bath’ twice a day. Everyone will think you are gross unless you do the same (oh well…)
• Not wearing shoes to the bathroom is also considered very gross (whoops)
• Sleeping past 8am is considered late
• It is always necessary to check the cup of sugar that comes with your oatmeal to make sure there are no bugs crawling around
• “Almighty Stamps” or “God’s Time is Best Fried Eggs” are common store names
• Men call each other 'boss' (American equivalent of ‘hey man’)
• All Ghanaian clothing (unless handmade) are secondhand and imported from the United States or Europe
• Soccer (or “football” for us Westerners) is a serious national obsession
• Ghanaians think it is very strange that Americans decorate their rooms with pictures and other various things
• Many things, including sache water, ice cream, and juice, are packaged in plastic, and you drink them by biting off a corner of the package and sucking the liquid out
• It is extremely unladylike to walk & eat at the same time
• You can make ice cream sundaes here! Only trick: you must run from the supermarket to your room to make the sundae as fast as you can, because ice cream is never actually frozen here and it melts VERY quickly
• You can buy almost anything while sitting in a taxi or tro-tro from people who walk around and sell things. Things you can buy include:
•  20 x 24 picture frames
• Ghanaian flags
• Mentos/gum
• Cell phone minutes (called ‘credit’ here)
• Various food items: Fanice (ice cream), plaintain chips, dough balls, Tampico fruit drinks, meat pies, chocolate, peanuts
• Cuff links
• Push-up bars/ ab workout matsWater saches (bags of water, much cheaper than buying bottled water, usually are safe to drink, and what all Ghanaians drink)
• Handkerchiefs (used by all Ghanaians as sweatrags) 
• Make-up products
• Steering wheel cover
• Sunglasse
• Q-tip
• Poster-size world maps (I had to restrain myself from buying one, it was difficult)
• Hair trimming kits 
• Pirated movies
• TV remotes
• Toothpicks

All of these items are sold by people who walk in between cars on the highway – I like to think of these people as the walking Walmart of Ghana. If you look just a little past these people, you will find even MORE objects being sold on the sides of the highway – shoes, clothing, buckets, fresh fruits and vegetables, dustpans, fabric, kitchenware, furniture, skin lighteners, jewelry, you name it.

water & electricity

At least once a week, the power goes out. How long the power will be out for is always a mystery…sometimes it comes back on after 10 minutes, and you hear cheers coming from all throughout the hostel, while other times it is out for four days. Earlier this week, the power went out from Monday morning to Wednesday evening. The other international hostel has a working generator, and so they had power….everyone in my hostel was looking longingly across the parking lot to the all of the light in ISH 1 (International Students Hostel 1)! However, our living conditions are some of the best in Ghana, not to mention the best on campus. Many of the other dorms on campus haven’t had running water all semester. These students have to travel to other halls with buckets to bring water back to their rooms for washing their hands, showering, washing dishes...

I learned in my geography class that 43% of Ghanaians have electricity and that 18% of Ghanaians have access to sanitation. These two statistics are correlated. For example, in my hostel, if the electricity is out, the water will always go out in the next 20 minutes. Why? The water tanks are powered by electricity. Generators are hard to come by in Ghana and often do not work. So, for three days this week when we had no water or power, I never washed my hands. Because I come from a rich country and have enough money, I had anti-bacterial soap with me that I could use after going to the bathroom and before eating. I have never seen anti-bacterial sold on the streets here (which is saying something!) and I highly doubt even if it was available that many people would be able to afford it, especially for the amount they would need during the frequent power outages.

When we drove back from Kumasi, my eyes were glued to the window (like they always are here!) I was horrified at the conditions in every village we passed. At one village, I saw children gathering water in dirty buckets (that had probably been used for food, laundry, carrying random items, etc). Not only were the buckets dirty, but the water they were scooping up was also dirty. It honestly looked more like sewage run-off than any sort of clean drinking water. And this water is used for drinking. It is no wonder that diarrhea is the leading cause of childhood deaths in the developing world and that infectious diseases are so common.

Some facts about water and electricity:

• 1.1 billion people have inadequate access to water
• 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation
• At least 1.6 billion people live without electricity
• On average, women and girls in developing countries walk 6 kilometers a day, carrying 20 liters of water
• About 4,500 children die each day from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation facilities
• In 11 countries in Africa, more than 90% of the population goes without electricity
• The amount of electricity consumed in one day in all of sub-Saharan Africa, minus South Africa, is about equal to that consumed in New York City

Why the worldwide electricity shortage? There are numerous causes: economic instability, war, poor planning, high oil prices, drought, lack of money to strengthen infrastructure, national debt. Drought in Ghana, for example, has hurt gold and aluminum production and set off blackouts in Togo and Benin, because both of these countries buy power from Ghana. People depend on electricity for heating, cooking, and their water supply. Without consistent electricity, a nation cannot industrialize. The lack of water and electricity is further trapping people in the cycle of poverty.

My professor for my Strategies of Development in Africa class received his Masters degree from a university in America. He told a story on the first day of class that exemplified the disparity in wealth between Ghana and the U.S. He said that as soon as he got to his room and saw that the tap water was running, he grabbed a bucket and filled it up, because he was certain from his previous life experience that he would need that water when the power went off. He said that his American roommate stared at him, asked him what he was doing, and then laughed and said that there would never be a water shortage in the United States. My professor didn’t believe him, and so kept the bucket of water in the bathroom just in case. After this story, he explained that many Ghanaians, especially in the rural areas, have never even seen running water....

volta region

A few weekends ago, I travelled with the International Programmes Office at the University with about 40 other international students to the Volta Region of Ghana. The Volta Region is on the eastern side of Ghana, pretty close to Togo. Lake Volta is the largest man-made lake in the world…just a little fact for you there!

The beginning of the trip was amazing, minus the having to be on the bus by 4:45am part (even though we left an hour after we were supposed to…typical). However, the bus was air-conditioned (amazing!) AND we were served breakfast and cold orange juice. We first went to a monkey sanctuary at a small village. The sanctuary was started by a Canadian as a development project, to both get tourists into the area to improve the living conditions of the village and to preserve nature and the monkeys. We got to feed the monkeys bananas…it was so fun! Next we traveled to Wli Waterfall, the largest waterfall in West Africa. It was beautiful. Many of the other students went swimming underneath the waterfall, but I stayed back and climbed up some rocks to get a better view of the falls. While I was sitting there, a rainbow appeared at the bottom of the falls…it was amazing.

Then the trip got a little more exciting. We packed back into the two buses to drive about five hours back to the place we were going to stay at night…huts on a beach! However, that didn’t exactly happen….First, the bus I was on ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Why the driver didn’t fill up earlier, no one knows. So, everyone on my bus piled out and found random things to do….people starting kicking around a soccer ball, some went exploring, others (including myself) climbed on top of the bus (there is a ladder because often suitcases are put up there or people sit up there on trips) and laid there. About 40 minutes later, the other bus of international students came back with gas to fill our bus up until we found the next gas station. So, we then continued on our journey to find a gas station and filled up so we wouldn’t get stuck in the middle of nowhere again.

About 30 minutes later, we stopped at yet another gas station so the other bus could fill up…why he didn’t fill up when we filled up is still a mystery to me. By this time, it was 6pm, which was when we were supposed to have arrived at a town from which we would take a boat ride to an island where we would stay at beach huts…unfortunately we were about five hours behind schedule. We continued on our journey, got lost on our attempt to find dinner, continued on our journey again, our bus backed into the other bus by accident on one of our random stops which no one had any idea why we were stopping (whoops), and got lost again on our way to find our beach huts (and backed into a tree, whoops again).

We finally arrived in the town after 11pm, and unfortunately by this time it was lightning and very windy. They wanted us to take a canoe to the island, but Aasiya and Moses (the people who work at the International Progammes Office) decided it wasn’t a good idea to take a rickety canoe in the dark during a lightning storm. So, they left all us sitting on the ground next to the bus to try and find accommodation, and while we were waiting, the power in the entire town went out. Perfect. I found the whole situation absolutely hilarious. And actually, the power going out was the perfect opportunity to see the stars from the top of the bus!

The 40 of us were split up into two hotels, with most of us sleeping 3 or 4 in a double bed. My room even had air conditioning! The hilarity of the weekend continued as the water in our bathroom stopped working…the power in our hotel went on and off several times…all 40 of us crammed into a tiny room to eat breakfast the next morning, to have the waiter bring out a plate of 5 pieces of toast at one time….We eventually ended up getting to the beach on Sunday, and it was wonderful. The 40 of us had to go to the island in three separate shifts on the canoe because it was ‘safer,’ but on the way back all of us fit into the same canoe. No use in asking why… Oh, Ghana :)

cape coast

So this blog is definitely overdue, but I wanted to write about my trip to Cape Coast. Cape Coast is a town located along the coast (surprising, I know) and is also the home of some of the largest slave trading castles that still exist today. A few weekends ago, I travelled there with the 6 other girls from Elon (Rachel, Maggie, Joanna, Natalie, Kaya and Ayaan) in a very nice car paid for by Elon (thank you, Dr. Digre!). We went to Kakum National Forest, where we did the canopy walk. The canopy walk was constructed in 1995 and consists of bridges connected to trees many feet from the ground.

After the canopy walk, we went to Hans Cottage Botel (we assumed that a botel means the same thing as a motel or hotel?) and ate at their restaurant which is surrounded by a pond of alligators. I couldn’t wait to meet up with the Elon Winter Term class, because two of my suitemates from last semester, Gretchen and Lauren, were on the trip! It was so weird for all of us to be together in Ghana, but so awesome. Dr. Digre also arranged for Elon to pay for the 7 of us from the University of Ghana to sleep at the resort where the winter term people were staying…the same place where Barak Obama & family stayed when they visited Ghana! It was so nice…and so weird to be in such luxury! (Although our hostel on campus is certainly luxurious for Ghana).

The next day, the seven of us from the university went our own way to go to both the Elmina and Cape Coast castles (the winter term trip had already done both of these). We first went to Elmina Castle (really St. George’s Castle, but located in Elmina). Elmina was ruled by the Portuguese for two hundred years following their landing in 1471, and then ruled by the Dutch after they defeated the Portuguese. Both the Dutch and Portuguese used the castle as a slave trading post. It was sobering to walk through the slave dungeons, see the somewhat-hidden passageway where the residing governor of the castle brought female slaves up for sex, smell the still-present odors in the various dungeons, and look at the tiny windows used for ventilation, food and water for the hundreds of slaves packed in a small room, wondering how any could have survived the malnutrition and disease.

Before we headed to Cape Coast Castle, the 7 of us attempted to find a vegetarian restaurant called Baab’s Juices (the other 2 vegetarians and I were so excited at the thought of salads, tofu, healthy food!) that our guidebook raved about. Our taxi driver abruptly stopped the car and motioned us out, promising us that we had arrived at our spot. We got out, peered around, and saw a boarded-up shack across the road that looked like it may have been the restaurant. I was pretty convinced that the restaurant had closed, until a Ghanaian came running up to us, and after sort of convincing us that she was Baab herself, hurried us up a very vertical flight of stairs into what I think may have been part of her house. There was one table in the room, and her and various other unnamed people brought chairs out of what I think was their house for all of us to sit in. After awhile (I am trying to move past the thought of anything happening fast in this country), Baab served us warm fruit smoothies in red cups. We’re still unsure what exactly happened….

We then took the tour through Cape Coast castle, which was similar to Elmina in the size of rooms, the tiny windows for ventilation, and the pungent odor still lingering in the air. Particularly disturbing was the tiny jail dungeon. We were told that white guards who worked at the castle were put in this jail if they were found to be having sex with the female slaves, and that many slaves were placed in the jail for minor offenses (I am afraid to think what was considered a minor offense) or for larger ones, such as trying to escape. Our guide explained that the white prisoners were given food and water through the peephole in the door, but the blacks were not, and so they starved to death.

I am so glad that I had the chance to visit both of these castles, but my heart was heavy as we trudged through cellar after cellar. Seeing the churches established at both of these castles was especially horrifying. How could people worship God as thousands were fighting for their lives just a floor below them and not be moved to action? How could the church think it was okay to enslave and exploit other people made in the image of God? Yes, these people may have looked different than them, but let us all remember that Jesus was not white…he actually probably looked Middle Eastern.

At the end of the tour through Elmina, the guide said that he did not want people to leave in bitterness or anger towards those who enslaved Africans; that we had to move past the tragedies that occurred in Africa and all be united as human beings. While I do agree that we should not be constantly lamenting over past sins, what made my heart heavy is that slavery is still happening today. There are more than one million child prisoners. Thousands of children have been stolen to work for Joseph Kony in Darfur. Millions of women and children, both boys and girls, are enslaved in human trafficking -- for sex or labor. Slavery isn’t over. That doesn’t even begin to think about the billions of people virtually enslaved by poverty. I wonder if in two hundred years Christians will look back at the state of the world in 2010 and think just as I did while standing at the castles: how could the church stand by and do nothing in the face of such injustice?

A plaque at each castle reads:

In everlasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors
May those who died rest in peace
May those who return find their roots
May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity
We the living vow to uphold this

It is a beautiful saying. I am just wondering whether we have really vowed that at all.

kumasi

This past weekend, I travelled to Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana (next to Accra), with three friends from Canada: Lonnie, Nina, and Arsalan. The journey started at 7am Friday morning…a stop to pick up egg sandwiches and fruit, a tro-tro ride to the main gate of the university, a hop on the Metro Mass transit bus to Circle in Accra, an hour-long wait on a bus to leave for Kumasi - buses here don’t leave on any schedule, just once they fill up - and a three-hour ride on the bus took us first to Abompe, a small village about halfway between Accra and Kumasi.
Well, the bus actually dropped us off near Abompe, so the four of us got off the bus only to be greeted by a number of Ghanaian women selling various items who didn’t speak English and two taxi drivers who were fighting to take us to Abompe. We hurriedly got into one of the taxis to avoid a fight between the taxi drivers (this happens often), and in a few minutes found ourselves dropped off in Abompe…again, with various Ghanaians staring at us and us having no idea what we were doing. But, we made friends rather quickly, and eventually a tour guide came to meet us. Abompe uses beadmaking as a community development project, and the beads sold to visitors go directly to the individual beadmaker and their family. During the tour, we met lots of friendly Ghanaians, saw how the beads were made and got to practice making them ourselves. We were explained that the beads are made from bauxite rock from the nearby mountain, and after the rock is taken to the village, it is chipped, whittled and smoothed by various beadmakers to be made into necklaces, bracelets, earrings, etc. We met so many hospitable people along the way, and some adorable children. One of my favorite moments was when I turned to see about seven children standing about twenty feet from me, all of whom looked younger than four years old with their arms outstretched, fingers pointing, yelling, ‘obruni! obruni!’ We waved, said hello, and asked them various things in Twi (local language of the Ashanti people), none of which they answered because they were too busy staring and pointing. My favorite part was when this one little girl came running up to me, touched my leg, and then ran away. So adorable! But okay, I’ll stop ranting about how cute the kids here are. So, after we finished the tour, we were taken to the shop where each of the beadmaker’s pictures are hung and their jewelry is on sale. It was so neat being able to buy something and know exactly where the money was going, especially since it was clear that the village was extremely poor.

After another tro-tro ride, we were in Kumasi! It was slightly unfortunate that we arrived there at night, since we had no idea where we were going, and quickly learned that not many people in Kumasi speak English…We made a friend at a nearby hotel, who helped us find a place to stay when all the places we called in the guidebook were either full or did not have working telephones. It took us quite some time to find a guesthouse, but we finally settled at the Nimoh Guesthouse. Arsalan even bargained for us for our hotel rooms - only 15 cedi per person for two nights – and we even got our own bathrooms (although the water in one of our rooms didn’t have running water, so the bathroom wasn’t much help). Who knew you could bargain for a hotel room?

On Saturday, we went to the Ashanti Palace Museum, where we learned about the history of the Ashanti people and saw many artifacts of the Ashanti kings and queen mothers. We then went to the cultural center, where we browsed through craft shops, ate some good Ghanaian food (after lamenting about how you are never given more than one menu and a good part of the items on the menu aren’t actually offered), and watched part of some performance by all different high schools that included skits and dramas. To us, it seemed like they were doing drama education – one skit was about the dangers of cults, another was about the repercussions that come if you accuse someone of doing something they didn’t do, etc. We then went to Kejetia market, the largest market in West Africa. It was absolutely insane!! The guidebook told us that it looked like ‘an alien mothership from afar’ and it kind of did. Row and row of cardboard or tin roofs made it almost look like a slum, but really those were all the shops of the vendors. Vendors sold everything from clothing to Bollywood movies to food products, and we didn’t stay for too long because of how overwhelming it was. We also got to see a Ghanaian band perform, and watch Ghanaians dance, which I LOVE doing. I’m hoping I’ll catch some rhythm here…but let's be serious, that probably won’t happen :) I really enjoyed Kumasi, but it was definitely different than Accra. There was so much pollution everywhere (it probably didn’t help that our hotel was in the junkyard part of town) and it seemed a lot more spread out than Accra.

The ride back also proved to be an adventure. The STC busses are one of the main ways of getting around Ghana, and are pretty much the only bus company with a set time schedule. I was very excited about the thought of actually leaving at 12:30, but of course, that didn’t happen. We watched our bus driver sit inside the bus, reading a newspaper as the minutes ticked away…around 1pm he came off and helped some other workers start replacing the battery or something… we eventually left at 1:30. Oh, Ghana.

The only bad part of the trip is that the three of us girls all got sick on the way back from Kumasi with a fever and flu-like symptoms. I went to the clinic (I arrived there and got my temperature taken only to be told I could only pay in cash and therefore had to go back to campus to get cash and then go back to the clinic, only to find out that when I later paid with the cash, they didn’t have change…it is such a mystery to me why no place has change) and was tested for many things, but they told me that I most likely have a bacterial infection. There is still a possibility that I have typhoid, but I am pretty sure that it’s just a bacterial infection…I’m already feeling much, much better so that is good!

Also...I will be trying to put pictures up soon! I'll either put them on this blog or on facebook...the internet is just too slow most of the time. So hopefully they'll be coming soon! :)

love, joy, peace, patience…

Those of you who know me well – or probably just those of you who know me – know that patience is not something that I am naturally gifted with. I like to do everything fast. My suitemates in Barney will attest to this…I made Becca time my showers so many times last semester just to see how fast I could do it (current record: 3 minutes), and I always beat Gretchen when we washed our dishes next to each other even though I usually had quadruple the amount of dishes as her. Some people would say that I am not thorough…but I prefer to say that I get a lot of things done quickly. I like to walk fast, talk fast, read fast, etc…That’s just the way I am. So, when I opened my email a few days ago and saw an email from Jana Lynn Patterson (one of the deans at Elon) sent at 6:35am, I laughed. The email stated that that morning at Elon, the power went out in some buildings for about 20-45 minutes at 5:40am. I sat slightly in shock at two things: one, that the power had been fixed in less than 45 minutes, and two, that all students in the school received an email about the power outage less than an hour after it had occurred. This kind of communication seems so foreign to me right now…I can’t even imagine getting an email from one of the deans here that would explain why everyone was woken up at 4am one night to sit outside for an hour because of an earthquake rumor. Or an email to explain why our power and water went out for four days and when it would actually come on again. But, then again, do we really need an email? If people had been emailed that the earthquake warning was a hoax, I wouldn’t have been able to hang out with friends for an hour in the early morning, laughing and talking. And the power going out can be fun… why else would I have learned how to take a bucket shower or have had to find things to do that didn’t involve any electricity?

The following events have required me to have patience:

• when I get all ready to take a shower, only to find out the water is out
• when the internet connection goes out every ten minutes randomly
• when I try to skype with Leah for more than two hours, and it still won’t work even though I have full connection
• when it takes five minutes to open an internet page
• when trying to register for classes…see previous blog
• when the electricity is out for five days and your phone and computer die
• when I carry three giant water bottles to the counter of the nearby supermarket only to find that I can’t buy anything because they don’t have change for a ten and have to put them all back
• when I walk to the bathroom and have to go back to my room because I forgot to bring toilet paper
• when you get three different answers from three different people in the international programmes office in response to the same question
• when trying to find the books/articles I have to read for class
• when realizing that the class I was trying to attend had been randomly moved to another classroom

Yes, all of these things have annoyed me because, like I said, I like everything to happen quickly and efficiently. But, at the same time, it’s kind of fun to never know when the power will go out next….when it will be your last real shower for a few days…when you will get to randomly explore buildings to find your class…when you will have to figure out a place that has change so you can get water…

…so I’ve been trying to learn patience :)