Brothels, parrots and “Ghana Maybe Time”

I had originally started this blog by announcing that I had finally acclimated to my new environment, signaled by the fact I had stopped sweating constantly. However, two nights ago we had a lovely downpour of rain, which really cooled things off yesterday, but today it is ridiculously humid! But the good news is that I am sweating less than I was when I first got here. Another somewhat unpleasant experience I had my first days here was  walking around with feet and calves that swelled to Hobbit-sized proportions due to my not walking around enough during my long flight from NYC to Accra, mostly because I was sleeping. But I happily report those are finally looking normal again, thanks to yoga and acupressure points I learned from Google. They may have normalized on their own without the treatment, but it felt proactive and made my legs and feet feel better. Long story short, I’m feeling a bit more normal.

I’ve also got a routine going now that has helped me settle mentally. I openly admit that I have been overwhelmed at times as I get more familiar with Ghanian culture.  This blog is about how I've been settling in.

First and foremost, home. During the first few days especially, after walking through streets in the heat and humidity with strong smells of wastewater and garbage, no sidewalks, and crazy drivers, I was grateful to come home to my little blue room, as it provided me peace and quiet, a space to process the day, and rest.

All the rooms here at the volunteer house are very pleasant and comfortable, if a bit warm.  We don’t have A/C, but we do have fans. My room has the added awesomeness of being a “single”. While this house can hold up to 20 people, most rooms are designed to hold 2-4 people; only two of the volunteer rooms are single occupancy. How did I luck out and get assigned to this little piece of heaven, you might ask? I read the entirety of my 14-page, single-spaced orientation guide Global Mamas sent before I left the U.S. where the words "if you require a single room..." were buried on page 12.  So glad I read all my homework!

Volunteer House

Here’s our Volunteer House. It normally  does not have an old mattress leaning against it! This picture was taken the day they replaced a mattress. Although I must say given the history of this building, now that I think about it, the mattress is kind of ironic. When I asked our house manager the history, she said it used to being  a well-known brothel at one point. I haven't decided if I'm glad I asked!

Anna and Busua

The balcony on the second floor is usually where we spend the evenings, it’s nice to be outdoors where it’s a bit cooler. The balcony is also home to our resident African grey parrot, Busua (pronounced “BOO swah”). He meows like a cat whenever we walk through the gate to the house, and can mimic other birds so I never really know if I’m hearing the beautiful song of a native Ghanian bird, or Busua! He also says “Hi,” and “Busua,” makes clicking noises, and likes to try to imitate you when you laugh. I’m trying to teach him “Aloha” but no luck yet. It’s one of my education goals to reach before I leave!

Our work location is at the Global Mamas office in downtown Cape Coast.  My commute is about 15 minutes by “share taxi,” meaning the taxi driver may pick up other people along the way until the cab is full. The benefit is that it’s much cheaper than hiring a private taxi, a.k.a. “drop taxi.”  In a share taxi, one way to work is about 75 cents. Here’s a view on the drive to work:

Scene on the way to work

There are usually fisherman out on the water in their giant canoes.  Mornings tend to be misty and overcast.

Street Food Ghana!

For lunch I have been eating street food; I either get a “groundnut” (peanut butter) sandwich, or a Ghanian meal of rice, beans, gari (dried and ground cassava), spicy red sauce and fried plantain (the brown stuff on the right). It's delicious! You need to eat plantains cooked, not raw. The cooking brings out the sweetness; apparently they are not at all tasty if you eat them raw. And sometimes I’ll get an egg for extra protein. Meat sources are scarce and the best place to get it is in a restaurant, usually chicken. I usually get my lunch from a lady who sells it across the street from our office, Hannah. It’s a good idea to get street food from someone you know and trust. One of our volunteers, Sascha from Denmark, has been on a mission to try as much street food as possible; unfortunately, she has gotten pretty sick on a couple of occasions. But I admire her openess.

After leaving the office, me and my co-volunteers usually get a share taxi home together. Most nights I eat in; I might make ramen noodles, or groundnut and crackers with some pineapple or mango. Last night I had an avocado and mango salad with lime juice. Yum! Dinner is pretty light because lunch is huge!

But some nights we eat out. This has given me the opportunity to try my third local  Ghanian beer, this one is called Stone. It’s darker than the Star and Club brands, and stronger. It’s now a toss-up for me between Star and Stone for my favorite beer. 

Coincidentally I have this glass style back home!

The picture of my beer was taken when we ate out this past Friday at the Oasis Resort. The Oasis is right on the beach and all eating and drinking is done outside on a patio, complete with an outside bar. Sascha, Anna and I were at the Oasis to see a performance by a Ghanian drumming and dancing troupe, Nyame Tsease African Traditionals, who performed traditional dances, lead by one of our Global Mamas, Antionette Adwoa Kudoto, Ghana’s only female master drummer.

When we got to the stage to say hello before they started, the dancers seated us right up front. I said, “Guys, I bet they are seating us here so they can pull us up on the stage and dance!” They didn’t believe me of course, until we were pulled up on stage to dance. I am sorry I do not have a picture of this. But I felt relieved as I thought to myself, I’m in Ghana and I’m not going to run into anyone I know!

The performance was off the charts! The drumming went nonstop for almost two hours straight, and the dancers only took a few 5-minute breaks. Talk about energy. Antionette was an amazing drummer. She is a beautiful, strong Ghanian woman, and she just owned that stage. 

Nyame Tsease African Traditionals; Antoinette is third from the left.

After the show, Antionette came over to talk with us. That is when we learned that her dancers and drummers were mostly from orphanages and/or had been homeless. This lovely lady gave them a gift of purpose, tradition and community, and some income. There are truly outstanding people here in Ghana.

The next day we went to a nearby beach for the day. We caught a “tro-tro”, which is really a van that can hold a ridiculous amount of people, up to 20, to a nearby beach/resort area called Ko-Sa. It’s a bit of a journey to get there; you take the tro-tro to a small town, then a share taxi towards the beach that lets you off in a little village, then you walk 20 minutes to the beach. But it was worth the trek.

The beach at Ko-Sa

When we got to the beach, we located three chaise loungers and planted ourselves. Sascha and Anna had been here many times before, but it was my first time, so I took a short walk down the beach. It was gorgeous. The sand nearest the water is not fine but more like tiny, smooth marbles. For a while, on the beach directly in front of the resort, the beach was clean covered with beautiful seashells. But over the next hill away from the resort, it was scattered with trash.

Trash dumped in the ocean makes it's way back

Ghanians ship their trash out to sea, and much of it comes back in with the tide. It’s the way things have been for a long time. By the way, those pieces that look like cuttle bone for birds, the are indeed cuttle bones. Cuttle fish are plentiful here; it’s neat to see them flying over the water, just like flying fish, and back into the sea, making their way from the shore back out to the deeper parts of the ocean.

As I was walking back to my comrades, a local guy walking by holding a beer said “Snap quick picture?” I thought he was offering to take a picture of me with the ocean as a background, so I looked down to activate the camera on my iPhone. When I looked up at him, he was posing for me, and I realized my misunderstanding. But I thought what the heck, I’ll just take his picture. What a ham!

My housemates and I ended up staying at the beach until the sun was getting close to setting. I spent much of my time under a tree in the shade reading “Congo” by Michael Crichton. The day reminded me of my beach days in Hawaii, where your biggest thoughts go something like this: I’m hot, I’m going for a swim. Or I’m hungry, I’m going to get a bite to eat. Or, I think my back is burning a little, I’m going to flip over. Or, I hope that chicken walking this way doesn’t peck my feet. Good stuff.

On the way home we stopped at a Shell station store. It was the first place I’ve been where they sell U.S. brand foods, although for a price. A small jar of Jif is $9, but if you are dying for some Jif, it can be found! On the way out of the store, my housemates pointed out the “Push” and “Pull” signs on the door, sponsored by Fiesta condoms. Being a health educator, I appreciated it from a purely preventive health standpoint, especially if there are brothels in the neighborhood!

Door signs sponsored by fiesta condoms

This place is just full of surprises!

On Sunday, I did laundry for the first time since I’ve been here. Laundry is done in a bucket and hung out on a clothing line. I have to watch the time and get my clothes down before the sun sets. This is not a house rule; it is something you must do unless you want an insect laying her eggs in your damp clothing. I’m serious.  It’s humid here and it takes a while for clothes on the line to dry, so its not unusual to see clothes hanging in the bathroom over night. Life is never boring here in Africa!

The pace of life here is much slower than in the U.S. (except of course when you are in a car), and the time zone “GMT” is also affectionately know as “Ghana Maybe Time.” It presents a challenge if you want to schedule a meeting, or in my case a training, as you have to give everyone a lot of notice, and even at that, they may not show. But, by accepting this part of life in Ghana, I’ve learned to slow down and take things a moment at a time, let go of expectations, and let things unfold. It takes getting used to, and I am still shedding my western ways. In many ways, I think it's a good thing.

Cape 3 Points

This weekend was spent with Nancy from San Diego who is a Global Mamas’ volunteer, Maria, an ex-pat from Barcelona who now lives here and is connected with Global Mamas, and her boyfriend James, an ex-pat from Brazil who works as an agronomist in Ghana. We all stayed at an Eco-resort called Escape! in Cape 3 Points, Ghana. I confess, this blog is kind of an advertisement for them, with my added personal accounts. But it really was a neat place, and we had a very nice, relaxing time, aside from encountering the GINORMOUS spider that was in our lodging. That was scary. But that's for later!

It's a 3-hour ride from Cape Coast to this remote eco-resort, with the last 45 minutes spent on a winding and pot-holy red dirt road.  When we left Cape Coast the sun was setting and by the time we got to our destination it was dark, so I really couldn't see our surroundings, and actually I was so hungry at that point that I really didn't care! We had a meal of beans and rice and chicken, a very common meal here in Ghana. At dinner I befriended a little cat that we named Bijou because it didn't have a name, and Bijou sized me up right away. She ended up sleeping with me that night. It crossed my mind she might have fleas, but I had enough DEET on me for the both of us so I quickly dismissed the concern because she was so dang cute.

Here's "Bijou" to the right.
 

Before bedtime I had to use the bathroom, and that’s when I found out how really cool an eco-friendly bathroom can be. Bathrooms are located just outside your cabin. The landing area when you step into the bathroom and the steps up (yes up) to the throne toilet were made of large bamboo stalks. The toilet was composting, so after you do your business you throw in a scoop of sawdust that’s conveniently located next to the toilet, and close the lid. That’s it. A little weird the first time! I know you are dying to see what this looks like so here is a picture of the toilet:

This resort is built right on the coast so I listened to the surf all night. Literally. I had made the mistake, for the millionth time and not for the last, of having coffee with my lunch earlier that day, and I am such a lightweight with caffeine any more that combined with my excitement of hearing the crashing surf, I could not fall asleep. Plus, Bijou was asleep between my calves and I didn't want to fall asleep, move inadvertently, and wake her up! I think I finally fell asleep around 5 AM, and woke up around 7 AM. Here's what our digs for the weekend looked like:

 



There were 2 beds, one on the ground floor and one in a loft. Nancy was sleeping in the loft. At first I thought she got the cooler bed, but by the end of the stay I had changed my mind! (It involves the aforementioned spider!) Anyway, that morning she came down the ladder and motivated me to get up and head over to the beach.

 

 
You can't really see it well in this photo, but if you look really hard you can see a small white lighthouse at the far end of the beach atop the greenery, at the left side of the photo. One of the other guests told us that the walk to the lighthouse was really neat, so after breakfast we headed out. The walk turned out to be down the beach, into a forest, through a small village, and finally up a hill. We passed many friendly Ghanians on our journey. Children are especially inquisitive of outsiders and like to say “hello” and “good morning” over and over again.Here are a few images from the walk. 

When we got to the lighthouse,  we found it locked so we couldn’t get in to see the view from the highest point, but the view we got was nice anyway.

We hung out for about an hour, got some great shots, (yes I took a selfie!!):

 

Then we turned around and headed back. I immediately headed for the shower when we returned to the cabin. The “shower” was a variation of the bucket shower, but instead of a bucket, you take your water from a (very clean) rubber trashcan using a small plastic handled bowl. The showering area was a slab of cement with moss growing on it. Being from Albuquerque where it is so dry, I am always very excited when I see moss. Also, the water is not 100% fresh, it is brackish (fresh and salt) but it felt like it was fresh water, it just tasted a little salty. I thought it was the coolest shower ever.

Anyway, after the shower my day kind of went from very active to very "in bed" due to being really hot, a bit sunburned and sleep deprived. The rest of Saturday I took a nap, got up and ate dinner, then went to bed at 8 PM. So Sunday morning, I woke up feeling much better. I spent the day swimming in the ocean, reading a book in a hammock, talking a lot with my companions, and taking time to be quiet and just breathe in the lovely place I found myself in.


If you want to check out Escape!, click here. 



 Oh, I almost forgot! Here's that spider that was in the ledge above Nancy's bed! It was about 5 inches across from end to end. And brown and hairy. I snapped this picture and when I took a step back, the floor creaked and scared the spider, so it shot off the ledge, across the wall and into a dark corner. That's when I screamed like a little girl. Wondering if it was dangerous, I walked over to the eating area and showed the picture of it to the gentleman who was running the place while the owners are away, and he said Don't worry! Those are everywhere! They aren't poisonous and if one falls on you it means you will find a large amount of meat that day! I relayed this all to Nancy, who was not amused and said he probably made that story up to appease the strange "obroni" taking pictures of spiders he sees all the time. 

Valentine's Greetings from Ghana!

February 14, 2014

It’s my first Valentine’s Day in Ghana! Ghanians celebrate this day too, and there’s a Valentine’s Day party at a gas station about a half hour away from us. I’ve been invited and have not yet decided if I’m going. My housemates are going, so there’s a good chance! If anything, I can then report back what a Valentine’s Day party at a gas station is like!

(My phone has been dead a couple of days so these photos are from the web.)

So I’ve been here a few days and I think it’s neat to see a new place, but also interesting to observe how so many parts of Ghana remind me of the different places I’ve been.

Ghana is a developing country with open sewage, poverty, intermittent electricity, street beggars, no running hot water and not much water pressure so we take “bucket baths” and sometimes have to flush the toilet with a bucket of water.  Also, dividing lanes in the street don’t seem to mean much as cars swerve all over the road and pass other cars on hills at top speeds. But believe it or not, I’m an old hat at this stuff. Our family trip to Bombay (as it was called back then!) and Ganeshpuri, India in 1984 prepared me for this! 

In Cape Coast, street vendors line all the streets and pineapples and mangos are common foods here. The beaches are beautiful, lined with coconut trees and boats that look like really big canoes. Needless to say, I’m getting a little taste of my first home state, Hawaii, here too. My commute to work, which is 25 minutes or so in a shared taxi with other coworkers and costs the equivalent of $1, is mostly along this beautiful coast. Unfortunately, as lovely it is to gaze at, the ocean here is not safe to swim in due to pollution, but you can’t see the pollution from the shore so I just imagine it’s pristine as I look at it. 

Cape Coast beach area. I wanted to give you an idea of how pretty this area can be, and the juxtaposition of images here.

Ghanians love spicy foods and most of the sauces here are very spicy, usually spiced with Cayenne.  I’ve actually been called weird for being a white person, or “obruni,” who loves spicy food! It’s a nice opportunity to talk about New Mexico chile. And man is it dusty here! Which reminds me of New Mexico when the Spring winds kick in.

Yesterday was my orientation at work. The first half of the day was spent on a walking tour of downtown Cape Coast. Did I mention there are no sidewalks and cars have the right of way on the narrow streets? It definitely keeps you on your toes!  I was taken to a couple of the stores our Global Mamas have, and at the end of the tour we walked by, not into, the famous White Castle where slaves were lead to boats to take them across the sea. My tour guide, a very friendly, young Ghanian man named Hubert, said he didn’t want to go in, and so neither did I. There is a palpable sadness that lingers at the site. I asked Hubert why they didn’t tear down the reminder of such a sad part of Ghanian history, and he said he thought it was because so many people of African descent from all over the world feel it is important to visit, and so it remains.  Our tour ended at the beach. Once Hubert found out I was from Hawaii, he felt determined to get me there. He took me to a part of the beach near a resort that was clean and so I felt safe dipping my toes into the Gulf of Guinea. It was cold! But for some reason getting my feet into the ocean made my arrival in Ghana complete.

The second part of my day was working in the Quality Control area where clothing that the Global Mamas have sewn are checked.  I sat near two lovely Ghanian women named Benedicta and Roberta, who would break out in song once in a while. They would ask me questions now and then to get to know me. They asked if I hurt when I got my tattoo, and I said “Yes and don’t let anyone else tell you differently!” To which they laughed, at my great relief!

Today, I met with our two coordinators to discuss our plan for my volunteer work. I’ll be doing our first training with a nutritionist from the University of Ghana. Our focus will be nutrition for women and young children. Global Mamas is very excited to start this program, and I feel so privileged to be a part of building it!

NEWS FLASH: I’m not going to the Valentine’s Day party at the gas station. I’ve been invited to join some other volunteers to go to Cape Three Points, which is a beautiful beach where it’s safe to swim! One of them is apparently going to surf, too, which will be fun to watch.

Happy Valentine's Day! XOXO

Countdown to Ghana

Hello my friends! Welcome to my blog!

If you haven't heard, I'm going to be spending the next 3 1/2 months in Ghana in West Africa to complete an internship for my MS in Health Education. I am leaving the day after tomorrow, Monday, February 10th. I've been planning this trip since mid-November when  I found out I was getting laid off from my job.

I'll be working at a very cool non-profit organization called Women in Progress (click  here for their website).  They've been helping Ghanian women build their businesses for the past 20 years, and are now developing a health education program. I'll be helping them do that by designing, presenting, and then teaching the women there how to teach others about nutrition, maternal health, reproductive health, stuff like that. 

The towns where I'll be teaching are Cape Coast, where I'll be based, Ashaiman and Krobo.


If you are like me and didn't know where the heck Ghana was, Ghana is in the red square on this map of Africa. Cape Coast is located in the southern part, right on the ocean and is a few miles west of the capital city of Accra (pronounced a-CRAW).  The area is also known as the Gold Coast, as it is one of the top 5 gold producers in the world! It's also a big producer of some of the world's best cacao. But I've been advised to not eat any of the chocolate there as they export all the good stuff, so I'm bringing a supply of my own. The ocean I'll be dipping my toes in is the Gulf of Guinea. Neighbor to the west is Cote D'Ivoire, and Togo to the east. Burkina Faso is north. Ghana is a peaceful country and gets along with it's neighbors (Mom & Dad please note. Don't worry!).


I've been learning things about Ghana and wanted to share a couple of neat tidbits. First, every Ghanian has two names, their given name and their day name, based on what day of the week they were born. I was born on a Sunday, so my day name is Esi in the Fante language, and Awisi in Krobo. Apparently, Ghanians love it when you introduce yourself with your day name! I thought you might get a kick out of finding your day name, too. So if you don't know it already, find out what day of the week you were born, and see below to find your day name. Names are in Fante/Krobo languages:

Sunday - Male names Kwesi/Akwasi, Femail names Esi/Awisi
Monday - Male Kojo/Kwadjo, Female Adwowa/Ejo
Tuesday - Male Kobena/Kwabala, Female Araba/Abla
Wednesday - Male Kweku/Kwaku, Female Ekua/Aku
Thursday - Male Yaw/Kwao, Female Aba/Awo
Friday - Male Kofi/Fifi, Female Efua/Afi
Saturday - Male Kwame/Kwamena, Female Ama/Ama


Second, Ghana is home to the world's largest snail. And yes, they get eaten. And yes, I will eat one if there is garlic and butter involved. And maybe some white wine. Or maybe if there is no garlic and butter, but a lot of wine.

Image credit: www.palaeowerkstatt.de