I am slightly self-conscious of appearing to be on a
perpetual vacation, or as my Dad would say, my second retirement. I may be giving you the impression that all I
am doing is traveling and hanging out at the beach, but I did come here to work
on my internship, too, I promise Dr. Avila.
This past week was a big week as far as my internship goes. But
before I rush into all that, I wanted to share my journeys from last weekend!
Saturday we got up early to hit the road at 8 AM to visit one
of Ghana’s world-famous national parks, Kakum. A lush, gorgeous tropical rain
forest, Kakum is 145 square miles of beauty with a unique feature, a canopy
bridge that allows you to basically walk above the tree line and get a rare
view of the forest from above. It took
about 20 minutes to get from beginning to end of the bridge, with breaks in
between at seven viewing platforms. The bridge moves and sways as you walk across it. It was breathtaking, literally and
figuratively!
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| Me on the canopy bridge. I blinked...of course! |
The park is home to over 300 species of bird, 600 species of
butterfly and 40 mammal species, with the largest population of forest elephants
in Ghana, but we didn’t see any. We did see some beautiful butterflies, lizards
and my favorite, the praying mantis, but that’s just fine because walking along
a bouncy suspension bridge made of ladders and wood planks and held up by
netting was exciting enough!
On the way home, Ben, our taxi driver, insisted we stop at a
roadside attraction that had live crocodiles. He said you could stand next to
them and get your picture taken, and we didn’t believe him until we got there
and saw school children having their pictures taken standing right next to a
live crocodile that was not in a cage, not restrained in any way, and as Ben
promised us, was not drugged. We were all extremely uncomfortable, and frankly
quite freaked out, so we didn’t stay long. It was more nerve-wracking watching those children so close to wild, carnivorous
creatures than walking across a bridge held up by nets! (Sorry, no photos of
that stop!)
Sunday was spent at a beach right here in Cape Coast, Brenu
Beach. But it is far enough away that we still had to take a tro-tro, then a
taxi, then take a walk to get to the beach. This is my favorite beach so far.
There were hammocks and chairs with umbrellas, and it didn’t take us to long to
find our own spots. I chose a hammock and I stayed on it for 4 hours reading a
summer romance novel.
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| Brenu Beach. Kinda crazy perfect, right? This is where I spent several hours last Saturday! |
I also enjoyed a glass of freshly made pineapple juice. As
you know, pineapple is great for your digestion as it has a lot of fiber and natural
enzymes. It is also high in vitamins C and E, so it benefits your eyes, skin,
internal tissues, brain and heart. And when you mix it with a little coconut
rum, it tastes even more delicious!
When we first got to Brenu Beach, the sun was shining and the
breeze was up, keeping us relatively cool.
After a few of hours though, we heard a loud thunderclap and
looked north to see a huge black cloud coming our way, which quickly moved in our direction. Amazingly, it didn’t
rain while we were there, but it got us packing up to head home. I couldn’t
believe how close the clouds appeared over the ocean.
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| Looking like it's time to go home. |
So that was our weekend, the latest of my sightseeing part
of this journey. What I haven’t been writing about in my blogs is my internship.
That’s mostly because I have been in the research and assessment phase, and
crafting my presentations, which is not as exciting to write about as monkeys
and the questionable history of the building I live in (see previous blog
entries if that got you interested!). But now I’ve begun the next phase, which
is presenting something that is (hopefully) useful to the audience.
On Wednesday, March 19th, I co-lead my first
class, on good nutrition. It was mostly presented by a very educated and, bless
her heart, very pregnant nutritionist from the University of Cape Coast,
Rebecca. She is from Ghana and delivered her part of the presentation in Fante.
When it came time for me to present, Global Mamas office manager
extraordinaire, Patience, translated my words into Fante.
Forty women and one brave man, Hubert, the nice fellow who gave
me my first walking tour of Cape Coast when I first got here, attended the
class. The class was pretty tame for the first 30 minutes or so. But then the
women got really comfortable and started asking questions, giving each other
advice, sharing experiences – in other words, it was a great success. All the
while Patience was quietly translating for me what was going on so I could keep
up with what was being said and share in the moment.
The class was scheduled to last for two hours max, with
short exercises, and a water break. However, because there were so many
questions and a lot of discussion, we skipped all the learning exercises and
only took one short break for refreshments. On top of that, the class ran a
little late. All in all, I think we gave our Global Mamas something they needed
and enjoyed. Yay!
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| Moringa Oleifera |
At the request of my internship hosts, I included the nutritional
benefits of the local Moringa tree in this presentation. So I did my due
diligence and conducted a literature review on Moringa, and found some amazing
facts. Moringa, which grows prevalently in Africa, is a nutritional
powerhouse. It’s leaves and pods are very
good sources of vitamins A, B, and C, calcium, iron, potassium, eight essential
amino acids, and protein. Ayurveda and current research use Moringa to successfully treat anemia,
malnutrition, arthritis, skin disorders, and high blood pressure, to name a few.
I discovered in recent research that
Moringa is helpful for people receiving chemotherapy – patients needed less
chemo and less recovery time because by adding Moringa to the equation, chemo did it’s job in a shorter amount of
time, and the patient’s healing process was quicker. Even more amazing: Moringa grows in the countries where
malnutrition is the highest.
Next week I travel to Krobo to present the same nutrition class,
sans a nutritionist. Gladys, the office manager, who speaks English in addition
to her native Krobo, will translate my presentation live. Most of the employees
at the Krobo office only speak Krobo and no English. That brings up one of the
interesting things about Africa’s history. When the powers that be decided
where the borders to each country would lie, they sort of lumped a lot of
different tribes into one country, so country boundaries did not reflect natural
language divisions of people in the area.
In Ghana for instance, many people can’t understand each other if they
don’t speak English, because their native languages are so utterly different.
Fante is spoken here in Cape Coast, and Krobo is spoken in Odumase Krobo, Ewe
is spoken in the eastern part of Ghana – and they are completely different languages
even though the areas are a few hours away and in the same country. To make it even more interesting, while English
is an official language here in Ghana, all the countries that surround Ghana –
Cote D’Ivoire, Togo and Burkina Faso – are all Francophone, using French as its
first or second language, as it were. So English doesn’t work as well in those
African countries as it does here in Ghana.
So that about wraps it up for last week and this coming
week. This weekend, I’ve been taking it easy reading Maya’s Notebook by Isabel Allende. I threw my back out last
Tuesday, the day before my presentation. It was the first time it’s ever
happened, and I was worried I would be in too much pain the next day and miss
the class, so I went to our neighborhood pharmacy and got some prescription-strength
painkillers over the counter for about $8 that helped me get through the next
day without a hitch. At least in my
experience in two foreign countries, Ghana and India, strong painkillers are
easier to come by than in the U.S. In 1984, when the McConnells went to India,
my mom took a bad fall in the shower and was in a lot of pain. My dad called
the hotel doctor, who promptly came to their hotel room, assessed my mom’s
injuries, and gave her a shot of morphine. My mom, whose list of drug-induced
experiences is very short and boring (she’s only been drunk once, seriously!),
still fondly remembers the morphine experience of 1984. Kids, if you are
reading this passage, take note: Just say no to drugs. It’s ok if your doctor gives
you painkillers to help you recover if you are in the hospital, at home recovering
from an injury, or took a bad fall in the shower, but that’s the only time it’s
ok to take painkillers. Unless of course you throw out your back in a foreign
country, you are short on time, you are afraid you will miss a presentation if
you don’t get some because you’ve taken your aspirin and it didn’t work, and stronger
painkillers are available at your neighborhood pharmacy. Then it’s ok, but only take enough to get you
through your presentation, and tell your parents or friends that you are taking
them, so at least someone knows in case you have a bad reaction.
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| Heading to Ashaiman Tema and Krobo this week |
Since I’m heading to Krobo this week, with a stop at the Global Mamas office in Ashaiman for a few days, and I don’t know what
the Internet situation will be, it may be a while before you receive another
edition of my blog. But have no fear! I will be back with more stories soon. In
the mean time, please memorize the following Fante words. They will come in handy when you visit southern
Ghana one day.
English Fante Pronunciation
Good morning Mema
wo akye May moe watchee
Good afternoon Mema wo aha May moe wa ha
Good evening Mema
wo adwe May moe wadgee
Responses to greetings above:
Response to older
man Yaa egya yah
age a
Response to older
woman Yaa ena yah
enna
Response to your age or younger Yaa nua yah neeya
How are you? Otse
den? Oat se den?
I’m good. Bokoo Bo koh
What is your name? Wofre
wo den? Woe froh woe den?
My name is ______ Wofre
me ________ Woe freh me
_______
How much? Ahen Ah hin
Reduce! Tso
do tsew dough
I don’t have any money Me
ne cica May nay sika
Thank you Me
da wo ase Me dah see
Very much Pa
Paa Pa Pa paaaa pa
Please Me
pa wo kyew May pow woe choe
Where is? Owo
hen? Oh woe hane?
Where is the toilet Toilet
owo hen? Toilet oh wo hane?
Oh and by the way, I also achieved another educational
milestone recently…I got our resident African grey parrot Busua to say “Aloha!”
On that note, Alooooooooooo-ha!
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