Well...it's been quite a long time since I've sat in front of a computer..it almost feels weird. Not too, too much has happened in the past month, as school has been out for Christmas (called "Bringa" in Degarre which I think is weird cause you'd think they wouldn't take "Christ" out of it).
In early December every U.S. volunteer in Ghana was summoned to one place during the elections. Big brother (if I mention the exact organization I'm working under I have to add all this stuff about how these are not the opinions of that org. etc...it's not worth it) was unsure if Ghana was going to be a peaceful place during their presidential election so they decided to keep us all together....good thing the terrorists didn't know about it :)....in case there was any unrest. There wasnt. On the bright side though, I got to sit through an entire weeks worth of boring sessions. It wasnt all bad though. It was pretty cool to get to meet ALL the other volunteers throughout the country, and we had a pretty bad-ass dance party n talent show.
For x-mas, I had a couple friends over to my village. It was fun, basically just the same as most nights, everyone hanging out drinking and eating...but everyone was in unusually high spirits (which says a lot cause they're generally extremely happy people). I, however, was not prepared in the least for the usual customs at Christmas here. I had no idea until the day of that on X-mas everyone just walked around from house to house and the people at the house are sapposed to have some food prepared and ready to give to the visitors. So, here I was scrambling to make something after about 50 people mentioned to me that they'd be "stopping by". In the end, I just made a compilation of the crap in my house (PB & J's (which here we call groundnut paste and jam sandwiches), popcorn, and bean stew). They all think I'm totally weird anyways, so why not perpetuate the stereotype? It was a good time.
New Years, I went to a different friends house. She lives in a pretty small village, but there were a bunch of us there so we didnt really need too much external entertainment. We basically just went to a spot and had some beers then went back to her house to watch movies on someones laptop. Sounds like America, right? It was the first movie I'd seen in about 5 months...so so exciting.
But yeah, overall the holidays away from home were pretty good. Oh, did I mention it is still like 90 degrees here everyday, and it hasnt rained in about 3 months!
Ok, I think that's about all I have to add right now...drop me a message and let me know how everything is going in A-town. Miss you all tons!! Love, Di
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
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This is me at the Amsterdam airport after far too many hours without sleep! I didn't realize quite how scary I look in the picture until I posted it...but I think it's funny.
This was one of the first meals I ate with my homestay family. I soon figured out that it was not customary for Ghanaians to eat together like this (they were just doing it as a sort of introduction to the family) and I ended up eating most of the meals over the next 10 weeks alone, which I was totally ok with. It also is not customary to talk while eating in Ghana (due to the abundant amount of spices used in the food, they are afraid they will choke if they try and talk while eating) so eating alone is virtually the same experience anyways.
Here is a pic of me and the girls at a spot. Check out the gigantic beers they serve here (for only 1 Ghana Cedi too!).
I took this picture while riding in a car on the way to Bote Waterfalls. At first I was like "shoot I think I accidently got those people that we were passing in the photo", but once I saw it I thought it was a really cool pic.
This is Kukurantumi, the town where I had training. It is right before the daily rain...
A kiss for you!