GHANA!

Current Location: Nsawam, Ghana

Hello everyone! I landed safe and sound in Ghana and have begun to get settled. Things are going great, though very crazy, and VERY different than anything I've ever experienced.

The flight was really good, and I met a nice guy sitting next to me, That definitely helped the 11 hours go by quickly. We landed and had no problems with passport control or luggage which made things a lot easier than they could have been. We left and we were met by Chelsey and Sammy who had a van to bring us back to where we were staying. We stopped by an ATM to get some money and we were off.

We are staying in a rural town about 45 minutes outside of Accra, the capital. We are in little walk through rooms. It's fairly nice - we have a floor, a roof, and walls, and we can lock our doors to keep our things safe. There is electricity, but no running water or air. There are currently 9 of us staying in 2 walk through rooms. It's not a ton of room, but its enough to get our beds out and have a little space to hang out in. There are lots of little kids in our town. Most people in our area speak both English and Twi, an African language. It's so funny, the little kids will run after us waving and yelling "Obrani" which is their word for white people. They are very affectionate and love to play with our electronics. They got hold of my camera and took over 100 pictures!

It is interesting to try living like this when I have always had running water and basic necessities. My first shower was quite the adventure. I walked to the borehole, pumped a bucket of water, carried it back and used that for my shower. I wish I had cut off all my hair before coming here. Trying to get the shampoo out was a nightmare! All in all it was okay, though I had to use a flashlight since there was no electricity in the shower! The latrine was not hard to use but smelly and eye opening! It really makes my appreciate everything I have in the states so much more. We all sleep under mosquito nets and try to burn things to keep them away at night. No one wants to get sick. We also can't drink the well water. We buy "satchets" which are little plastic baggies of water. I have some iodine tablets that I can use, but I want to be careful, don't want to make myself sick.

We are currently at the school where we will be teaching handing out applications for our program. We start teaching on Monday and we hope to have 80 kids in the program. If we get more applications back, we will have to reject some people which would be sad. We have a few more days to get our lesson plans and activities together, which I will need. We might get to take a few trips too - we will have to see. Might be going to Cape Coast soon, which would be really great!

Must get back to work, but I will continue to update as often as I can!