just call me girlfriend

Okay, so I still haven’t updated about Namibia, but that’ll come shortly. I do have a new resolution that I made the other night upon the realization that I’m here only for a little bit more than a month (let’s not talk about it…), that I need to spend less time on my computer, and more time with my friends here and with Ghana. I’ve started to realize the benefit of studying abroad with your own school, simply because you meet so many people that you otherwise wouldn’t have met. Most of the people here did not know anyone else on the program, just like me. And now that our time here is almost ending and I’m 3,000 miles away from everyone and they can all spend the rest of college hanging out in New York, I can see the advantage of studying with your own school. I also realize that its just as great that I now know people from many different backgrounds, etc. that I will have this incredible connection with… and will hopefully be able to visit in the future. So yeah… I’ll be online less, basically. But still updating my blog, hopefully.

Monday was a good start to my resolution though! Or at least I think so. Because, after my psych class with Andrea, we stayed on Legon’s campus and hung out with a friend of her friends who go there and live on campus. It was really fun. Their names were Katman and Hamzah. Almost as weird as Griffin. People here, by the way, think Griffin is the MOST bizarre name. “That should be a surname” or… “ Girlfriend?” Griffin when pronounced with a Ghanaian accent, almost ALWAYS sounds like “girlfriend.” It’s quite amusing as I’ve sort of picked that up as new nickname here. Anyway, Andrea and I had a good time with our friends, we talked a lot about Ghanaian day-of-the-week names – mine is Adwoa, and if you were born on Monday and you are a female, yours is too. Monday, male = Kojo. The Ghanaians thought it was so interesting that we wanted to learn about their culture… Hamzah didn’t even know his day of the week name, how unfortunate. We also went to Hamzah’s residence hall and hung out there for a bit and met his roommates. Oh and we also talked to this old guy Uncle Ray who was really interesting. He went to University of Ghana and he used to teach in the economy department there but now only goes back to LEgon to “gossip and hang out” with his old buddies. He was a funny old guy. After hanging out at Legon, Andrea and I missed dinner with the group at Tante Marie, so we decided to get some Chinese food because we’ve been craving it for a long, long time. Mmm so good. Then we just hung out. I got a lot of good music from Andrea on my ipod. Then went to bed.

This past weekend was great toooo! Friday, we went to Kokrobite for our documentary making class. Tro tro ride was so gross, Katja and I were sweating on each other and just ew it was so hot. One thing that was great about the tro tro ride though was there was a little family (mom and three kids under the age of seven). The mom was sitting behind two of her kids with one of them in her lap. As the tro tro filled up, the two little ones were sharing a seat in front of their mom and when a man got on the tro tro, he just picked up the little girl and sat her in his lap like it was no big deal. She sat with him for the whole ride. It was just so nice. Katja and I talked about how that would never happen in the US for so many reasons, like lawsuits, etc, but here it was so normal and people just care for one another in all aspects of life. It was a small gesture, but I really appreciated it, even from afar.

Once we got to Kokrobite, we filmed a bunch, so that’s good. We still have a go back a few more times, but it’ll hopefully be interesting. Then Saturday, Tina, Leah, Katja and I went to Kumasi, a city about four hours out of Accra. Its home to the largest market in west Africa… and yes it was the largest market. Okay, so getting to and from Kumasi was half the fun. And half our trip.

Our day started off getting up at seven am. We knew we’d have to be at the tro tro station early because the trip is no less than four hours. So we woke up and decided we should look in the Bradt Ghana guide where we could get a tro tro to Kumasi and it said Kaneshie station. That made sense because you can get practically ALL other tro tros from Kaneshie (to Kokrobite, Cape Coast, Takoradie, …lots of places), but not Kumasi. We got to Kaneshie and asked someone where we should go. “over the bridge” so we went over the bridge to the tro tro station, then when they asked where we should go “back over the bridge” to the other side and you can get one from there. Then back again… “where do we find a tro tro to Kumasi?” ..finally, “you have to take a tro tro to Circle then from there you can get a tro tro to Kumasi.” Goodness. I think they just wanted us to get a little exercise by crossing that bridge a bunch, and if not, we definitely got some good exercise. We got a tro tro to circle and the guy sitting next to me on the tro tro, Samuel, said that Circle was very crazy and that since we’re obrunis the tro tro conductors would swarm around us trying to get us to take THEIR tro tro, so that he’d help us find one. And I’m really glad he did because Circle was INSANE. He was so nice and helped us find one for cheap. People were literally grabbing all of us trying to get us to take their tro tro. At one point Katja was circled (no pun intended) by like eight Ghanaian men who she had to push away and tell she didn’t need help. Finally, we got on a tro tro for five cedi to Kumasi. Niiiiice. Unlike most tro tros, this one was spacious and had a flat screen TV..? They didn’t use it on the ride, but it had one. Weird. That’d be like a public bus having a flat screen TV. Hmm.. maybe for long rides up to Tamale or something. Anyway, we waited for a while for the tro tro to fill up, bought some delicious hazelnut wafers and some other snacks for our long ride. The ride was really long and really dirty. We had the windows open the whole time and by the end of the ride, we were all covered in dust. Leah had makeup remover pads and when we wiped off our faces, especially Tina and me because we were by the windows, the wipey was black. It was so nasty. Then washing off my neck and shoulders, ew. It was grossssa.

When we got to Kumasi, we found a cheap hotel in the middle of town, Nurom, so we asked how to get there. We should’ve known after the morning’s events that asking for directions will probably lead up astray, but we weren’t thinking. Everyone lead us completely in the wrong direction. And after asking around some more we realized that we were in the entirely wrong part of town so we took a taxi to Nurom just to find out that there was no vacancy. Then this “Canadian,” named Bless, with a gold grill that said “GOD” showed us where to find fried rice for lunch. From there we went to the National Cultural Center to look at the art centers. We got some really cool stuff. I got some shoes and some gifts for people at home, so I’m not going to say what I got… just in case you’re reading. Then Mallory gave me money to buy something that she saw when she was in Kumasi for spring break. Long story short: I wanted to buy a couple things from this guy, in addition to what I was getting for Mallory, and this guy would not bargain with me. I was an angry camper and left without buying anything, but it was so ridiculously overpriced. Whatever. Then it started pouring. So cold. So so cold. Then we got a taxi to our new hotel, Hotel de Kingsway. They almost made us get two rooms because they didn’t want four people in the room, but once they realized we were going to put up a fight about it, they said it was okay for us all to stay together. The room was HUGE and the bathroom was so unnecessarily big I don’t know why they didn’t want four people. For dinner, we ran to the closest restaurant right across the street because it was still raining. As we were eating, a man sat down with us to talk to us about his NGO. His name was Nanasei and he runs a very lovely NGO called Global Youth Network (www.gynetwork.blogspot.com). We hope to return back to Kumasi in a couple weekends to volunteer with him at an orphanage or something. We considered doing it this weekend, but I think I’m going to Togo and maybe Benin.

Sunday, we woke up early and right as we left the hotel we got bombared by a bunch of Ghanaians who wanted to sell us stuff. We were all just so groggy and not in the mood to be talking with these people. All we wanted was an egg sandwich. And of course right as we’re getting really frustrated with them, a troupe (must attribute this word to Caroline) of kids with instruments parades by. What. The. Hell. Seriously, it was just so weird. So one of the guys pestering us insisted that he take us to get egg sandwiches. He dropped us off at a little stand… it was very good. And after that, we went to the market. Even though it was a Sunday and markets are usually more closed down on Sundays, it was still pretty hoppin. I got some fabric, some beautiful scarves for… get this. 10 pesewas. Then after walking along a railroad track… and wondering how any railroads go on these tracks (they don’t), we stopped to buy flannel shirts? In the blisteringly hot sun. We thought this was a reallllly good idea. As we were trying them on, we started to realize maybe the worst idea we had ever. It was so so hot. But they were 50 pesewa… how could we say no? So then we just walked through the market a little more, talked to a bunch of people. And just loved life. Being with Tina who is Indian and Katja who is half Korean, the people at the market could not understand how we were all together. People were so confused, thought I was Asian, and just didn’t understand that being from the United States, there are lots of different races. It was so funny. After the market, we went back to those pestering men because they were outside our hotel. We talked to them for a while then found our way to the tro tro station and fried rice. The ride home was not as comfortable as the ride to Kumasi… whoever thought wrapping car seats in Ghana in plastic was seriously deranged. We stuck to the seats for the whole ride home. It was so nasty. As we got off the tro tro, yet another reason I hate being obruni, a guy came up to us and immediately thought we needed help finding a taxi. Which we didn’t. This guy hailed us a taxi and expected us to pay him for it. Then his friend put his hands in our taxi and tried to pickpocket Leah… when I saw this I slapped the guy’s arm so hard, and he immediately got away from the car and the taxi driver sped off. Being obruni has serious drawbacks. But being in Africa totally makes up for it.

Last week, I went to the after school program twice. Gaby and I decided we wanted to make mandalas with the kids. We told them to divide the circle however they wanted and we gave them examples of ours and then we told them to depict things like their family, their faith, their friends, home town, fears, aspirations, dreams, etc. It was so wonderful the things they came up with. Some of them drew that they wanted to be football players, some that they wanted a book, some wanted cars, and the one that struck me the most was a dream for “good ventilation.” It’s something we take for granted, but most places here are so poorly ventilated, and with this heat its so bad. When we were done, we asked for all the markers and colored pencils back.. when we couldn’t find a few, we told them that if they couldn’t take care of our stuff, they wouldn’t be able to use it ever again. This was appalling to them, and they absolutely tore the room apart looking for these markers. They were so appreciative of the supplies and it was so great to see how quick they were to help. These kids really teach me a lot and its so rewarding to see them express themselves creatively… something that isn’t encouraged too much in Ghanaian public school. The next day at the school, Mallory, Tina and I took Gaby’s computer and showed this video (http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/poisoning-the-poor?mode=send) and then asked the kids to write letters to companies like Nokia, Dell, and Microsoft asking them to find a more responsible way of disposing of their e-waste as to not pollute their beautiful country. It was pretty successful, except one kid didn’t quite understand…and when Tina looked at his letter, he had asked the company to “Please send their e-waste.” He thought the movie was showing how they got all the old computers and stuff and thought it was a good thing. It was so hilarious. I really enjoy helping with the after school program and I’m happy I’ve begun to help.. too bad they have a three week break starting really soon ☹.

This week was pretty non-eventful. Just class and the bead market. That was really cool and beautiful. Andrea and I now have belly beads! On the way to the market, we drove by this huge truck and as we passed it, there was a MONKEY in the front seat with the driver. It was so funny and just unexpected. So great, only in Africa really. And photo was so wonderful this week! We had our critiques on our “Narrative in Five Parts” projects – self-portrait, landscape, the other, signage, and ‘j’ne c’est pas’ (basically whatever doesn’t fit into those categories). Our class was so great because we had a visiting guest artist/critic, Senam Okudjeto. She was so helpful and just brought a totally different feel to the class. She was so great. Look up her work and you’ll see what I mean. This weekend, we’re off to Togo for Easter and just to explore.

Okay, that's it.

love love love