Good evening!
Here are a few travel diaries! I will be uploading the rest tomorrow so stay tuned for lots of stories! :) The picture I have attached with this blog is from the night I unbraided my hair. I now have it rebraided and it is red! I'll have to get a picture of it to post on here!
Ochena! (Tomorrow!)
-Sara xoxo :)
August 1st,
We got to work a little late this morning and our supervisor Kyei had been looking for us. Usually everyone is late but for some reason everyone was punctual today and poor Caro & I were out early running errands and trying to get organized after being away for the majority of last week.
Once we got to the office Kyei invited us to sit in on a meeting with him. There were 2 American people running this meeting from Oxfam. They were discussing oil and how it needs to be regulated in Ghana and They were doing a lot of chit chat and not a lot of planning which is usually how it goes at Friends of the Nation. Caro & I couldn’t contain our laughter at one point though because this woman came and joined in on the meeting and gave Kyei crap for being disorganized and not having a plan. She told everyone in the room that they were wasting their time unless they all marched to Accra and demanded their rights for their fishing coast. It was incredible to see a woman be so outspoken here and I will admit she did have a good point!
After the meeting there wasn’t much going on. Caro & I are finding the time long since there isn’t much for us to do at the office. I am very thankful that I have the clinic otherwise I would be very disappointed because I came here to volunteer and gain work experience. I feel bad for Caro though because she was looking forward to this internship and then they lost the funding for the project so now there is nothing for her to work on. It is unfortunate that they didn’t tell QPID about this before we came to Ghana as we could have found another organization to partner with.
During our lunch break we went for a walk to our favourite little shop that sells jolof rice. Then we went to see Janet and pick up our new dresses that she made for us. We also went for a walk through the field behind Friends of the Nation to see what we could find.
This evening Caro & I unbraided my hair. It was starting to get too loose and some of the extensions had fallen out. I was heartbroken but I will definitely get them redone! Unbraiding them took awhile because the cornrows were so long and thin but we streamed legally blonde the musical off of you tube and sang along which distracted us!
My hair now looks like a lion’s mane because it is so short and puffy from the braids! Part of me wants to go out for a walk down the road and show off my new look but at the risk of scaring children I will just stay inside!
PS. I will be home 4 weeks from today! I am looking forward to going home and seeing everyone but I am also sad about leaving Ghana. I have learned so much from volunteering at the clinic and I have met many incredible people that I am going to miss when I go back to Canada. I hope to get the opportunity to come back and visit Ghana one day!
Bye for now!
August 2nd,
This morning when I arrived at the clinic I went around to all of the sites to say good morning to everyone. A lot of them hadn’t seen me for awhile because I had been in Half Assini and then in Ho. I worked at the general health site today with my good friend “Sister Adua / Angelina.” She told me today when I arrived at the clinic that I could only speak Fante, no English! I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to open my mouth all day since my vocabulary in Fante is quite limited to basic greetings and random phrases. It ended up being great though because I would try to say as much as I could in Fante and then she would help me with what I couldn’t say. I will probably get the hang of this language right before I leave to go back to Canada!
There were many injections for malaria today. I did a dressing change for a man who had a severe infection in his foot. When I was changing the dressing I would randomly speak in English since he spoke English and then I could hear sister Adua yelling at me from inside “only Fante!” Oops! Haha. I came to realize though that it was better when I spoke to the patient in Fante because he found my accent hilarious and that distracted him from the pain related to his dressing change. Laughter really is the best medicine!
There were a few people admitted to the treatment ward today. One of them was a little girl who had been vomiting excessively and required close monitoring all shift. The other one was an older woman who was very nauseated and dizzy. She was hooked up to an IV and also required frequent monitoring. She had a friend with her who would get really excited every time I walked onto the ward and would slap my arm in a playful manner. She was really funny and was having a blast teasing me. I love the patients at the clinic! They enjoy it when I try to speak their language, especially when I try to pronounce it with their accent which means I butcher it and sound hilarious!
After I finished at the clinic today I went to Friends of the Nation for a few hours. Then I went home and played with the kids. They taught me how to play a clapping game. You play with 2 people and you count 1, 2 over and over and change your feet according to the number you say. Who ever messes up loses the game. It is a popular game that I see many children playing along the road, on the school grounds, basically anywhere there is a group of children you can hear clapping hands and 1, 1, 2, 1 being shouted as they jump up and down. Now I finally know how to play! After that game we went inside the house and played a board game called Ludo. It has four different colours and it is similar to the board game trouble. It has a football theme to it so you can move your player backwards and kick people back to home base which can put the person in the lead right back at zero in a hurry!
For dessert tonight we had sugar cane. I can’t think of a sweeter dessert than chewing right on the sugar cane itself! I will probably have diabetes one day but I might as well live it up now! While we were eating sugar cane the children were all in the kitchen and we were singing our favourite Ghanaian rap songs. I think my favourite was hearing Emmanuel sing “Waist & Power” which is a song about wanting an African man. I’ll attach the link! It is a very popular song here right now! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTqSHhqFOyo
I had a fun evening with my family! I love each and every one of them so much!
Until next time!
August 3rd,
I got to wear my new skirt today that Janet made me! I was very excited about it! Caro & I plan to wear our Ghanaian clothing all the time when we go back to Kingston! We will be trendsetters!
Today at work Caro & I worked on our evaluation for Sight for Life. We had to make it very detailed and talk about everything we had learned about the organization from projects to funding so that QPID will have plenty of information if they decide to send cooperants there next year.
After work Caro & I went to market circle to feed our fabric buying addiction. We ran into our friend Josafe who we had not seen for a few weeks. After we bought some beautiful fabrics we went to Georgina‘s shop to have more dresses made. Caro & I also bought hair extensions while we were downtown because we are planning to rebraid our hair this weekend! Mine are pinkish red this time which should be fun! After a successful fabric shopping spree we went home and had a nice big helping of fufu.
Now I am scrubbing my nursing dress and getting ready for another day at the clinic tomorrow!
Until next time!
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