TravelStream™ news feed for member msafiri on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/msafiri en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 24 Nov 2006 12:40:00 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1164497100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1164497100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1164497100/tpod.html Fri, 24 Nov 2006 12:40:00 -0500 Peace Corps Ghana: She actually volunteered for this?

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Techiman, Ghana

So I thought it'd be entertaining to describe a typical day in my life as a trainee in the village of TrimiaNkwanta outside of Techiman. All of the events described below have actually happened, although not all on the same day.

4:16am - wake up when my family's "cage" is unlocked by the man living in the room next to mine.
5:00am - wake up again with a desparate need to visit the pit latrine.
5:03am - have finally managed to find shoes and a light and the pit latrine key.
5:23am - am finally done in the pit latrine, wondering what I ate yesterday.
5:25am - go back to sleep
5:45am - wake up and start to get out of bed, but hear mother and father having an argument outside of my window. Decide to wait until they are done yelling and potentially throwing things to come out.
6:05am - drag myself and a bucket of laundry out to the courtyard. Scrub laundry while neighbors comment. "In ghana here, we do not wring the water out that way. You should twist your hands this way to get the water out."
6:25am - hang laundry on line. "In ghana here, we snap the clothes before we hang them on the line." me: "Who ARE you, anyway?"
6:34am - eat breakfast - egg sandwich, porrige, and fruit. But first, pull mold off of the bread and remove the ants from the porridge. Also, check fruit for worm holes.
6:55am - lie on my bed and wish I was asleep or eating a cheeseburger.
6:57am - realize that I don't have to leave until 7:30
6:58am - watch cockroach crawl up wall next to bed.
6:59am - laugh as cockroach falls back to the floor.
7:00am - pick up ipod to see if the battery has magically recharged overnight. (No.)
7:02am - laugh at cockroach as it falls again.
7:04am - give in and pick up book, even though I read too much too fast already.
7:09am - decide that I am TOO BORED, pack my bag, and leave, much to the dismay of my family. "Oh, u ko in?" "I am going to school. I will be back at 6 tonight." "Will you take lunch here?" "No, I will not be back until 6 tonight." "Will you go to church on Sunday?" "What? It's wednesday. Can we talk about this later?" "Ok, we will see you at lunch." "No, no you won't."
7:16am - stop to talk to Casey through his bedroom window.
7:18am - reassure alarmed Ghanians that all is fine, and people in America talk to each other through the window all the time.
7:22am - get tired of talking to Casey with an audience, go next door to collect Brad so that we can travel to language class together.
7:30am - see Travis coming, decide to wait even though we'll probably be late.
7:32am - decide to wait for Casey too, even though we'll definitely be late, but that's ok because we hate language class.
7:40am - avoid the rabbit being slaughtered on the main road while we wait for a taxi. Fit 7 people in one tiny car, close our eyes against the exhaust fumes, and sing along with Christmas music.


TO BE CONTINUED...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1164026640/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1164026640/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1164026640/tpod.html Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:07:54 -0500 Peace Corps Ghana: She actually volunteered for this?

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Techiman, Ghana

Well, here we are again...

Last week I went to visit my site, aka the place where I will be living for the next two years. It was...interesting.

I didn't know what to expect. I knew that I was going to the Upper East region and so it would be grasslands and shade trees instead of jungle, and it would be hotter and dryer. People in the North tend to be more relaxed about life in general so I knew that it would be less crazy than Techiman.

Well it was all that. I absolutely loved it and think that things will be great there, especially as the entire crowd going to the UER is great. My three closest friends in the group are all within 3 hours of me, which is lucky. If you have a map of Ghana, I'm on the Bolga-Tamale highway, just south of Bolga, next to the town of Tongo which may or may not be on your map.

My house is a compound house all to myself that they just finished before I arrived for my visit. I have a front room, called a "hall" and a bedroom with a bed that may or may not be mine. (I witnessed some men pulling it out of someone else's house as I arrived, so if it is my bed it means someone in the village is lacking and I feel bad.) Then there is a courtyard and across the courtyard is my kitchen, my shower room, and my latrine. I don't have running water so shower room means "stall where I take my daily bucket bath" and my daily bucket bath I mean "maybe every few days if my village is lucky" because I strive to be the unbathed PCV of the upper east. I was told not to expect electricity, but apparently they're hooking me up because my neighbor has electricity and it's not complicated to attach my house. But we'll see.

I can walk to the town of Tongo in about 15-20 minutes and I can buy the basic basic necessities there. (Basic necessities are bread. I can buy bread in tongo.) Actually, I can get things like bread, tomatoes, yams, melon, rice and soap any day of the week and on market days the possibilities expand. I'll probably be going to Bolga every week because it's an actual city where I can access the internet, get mail, meet up with other PCVs, and buy anything I need beyond the above list. I can get to Bolga in about 20 minutes by car, but I could spend all day waiting for a car.

There's another guy from my group about 6k from my site, just over the mountain, and luckily he's someone I get along with so we'll probably hang out a lot. He got lucky in that he's replacing a site (there was a PCV there until last month) and so he gets her house....and everything in it. His placement allowance can go to something more interesting than a stove and furniture.

This week is just the week from hell where we go to sessions that we don't want to go to and make presentations that are useless to everyone involved, and next week will probably be even worse, but I swear in on the 30th and leave for site the next day. I'll probably take a couple of days in the TSO (tamale sub-office) just to chill and do some legitimate pre-research for my site (there's a sizeable agricultural library at TSO) so I'll arrive in Gbeogo on the 2nd or 3rd, most likely.

One reason why this week sucks is because the language I've been studying for 7 weeks - Guruni, commonly known as FraFra, is not spoken in Gbeogo. They speak something called Talen/Talensi. Unfortunately, after a minor show-down with administration, I have to continue to attend Guruni lessons so that I can fulfill a beaurocratic requirement by passing a language proficiency examination in Guruni a week from today. (Thank you mom and dad for raising me with a blatant disregard for all administration policy everywhere. Sometimes I wish I was a passive sheep of a person because then I wouldn't have to spend so much time fighting with people.)

Aaaannnyyywayyy, speaking of pointless sessions, I must be off to attend one right now.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1162623840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1162623840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1162623840/tpod.html Sat, 04 Nov 2006 08:16:41 -0500 Peace Corps Ghana: She actually volunteered for this?

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Techiman, Ghana

So I've been in Ghana for just over 6 weeks and this is my first entry. Serves me right that I'm now so backlogged that I don't know where to start.

Right now I'm in the town/city of Techiman for my 10 weeks of Peace Corps training. In order to describe training in a way that you can visualize, please imagine sitting in an uncomfortable chair for 8 hours while someone teaches you your ABCs. Over and over. And over. And then the next day, you do it all again. Once in a while they'll switch to counting to 10. But then it's back to the ABCs.

There are some good parts - the PCVRFs (current volunteers who have come to assist with training) have a lot of good knowledge to share just because they're current volunteers. Every site and every assignment is different, so of course nothing is specific, but it's helpful just to hear people's experiences.

For those of you who don't know, my site will be in the Upper East region of Ghana, in a village called Gbeogo (pronounced bego) near the city of Bolgatanga. I'll move there sometime in the first week of December, but a week from today I get to go and visit. Right now I know that: my primary project will be with habitat for humanity (that could mean anything, actually, so don't let it fool you), I don't have running water or electricity at my site, I'm geographically very close to several other PCVs, and I'll be speaking the language Guruni.

Right now I'm on my way to more training, even though it's Saturday afternoon. Today is something called "cross-sector" where a different sector group (in this case, the small business group) will teach the rest of us tree-hugers and sanitation people about business. Before I go I have to get lunch, so I'm going to "chop." (that means, buy and eat "chop" from the street. Chop is cheap and of questionable cleanliness.) Probably I'll eat fried rice because it's the cleanest. Today the options are actually limited because of a funeral going on - EVERYONE goes to funerals, which are frequent, and so a lot of businesses are closed. Therefore I can't eat redred (a beans and plantains dish) or bofru (fried dough) or fried fish (disgusting) or anything else you could eat, which may or may not include chicken innards and dog.

If I were eating lunch with my homestay, I would definitely eat redred because my homestay sister is the best redred cook in ghana. At home I eat a lot of fried yam, which I use to sort of scoop a number of stews (most popular at my house being a cabbage and tomato thing) and a lot of jolof rice (i can't even explain it). sometimes I get rice balls or fufu, which I eat in soup.

My time at the internet is almost up and I'm really hungry so I'm going to stop writing now. But it'll probably be less than 6 weeks before I update again. (Hopefully.) (I can try.)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1154308080/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1154308080/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1154308080/tpod.html Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:09:24 -0400 Peace Corps Ghana: She actually volunteered for this?

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Bloomington, Indiana, United States

I feel that I need to update, even though not that much is going on. My visa/passport forms have all been submitted, despite the unhelpfulness of the clerk at the post office. (He was convinced that he should take everything and mail it USPS even though I had specific instructions from PC NOT to let him do this.) Now I'm focusing on moving out of my apartment (which involves getting rid of the little that I own) and packing for service.

I've never been a good packer, but this seems harder than anything else. I have to pack for 2 years without knowing what my living conditions will be like. I'm allowed 2 pieces of checked luggage and a carry-on. The total for my stuff cannot exceed 80lbs. I'm bringing a backpacking backpack and an army duffel for the 2 big pieces, and a smaller backpack for the carry-on.

I need to bring clothes (but not that many because I'm going to go African and wear what they wear - it's better suited to the climate), shoes, books, a sleeping bag, flashlights, tupperware, a shortwave radio, any name-brand toiletries I can't live without, duct tape, etc. There are a million things I've thought about and decided against, and a million more things I have yet to think of.

Ugh I don't want to think about this anymore.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1152604200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1152604200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/msafiri/ghana/1152604200/tpod.html Tue, 11 Jul 2006 02:57:12 -0400 Peace Corps Ghana: She actually volunteered for this?

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Bloomington, Indiana, United States

So the other night I was lying in bed reading when suddenly it hit me. I don't know if it was the late hour, or the book, or what, but suddenly I realized that I'm really, actually, truly going to Ghana in 2 months and 8 days. I am basically moving to a third world country to live in a cement hut to live with people I don't know doing work I don't know how to do. For two years.

It's scary. It's very scary. And getting more real every day.

I do consider it moving, rather than an extended vacation because 1) I won't be vacationing, I'll be working and 2) it'll be my home. My lease here is up August 14th and I have no idea where on the planet I'm going after COS (completion of service.) It could be New York, London, Cairo, St. Louis, Seattle...Ghana will be my home. That means that I'm moving there.

I can be scared all I want but then I realize just how cool that sounds and my thirteen year old self is nearly imploding with the excitement.
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