So, this is my first time being able to get online in almost a week, due to the fact that the internet cafe here didn’t pay their bill, so it has been closed for a few days.
Like always, this last week has been a week full of so many growing experiences, it is hard to even convey to you. I finally feel like I have reached a plateau on my trip here in Ghana, meaning I am finally becoming comfortable with walking outside and walking to the market to buy something like a Coke, which is quite an accomplishment, I think. Living here after growing up in the United States is seriously like living on a different planet. Each day, I grow more and more fond of the people in this country, and have been learning to appreciate the many different cultural differences rather than get frustrated with them. The most challenging thing, I still find, is to accept the discipline methods in the schools. I saw one girl today that got caned so hard by the headmaster today that she wet her pants. She was caned because she was 2 minutes late to my class because she was helping her little brother change into his uniform. It made me sick to my stomach to have to watch her face as she was continuously caned. Her face was filled with pure terror, as I am sure any child’s face would be. But this is not uncommon in the schools here. Many other volunteers talk of the same experiences with caning. My students are so sweet. Today when I arrived at the school, I was bombarded by the hugs of over 30 children so much so that I was knocked off my feet. I quickly got up and they all started dusting the dirt off my feet and straightening my skirt. I feel kind of awkward about this, but they love to serve me as a teacher. Any time there is dirt on my feet or I don’t have a chair to sit on, they will wash my feet and carry a chair on their head over to where I am standing. This week, I taught them how to make paper fortune tellers, the kind I always make when I am sitting in church trying to listen. Haha. They absolutely loved it! I brought crayons for them to color with as well. So, placement is going well.
This weekend was amazing! My friend Joe from BYU, who I recently learned is in Accra (about 4 hours away by tro tro) for the semester on an internship as well, rode up here to Hohoe and spent the weekend with me and some of my new volunteer friends. He traveled here on Friday, and didn’t get here until around midnight, after leaving from Accra around 1pm. Here in Ghana, the public transportation is very unreliable, or rather it just takes forever, but you will eventuallyu get to where you need to be. If you want to take a tro tro, which is a huge van that supposedly holds around 12 people, it can sometimes take around 2 hours for one to fill with people that are all going to the same place, and often times, the driver will try and cram 4 or 5 more people than the van is supposed to hold. Haha. You definitely can’t have any personal bubble riding those things, especially riding around on the extremely bumpy, pot-holey road. You have to become pretty comfortable with the person sitting next to you.
Anyway, so Joe, me, and my friend Krista decided to hike up to upper Wli falls close to here early Saturday morning. We took a taxi (which averages around $1-4 anywhere you go) up to the trailhead. Hiking here always has a tour guide, we had a guide, Alfonso, who took us all the way to the top. It was a really difficult hike, I would say even more difficult than Mt. Afadjato , literally climbing up tree roots and rocks in the wet rainforest in humidity so thick, you can’t even imagine it. But, it was definitely worth it at the top! We sat on a rock next to the waterfall and got drenched. It was so beautiful. The hike took a total of 4 hours. Saturday afternoon, we took a 3 hour tro tro ride to a city called Akasambo that is right on Volta lake. There, we stayed in a really cheap hotel ($5 each). It supposedly had air conditioning, but the electricity was out all night, so it was extremely hot and we didn’t get hardly any sleep, because we decided to cram 4 of us into a room that was built for 2 on a king sized bed. Haha. But it’s ok, we were still enjoying ourselves. We got up the next morning and rented out a boat to ride up and down the lake for an hour. It was probably the only boat with a motor that I saw the entire time. I kind of felt awkward riding it next to all these people with little wooden boats doing their fishing. Even though it was cheap to rent, I still felt like white, rich, tourists that were sort of disturbing the naturally beautiful environment, making waves, and getting lots of stares if that makes sense. I didn’t like that feeling. After getting off the boat, Joe and I decided to stay for lunch before heading back home because we were really hungry. The others took off to go back to Hohoe. While we were sitting out on the lake eating lunch, a little boy, no more than 8 years old and pretty much naked rode up next to the gazebo we were eating lunch in in a handcrafted wooden boat with wooden paddles and asked if we wanted a ride unofficially for 2 cedi (about $1.50). We decided to just go for it. This was probably my favorite experience of my whole trip so far. I loved it! This really strong little boy paddled us out and around an island, and on our way back, we passed some of his friends at his village on shore. He asked us if we wanted to meet them, so we did, and all the kids ran up to the boat as we road in to shore, most of them naked, and they came up and shook our hands and said hello. They crowded all around us. It was such a surreal experience. Then, when we were afraid they were going to tip the boat, we said our goodbyes and paddled away. I will have to post pictures when I can. I road the tro tro back to Hohoe on my own, and really enjoyed it. I felt so much a part of the culture this weekend. It was so nice.
Before this gets to unbearably long, I just want to say I got to go to a monkey sanctuary yesterday where we fed wild monkeys that just run around bananas. They would peel the bananas and eat them right from our hands. It was so awesome! They were the cutest monkeys I have ever seen.
I’ll write next week, and try to post pictures when I can, but the internet is more slow than usual now, so I am not even going to try today.
Fieie!! (Good evening in Ewe) Love you all.
Ps. Mommy, here are the names of my students to write to. This would be so cool!!
Mirina, Yussif, Inbrien, Precious, John, Abu, Richard, Jaymole, Elizabeth, Felilatu, Adamu, Jeminu, Samiu, Rafia, Rayan, Marvellous, and there are about 6 others who could not spell their name, but I think you could just write anonymous letters or something so that each of your students has someone to write to. There are plenty of kids in the other classrooms. Do whatever you want. Anything would be awesome! Ask Gladys for my address. I sent it to him.
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