And speaking of fish, I was quite a little guppy myself this weekend testing the rough and tumble waters of gold coast atlantic. My friends Emma, Carly and I decided to spend the weekend at Kokrobite beach (it was supposed to just be Friday, but we couldn't resist staying another night). We stayed at Big Milly's, which is a bar/restaurant/hotel on the beach. On Friday night, it was pretty relaxed because there weren't a ton of people there, so we went with two of our Ghanaian friends to a little spot (outdoor, small bar type place) to get some less expensive drinks. We ended up sitting there for a couple hours and somehow started singing, and one of the guys we were with happened to be a reggae singer so he was making up songs and we were singing background. Bursting out into song (as long as it's reggae) isn't uncommon here. After that we went to walk along the beach (accompanied by our friends, because it really isn't safe to walk alone) and we saw the most incredible thing. A large sea turtle came up onto the beach to lay her eggs! We watched the entire process from only a few feet away, and I know it's an unforgivable sin to disturb the turtle on her way back to the sea, but I got to touch her foot and her shell. It was especially funny for me because about four years ago I travelled to Costa Rica with the sole purpose (ok, not my sole purpose, but the sole purpose of VINS--Vermont Institute of Natural Science) to study and watch Ridley Sea Turtles laying eggs on the beaches. What a coincidence that I see one, randomly, laying eggs years later on another continent. Very cool. The next night was just fun, nothing too exciting to report. And the next day? Um... That's a whole other story....
Here it is: bad water sachet=the death of me. I guess Emma, Carly and I drank some bad water on Sunday because Sunday night, just as we were sitting down with Liz to begin studying for our two final exams, we all felt a sudden urge to reject some bad water from our bodies. I was puking all night long, but Liz saved my life at 4 in the morning with some rehydration tablets, which I think helped a lot. I took the exam the next morning without having really studied at all and I think it went alright. I took my last one this morning and it also went ok, and I think I'm mostly recovered by now. But there's my lesson in not trusting all the water sachets I see. (Water sachets are these small plastic bags of water you can get anywhere, and most of them are fine, but you need to be careful).
This Friday, we leave for Kumasi, a city right in the heart of Ghana, about four hours North of Accra. After spending a couple days there we will head to Tamale, which is right on the border of Burkina Faso, and in total, about 12 or 14 hours from Accra. We will be looking for NGO's to work with and visiting some sites as well. I'm very excited! The trip will be ten days in total. It seems the year is just flying by! I can't believe it's almost November. I'm still working on planning my winter break with some friends, but it looks like perhaps Cape Verde for Christmas? And maybe Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal by bus before that... But perhaps I'll stick closer to Ghana and travel along the coast and maybe visit a town in Benin called Oidah that is known for its voodoo practices. We shall see.
That is about all for now. One thing that I will warn you about though, is that I might speak differently when I get home. When I hang out with my Ghanaian friends here I have to speak very slowly and clearly so they understand me and sometimes I have to modify my word choice so they know what I mean. Everyone speaks English here, but obviously there are different levels of competency and there are accents to deal with. Dad, I'm sure you'll be happy about that, you'll never have to say "Lib, you need to speak slowly and clearly" again, because I already will!
Now that is truly all, I'm off to get pizza (would you expect me to eat pizza? it happens surprisingly often) with a co-worker of Carly's Dad who lives in Ghana with his family. (Carly's dad doesn't live in Ghana, he just used to work with this guy who does... Convenient for us!). Yum. But don't worry, tomorrow I'm back to fried plantains and wakye (beans and rice with spicey sauce, yum).
There are plenty of restaurants and stores, but the majority of the food suppliers are the open air markets or women walking around with huge bowls on their heads with snacks. If you're driving and there's a lot of traffic, men and women will walk around carrying things on their head that they're selling. My favorite are these little doughnut like things. Other regular items are plantain chips, water sachets, chocolate, mentos (I know, random), etc. They walk around saying "yyyeeeesss plantain chiiips" or "yeeeessss puure watah" or you can call them over from the window. Most of the vendors are people from the North who have come down to Accra to make some money, because there's a lot of poverty in the North and not many opportunities for work, other than agricultural work. They work pretty hard selling things though, because they're out there all day and sometimes have to run after cars to get their money if they're in the middle of a transaction and traffic has started to move. And of course they're running with probably 30 pound loads balanced on their heads, and a lot of the women also have babies tied to their back with fabric. They also sell non food items like flags, fans, movies, and other really random and unexpected things. It'll be sad to go home and not be able to buy snacks right out of my car window. It makes traffic so much more fun.
Speaking of cars, I've gotten some really interesting taxi drivers. My favorite so far though was two nights ago when Carly, Liz and I were returning home from Osu. I sat up front and negotiated a good price (2 GH cedis, equal to $2 USD, for a 15 minute drive) to our house. At first he was about to complain about the price that he had agreed to but I just changed the subject and asked him how his day was. We started talking about politics and he asked who I was supporting. Of course I said Obama, and I was expecting the usual "ahh, I love Obama" response, but he surprised me by saying "I don't like Obama. Black man can't be president." I was a little confused because 90% of the time, Ghanaians do not use or understand sarcasm, so I didn't know if he was serious. I said "oh that's a horrible thing to say" and he said "no no, I don't like black man" and I looked at him funny and then he started laughing and pointing to his skin saying "ahh, I am a black man, you think I don't like myself?" So we talked about politics for a while and he continued on with the sarcasm and then we asked him his name and he said "Kwame Obama," and we laughed and I said "I'm Adwoa Obama" (Adwoa is my Ghanaian name) and Liz said "I'm Akosia Obama" and we were all laughing and Carly said "I'm Afia Obama," but the taxi driver interrupted and said "no no, you can't be, you are Afia McCain. We can't all support Obama." So we all laughed and we were almost home so we said "at the next junction, left" and he said "oh, yes, yes, Obama Junction." It was pretty amusing. I don't know if it translates well as a story, but it was pretty funny.
In other news, I have exams next week... Ew.... And soon we travel to the North! This weekend though, me and my friends are going to Kokrobite beach to dance to reggae. Yay yay! That's all for now!
Anyways, yesterday we took a break from the bustling life of Accra and took a day trip to Cape Coast, which is absolutely beautiful (perhaps I'll spend Christmas there...). We did a tree-top walk at Kakum National Park, which was great. It was a very thin rope suspension bridge (um, I don't actually know if that's how you're supposed to describe it), and I couldn't decide the entire time if I was scared or not. I was too busy sweating to really think about it. After that we got lunch, which took forever, as it always does. And finally we went to Elmina to visit Elmina castle which I think is the most amazing thing I've seen since I've been in Ghana. It is one of three castles left from the slave trade and one of the oldest buildings in sub-Saharan African (524 years old), built by the Portuguese. We walked into the quarters where they packed hundreds of enslaved women waiting to be shipped on the Middle Passage and the whole atmosphere felt heavier. To make it even more intense, we suddenly heard this incredible gospel music from a couple floors up (a lot of the building is open air). So this sad, powerful gospel singing was echoing through the building while we were looking at the iron bars and the ball and chain on the floor and the "door of no return" where the prisoners were sent before they entered the slave ships. It was really intense and if you ever go to Ghana, you must go there. I can't really do it justice in a one paragraph description of it.
In other news, the two courses I'm doing right now will wrap up in about two weeks and then we'll take a ten day trip to the north, stopping at Kumasi and then continuing on to Tamale. We'll be looking for NGO's to work at during that time. I'm really excited to explore more out of Accra because I know the northern regions are really different, and I've been told that you haven't experienced Ghana until you've been to Kumasi. I'll be sure to bring my camera along. I stupidly forgot it yesterday, but I'll steal some of my friend's pictures and post them.
On a lighter note, I finally went to pick up my drum and it's just beautiful. I'll post pictures soon. I had a mini drum lesson before I left the cultural center, because just about everyone you meet wants to teach you something, whether it's drumming or the local languages or some other thing.
Now jumping back to more unrelated things (my writing organization and transitions have really plummeted)... I'm an anthropology student and my main interest is in cultural anthropology so it's clearly very exciting to be here observing cultural differences, but I've found that the linguistic differences are just as interesting. People structure a lot of sentences very differently and it's obviously as a result of the mixing of so many different types of languages and because English is not generally the first language for most people (although they do learn it at a young age and I haven't met a single person who can't speak it, aside from some small children). I've noticed some pretty cool linguistic differences from listening to some of the guys that I hang out with (don't worry dad, I'm not married to any of them). For example, when they want to explain something and set themselves apart from something they'll say "he goes to church. Me, I don't go to the church," with a emphasis on the word me. Also, their kinship terms can have very different meanings than American ones because of the kinship system present here, where extended family is very important (versus the nuclear family system of the U.S.). So people will call older women "auntie" and men "uncle," and every girl and boy is your sister and your brother, even if you're white. It's all inclusive. Everyone's family. They say "junior brother" and "senior brother" instead of older and younger.
There are also some pretty interesting ways of getting people's attention. Usually they just go "tssss" to call you over, and it isn't a rude thing, it's just a way to alert you to them, and the sound carries surprisingly well. You can always hear it and react right away. They will say "bra bra," which means "come, come" to get you to come over. That's not really a linguistic difference, because it's just a different language altogether, but it helps demonstrate the degree that local languages are mixed in with English. Also, during conversation they will say "hullo" to get your attention, and "you get me?" or "you understand?" to make sure you understand. They also say "are you sure?" a lot. But perhaps one of the most interesting features of Ghanaian communication is the sounds they'll make in response to things. It's not something I can really type, but usually it's "oh!" with some kind of emphasis and tone change depending on what it means. They will say it when the price is too high, they will say it when they're joking around, they'll say it when you've said something shocking and so on and so forth. I think it could be used for just about any situation.
Finally, the men (and I can only comment on them because I have not noticed this with the women) have a couple sayings that they always use. They will say "it's nice to be nice" in a lot of situations, usually if they're asking to "take you as a friend." Also they'll say "sharing is caring" all the time. And so I'll end there, as I have shared enough information as my brain will allow for the moment.
This weekend was super fun. I went to Kokrobite beach with 5 of my Canadian friends and bunch of my Ghanaian friends. The swimming was awesome, because the waves are super fun. But it was pretty freaky, because when we first arrived there were SO many Ghanaians all in the water and pretty soon after, all these people were being carried out of the water semi-conscious. It was unrelated incidents, but basically it was just that most of the Ghanaians there did not know how to swim and got dragged out by the strong current. Everyone seem to recover except one girl was carried off the beach unconscious and I'm pretty sure, not breathing. It was pretty disturbing. It's the only time in my life where I've actually seen a need for lifeguards. That just doesn't happen at home, because we do have a lifeguard system and most people are taught to swim. So it was crazy.
Other than that though, it was a lovely day at the beach. I spent the night dancing to live reggae music (learned from traditional african dance moves from my friend, which was awesome). Tomorrow I'll move into my new apartment with my current roommate and our other friend. We somehow managed to get a ridiculously nice apartment. It's in a guest house and it has air conditioning and wireless. Is that what you were expecting for me when I left to Africa? Anyways, I'm excited and it will be very nice, but surely drastically different than what my living situation will be in a few months when I move to do my placement. I'm sad to leave my homestay, but excited to explore a new area and not have a curfew!
It seems to be getting drastically hotter everyday. Sweating is basically my job. It's hard not to dream about how nice it would be to feel a cool Vermont breeze and be able to wear a sweater and jeans! But, who could really be justified in complaining about 12 solid months of sunshine? (Including the sunshine in vermont on either end of this trip). Longest summer of my life.
I suppose I'll end this rambling entry with a funny quote from the girl that works/lives in our house. We were talking about Barack Obama and she said "oh he will win, he will win. And they will paint the whitehouse black!" I thought it was brilliant suggestion, paint the whitehouse black. So that was pretty hilarious... If the whole world was voting we really wouldn't even need to vote. There would be no contest. I'm sad to miss the debates and everything, and all the craziness of the economy, but maybe it's only because I'm so far away. Distance makes the heart grow fonder... even when it comes to news and politics I guess.
Oh no, one more thing. I discovered another dish here that I love. Groundnut soup with these mashed up rice balls. Sounds gross, but it's amazing. Groundnuts are peanuts. I had it last night and it was delicious! I'll try to bring home some recipes.