And so it begins


Saturday, May 4th
After 24+ hours of traveling, I landed in Ghana! Getting past immigration didn’t take too long and miraculously none of my baggage was lost in transit. I hurried outside to meet the driver that would take me to the hotel, and I was hit with a WAVE of humidity. Holy Hannah. Ghana’s heat is everything people said it would be and more. We stuffed my suitcases in the car along with the eight other volunteers’ stuff and headed to the hotel. Sitting in the van, I finally had time to stop and take in my surroundings. I was speechless. There were so many people and little shacks and businesses. And it was so much greener than I was expecting! The rest of the van was talking and joking around but I literally just sat there and stared out the window in awe of how different everything was.

We finally arrived at the hotel, unpacked a few things, received our new phones, changed into clothes that weren’t so sweaty, and went exploring. Me and four others crammed into a car with Asante (or “Nana”, our driver) and we went to the Achimota Mall. We got more than a few stares as this herd of white people (or “obroni” as we’re sometimes called) walking around and even saw some people sneaking pictures of us. It’s actually pretty funny because every once in a while, you’ll pass someone, greet them, and all they’ll say is “obroni” in return. I learned that if they do that, you can say “obibini” back to them (which just means “black man”) and they’ll smile and laugh.

Three of the volunteers served their missions here a couple years ago and they introduced me to my new favorite thing: FanIce. For just 1 cedi (or about $0.20), I got one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten. It’s basically just a block of flavored ice / ice cream. Just rip open a corner with your teeth and enjoy. I can tell I’m going to be eating a lot of these.

We walked about 15 minutes to a restaurant where I had my first meal in Ghana: Jollof Chicken. The meat was amazing, and the rice was pretty good too. My nose was running from the spice but the RMs send that was just about as mild as the spice is gonna get around here. We got back to the hotel at about 9:00 and finally got to shower and wash our clothes (I got to practice multitasking by washing my clothes in the shower with me!) The water wasn’t warm but honestly it felt pretty refreshing after sweating all day. At least there’s running water and we don’t have to take bucket showers.



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