Week 6: Accra

Sunday, June 9th:

Last Sunday in Ghana! We went to the same 9:00 ward we’ve gone to in the past so it was fun to recognize some of the members. I hadn’t been to church in several weeks, so sacrament meeting felt especially good. Gabby and I also stayed for Sunday School where they were going over the area plan for West Africa. Comments / discussion are abundant which make any lesson better. At one point, no one was answering a question that the bishop had asked so after a long pause, he asked the group, “Brothers and sisters, are we here? Are we together? This room is too dull. We need some fire!” That was all the group needed to have some more discussion.

The rest of our Sunday was pretty relaxed. A group left for an overnight outreach, but four of us volunteers will stay here with St. Thomas Eye Clinic for the last week. I watched several episodes of my TV show, found some waakye to eat for lunch, took a nap, and then cooked dinner with everyone. We made fried cassava (seriously, they taste like French fries)  and groundnut chicken (surprisingly good).

Bryan hard at work

Jaden has earned the name "Fry Master"

I talked a little bit with one of the hotel staff, Emmanuel, for a while about college and tuition and such. At one point, I tried asking him if there was such a thing as a minimum wage here in Ghana. IF there is, he didn’t know about it. Here, people are paid by the month rather than by the hour. When Emmanuel told me how many hours he works a day and how much he’s paid a month, I did some quick math and found out that he makes 2.6 cedis an hour, the equivalent of $0.46 an hour. I was shocked. It really put into perspective for me how much everything else costs in relation to that.

Monday, June 10th:

The outreach today wasn’t too far at all so we were there by 8:00. This week we’re with St. Thomas, which I’ve heard runs at a considerably slower pace. While this might sound nice, I’d wayyy rather by super busy than bored. There was some sitting around in between patients, so we had fun playing with the school kids at their recess and we were done by 1:00. I think we saw somewhere between 40 and 50 people.

Patients waiting for their visual acuity test

On the way back, we stopped at an ice cream place. The ice cream was dairy free, but that’s hardly a surprise because dairy is so rare here. Now that I’m thinking about it, I haven’t had milk once since getting here. Any ice cream or milk we have is made of milk substitutes. Anyways. The point it, this ice cream was DIVINE. My favorite was the coconut flavor. I still can’t believe it was dairy free.

Once home, Gabby and I decided to make it a girl’s afternoon out on the town. We went shopping for bras because Gabby needed one but I had to buy one too when they told me they were $3.00 each! We also stopped by a little beauty parlor and got our nails done. It was definitely the most informal manicure I’ve ever had, but for just 5 cedis , it was so very worth it. All the ladies working at the salon were awesome and we had lots of fun taking pictures with their adorable daughter.

The little boy at the bra shop

Gabby getting her nails painted

Just look at the little hand on her hip

Rather than chillin at the telecentre all evening, we decided to go to a mall and watch a movie! It was about 40 minutes away and a suuuper nice place! I kept forgetting I was in Ghana. The plan was to see the new Aladdin, but the show times listed online were wrong (not too surprising) so we ended up seeing the new X-Men. I wasn’t super excited about the change in movies, but since tickets were 25 cedis, I could hardly complain. This was made even more true when I found out that included with our ticket, we got popcorn and a drink!! When I ordered the popcorn, I was surprised when the guy asked if I wanted salt or sugar. I said sugar because I was curious and I’m so glad I did! It was essentially kettle corn and so so good.

The movie was better than I thought it would be and by the time it ended, we were all very hungry. We went to a place called Pizza Inn (located between Creamery Inn and Chicken Inn) and got a large pizza to split. I can say without a doubt that it was the best pizza I’ve had in Ghana. The only damper was the family sneaking selfies of us the whoooole time we were eating. Gabby finally stood up and said, “Hey, do you guys just wanna take a picture? You don’t need to sneak it.” She went over and took many selfies before she came back to finish her food. Of course about five minutes later, they were back at it. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why they went a blurry pic of a white person eating pizza at a mall on their camera roll.

Ghana's best pizza

I fell asleep in the taxi ride back so it was a quick drive. We went to bed as soon as we got back because we leave early in the morning for an overnight outreach!

Tuesday, June 11th:

We were supposed to leave at 6:00, but the van didn’t arrive until a little after 7:00. Thank goodness too because I’d sort of overlooked the fact that we had to pack everything up and check out of the hotel if we didn’t want to pay for the room while we were gone. It was a four-hour drive to Abakrampa and we stopped on the side of the road for breakfast. I think I may have discovered one of my new favorite things: Ghanaian pancakes. They’re crepe-esque and sooo good. I ate four of them. I can’t believe I’m only just now discovering them during my last week in Ghana.

Close to the ocean!

We set up camp in a little church tucked at the top of a hill (that I didn’t think the van would make up to be honest) next to a school. The kids went crazy when they saw us and chanted “obroni” for a good 10 minutes before they settled down. The majority of schools in Ghana require all the kids to have their heads shaved. I’m sure that makes getting ready in the morning faster and helps with hygiene and such, but it does make it so all the kids look very similar. This is when it’s super nice that all the girls wear dresses and all the boy wear shorts. In fact, this methodology of sorting between girls and boys is practically foolproof. Before coming here, I was told that the women wear mostly skirts and dresses and that they are very modest. I don’t know why I was surprised by just how true that was. I can honestly say I’ve seen maybe three women wearing shorts in the five weeks I’ve been here. I mean seriously! The women here put in WORK into their outfits. Everyone is so stylish. Anyways, the point is that if you see a little kid wearing shorts, that practically guarantees it’s a boy.

During the patient exams and such, you could see their little faces squished on the windows, trying to get a peek at what was happening inside. We saw 51 patients in total today! St. Thomas clinic is the only one that uses a computer to enter the patient’s data, so I learned how to do that today. One of my favorite patients was this little boy named Nana. It took forever to convince him to come over to me, but once he reached me, he wouldn’t leave my lap. He was blind in one eye and so cute.

There were about 10 of them but they ran away when I took a picture 

Another picture of the kids watching us

My friend Nana

On the way back, we stopped at this awesome gas station. A guy came out, pumped a lever to fill up the clear container, then drained it into the gas tank. Never seen anything like it. Apparently, these fueling stations aren’t good because they water down the gas, so we got just enough to get us to a normal gas station. It was great fun to watch though.

Our gas pump

We checked into our hotel and carried up our overnight bags. Our room is small but the bed that Gabby and I are sharing is pretty big. We watched some random TV show before we went to go find dinner. We got fried rice and grilled corn. The grilled corn makes the kernels kind of hard but it got better with each bite and by the end, I really liked it. It kinda reminded me of half-popped popcorn. We ended the night by watching one of the few shows I have downloaded on Netflix. I’d actually just watched it the day before, but with limited options, it was the best choice.

Gabby ordering her food from a very tiny window

Wednesday, June 12th:

We nicknamed the bed we slept on last night “bedrock” because it was so hard. I’m usually pretty easy to please when it comes to mattresses, but I woke up achy all over, especially my neck. Gabby said the first thing she thought about when she woke up was how we were gonna have to sleep there again tonight. We were supposed to be ready at 6:30, but our schedule was thrown off when our shower faucet only had a small dribble coming from it. And I needed to shower. It had been several days. So I got to experience my first “bucket shower”! I let the water dribble into the large bucket and then used a little pail to dump water on myself. It was especially cold but other than that not too bad! I had just finished getting ready when Bryan came in and said, “Were you guys aware that we’re not staying here tonight?” No, I was not. Apparently neither was he, so we all tried to quickly pack up our stuff and take it downstairs. It can be frustrating when I feel like I never know what’s going on, or I can just roll with it because that’s not going to change anytime soon. Basically, as long as I’m here, I won’t ever 100% know what’s going on or what the plan is. So might as well take it in stride.

The drive to the outreach today was so gorgeous, mostly because of how green it was. There was a morning haze over everything and I felt like I was in some sort of jungle. The price we pay for being out in the wilderness though is the super bumpy roads. At least the potholes keep my awake so I don’t fall asleep during my podcasts. We stopped for breakfast and I got coco (millet porridge) and boflot. I think I’m going to go through withdrawals when I get home.

We were in an old church again today that thankfully had a few fans going to make it slightly cooler than outside. I did visual acuity with Bryan and breezed through the people that had been waiting for us when we arrived.  We’d seen a gorgeous church in the distance, so we decided to go track it down. Sadly, the gates were locked, but it was still pretty from the outside. I think it might be one of the prettiest buildings I’ve seen here in Ghana.

Here you can see the gorgeous (and slightly out of place) church in the distance

I seriously feel like a celebrity walking down the street. I took selfies with people, Bryan found an old woman who wanted to be his wife, and a few minutes later he also gave me away to a man who offered to pay money for me to be his wife. Lovely. I’ve been learning a lot more Twi in the past few days and it’s been fun finally understanding bits and pieces of what people are saying as I walk by. Of course, this is happening my last week here.

We checked into our new hotel for the night and I was again impressed. It’s about $8 a person for an AC room and the rooms are basic but clean (what more could I ask for). The only problem was that the power was out. I starfished face-up on my bed and just let myself sweat. After about two hours, the fan started up and Gabby and I did a little happy dance that the power was back on. We also discovered that our bathroom light has an intense blue bulb for the lighting which makes it feel like I’m in a club or something. Pretty cool, but it’s hard to see much of anything.

Am I in a bathroom or a club?

We went out on the town to find some dinner. Lots of yelling at us and men coming up to introduce themselves, grab your hand, etc. I was grateful Francis, our driver, was with us because he harshly told the guys to back off. Bless him. There was music playing everywhere and it was warm outside and it wasn’t too crowded and I really loved the vibe of the area we were in. We found a woman selling bread and egg and most of us ordered that. Just watching the amount of oil she put into the eggs she was frying made me gain a pound or two. But sooo good. I also got some popcorn that ended up being “sugar popcorn” and that was also bomb. We came back to the hotel and played some Wordscapes before going to bed. I think we were all pretty tired from the little sleep we got the night before.

Thursday, June 13th:

Today was crazy! We woke up at 6:00 to get ready and pack up our stuff. We discovered a few ants in the bathroom which were very hard to see because of the weird blue light. When Gabby was finished brushing her teeth, she realized she’d actually brushed with a couple ants in her mouth. Then as I was about to put my toothbrush in my mouth, I saw an ant on there too. Gross start to the morning.

We packed up and started on our way by 7:00. I didn’t know if we were going home or to an outreach, but suddenly we pulled up to an old church I realized we must be doing an outreach. Thankfully we got some food before we started. I got some waakye with spaghetti, gari, salad, and an egg, while some of the others got spicy rice. It was amazing how much my mood improved once I had some food in my stomach. I was at the visual acuity station again and we only saw about 30 patients. I think maaaybe two of the 30 scored 6/6 (perfect vision) on one of their eyes during the screening. It’s crazy how rare it is.

Patients waiting to see the doctor

Gabby using the "bathroom"

There were more school kids today and it was fun (as always) to talk to them / watch them run away from me. I also met a really 17-year-old girl who was helping us out today. Everyone wants to come to America. Pretty much everyone I meet makes some comment about how they’re going to come visit me.

The girl who was helping us, Mavis

The kids love just rubbing my arms and it cracks me up

By noon we were on our way back to Accra  to go shadow surgeries at the clinic. The majority of the ones we saw today were pterygium and they were performed by a woman named Dr. Ella. She is the coolest! She grew up and studied in Cuba before moving here. She’s been doing surgeries for 47 years and I think she’s the fastest I’ve seen yet. She talked a little bit about her travels (she’s seriously been everywhere, it’s insane) and about the differences in doctor / patient relationships she’s seen. She said the doctors in Europe seem to be pretty cold but that ones here and in America (I was surprised too) were especially warm and had good relationships with their patients. She said it’s best to treat each patient like a family member. I couldn’t agree more.

The surgery squad

We left a little before 7:00 and were home by 8:00. Bryan was saying he couldn’t believe people paid $150 to go to Disneyland and ride the Indiana Jones ride when we could do it here for free! Comparing it to an amusement park ride almost makes me appreciate the bumpy roads. I didn’t need dinner because we were given spicy (I think the spiciest I’ve had yet) rice and chicken at the clinic, so I just had a FanIce for dinner. I figure I’m not gonna worry about eating healthy for the last few days I’m here. Earlier this week I was feeling pretty ready to come home, but I’ve been kind of sad about it all day today.

Friday, June 14th:

I got to sleep in for the first time in a good long while and it was wonderful. Kaden and Gabby and I did a little workout and I was shocked at how hard it was. I guess I can’t be too surprised when I’ve worked out like twice in the past two weeks. We showered (this was a time when the cold shower was much appreciated) and headed out to a town called Aburi to go to their art market. On the way there, we stopped at a smaller more expensive market. We looked around a bit but everything was out of my price range. What was in my price range though was looking at the cute monkeys they had in the back. Kinda cute, kinda vicious. They hate women. So every time Gabby or I got close, they would attack the cage in front of us. It  was kind of hilarious. They also had tortoises in the back. Baby ones!! My heart was bursting.

The babies. Crying.

We finally left to go the original market we'd planned on. They had all manner of wooden carvings, dresses, drums, masks, paintings, and jewelry. It was hard to not want to buy everything. Since this was a more touristy spot, I was amazed at how bold the vendors were. Some would pull on your arm to bring you over to their store and some would just yell pretty aggressively for you to come over. We learned that the key was to walk with purpose. As for the actual buying process, the vendors always start with a high price and will come down with bargaining, It’s still not a skill I’m completely comfortable with, but I’m a lot better than when I first came. Though I’d already done most of my souvenir shopping, I couldn’t help but buy a few more things.

Kaden after he paid 160 cedis for four dolls.

On the way home, we stopped at a place called Starbites. And yes, it was meant to look exactly like Starbucks. I about cried of happiness when I came in and saw the baked goods in the display case, especially the chocolate croissant. I’ve been looking for one for weeks and so, of course, I had to get one. I also got a chocolate muffin. The croissant was divine and the muffin was probably the best I’ve ever eaten since it had dark chocolate in the middle. Wow. We also had fun watching Bryan have a praying mantis he found crawl all over him. It was great fun.

Bryan with his new friend

It's even in the same font and everything I love it 

We came home and then went to the mall to get real dinner. I was still full from the pastries, but the others got Pizza Hut and Cabo Corso. The group wanted to stay up all night for our last night, so I also ran to the store to get some snacks and caffeine. We started the movies at around 8:00 and went all night. We watched Tommy Boy, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Hot Rod, and Live Die Repeat. We took breaks here and there to play video games (gotta love being in a group with eight other guys), catch the very large spider we saw run across the wall, and eat our various chips and fruit snacks. 

Saturday, June 15th:

Only four of us lasted the whole night without sleep and I’m proud to be one of the select few. It’s hard to believe the last day has finally come. Some other volunteers wanted to go to another market, so I decided to join even though I’ve bought way too much stuff already. We went as soon as the market opened which was nice because then it wasn’t quite as crazy busy. We wandered around the narrow streets that were filled with vendors selling anything you could ever want. I found a few people selling clothes that were surprisingly cute so I stopped and spent some time digging through the trash bags of clothes. There’s not a doubt in my mind that everything there was used, but it was fun because it made it feel like thrift shopping! There were so many dresses and shirts I absolutely loved, but I’m scared that my sense of style has been warped during my time here because it’s like what everyone else is wearing. There were many times I had to take a step back and be realistic about whether or not I would wear that stuff at home. I really like the shirts I bought and I’m fairly certain I’ll still like them when I get home. If not, I guess I’m only out a couple bucks.

Kaden is very happy about his jean jacket purchase. We even did a mini photoshoot when
we got back to the hotel.

We also stopped by an art market (that’s just code for “tourist market”) because some of the boys wanted African masks and machetes. The vendors here are so aggressive and it’s easy to get annoyed with how pushy they are. Luckily I felt like I’d already bought everything I needed, so I didn’t have to worry about bartering down the higher prices.

Today has been especially hot and after a few hours, we were all exhausted (I’m sure the no sleep the night before had nothing to do with that) and sunburned so we headed back to the hotel. I ended up doing a little more shopping with Gabby and I somehow also bought a pair of heels?? Who even am I? We also got our last meal of spicy rice and chicken. Very classic. We went around and said goodbye to a few of the shop owners we’ve gotten close to. There’s one woman in particular I’ll really miss. I’m realizing now I don’t know her name because we always called her Mommy, but I really loved her. And the FanIce that I bought from her just about every day.

I was feeling very sentimental while packing and looking
out my window at this view.

I spent the rest of the time packing up all my things and spending time with the hotel staff whom I’ll all really miss. We’ve all gotten pretty close to them and they feel a lot more like friends than staff. We sat outside in the warm air and it really hit me how much I’ll miss this place. The van came to pick most of us up (a few are leaving tomorrow instead) and we left for the airport. The boys entertained us with some surprisingly good harmonies and Vocal Point renditions of songs. I tried my best to soak it all in as much as possible. I wish there was a less cliché way to say that the past six weeks have been life changing for me. I feel like I’m leaving a piece of my heart in Ghana. I’m also not looking forward to doing all the homework I’ve procrastinated. My mother tells me it’s a good sign I’m sad because it means I’ve enjoyed my time here. That’s a good way of looking at it.

That's a wrap folks.