I miss…

Our Internet has been down for a week and all hell broke loose. Everyday new tension was sprouting and snide squabbles going on – we would’ve been a fantastic show to watch: Real World GHANA. But now we’re on our last episode. It has been five weeks and six days since we’ve been here and we’re all ready to go home.

…

I miss Internet that doesn’t take 5 minutes to load. I miss shopping, American money, driving my car, Happy! I miss SET prices where you buy something at the price offered instead of standing there bargaining for 10 minutes and feigning disinterest and walking away only to be pulled back and in the end feel rotten for being cheap with an African who may or may not have 10 kids to feed, or feel rotten because you know for a fact that you got cheated.

I miss freeways and intersections with red lights that people actually stop at. I miss sidewalks and smooth concrete roads instead of the rocks and dirt that are seriously killer to my soles. I miss real ice cream. I miss sushi, Korean BBQ, I HATE RICE IF I EAT ANOTHER BOWL OF RICE I WILL DIE. I miss the comfort of my bed where the air conditioner above me isn’t leaking and creating a freaking flood on the floor. I miss shower curtains that stay up. I miss walking out of the house and not getting stared at by every person you walk by. I miss cheesecake, sour belts, and familiar faces.

In approximately 22 hours I’ll be on the next flight out of here and in another 14 hours be back at home sweet home, LA. Ghana has been an amazing experience and I’ll have to write a more reflective post after perhaps thinking about it on the plane, but now I’m ready to be an American again.

Do call me dears, I will want to see you all =)

a hospital visit

I have become an invalid in Ghana.

I can’t walk and like a crazy person I hop around everywhere, up and down the stairs, into the kitchen, into the van, around the dinner table, etc. So Phil and I go to the hospital to get a pair of crutches so that I could get around despite my swollen ankle. 

We arrive at  the Nyamo Clinic where I get taken into the Temperature Room, where they, SURPRISE, take my temperature. Then they take me to the Consulting Room where Dr. Maxwel (with one L) assesses my scrapes and ankle and determines that 1. I need an X-Ray, though 2. nothing is broken and 3. I should get crutches. Again, what a surprise. Then I get taken to the Cleaning Room (I forgot what it was actually called). After waiting nearly 2 hours for the nurse to spend 5 minutes bandaging my wounds,  we then drive to another clinic to get the unnecessary X-Ray, because their X-Ray machine was “broken.” After getting the X-Ray, which showed that nothing was fractured, we went back to the hospital’s pharmacy, but alas, the hospital DOES NOT HAVE CRUTCHES, and has no idea where you can get a pair. In the end we were at the hospital for nearly five hours and all I have to show for it is an X-Ray of my foot and a large hospital bill. 

Now, I am limping all over the streets of Ghana while Ghanaians cluck sympathetically and go, “oh, I’m sorry.” 

my catastrophe

The towel is soaked in blood; there’s a kettle next to a bowl filled with hot water running cold; and Stephen is kneeling in front of me wiping alcohol pads over the gashes. In short, I fell. Hard.

…

I woke up this morning feeling rather normal. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and in my pajamees lazily opened my door to go get some coffee. I passed the boys’ room by the staircase and noticed a trashcan, tipped against their door, held up by two large cushions and a wastebasket cover. I took a second to stare, then shrugged, and went downstairs to go get my coffee. I need coffee.

About an hour later I make my trek back upstairs to my room, and again staring at the tilted trashcan, I move right along to figure out what to wear, read some email, and think of questions for my interview when I hear the boys’ door room creak open and then shut close. I stare for a moment, then go back to my questions when suddenly I hear a big THUMP, then a WOOSHHH. The trashcan just tipped over and water was rushing everywhere. I jumped up and ran to pick up the trashcan, but the damage was already done and the girls had successfully pranked the sleeping heartthrob. By now the water is spreading not just into the boys’ room, but also made its way into ours and was flooding the stairway. I slipped on the water and let out a small yelp. Then before really assessing the damage, I slip out to go to my interview leaving my roommate fuming.

 

Four hours later I finally make it back home, drenched in sweat (it is just so damn HOT in Africa), carrying a coconut (an entree on this coming up), and just plain exhausted when Amy comes running up to me and asks me if I’m okay.
Sure I’m okay, I’m just tired and sweaty and carrying this rather heavy coconut, but why are you apologizing profusely – wait … what are you talking about? What fall? Who fell? I didn’t fall.

In the next five minutes I get bombarded with “Are you okay?!” “I heard you got wiped out!” “Sharon, tell me exactly how you fell,” when I finally realize that my slip this morning had somehow transformed into a “wipe out” that needed doctor’s aid. Our director was called in fear of health liability and the whole thing just spun out of control.

We’re a really small group.

So after informing everyone that I’m fine and I didn’t actually fall, we go to dinner when it hits me. 

Diarrhea.

It started yesterday, so I took Ciprofloxacin, but apparently it was back with revenge.
Elana wanted me to walk her back home, but my stomach was hurting too much to get up. I was about to tell her to wait a couple minutes, but when I looked up she was gone.

After my pains died down a little bit, the group was still in heavy discussion about journalism or whatever so I decide to go run after Elana thinking in my pain-induced delusion that I could catch up to her.

I’m running and running, yelling “Elana,” while my stomach is writhing for a bathroom, and for some reason there are a lot of taxis and cars on the street so I stick as close to the end of the road as possible.

In Ghana there are no sidewalks. And in Ghana there are no streetlights. And I found out the rather painful way, that in Ghana the road doesn’t end with a curb, but with a ditch.

All of a sudden the asphalt underneath me completely DISAPPEARS and my right foot runs myself into a freaking ditch and the whole right side of my body slides against the ragged concrete landing me in what I’m sure is a pile of disgusting trash that I would rather amputate my feet than touch, but by God’s grace it’s pitch black and I can’t see anything let alone feel the blood dripping down my legs. I have no idea how, but I drag myself out of the ditch and end up lying on the concrete in darkness and in pain when these Ghanaians come out of nowhere and they start talking “I’m sorry, oh sorry, ow” yanking me up when really all I want to do is lie there and not move, but once they get me up they realize how much PAIN I’m in and then they go, “oh sit down, sorry, sit down.”

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I say while pushing their hands off and in the end I can’t get rid of two of them and they insist on escorting me back home. One of them mention getting a taxi while the other one (with his arm still holding onto me) goes, “Oh no, no, let me just carry you, here get on my back, I’ll pick you up.”

Uh, no thank you. In the end I’m glad they helped me hobble back to the dormitory, cause I don’t know how I would have made it back on my own without using my right leg. The whole way the one on my left keeps chatting to me and at one point he starts talking to me in some foreign language, which was when I really thought I was getting delusional cause I couldn’t understand a word until finally out of exasperation I go, “What are you saying?!” and he goes, “Oh, you’re not Chinese?” Well, he keeps talking anyways and the right one keeps insisting for me to get on his back, and all I could think about was that I actually really did end up falling today.

Only to me.

Everybody doctoring me while Courtney pranced around taking pictures and laughing.

Dr. Stephen and his goofy apprentice

Minidramas of a 22 year old

“It actually sounds sexy … and provocative,” Courtney says in reference to the new title of my blog: Minidramas of a twenty-TWO year old. 

Personally I think it sounds wack, but I’m warming up to it.

I spent the morning of my 22nd birthday at church! Christ The King Catholic Church to be exact. Though I was lost most of the time with the constant standing, sitting, standing, kneeling, I really enjoyed the sermon and the African drum-infused choir and communion where the priest hand-to-mouth feeds you the cracker. 

Frankie, our director of the program, bought me lunch (and kissed me on the cheek wishing me a very happy birthday).

The celebrations began with homemade Bloody Mary’s – Phil’s specialty. It was actually quite good considering the limited ingredients available in Ghana’s market. 

Then had fabulous dinner at a fabulous hotel and doubling up at the hotel’s casino, I say not bad for a 22nd birthday. =)

Day drunk? Nahh

The party people at the casinoooo

Thank you Queeney.<3

It’s my birthday … in Africa

David badongka: happy 24th birthday

Sharon: you’re one day and two years early.. but thanks. =)

It’s my birthday –  in Africa. I had unwittingly signed myself up for another birthday to be spent across the seas, a continent and a half away from my family and friends. I mean, one birthday spent in Africa is enough I think, no? I spent my 20th birthday completely and utterly depressed. It hit me during dinner. Though we were eating Korean food, a luxury my teammates and I looked forward to all week, I was so sad to be spending my birthday in Africa that I got indigestion and held in my throw-up for the entire, bumpy ride back to our base where I then proceeded to throw up, heaving and crying on the bathroom floor. 

I didn’t realize I had signed myself up for another African birthday until a few weeks after all the papers were signed and the travel expenses paid. 

… 

I skyped with my mom and my brother yesterday and when I reminded them that my birthday was coming up my mom said, “Oh, should I send you flowers?”  Remember that this is Africa where a post card would probably either take 3 weeks to get here or get “lost,” let alone a fresh bouquet of gerbera daisies. 

My mom scoffed. “Of course not through the mail! Through the chatbox!” 

She then proceeded to send me a blooming flower icon through our Skype chatbox. She also gave me beer, cake and a tiny tiny gift box carrying who knows what pixelated surprise inside. 

“Sharon, it’s six minutes to your birthday!” says Phil, my assistant director and housemate. 

It’s six minutes to my 22nd birthday. And I am in Africa.

Picture taken at midnight =)