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 =)

 

Three is not a lucky number

Walter Cronkite is dead. 

 

Michael Jackson, Billy Mays and now Walter Cronkite, all within a span of a few days of each other, have died, Cronkite only leaving just an hour ago. 

We just got back from watching Harry Potter at the new multiplex theater in Accra and after noting on how terrible the movie was (it was awful), we did a quick ice cream run to a local bar before returning home to headlines of Uncle Walter, dead. 

I remember learning about his journalism career in class a couple summers ago. As a journalist, he was the most trusted man in America and with his one-line dissenting opinion of the Vietnam stalemate, President Lyndon Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” I thought to myself that I wanted to be a journalist like Cronkite someday. One who had the discernment and the nation’s trust to give his opinion when necessary and to do his job as a reporter otherwise. 

And now Walter Cronkite has passed, and just like Michael Jackson who was a living icon, Cronkite’s role in our history book is now officially over.

…

A few weeks before the end of the school year during a game of Cranium, Eric was frantically charading to me. I knew who he was talking about, but the name was just at the tip of my tongue.

Walter Cronkite is one of the famous names in Cranium’s Star Performer deck. 

And now he is dead at 92. 

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/167649/Legendary-CBS-anchor-Walter-Cronkite-dies-at-92

A Whole New World

BARACK OBAMA IS IN GHANA!

 Or was, actually. 

Yes, indeed, the President of the United States came to Accra, Ghana on his inaugural visit to Africa as the first Black president. And we were here to witness the historical event!

I was thinking of questions I could ask him that would begin with, “Mr. President, Mr. President!” but I didn’t get a chance. Due to the erratic rainstorms, the venue was changed at the last minute and instead of being outdoors, the President was taken into the Accra Convention Center, which was by invitation only. We didn’t make the cut.

So we saw the presidential speech at a lame viewing party, but despite the setback Courtney and I wrote a story that covered Obama’s visit to Ghana.

After the speech we took off for our most fabulous weekend trip to Cape Coast.

 

We arrived at Coconut Grove Resort, 20 beautiful acres of swinging palm trees, cabanas and cute little villas stretched out on a private sandy beach.

It was unreal.

After unpacking I unwound with a Pina Colada as Anika and I took a dip in the pool and relished the last moments of the dying sun into what would become the most fabulous night of my life.

 

We had a buffet dinner under the cabanas with a steaming fish soup to die for. Dessert was strawberry ice cream, pineapples and Palm Wine. The wine was milked from palm trees and tasted like fresh grapefruit nectar with a fizz. We drank our Palm Wine scooped into coconut cups sitting on the cool sand with a roaring bonfire at our feet. 

While the rest of the gang played “Never Have I Ever,” I took a walk down the beach and found a rudimentary wooden swing set sitting in the sand. It had a wooden plank as a seat and was tied to the wooden beam with ropes. A Ghanaian helped me up and I spent an eternity there, swinging alone with the sea breeze and the stars as company, looking out at the waves just ten feet away. It was honestly the most blissful moment I have ever had.

The whole night was straight out of a fairytale. Ethereal and completely fabulous.

 

The next morning I woke up to the beach and had breakfast in the cabana on the sand.

It really was like a whole new world.

 

…

So maybe the weekend wasn’t TOO fabulous.

The following Monday everybody started dropping like flies. One by one people rushed to the bathroom to throw up, then spent the next three days collapsed on the couch with shivers.

The African Plague has caught up to us. Good grief. Glad it missed me.

Isn’t Ghana Fabulous?

Other than a few hiccups, this trip has been one breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime, amazing moment after another.

 

On our first weekend in Ghana we planned a trip to the Lake Volta region to see the Wili Falls, a waterfall four hours north of us in eastern Ghana. We rented a bus (and a bus driver for 130 Ghana Cedi`s a day, which by the way would be fiscally impossible in the US) and made the trip up north. Right when we got to the base of the mountain the obvious happened. It started to rain – pour, actually.

Caught in yet another spontaneous rainstorm, the trail up to the waterfall turned into a gigantic mudslide and I nearly lost my flip-flop to the mud’s suction a bazillion times. As the rain slowed down, we suddenly heard Reggae ringing through the trees.

Let me remind you, we’re in the middle of a fing mountain.

The Reggae music only got louder as we continued to hike until the trees cleared and we came upon a full-fledged Reggae party with a stereo sound system, drinks, and a hundred Ghanaians dancing right next to the WATERFALL.

It was simply breathtaking. I can’t explain how gorgeous and magnificent a waterfall is in person. It really sucked the air out of me.

As we paraded through the party and reached the end of the clear water pooling from the waterfall the girls stripped down to their bikinis to dive in.

Now, let me tell you, this wasn’t the smartest of our ideas.

Apparently, there’s a group of Ghanaian men that come up and chill at the waterfall regularly, which isn’t weird at all because if I lived near a waterfall and there was always a bumping Reggae party up there, then I would go everyday too; but the weird thing is that they wait in the shallow waters of the pool for unsuspecting female tourists to offer “assistance.”

As I watched Anika and Amy, the first ones to plunge in, wade out towards the waterfall I saw them within seconds getting swallowed up by a horde of black men. I nervously tapped on one of our guys’ shoulder while pointing out at the girls asking if this was okay, but with no response I turned to see that the rest of the girls were stripping down too. 

Well, if you can’t beat them, join them.

 

“AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

I don’t know why I was so terrified, but the second I allowed a Ghanaian man to lead me towards the waterfall I started screaming and I couldn’t stop.

“AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

As we got closer it felt like we were getting pelted with hail or a freaking blizzard. The pressure of the water slamming a hundred feet into the water below was so powerful that it forced me to shield my eyes and turn my back to it, which is exactly why the Ghanaian men were there. They would hold onto your stomach from behind and lead you, backwards, towards the waterfall until reaching the mountain wall where you would literally stand underneath the crashing water. It was amazing. Simply amazing.

I think, because I wouldn’t stop screaming, the Ghanaian guy didn’t try anything with me although there were plenty of times when I impatiently threw off an extra pair of hands that would touch me out of nowhere. The other girls, however, didn’t have such great luck and almost all of them got molested under the waterfall.

I guess it’s the price you pay for one hell of an experience.

I really didn’t think anything could top standing under a waterfall, but I had no idea what was waiting for us at our home-stay in a village called Ho-Hoi.

 

The home-stay was reminiscent of a part of missions that I did NOT want to relive: sleeping on unknown mattresses in mosquito nets and taking dumps in foul-smelling, wooden port-a-potties – not a favorite.

But it was at this home-stay in Ho-Hoi where I experienced something most people will die without ever witnessing: an African tribal drum circle. Literally.

The South African Dance Association, also known as SADA, was a tribal dance group made up of boys, girls, men and women all participating in traditional African drum dance. The men stood in the back and began to chant while the boys, as young as ten years old, played the drums; the women, filed in two rows, began to dance and chant back, singing a tribal song in their native language that we naturally couldn’t understand. It was enchanting and I really counted my blessings to be chosen to witness this moment.

We spent the rest of the night in Ho-Hoi dancing with the Africans in the circle as the drums banged on.

…

The next morning we woke up at 5 am to hike the tallest mountain in Ghana, Mount Afadjato. It was breathtaking (both the physical hike itself and the view) and definitely took me straight back to the Moroto Mountains of Uganda. And though this weekend was finally over after our last stop at a monkey sanctuary, it was nothing compared to the one coming up.

 

Simply amazing. Photo courtesy of Julia Rickert.

Beware of The Rasta Man

The first breath of the African air threw me back into Uganda, summer of 2007. I can’t describe how the air smells different – it just does. It’s like this sweet smell – grainy or beany or something heavier maybe of the dirt or the trees, but the African air is definitely different. The air: confirmation that I am back in Africa and it feels awesome.

….

It’s been a whole week since we’ve arrived in Ghana and we’ve gotten into a routine of things. Wake up, wake up the roommate, wake up the boys, drink coffee while reading my Bible before climbing into the van, which takes us to the Academic Center where we listen to guest lectures or have classes for Journalism in Ghana. Then, we get a two-hour break for lunch, which literally takes the FULL two hours.

On a side note:

I don’t flipping understand how it can take SO LONG to prepare food. The food NEVER comes out together and it can take up to 20 minutes for the next round, or plate, to come out and sometimes it doesn’t even come out at all. Today I ordered an omelette and it came out 15 minutes after everybody else’s hamburgers were scarfed down and Courtney’s INSTANT coffee (which means hot water and a packet of Nescafe) came out at the same time her toast did which took 30 minutes. And you definitely do not want to order the kabobs, not because they’re not good, but because they will come out when the bill should come instead. Guaranteed. It’s a huge ordeal.

But I digress.

So after lunch we go visit a media company like the local radio station Joy FM, the state broadcast company GBC, or the state-funded newspaper, Graphic. We get a tour of the company and all of their facilities and have a Q&A after. It’s actually quite a privilege, one that wouldn’t be so easily granted to us back in the States.

Every night (and literally it has been every night) we go out to a local jazz café where Reggae and jazz fuse to create this awesome fresh vibe; or the beach for Reggae night every Wednesday where Reggae bands play and Rasta men offer you a smoke out for just 20 cedi; or a struggling lounge called Twist that offers drinks for half-off in an attempt to upstart a “college scene” that is currently completely comprised by us. Unexpectedly, Accra has a very vibrant nightlife.

I can’t do this everyday. So I’m staying in tonight with my two homies, Stephen and Carlos and we’re all sitting around our living room table with our Macs and listening to Kid Cudi’s “I Poke Her Face,” which has unofficially become our theme song, and which you are pleasantly enjoying now. =)

A huge treat was when we went to the “football” game at the Ghana Stadium for Republic Day. Of their many pre-games, the most popular was the Little Person game when two whole teams comprised of “little people,” or midgets, came running out onto the field and the whole stadium cheered! What I do not understand is how do they even find enough midgets skilled enough in soccer to produce a whole soccer team, let alone two? Do Ghanians just have more little people than we do in the States? And the crazier thing is that these little people were not just playing soccer, but they were playing on a regular sized soccer field with a regular sized soccer ball and their shorts went all the way down to their ankles. 

 

Real classes start on Monday and before then we have the weekend ahead of us planned to the brim with a trip to Lake Volta filled with stops to waterfalls and monkey sanctuaries. `stay tuned my loves.

 

a day in ghana

After meeting the 14 other people in the program I realized that I was really worrying over nothing. Honestly, why do I do this to myself all the time. 

Goal #1: Don’t stress the little stuff or the big stuff if nothing has happened yet.

E.g. Getting “lost” at a grocery store. 

On our first day in Ghana we unpacked at the Church Crescent and then drove around town to pick up essentials such as lunch, cellphones, and groceries. We parked the van and walked to the Koala grocery store where I mulled over toothpaste and detergent when I realized I was the only one left. After paying for my purchases I walked outside and was immediately bombarded with “Taxi? Taxi?” to which I curtly replied, “No” and confidently looked around for our van when I realized I had no idea where it was.

I walked to and fro alongside the front of the store with no white person in sight and finally I called the Director who called the Assistant Director yelling, “You left Sharon at the grocery store!”

Apparently they didn’t leave me but were still parked at the same spot from where they had dropped us off.

Completely embarrassed I walked back onto the van and somebody yelled from the back, “You called Frankie?!” incredulous that an idiot who forgot where the van was parked was actually in the same program as they were.

Damn. This is going to be a long 6 weeks. 

…

Every so often when we’re turning a new corner or trying to figure out if we should go towards the red shack or the shack with the red sign we have conversations about direction, which always somehow lead to:

“Didn’t you get lost again today?”

“…Um, I did?”

“Oh, that was just yesterday when you got lost at Koala.”

-_-.

Damn. It.

 

A Ghanian resting under the shade of a tree.