I'm always a little skeptical of the NGO's and volunteers here because from my experience with them and various organizations here I've learned that they teach that their ideology, the western ideology, is best and I'm under the opinion that it's better to preserve your own culture rather than adopt somebody else's. Some of the organizations are questionable because in the long run few offer any true help. There are those, however, that effectively work in preserving certain things like dance and art and that's great. But I've talked to a lot of NGO's here and they've basically said that you have to accept that things here are what they are and they've accepted that a lot of programs will fail. But a lot of them come because it's a free means of travel so... It's nice to meet other volunteers and it's great that they're doing it I just question whether or not it's really effective or even necessary. I say this now because I just met a really nice north korean kid on my walk over here and he was telling me about how he teaches tae kwan do and he gave me the volunteer packet. I will say having missionaries here is useless because Ghana is such a religious place.

You see it everywhere from the messages on the back of tro tro's and taxi's to the music. I go to church with my homestay and a LOVE that they have made Catholicism relevant to their culture. They dance and drum and the priest uses traditional stories to tell a moral. It does get a little intense. When we were at the botanical gardens there was a pentecostal church meeting and there was this woman hysterically screaming and people were attacking her and putting their hands over her face and saying "come out demon... by the power of jeeeeeesus." There's a Pastor from Nigeria called Pastor Chris. He's so famous his church services are held in stadiums. No joke. They believe he heals. Some of the staff members even have his voice as their ring tone so in the village whenever Ana got a call we heard "you are blessed in your body... in the name of JEEEEEEEESUS."

In the village we went to a Methodist church with Nana (she was great I'll tell you about her later) and it was only spoken in Twi and there were only 4 people and it was in a school room. I told Jessica later that it was intense to hear all of them praying like that for everyone to hear and she thought it was amazing that people were so open to pray in public because I would NEVER do that.

There's this church called the Charismatic church where people just dance. They were worshipping one afternoon in the village so we danced with them for a bit. You dance everywhere here so I've learned not to be shy about it because they LOVE if you know the traditional dance. Every time we went to see a dance performance we were always asked to dance afterwards. I've even had a few dance solo's. It was a little awkward in the shrine because I knew they were making fun of me, they dressed me up in the skirt so I looked like a traditional priest and had me dance.

We happened to be in Ghana at the time of independence day and to celebrate every kid marches. It's this weird thing they do at the school and I don't know if it's disciplinary or because they truly enjoy marching. You'll pass schools a lot and see the kids marching. We were asked to march as our own school which we immediately rebuked because we knew it was another way of laughing at the white man and having white people march and say "Ghana is my own Ghana is my own." But the staff made us do it anyways and a lot of the kids did laugh. It was just a weird setting because in the villages people don't see white people so kids would stand 5 feet away at us and just stare and that gets overwhelming because you're standing in front of 50 kids. I learned that if you stare back they get really uncomfortable and go away.

The kids were great in the village. To a degree. The first day we were there was very overwhelming because they all stared and I lived in the chief's house which was right across from where we had all our meals and meetings so when I went to bed that first night they just stared at me through the window. And we all played with the kids and danced with them and learned ampa and some of their games and we taught them a few in return. The thing about kids is that they never tire and there comes a point where you're finally tired and just wanna be by yourself and because I was usually the one to drag the kids off so they wouldn't bother the rest of us I ended up being the person to tell them to finally go home. So every night I'd adopt my most threatening voice and yell "MO KO FIE" (EVERYONE GO HOME!) but because I'm me kids never take me seriously so they'd shrug their shoulders and go me n'ko. I won't go. So every time I saw them they'd yell to me ko fie. I don't even think the staff took me seriously but that was another issue.

We met Ana in Accra and she stayed with us in Kumasi and for what ever reason she decided I was her favorite "obruni". Her reasoning was "you are beautiful. I like your shape. You have a nice boom boom." But in the village she completely got on everyone's nerves. We went out one night and treated them all to drinks and she got really drunk and was screaming her head off. Then there was that issue where she never did her job and slept under a tree all day.

In the village we weren't being fed properly. Auntie Grace was in charge of everything. She decided what we ate and how much and poor Mavis, the cook, would cry because she knew we weren't getting enough. It's insane how the portions were so small and according to the program coordinators they pay A LOT of money for food for us in the village and since we weren't seeing any we knew Auntie Grace was dipping into our funds. Majorly. It got to a point where it affected all of us because one night they just gave us fried yam chips. Every day it was pasta and tomato sauce and our bodies felt like they were dying because we weren't getting the right nutrition and we were starving. We all hit a breaking point. Mine was when I got really sick and spent a whole day puking everything. I was so scared I had malaria and it's horrible to think about because you're so far from a clinic that you'd have to walk 20 minutes to the next village and get a cab to the nearest town to take a tro tro to Kumasi. And if you have malaria that's not something you want to deal with. I don't understand how people in the village can deal with that. It's a real eye opener because yeah here we were not eating enough but you know the kids weren't being fed right and it's infuriating because they have everything they could ever need at the farm. The parents would rather spend money on apateshee than send their kids to school.

To get drinking water we had to walk to the next village and that was usually by the time we ran out of water and the water hole was locked off more than once so you couldn't even bathe or if you wanted to you had to go to the next village. And carrying water is REALLY hard.

It was a little hard because the staff beat up on me a lot. They made fun of my size and told me I was too quiet. When I was sick Ana jumped on me and kept shaking me and I was so furious because the slightest movement made me puke. But I'm made of stronger stuff. I shouldn't have taken it and there are times I get annoyed at myself for being so nice. That final night all of us had had enough mistreatment of the staff. Our breaking point was realizing that they were stashing all the food that Aline had paid for (Auntie Grace made Aline buy groceries when she was in Kumasi and never paid her back).

There's probably a reason I hated Kumasi so much. In my homestay there was this girl, Doreen and every night she would mock me and taunt me in twi. She caught me writing a letter to Greg one night and I showed her the picture and they all caught the way I was looking at it so I guess they knew that he really meant something. So she'd say Greg is probably cheating on you... he doesn't care... and had she known how I was dealing with that particular issue at the time... It was awful because I was still going through culture shock and here she is with her 20 year old cousin mocking me. One night she took my key from me and threatened to take my stuff and I'd had enough so I grabbed her hand and told her in my nicest voice that should she do so I'd tell SIT how horrible the visit was. And that I would have to explain to her Aunt why she was missing out of hundreds of cedis. After that she stopped and was a lot nicer. Because people don't joke about money here.

I do everything I can to always be polite and kind in dealing with that stuff. When someone asks you for money or food you tell them you're a great person but I don't have money to hand out. I've had to deal with a lot of stuff like that and it's unfair to those who are kind and don't try to cheat me because I'm always on my guard. It's especially different because I'm a girl.

I'm having an amazing time here so I don't mean to say I'm having a hard time. There are nights that are hard. But I expected that and it was the reason I chose this program instead of going anywhere in Europe. I only wish I didn't have to deal with a horrible fall out with the person I really cared about while I was here. That made things hard on top of what was already hard. I even came to this silly conclusion that all men are horrible. I really am enjoying myself. I get to drum and dance and make batiks and beads and write and hear stories. I struggle a little bit but like I said, I'm made of stronger stuff and every day I do everything I can to make sure I'm happy.


So I took a few hits. It's only made me realize how fortunate I am.