I didn’t have a culture shock, probably because I had just been to Senegal & Tanzania recently but I’ve learned a lot, about myself. I can live without running water and electricity. You get used very quickly to showering with a bucket. I still can’t believe that I was able to shampoo my hair, rinse, condition, rinse and wash and rinse myself with only 1 bucket of water. My showers are much shorter now - and cooler too! I can’t believe how much water I wasted. And sure, it’s inconvenient to live without electricity but I survived. Food spoils quickly but you only buy what you need for your meal. I know I used to throw a lot of food away because I bought a lot, put it in the fridge and just forgot about it. It’s made me realize how wasteful we are.
I can live without technology. No TV, no music, no computer. A good book and good company and I didn’t miss my TiVo for a second. I haven’t really watched TV since I got back. I watched the final Sopranos episodes because I didn’t want anyone to ruin the ending for me. I didn’t worry about what was going on in the world. I just discussed what seemed like the only news topic in Ghana: the country-wide electricity problem. Ghanaian politics: all about the electricity problem.
Another thing is that the Ghanaians are incredibly friendly. The friendliest people I’ve ever met. It was so heart warming to meet people who are genuinely friendly and who help you without expecting anything in return. I took trotros to go everywhere but very often a private car would stop and pick me up. I ended up flagging anything with 4 wheels when I needed a ride. I got picked up many times by people who had either lived in the US or UK, or who have a relative there. I got picked up by a guy who lives in the Bronx and works at Mount Sinai Hospital. He was spending 3 months in Ghana on vacation. Another one lives in Toronto and he was visiting his family for a few weeks. There was also a dentist who went to school in Boston and practised in the UK for 15 years before retiring at home in Ghana. I heard the entire story of how he imported his Nissan SUV from the US J But there were many locals: Eric & William who work for Ghana Telecom. They picked us up one day and took us to the market. They gave us their number so we could call them when we needed to go into Accra because they often drove through our village on their way to and back from a job site. One guy picked us up at the orphanage junction and took us all the way to the market and then waited for us to be done with our shopping so he could drive us home. He runs his own school in Accra. And the guys who picked us up when we had the dog with us. The car was full: the back of the pick up was filled with plantains so Komi had to ride on the plantains and Tanya and I pretty much sat on the guys’ lap. It was a short ride thankfully.
It was great to meet all those people. Not that the trotro rides weren’t fun. I really enjoyed riding them. They were safe. Cramped and hot but safe. I rode on people’s lap a few times and I had people on my lap a couple of times too. Especially kids. Kids ride for free if they don’t have their own seat, so sometimes, mothers travelling with more than one child would just put one on my lap. Like it wasn’t cramped or hot enough J
The best was the ride where I kept hearing a goat cry (or whatever noise they make), it was coming from behind me but all I could see in the back of the trotro were big bags of yams. I finally saw a smaller bag underneath and that’s where the poor thing was.
Ask for directions in Ghana and chances are you’ll end up with a personal guide. Many times people would drop whatever they were doing to help us. In Koforidua, a guy walked with us 15 minutes completely out of his way to take us to the trotro station, and stayed with us until our trotro left. And in Somanya, we asked a guy of he knew where we could watch the UK soccer final and he took us to a place in the back of a house where someone had set up a generator and a TV and charging people to watch the game. We ended in the VIP section upstairs in the house, in the members-only club area, and everyone scrambled to get us chairs, while the 150 men watching the game outside were baking in the sun. It was incredibly hot that day but I had just bought a fan made out of woven leaves at the market - the best 10 cents I’ve ever spent! I had to suffer through Manchester United vs. Chelsea but the ambiance was fun so that made it bearable.
One thing I noted is that people don’t know the meaning of personal space! They’ll just walk past you or stand next to you and hit you on the arm. I had some kids and teenagers just hugging me with their arms around my waist, and most of the time I didn’t see them come so it was a bit surprising. But most of the time it was only “Obruni!” (it means white person) or “ white woman!” or simply “white!” A woman pinched my butt at the market and I’m not sure what it means.
They all want to be your friend and ask for your phone number or email address. Tanya and I had a surreal experience at a small restaurant in Koforidua where we stopped by for a cold drink. The waitress brought us our drinks and she gave us our address book and asked for our address. Then she asked if we were her friends and then asked if we loved her. She really seemed to care so we told her we loved her and she had a big smile on her face and off she went with our email address. I gave out my email address a lot but I figure that I won’t get many emails because these people don’t own a computer and unless they’re in Accra, they probably don’t have access to an internet café.
I’ll miss coming home at night in the back of the orphanage pick up truck to cheers from the village kids. They would run behind the truck and wave at us and I felt like I was Queen Elizabeth on a parade float every night J
Another good thing about the trip is that I’m not as picky with food as I used to be. I ate everything. I ate lunch at the orphanage so I couldn’t be picky (and I didn’t think of the fact that they keep about a dozen cats in the kitchen to kill the mice)
Monday: rice & tomato & fish sauce (I gave my piece of fish to the kids. They need the protein more than I do… ok, it was the fish’s head and if that makes me picky for not wanting to eat it, than so be it.
Tuesday: red red (a black eye pea stew with powder you mix in to make it thicker and more filling and fried plantains) – I always thought I didn’t like black eye peas before. Did I try some before? Nope. I just knew I didn’t like them J
Wednesday: boiled yam with a tiny bit of tomato and fish sauce. It was very dry but if you are hungry enough and tell yourself with each bite that you’re eating very dry mashed potatoes, then it’s fine.
Thursday & Friday – not sure because I was off on those days
Saturday & Sundays, I usually ate something at home before going to the orphanage.
Dinner there was usually kenkey (boiked fermented corn dough) or banku (fermented corn dough) and I just couldn’t stomach that. I tried, I really did, but I didn’t like it at all.
My favorite food was fufu: either pounded plaintain and cassava or yam served in a soup. It looks like a big doughy dumpling. I like it in palm soup. I was told it takes 16hrs to digest fufu. It’s very filling and I could only eat a few handfuls. I love eating with my hands and I’m going to stick with it, at least at home. Not easy at first, especially with rice so I studied the way the kids were doing it. They take a handful and squeeze it into a small rice ball.
I ate food from street vendors and never got sick (except for that frozen chocolate yogurt but that was a mistake on my part. What was I thinking eating something that has “must be kept frozen” on its label in a country with very little electricity and where it’s so hot…) We ate donuts. Fried dough balls really. They sold them in our village at night for 5 cents each. They had some make of beans and some sweet ones which didn’t taste sweet at all. They don’t really eat sweet stuff there.
We bought meat pies that would be fine for vegetarians; you were lucky to find a trace of meat. We ate a gizzard kebab once. When we asked the vendor what type of meat it was we were already eating it and she said something that sounded like lizard! It took us to while to find out that it was actually gizzard. I’m not a fan. Lot of avocados, tomatoes and pineapples. And some coconut until Veronica, the woman who has a fruit & vegetable stand near our house told us that coconut makes you burn in the sun. I had no idea. So I avoided coconut after that. Ghanaians only eat the green coconuts, not the other ones because they would get a sunburn.
We drank pure water sold in plastic bags of 0.5 liter. Sometimes we’d buy one on the side of the road and it tastes so much like bleach that we had to throw it away, but the ones we had at home were fine.
What else… I didn’t see as much poverty as I did in Senegal. People don’t have very much but they’re not starving. I was in an area where there are a lot of farmers. People seem to work enough to make money for the day and stop when they reach their number; and they do it all over again the next day. A big expense for them is funerals. They go all out. They travel from far away to attend funerals and they all dress up. Funerals are a big affair and they last for days. We had one in the village one weekend and it was very close to our house. On Friday, we saw the body arrive in an ambulance followed by a car with men dressed alike and singing. On Saturday, they had the funeral and burial. At the funeral, they have the casket in the middle and chairs on all 4 sides, several rows deep. I saw one when I was driving by on a trotro and first I thought they were watching a soccer game because they area was so big and there were so many chairs. After the funeral, they start eating and dancing day & night. They rent a generator and it’s non stop loud music for days. That weekend, Monday was a holiday so it lasted for 4 days instead of 3. We didn’t get much sleep.
They have posters to announce funerals with the picture of the deceased, their age, what they did for a living and they list the surviving family members. In some villages, they have a board where they write the latest passings.
The Ghanaians are very religious. The majority is Christian but there were 2 mosques in our small village. The farther north you go, the more Muslim it becomes.
I loved the store names… they’re all religious: the Lord is my shepherd saw sharpening center, Thank you Jesus, God’s will beauty salon, Praise God phone center, Allah’s fast food. And there are just some funny ones. My favorite is “Lover Boys Undertakers”
I’m going to wrap up with the orphanage. Even though I didn’t have a culture shock, I was shocked at the way the orphanage kids behave. I expected discipline because I thought that an institution that has 50 kids would run a tight ship. I was wrong. They run wild, unsupervised. Only the teenagers behave. They get up very early and the orphanage bus drives them to school (1-1 ½ hour drive), they get back around 5pm for dinner, worship and homework. On the weekend, they have chores: laundry, ironing the school uniforms, helping with the younger kids. But the younger kids, especially the 2-10 year olds are wild. They go to school at the school built by the orphanage, right outside the orphanage. The classrooms have a roof but no windows or doors so the kids just walk in and out. Mostly out! The teachers obviously can’t discipline them. I sat in a classroom once for 1hr during the weekly morning worship and it was complete chaos. I feel bad for the teachers because the kids just don’t listen and don’t care. One of the teachers was fired while I was there because he beat some of the kids and told the parents of the village kids to beat them if they had misbehaved. The orphanage has a no beating policy so he had to go. Madam Benice, the nursery teacher, is just lazy. She lives in the same village as the volunteers and she teaches in from 8am-2pm and then she runs a fruit and vegetable stand in our village. She doesn’t do much in the morning with the nursery children. She has her cell phone ear phone in constantly and she listens to music on her phone. She steps out all the time to make calls. During lunch time, the kids go back into the orphanage to eat and she stays in the nursery and sleep. From 1-2pm, the kids come back to school for “rest time”. She’s the first one to fall asleep and very often she’s the only one. Even when volunteers are around. So we’re pretty much on our own with the kids. And we don’t get support from the mamas. They’re just too happy to have volunteers around. They sit all day and talk and laugh and watch us struggle with some of the kids without helping. Almost everyday I had to bring Kim back to the mamas because he was hitting me and the kids, throwing large rocks at us and he’d bite pinch, kick and hit me all the way back to the mamas and they’d just watch me struggle with him. They never bother taking Joseph to nursery school. He’s 4 years old but he can’t walk so he just stays near the babies’ room unless there’s a volunteer there to take him. The kids never asked the mamas to go to the bathroom. They went on their own and without toilet paper. But if we were around, they would ask us because they knew we’d go with them and take toilet paper. The children go to school just outside of the orphanage and they play there as well. It’s not dangerous. It’s far from the road and the village is small and they all co-exist peacefully. But sometimes the children hit each other very hard and I kept wondering how they didn’t get hurt more often. I only saw blood a couple of times, including the time Bene pushed Gloria on the playground and she hit her head and the nurse had to cut her chunk of her hair to clean the wound.
They cry a lot: when they get hit, when another kid takes their shoes, or like Mabena, if your show falls off. They are all very attached to their shoes. It’s very funny.
I’ve already explained how they don’t like to share toys but they’ll share food without any adults asking them to. They play well together and they’re always excited when the older kids return from school on the bus. That’s when you see that they’re all a big family, especially on the weekend. It’s very moving.
The first couple of days were difficult. I was wondering if I’d make it through the end of my stay. And then the kids and I started to bond and just like that it was fun to go there every day and I missed them on my days off. And then it was almost time to leave and I was dreading that moment which came way too soon. Over time, you form a stronger bond with some of the kids. I had a strong mutual bond to Victor, Jojo, Paul, Kelvin, Mabena and Sadi (pics on Flicr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinounyc/). I really wanted to bring Victor home with me. I already knew I wanted to adopt but now I also know that I don’t want to adopt a baby (I didn’t really bond with the 2 babies there) but I’d rather adopt a 2-4 year old instead.
It’s a good thing that none of the kids I’d adopt are available for adoption because it would have made leaving them even harder and I’d already be looking into a way of adopting them. I also realize that when I do adopt, I won’t want to just receive a picture and have the agency tell me “here’s your child.” I’ll go to an orphanage, spend some time there and adopt a child I bonded with. The conditions at the orphanage were far from perfect but it’s a pretty nice orphanage compared to others. The children receive good medical care, better care than most children who are not orphaned. And compared to the village kids, they even seem a bit spoiled. They have a TV and they get some TV time on Sundays (they have solar powered electricity that is sent to a battery and they can watch TV sometimes) in the library while the village kids stand outside the window with on their toes with their faces glued to the window to get a glimpse of the TV. The orphanage kids get cookies and candy sometimes. The village kids don’t.
So even if the mamas are not involved in the children’s development, at least the kids have a roof over their head, food, a bath and medicine. And they seem happy so it’s all that matters.
Goodbyes are always difficult and the kids must have felt that I was upset because they were very clingy on my last 2 days. It made things much harder. I’ve already described the goodbyes and I won’t go into it again but I’m teary-eyed just thinking about it.
I’m hoping to go back there soon. Even if it’s just for a week at Thanksgiving or over the holidays. The plane ticket is expensive but life is very cheap there so it’s not so bad.
In the meantime, I will get update from Laura & Rebecca who are still volunteering there for a few months. And I have the email address of one of the older kids so I’ll keep in touch with him and get updates from him.
I wish I could have stayed longer. I would have stayed a few more months.
Would I do it again? ABSOLUTELY!!
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