June 7th 2012

June 7^th, 2012

I’m in Ghana. I finally made it. After 2 years of applying and waiting and applying some more and waiting more, I am here. Given I am only a trainee for the next 10 weeks, I still made it.

The day of the flight was hard emotionally and physically. I said good-bye to some very important people the night before and sleeping wasn’t really an option. I had meetings all morning (8am onward), then lunch, more meetings, and then we checked out, hung out, and hopped a bus to the airport. By the time we (when I say we I am referring to the fresh batch of trainees) made it through all the checkpoints and whatnot it was about 7pm. Time for a quick dinner then grab the 11pm flight to Ghana.  I slept most of the flight (if you flip down the tray table, put your purse on it, then a pillow on top of the purse, you can fall into a deep enough sleep to drool like a pro).

We arrived in Ghana at 1:30 pm. We rode a bus to Valley View Christian University where there were dorms, electricity, running water, showers, good food, etc… waiting on us. We had a whole bunch more meetings and then exhaustion took over.

Here’s the thing, Ghana is 4 hours ahead time wise. When we arrived at 1:30 pm, my body told me, in a very loud voice, it was 9:30 am and I had taken some type of strange nap. So by 8 pm (4pm VA time) I collapsed and my body refused to work anymore. I should have been more forceful and said “No body, I own you.  You MUST stay awake because you will be so confused if you don’t and for the most part I can guess what’s best for you.” Instead I let my body do whatever it felt like and I woke up at 11:30pm ready to start the day. Not just awake, but AWAKE. Wide awake. It being the first night in my new digs, I wasn’t quite sure what the protocol was for wandering around so instead of risk it I just laid in bed for 2 hours till my body felt just tired enough to fall asleep again. The kicker is I had to get up at 5am.

 At 6:30am we loaded a bus and went to the main Peace Corps office in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Accra is an interesting city. There are parts of it where, if you’re standing in thick fog and someone’s thrown sand in your eyes, you might guess you’re in the states. The outskirts of Accra are a whole different story. Lining the dirt roads are thousands of huts selling anything and everything you could ever think of. People walk in and out of traffic, in between cars and whatnot selling items they mostly carry on their heads (biscuits, peanuts, phone cards, stickers, etc…). The driving and traffic here is something no one in the states could ever think of handling. Americans would just pull over and collapse with a nervous breakdown. Kudos to the Ghanaian drivers who have made sense of what my eyes see as a complete cluster@#$% and somehow got all 25 Peace Corps trainees, plus a few others, where we need to go. When we arrived at the PC headquarters we had more meetings and then were broken into a few groups. My group had medical first. I got a shot in each arm (hep B and rabies), talked about camel spiders (I brought this up because being in a country that has 8 legged monsters living in it seems worth bringing up), and discussed the best way not to get rabies. We then went to admin where we filled out some paperwork to the best of our ability. Lastly we went to a Twi language session.

There are thousands of different languages with hundreds dialects in Ghana (I’m exaggerating, but not by much). Twi is a pretty common language so that’s the one we’re learning. The thing about Twi is it’s hardly about what you’re saying and much more about what you sound like. It’s what some people like to call a “tonal” language. In other words, I suck at it and I know that’s the thing I’m going to have to put 110% into.

After all the sessions we went to a gathering at the US ambassador’s house in Ghana. The ambassador, his second in command, a representative from the CDC, the ambassador’s giant dogs, and some other really nice people were there.  It was real neat to meet some influential Americans in Ghana, whether they had 4 legs or 2.

So here I sit, in this dorm, trying my hardest not to fall asleep till I can sleep a reasonable amount of time like a reasonable person.  This is just the first 2 days and there has been non-stop. Mostly a lot of non-stop sitting, but non-stop nonetheless.  Even though the sitting through hours of meetings is not my favorite, I am glad to be here. Mostly I have only been exposed to Ghanaians who work for PC, so they are very used to Americans and our strangeness, but they are the epitome of hospitable, patient, and welcoming. They have a great sense of humor and like to laugh at themselves and us (especially when it comes to Twi). On Monday we move to our homestay families where we will be spending the next 10 weeks. I am nervous and excited, as I am sure my fellow PCTs are. I am hoping they are extremely patient and understanding with me. If these last 2 days have taught me anything it’s that I have a ridiculous amount to learn.