Purging, Boti Falls, and people. Lots and lots of people.

June 29^th

Almost a month in Ghana and I am finally sick. I knew this day would come, although I really hoped it wouldn’t. In the back of my head I thought maybe I wouldn’t get sick. Maybe my diet of red fish paste and rice is just healthy enough to keep me well. I have a pretty tough stomach too. But yesterday our Peace Corps Trainee group went to the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana and I got poisoned there.

That’s probably an exaggeration, but I do know that right after I downed some chocolate water I paid .50 pesawa for, I got an immediate headache and it was all downhill from there (the fact that I would drink strange chocolatey water out of a big vat seems real stupid now).  By 7pm I was throwing up and had to run to the bathroom every 30 minutes. I had a fever of 101 for most of the night. After puking my guts out till 2am I fell asleep and I’ve been ok since. My body hurts from all the purging and I missed all the fun stuff Peace Corps did today, but it’s a little after 4pm and I think I’ll live. I was smart enough to pack a couple fiber bars before I left home, so I’ve been munching on those and avoiding my Ghana “mom’s” oily soup.

I hate being sick in a foreign country living in someone else’s home. Even though I was completely miserable all night, I still feel like I need to be a good house guest. What I wanted to do was lock myself in the bathroom with a pillow and a billion water sachets until the episode passed. I wanted to scream at the children to quit making noise and go to bed.  I wanted to go to the refrigerator and find Freezee Pops, turn all the fans on high and take a very long cold bath.  What I actually did was steal a bucket and put it beside my bed, lock myself in my room, cover my body in cold water sachets, and try to ignore the screaming baby. I don’t think my Ghana “mom” really knew what to do because she kept bringing me food. Instead of telling her I didn’t want to eat because in a few minutes I would see it again, I kept crawling out of bed, thanking her, and putting the food on the floor of my room. This morning was a little rough because my body was still very unhappy and for whatever reason the baby decided to wail all morning. I almost got out of bed to see if he was slowly being eaten or something worse, but I heard his mom trying to soothe him so I knew I would be of no help. Finally everyone left for school, “mom” went to her store, and I have enjoyed the silence so so so much. Between the chickens, goats, blaring music, car horns, and yelling adults and children, Ghana is a very noisy country. To get a few hours of nothing but the sound of the rain is heaven.

On a separate note practicum is finally finished. Although the school system here is much different from what I had anticipated, I feel better about teaching here.  The teachers rule their classrooms and get to make a lot more executive decisions than in the states. The kids are in charge of bringing their own supplies and if they don’t that’s just too bad. What’s also pretty cool is no tool is too dangerous. The kids walk around school “mowing” the grass with machetes and use razor blades to sharpen their pencils. We can light fires and use sharp tools all day, every day and its fine. Also the students are excited when they are picked to help a teacher. I can pick a student to help me build a garden at my personal house and I’m told he/she will be so pumped to help. Also I can tell a late student to fill my personal water barrel as punishment and that’s cool too. Not that I’m a proponent of child labor, but when the alternatives are caning, kneeling in the sun, or public shaming, filling a water barrel doesn’t seem so bad.

Today Peace Corps made language announcements (so you can at least get an idea where in the country you’re going) but I missed it. Monday we start a week of language training, then we go to our sites for 2 weeks, then we come back for 3 weeks of more language and other training. If I am not overly prepared to live in Ghana by the end of this then there’s no hope for me.  

After all this and 3 months at my site, people can start to come visit! So start planning your holidays around your trip to Ghana J

Boti Falls was definitely worth the trip. There was a hike that wasn’t too bad (if you don’t count the mile up jaggety rocks I had to climb) and I got some great pictures. I am disappointed in my shoes. I wore these special shoes I bought just for climbing around on wet rocks and what not. I was sliding around everywhere! There were signs all over the place about how to stay alive by not going into the water, and here I am sliding around on mossy rocks under a huge waterfall.  I barely made it out alive J.  Of course I don’t blame my lack of coordination or the fact the rocks were covered in mossy slime, I blame the $80 shoes that are supposed to make these types of adventures possible and safer.

UPDATE:  June 30^th

So before I got a chance to post this a few interesting things happened that don’t really warrant their own blog entry, but they are interesting none-the-less.

I found out my language is Twi. This is good because I’ve already started learning Twi and the people I am staying with now speak Twi. This is bad because it only narrows my site choices down to the bottom half of the country. Also, even though I am learning Twi, It may not be my village’s language. Since there are so many languages here the Peace Corps can’t find trainers for all of them. So if they can’t find you a trainer they teach you Twi because you’re bound to find at least one Twi speaker in your village. I think I a find out my actual site Friday so I only have a few days to wait.

There is a funeral going on in the village we are staying in and there is an abhorrent amount of people here. Funerals aren’t anything like they are in the states. If the person was old when they died (as in this case) the funeral is actually a big party where there is dancing and drinking and people dress in their best black and red fashions. This makes for a really good spectacle if you are capable of blending in. Being a bright white person wearing green in a sea of Africans wearing black isn’t exactly blending in. I get yelled at a lot. People come up to me and say something very elaborate in Twi, which I can’t understand, and there are just way too many people staring ALL THE TIME.  Imagine walking around with a giant bird on your head and everyone is speaking jibberish. It’s a lot like that. There are hundreds of PCVs in Ghana, so one would think it wouldn’t be a big deal to see me walking down the street. But it is….. Oh how it is.

The sickness has passed which strengthens my chocolate water theory. As soon as it was expelled from my system I felt better. Today (almost 2 days later) I am basically recovered and back in action.