Trying to run with Africans? Silly Brittany.

For the past 3 days, I have been getting up at 5 am, to go run with the Volta hall cross country team! Despite the 5am darkness, and the incredible amount of sweat, I'm having a blast. Running with 30 Ghanaians, through campus, just as the sun is rising, with a light drizzle...I smiled at myself this morning.

I've also been playing basketball in the afternoon, which takes my daily shower total to 3. I've been making friends with girls from other halls. They seem to like me so far. I just try to get them to laugh at me...well laugh at me more, since they already find me humorous. Games between the residence halls start tomorrow, and from those teams, players are chosen to play on the school system. I'm hoping I make the school team; some of the girls I've been meeting at the court (who, I think, will help select the school team) said they liked "the height." Being 5'11" might finally pay off!

pictures from last weekend

So my adventure this weekend?

Last week, a couple friends and I decided that the coming weekend would be the weekend of chillaxing. We planned a movie marathon, and bought supplies to make a pasta dinner for ourselves. Well, then the opprotunity of a lifetime arose.

to go to Ghana's Liberian Refuge camp with a Liberian, plans got changed a little.

Saturday early morning, 6 other EAPers and I left with our Liberian friend Bismark, for the Ghana's Liberian Refuge camp, run by the United Nations High Commisoner on Refuges. The camp (of about 50,000 people!) is about an hour down the coast. It took about 3 tro-tros to get there, but was worth the trip. Now, when I say refuge camp you are probably picturing tents and such...well not this UNHCR camp. A large portion of the refuges have been in the camp for 10-16 years! Although it still was a camp, it was much closer to a settlement: cement buildings, established market places. It looked very similar to other Ghanaian communitis I had seen. However, there were some interesting differences.

We had lunch--Liberian food, very SPICY-- with some of the camp volunteers (Bismark had previously volunteered at the camp). The volunteers were only at the camp for a month and are leaving this week; it was surreal to realize I had also been in Ghana for a month, but also conceptualize how different my experiences was compared to the volunteers' experiences.

We played with kids a lot. As you can see below, they were jumping all over us, literally. It was a lot of fun! Very different than some of my earlier experiences with kids, because these kids weren't the slightest bit interested in getting anything, but some playtime, from me, which I very happily gave!

Then we went to Bismark's "sister's" house. She took all 7 of us in with open arms. She offered us soft drinks, and we sat on the floor of her living/kitchen/work room talking and watching a Nigerian soap opera. I asked her if she'd thought of returning to Liberia. Her response was similar to many of the responses I got by the end of the day: many of the refuges had livied in Ghana for more than a decade and lost interest in going back to their "home" country, it just didn't feel like home anymore. Makes sense.

However, it was interesting to see all the UNHCR ads encouraging the Liberian refuges to return to Liberia, rather than waiting for the UN to offer them tickets to another country. Also makes sense; having Liberians return home will definitly help the country rebuild. Now, per week, about 500 voluntary Ghana refuges arrive in Liberia! But some still do make it to other countinents. I played clapping games with a 13 year old, Princess, who is on her way to Austrailia this week. And then her friend, is heading for California. It made me really really happy to learn these two girls had the opprotunity to repatrionize! Maybe I'm excited for their opprotunity at a better education, or the flushing tollietes. But then my friend reminided me, the transistion will still be hard. And then I was thinking... although these families will have all the opprotunity the "first world" will bring, it still doesn't mean the first world is the best world. I'm still thinking about it.

Let's see, .after a stop at the camps basketball court and football field we headed back to catch a tro-tro. We made it back in time to by Bismark dinner at the local gas station. Oh, have I mentioned the gas station in town is the hangout. Yep, they've got pizza, chicken, drinks, ice cream...gas.

In sum, this time last year, I was in Geneva Switzerland, visiting the UNHCR. This year, I got to experience a refuge camp for myself. I'm excited to report: the learning continues!!!

My friend Will, with about 3 kids
hanging from each arm

Sadie and I so excited for a Nigerian soap!

D, Sadie and at the soccer field.
Yes, no grass, and that is
charcoal as the boundary lines.

My teachers are playing hookie.

So this is the first week of classes at the University of Ghana. To bad, none of my teachers have shown up to class. Looking back on the week, it is kinda funny, but while sitting in about my 8th class for a half an hour, praying the prof will show, I can get kinda irritated. I've heard (oh, and everything here is rumor, haha) that teachers spend the whole break grading because there are not TAs and then when it is time for school to start teachers don't show for a couple weeks because they want a vacation...and I'm all for teacher education, I guess? Hopefully next week, more teachers will show. But for now, I've been reading a lot, eating a lot. Food is great here, by the way, not healthy but good. Most everything is fried, or has tons of sugar in it. I have yet to see any type of whole grain. Women sell amazing pineapple on the street, oh and the chocolate! Oh and for breakfast I have been having fried egg sandwiches. I'm starting to get hungry again even though I just had dinner.

I've also been going on morning runs, which feel great, but I do start sweating in like the first few steps because it is so humid. Oh, and my African Dance class has actually been meeting, and that is tons of fun! I never thought my body could move in these new ways before. :-) I'll be teaching my moves when I get back!

This weekend some EAPers are going getting away from campus. My friend Sadie and I decided to hang around Accra (Ghana's biggest city, about 20 min drive from campus) this weekend, there is still so so much to see. We are also planning a movie marathon on Sunday, which I'm really really looking forward to.

I just had a dress made this week, tailored to me for a whopping $10, and that was a little overpriced. I'm thinking I might have something made for me each week! I was pretty proud of myself so I took a picture of myself in it. Okay, okay, I'm a dork.

My first trip!

August 19^th, 2005

What a weekend! A couple friends and I decided to go on a little trip of our own. We decided we have been herded around Ghana in a group of 50 for too long, and we wanted to get our feet wet to Ghana travel. So Thursday afternoon we took off to a little town in Eastern Ghana called Ho. The ride was supposed to take 2-3 hours, but our bus broken down a couple times, but we got there fine and found a room at the local YMCA. Early Friday morning we took a tro-tro (like a mini-van with 20 people shoved in) to a small town in the Eastern Mountains called Amedzofe. It was an amazing little community with which tourists are drawn to for its Eco-tourism (a fascinating method for sustainable development). There is a small tourist office in the center of town—very rare in Ghana, but apparently a previous Peace-Corps volunteer set it up. There we met guides who took us on hikes to a gorgeous!!!!!! waterfall and to the top of one of Ghana's highest mountains (but it's more like a hill). We were also led to lunch at Madame Betty's, the best chef in town; she made us fried yam balls with vegetable stew, it was one of the most amazing meals I have had in Ghana, if not this whole year!

By the time the sunset we were whipped out. We heated up the reminder of our lunch and struck up a conversation with the two other people staying in our guesthouse. They were peace-corps volunteers on vacation. We talked for a long time, about culture shock to Ghana, health, the peace-corps…and they gave us some great travel tips!

Saturday morning we got up at 5:30 am to catch the 5:30-6:30am tro-tro back to Ho. Turns out the tro-tro left at 7:00…welcome to Ghana's time system! Once we got back to Ho, we took another tro-tro to a small village, known for its kenti (you known that famous African cloth) weaving. We bought so cloth and made our way back to Accra. We got to campus around 4:30pm, just in time for an early dinner—fried plantains and baked beans, also known as redd redd! Yum!

More exciting Ghana excursions to come!

pictures!?!

This is the town of ElMina. I think it is a good pictures of what Ghana is like. It is definietly a developing country, but some parts are still very urban and developed in a lot of ways. I think pictures of Ghana can describe wht it is like better than I can describe.

This is ElMina castle. Built for gold, and ivory trade, and used for a little for the slave trade. A very intense place, to say the least.

This is my friend Yolanda, playing with a few kids in a village we stopped in to buy Kenti Cloth. All the children wanted to teach us clapping games.

So I just mentioned Kenti cloth, and here is how they make it.
Kenti is really really bright, with lots of different designs on each strip of cloth. West Africa is famous for this fabric!

The library at my school. There are statues of famous graduates all around campus.

A sunrise, looking out from the bathroom.

This is my good friend Sadie, in the our showers. COLD, ONLY COLD water comes out of the facet at the top! Believe it or not, I've gotten used to cold showers...this coming from the girls who usually uses up all the hot water with 30 minute long showers.

This is my roommate (who has since moved because she is taking classes at another campus)
in our room. Not to shabby?

Me and one of the Ghanaian student EAP volunteers at our orientation dinner.

This is where I live! Nice, huh?
The entrance to the Volta Hall Cafeteria.

August 15^th, 2006

It has been a while since I have last written. Internet is a little hard to get to at the moment. Well, there is an internet café across the street from the dorms, but the connection is reaallyyy slow most of the day, so I try to go in the evening. Once I get into a bit of a routine, with classes and such, I hope giving weekly updates on my travels.

In some ways my first two weeks have flown by, but in other ways I feel like I’ve already lived here for 2 months. EAP orientation is officially over. So we no longer have daily lectures, but there are still some organized field trips to come.

This weekend, our group took a bus to the coast to see two slave castles—Cape Coast Castle and ElMina Castle. It was an intense day, and to avoid recounting the whole day I will just say the trip was emotionally exhausting. I hope to forever keep the lessons I learned last Saturday—as we were standing in the pitch black slave dungeon, our guide explained that 300 people were forced to live (for 6 weeks) inside a room that was nearly big enough for 30. Our guide continued with more horrific details; but even without his words, I felt so much pain from just standing in that space.

Yesterday marked the beginning of registration. I think the best way to describe registration at the University of Ghana, is to imagine a deep dark chasm! I think I may be making it sound like a horrible thing, it is just different, in a good way. Yes the process is long and unorganized—involving several passport photos, confusing paperwork, and most classes don’t have times yet—however, this is the best lesson of patience I have ever gotten and I’m embracing it! One of my goals here is to roll with the punches, and try my hardest to make lemonade out of whatever is thrown my way. School is supposed to start the 21^st, however, I think the “real” start date with be the 28^th, or later…teachers tend to go on strike every year for the first couple weeks.

I’ve signed up for a lot of really interesting classes. I’m planning to sign up for about 7, but start dropping them like flies once I figure out what teachers I like best (apparently some teachers lecture by just reading out of the textbook). As of now I’ve registered for: Educational Psychology, Theories of Social Development, Agricultural Economics, Developmental Economics, Urban Sociology, School Social Work, and Traditional African Dance. Plus I will be taking Twi (the language of the Asante, although most Ghanaians speak it), and I will be working on a research project. I’m exactly sure what I will do my project on, I though I would first start volunteering in a local school, and then see what strikes me. But I have gotten really interested in literacy here. English is taught as soon as Ghanaians enter school, and although English is the official language it is by no means the national language. In fact, one professor said American students tend to do really well here, because we classes are taught in our 1^st language, whereas for Ghanaians, both the teachers and the students are communicating in their 2^nd or 3^rd language.

More to come! Stay tuned!

Here I am!

Akkwaba! That means welcome in Twi.

So, I'm here. I've reached Ghana. I'm currently in the middle of my EAP orientation. There are about 50 students total, 40 of them from the UC system. There will actually be like 400 international students at the University of Ghana, once school starts. UG is actually very big, 30,000 students. Campus is very pretty. Ghana is really very tropical. Everything is very green and lush. We are in the middle of the rainy season, so it hasn't been too too hot, but rainy, which is great for the mosquitoes. But, actually I haven't gotten a bite yet! Yeah for DEET!

I was talking too my roommate and we came to the conclusion that we are feeling like we are permanetly camping. We have to remember to bring TP to the bathroom, and I sleep under a mosquito net. But, really I'm having lots of fun. As part of orientation we are going to lectures on different aspects of Ghanaian culture, like gender, music, politics, history, and language! Then in the afternoons we have been going to Accra (the capital and biggest city in Ghana). After dinner we have been taking dance and drumming lessons, which has been so so cool. I've been inspired to take a dance class here!

What else? Well, parts of Accra really look like the movies. I'm definitely in a developing country. It is overwhelming at times, but I'm becoming much more comfortable here. I have pictures, but am having a hard time posting them. Soon, though.

Hope all is well, Britt