There is nothing quite like an African sky...

There truly is nothing quite like an African sky in the evening. It is one of the most beautiful, vast and colorful things to have ever met my eyes. It sounds silly to say that a skyline can look any different from another, but for some reason this sky seems to stretch so far that it can swallow you whole. There are many beautiful natural places here in Ghana. Honestly I have been able to experience more than most of the Ghanians I met have. It's sort of strange really, but the majority of natives that I have talked to here haven't left their home town or their country. I'm not sure if it's the lack of money because even the most wealthy Ghanians haven't ventured far from home, so it almost seems like an overall lack for the yearning of adventure or maybe both. This weekend I went to a village near HoHoe prenounced: (HaHoi) near the border of Togo. I went to visit the orphanage where my friend Miles and his family are staying. To get there, I ventured off to the nearest bus station and hopped on a crowded "Cho Cho" ( a refurbished suv turned into a small van/bus) that holds about 14 people and paid my 9 cedis(about 7 dollars) to travel to a place about 4 hours away. For me, the price was right! Although it was pretty crowded after the first two hours on the bumpy, dirt road, every now and then when we would pass through a small village people carrying large loads of goods on their heads to sell, swarmed the van and offered just about whatever was needed to satisfy your hunger, thirst, communication, or comfort needs. It's so great, cheap and convenient that the van never really has to come to a complete stop. Fingers are pointed out of the Cho Cho window to motion what it is that is wanted, money exchanges hands, the good is passed over and all of this is done while the car is still in motion! It's like a wayy better version of a convenience store/Walmart on wheels. Finally arriving in HoHoe, I began to notice that there really isn't much going on outside of Accra, the big city here. The landscape is predominantly just jungle, mountains, and small villages along the dirt road. HoHoe is a small, market town near the border of Togo that is filled with street peddlers and small, dirty buildings. That is really all I have to say about the town other than it is on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere basically. We also ventured to the orphanage/school where Miles is volunteering. I got to meet the 40+ energetic and excited little munchkins on Monday and man are these kids cuties! Immediately they grab onto your hands and clothes and ask for your name and hug and love on you without hardly knowing you for 10 seconds! After playing a local hand clapping game called "umpay" and other various games with the children, I helped organize their "new" or new to them anyway, books in their library(a room full of miscellaneous books) into categories and age appropriate groups and subject matter. I got into a little more than I bargained for when I reached into a nasty, old box full of rat droppings/dead insects and when I pulled out a stack of books I thought I saw something move out of the corner of my eye..while still holding the books I flipped them over and immediately threw them into the air in a fit of terror when 3 GIGANTIC, horrifying stripped spiders came spastically scattering all over the books. I made quite a scene screaming and jumping up and down while running out of the room in horror. Everyone got a good laugh at my silly overreaction to the spiders. At least someone got a good laugh because I was so upset and surprised that sure enough I began to cry a little..I was that terrified. On a better note,  Mile's family and I got to sort of vacation this weekend away at Lake Volta. I don't have internet to back this up as I am writing, but I have heard that it is one of the largest man made lakes around or at least in Ghana anyway. The lake was truly an oasis of relaxation and a good escape from the busy city and the claustrophobic feeling of the small land locked villages. To give you a mental image of the lake, it is surrounded by gorgeous green and lush mountains and the hotel we stayed in rested at the base of the lake and was garnished with natural shells on the pathways, hand carved wooden doors and covered with tasty fruit and plentiful flora. The rooms did not have air conditioning or hot water, but honestly after being here for so long,  my standards for "nice" have gone down and my body has really began to acclimate to the sticky, hot, humid weather of Ghana so it wasn't as bad as it might sound to you. The best relief from the blaze of the heat was the refreshing plunge into the great Volta lake water. There was a rope swing and a dock at our hotel and I wasted no time taking advantage of such a fun activity that reminded me so much of home. Along with several Englishmen, local Ghanians and Miles, I swam in the dark, yet somewhat clean water and just got lost in floating around in the calming abyss surrounded by such beautiful scenery. The perfect cure it seems for any sort of home sickness in my experience is simple: listening to my familiar music always makes me feel at ease, having things like candles or perfumes that smell familiar, and swimming. For whatever reason, if I ever start to feel at all overwhelmed, and I do any of my homesickness remedies suddenly I feel right at home. :) Although Ghana seemed so incredibly overwhelming and just plain weird in so many ways when I first arrived, it is slowly becoming a place that I am getting used to and I place I am learning to appreciate. This might sound crazy, but I could actually picture myself living here at least for a while... Thanks for following, -English

Things that will surprise you about Ghana.

It only took about 2 weeks of me being here to finally shut up about and become used to seeing some of the  backwards ways of this place. For instance, their drainage system here are roughly 3 foot deep ditches that look like a miniature half pipe of concrete. These ditches are seen everywhere on the side of the asphalt roads. This may not surprise you, but the purpose that the drains are used for certainly will. Because the ditches are open to the air and easily accessible, they also serve as a "garbage disposal" every morning people get up, walk out to the closest ditch, and dump all of their rubbish and waste into the it in hopes that drainage water will carry it away from their homes and businesses. Here, it seems they have no qualms or concerns for where the trash ends up or how it so greatly effects the cleanliness of their environment and water system. Get this, not only do the ditches make great garbage disposals, they also are used as toilets. That's right, you won't see people getting arrested for public urination/public indecency around here. In broad day light both women and men urinate in the drains and sometimes defecate there right beside the street! Now remember, from all the trash piling up, also comes rats and other animals which get stuck in the ditch and die, and occasionally trash will pile up and stop the flow of things which means stagnant water that is perfect for mosquito breading. But what happens to the trash and debris? Funny you should ask, after a good rain it all flows right through the drains to the rivers...when you see the rivers after the rain it looks like a river of moving trash. You cannot see the water that moves the rubbish underneath, it is just a sea of moving plastic and dirty rubbish in the process of flowing out to sea. This, as you can imagine is a disheartening sight to see. I'm not even sure if it's a lack of education, it seems to be their way of "dealing" with the problem of waste. The government even stepped in to put concrete slabs over drains on busy roads to help stop dumping, but the people here are so desperate, that they literally ripped up the concrete slabs from the ground, broke them apart, removed the iron bars from the concrete, then melted them down to sell. How can you fix a problem when the people won't cooperate or accept help? Everyday, people throw litter on the ground or in a ditch or defecate on the beach, or urinate in a water source. What can you do? The change for good must start with the people wanting to change if it will ever happen. They don't really have stop signs here either. When you come to any intersecting road, the signal for "I'm coming your way and I'm not stopping" or "hey don't go" is the use of the car horn. I never thought I had heard more car horns than in New York, but here it is just a normal way of saying "stop". If you don't blow your horn at every car that crosses or is about to cross your path, they will not stop even if they see you coming, it is insane. On another note, after leaving Cape Coast the other day, I noticed historic government buildings and landmarks that were a part of the slave trade and city system from the 1700's, inside of them were trash, clothes, and squatters! People are living in historical relics! They just pop a squat and pitch their tent where they please. Ghana has to be one of the most punk rawk places in the world because there are more squatters here than anywhere else I have ever seen. Because people don't really have time limits on their building permits here,( or at least they aren't put into effect) there are giant, empty, concrete buildings that are half built everywhere..and inside of them you will find squatters! The way the squatters also grow their own vegetables and fruit and live with multiple people to one house like a commune would be greatly admired by crust punks abroad. Anyway, I have food poisoning from most likely eating the delicious calamari that was not refrigerated.. :( I will post more later!! Thanks for reading!-Eng

Justin Bieber, I'm begining to know how you feel..

Ok, so I don't have crazy 12 year old girls trying to tackle me down, but if you are a white female in Africa you are going to get a lot more attention than you bargained for. Sarah who is 19, the house keeper, and my friend took me to get some tomatoes today from street vendors. We walked out of the barricaded property and through about two blocks of muddy, red dirt roads passing some people that she knew,  street peddlers, locals walking home, and school children that were dressed in uniforms. Every single person stared. Some smiled, some waved, some said "hi" or "obeei" which means "white person" and some didn't say any thing at all.  Sarah kindly explained to me why the people stared at me the way they do. They stare because they are curious of why I'm here. They think I might be a journalist, or some sort of celebrity or researcher. Plus let's face it, I just stick out! On our way to get tomatoes we came across a large group of school children coming home from school. They all got really excited and started jumping up and down and waving and smiling at us. Sarah also introduced me to some of her friends and they were all very cordial and friendly. After we purchased the tomatoes in a fly infested street market, we went back home to cook spaghetti. While we were cooking she and George, the other house helper took pictures of me and sent it to their friend on their Blackberries haha even people in Africa have better phones than me!! It's ironic that I am so interesting to them, when really I think they are the ones who are interesting. People in the streets ask why I take pictures. They don't seem to understand why carrying things on your head is weird or that selling things in the street is out of the ordinary. It is the culture and way of life that interests me so much I have to explain to them. We don't have this in the U.S...etc. They are always open to pictures but seem to question them every time. Since my arrival here, I have eaten like an African and tried to experience life as an African, so when I unpinned the laundry from the line I carried it in a basket on top of my head in true African style.  Hey, why not? Well, today was my day off. I slept in most of the day, went out with Sarah, helped around the house, played jump rope and did cartwheels in the yard with the girls and hung out with the family. In a nut shell that was about it. It was a very relaxed day indeed. Tomorrow I am supposed to go to work and go to the market for groceries and a new cell phone. Wahoo. Hopefully it will be a little more action packed and interesting to write about. I look forward to visiting the beach and the gold mines soon! Laterrrrr, -English

The Arrival

After much tribulation on the plane and buzzing through busy traffic and the hustle and bustle of the city, I have finally arrived. No I'm not staying in a hut!! My host's beautiful, clean, new house comes fully equipped with a flat screen tv, wifi, hot water, burglar alarm system and everything that a normal American household might have and even a gorgeous manicured garden in the back yard. But don't get the wrong idea. This house is NOT in your everyday suburb. Just outside the towering 8ft concrete walls heavily lined on top with electric barbed wire, there is a bumpy, red, dirt road that host everything from roaming goats, chickens, shanties, pollution and the poorest looking houses you have ever seen, as well as some of the most elaborate houses you have ever seen. There seems to be no buffer zone between multimillion dollar mansions and plastic bag huts on the side of the street except for the gigantic concrete barbed wire lined fences that seem to be of the same stature of those at U.S. prisons. Safety is a genuine concern here amongst the well to do of Accra. The Yeboah's (my host family), as well as other wealthy families here not only have a heavily fenced in and gated property, but two guard dogs, a panic button system, a personal gate keeper, and barred windows on every window in the house. This will surely help me sleep at night as I lie here thinking about some of those looks I received from the poor street peddlers today. I could almost feel the hate radiating off of their face when they saw me driving through their neighborhood with a local like "haha look at that white girl, what is she doing here?" And I can't really blame them. I can honestly say I have never felt so white and out of place in my life when I'm outside of these protected walls. Inside the walls however, is a totally different story. Crystal, Glory, and Daniella are my very own African sisters after just one day! I absolutely adore them and they just love braiding my hair and dancing around the house with me. I even taught them the Ethiopian shoulder dance! Haha. Irene is like a mother to me and is just the sweetest, most caring and welcoming host ever and her husband George is just as nice. It's the rainy season here and the rain has brought a cool, misty  breeze through the house. It is night and the hot sun has finally stopped roasting everything and gone to bed. There is a lovely song being sung in a deep, soothing voice in their people's local tongue, "Tree" coming from outside the fence. I have no idea what he is saying, but it sounds so beautiful. The sticky, yet cool and sweet African breeze blowing through the blue flowered curtains of my room will soothe me to sleep tonight. It's been a long, but extremely eventful day. Until next time, -English

African Adventures: Only 2 days...

African Adventures: Only 2 days...

Only 2 days...

Only two more days until I take off on a plane destined to land in Accra, Ghana. As I am sitting on the floor packing up the last of my closet and belongings I probably don't really need, I can't help but wonder is this actually happening!!? It seems like I've been talking about going to Ghana for so long that it has become almost surreal. Looking over at my plane ticket on the rug, it really hit me that in two days I will be living on a different continent, staying with a family I don't know and working in an environment that is much more foreign to me than anything I've experienced here in Charleston, South Carolina. Although Accra is one of the more developed places in West Africa, I can only imagine how different and exciting it will be. Everything from the vegetation, wild life, government, sanitation, housing and architecture will be very interesting to experience. Trips never make me nervous, but this time I definitely have a case of the butterflies. Hopefully they will subside within the next day or so. Anyway, I anxiously await my departure to Africa! Sorry this blog post is boring, I promise they will be better. -English