10 months mark - cream, soap and bee.

Somehow, it seems that every time I start to write a new blog post, I never come close to finish it, let alone publish it for the public eyes.  And that is going to be my excuse for being such a crappy blog keeper… every time.

I would also like to blame the lack of internet, but at this point, that’s just beating a dead horse, and I’m no weirdo who likes to abuse dead animals so I digress.

One of the most common questions I get from my friends when I get to talk to them is, “How’s Ghana? Anything crazy/exciting happened to you?” and most of the time, my answer is lame and dissatisfying, “Ghana is fine, nothing crazy has happened.” And I want to take this time to explain myself. Guys, I guess I could say that at this point, I am used to being in a country where, for instance, everywhere you go, there are goats and/or sheeps around. Villages, towns or cities, they are there. Everywhere. Sleeping under parked trucks, laying the middle of the open road, crossing the street, stuffed under seats on my tro, standing (fearlessly) on top of vehicles because the space under the seats is occupied, maybe by some chicken. You can’t go anywhere without seeing them, and it is very real and hilarious.

But, for Ghanaians, this is all too common. This is a part of their daily lives as far as they can remember. There is no humor in seeing a baby goat standing on top of a bench in someone’s court yard crying for its mom who is 3 feet away and also doing the same cry. They don’t care for it, and naturally, as I have no one else around to share the laughs, as well as having seeing these sights too many time, I too, become accustomed to it and unimpressed. So when someone asked me if I have seen anything wild/weird/crazy, truth is, I probably have. Like the time when there was a pack of sheeps stopping in the middle of a high trafficked road to eat some spilled grains while completely blocking traffic but no one seemed to mind. Instead, cars and motors maneuvered their ways around them so they don’t hit the sheeps. Hilarious because just a few hours before that, a 24 seaters car body checked me and no one was concerned that someone was hit but they would rather go out of the way to not hit a sheep. And that is too, no longer a surprise for me, so when I’m talking to you, I also forget to tell you about it.  

I have been in Ghana for about 40 weeks now. That’s 10 months if you can’t count that high. After some unprecedented and especially eventful first few months at site (bone setter, hallucination, evacuation) the last 2 months or so have been on the quiet and uneventful end with some fun breaks in between but nothing scandalous.

I spent a large chunk of time trying to show the locals women how to make a mosquito repellent cream from soap and the local neem leaves. If they all do what I have shown them, their children and themselves would suffer a little less of malaria infection from mosquito bites. Neem cream is nothing new, PCVs from everywhere have made it and showed it and we talked and talked trying to get people to make it and use it. And I wish that it was completely true that they do use it, but it’s probably not so. Sometime, I am just happy that people actually show up when I ask them to, albeit 45 minutes to an hour late only to get the free samples. I am no saver of small children from evil mosquitoes.

There is also a Spelling Bee Club. Under different circumstances, I would laugh just as hard as anyone about the idea of me teaching people English. It is not my first language. I talk like a valley girl and curse like a sailor who now works in construction. And let’s not forget the Asian accent that makes certain words sound weird. But there was no one else, because all the teachers either don’t care or discourage because they all haven’t been paid in more than 6 months. And there was a Spelling Competition last month, so I started the club anyway because I want these kids to know big fancy words and how to spell them. I even took one of my students to the Regional Competition. He was nervous and didn’t get that far, but oh well, baby steps.  I got back to site after a few days and found that a few of the kids wanted to learn more spelling bee words so they try to scale the wall of the place where we usually meet to study together. How touching is that? As I have always been a sucker for the underdogs and ambitious children, I decided that it would be a great idea to have our very own spelling bee for all the kids at the school. It is the current issue that makes me toss and turn at night. The headmaster is up for it but is not sure how to do anything because he is new. Other teachers don’t really care for it because they are also new and don’t know who the white lady is and why she is here. My counterpart is great, but he’s not a very good teacher and the students laugh at him because he likes to yell at them, sometime for no reason at all. So it is now 2 weeks before the scheduled time, and I don’t know if it’s going to happen at all. We were very well prepared and warned about the prospect of having failed projects. Even so, no one likes sucking at doing things, do they?

The one other good news I have so far is that I have also been trying to make soap. Grace, a fellow friend, came to my site to show us how because she did it a few times at her own village and it turned out great. I have been using them to bath and I think I will make some more soon, with some nice smelling scents so we can try to sell them too.

Some other equally morose thing, I tried to vote during the American Presidential election but I am pretty sure my absentee ballot didn’t even make it outside of Ghana. So it was definitely the most pleasant surprise that I found out about the result some days later because I also forgot about Election Day. Ghanaians, and all of Africa probably, like to claim that Obama is “their president”. I asked a Ghanaian friend “What would you do in 4 years when Obama isn’t a president anymore?”  He just laughed as if it isn’t even a possibility. “Would you cheer if a woman is running for president?” “A woman can’t be president-oh!”

This person is one of the most educated person I know here in Ghana. He went to college. Graduated at a right age and is about to go back to school for a master’s degree – and yet still managed to sound like a hick. Despite having women leaders and even some in politics, places like my village still have very limited view of the roles for women. Just a few days ago, I was sadly enough to be in the middle of a conversation by some of the teachers who were talking about their past students. One brought up something about having a girl student who kept repeating the class and ended up dropping out because she had a baby. He commented that she “was so dumb anyway, her and her husband should keep fucking so she would have more kids and never come back to school.” I was so disgusted and shocked that I had to remove myself away from the table before doing a rage table flip on their asses.  I probably should have said something, preferable wise and profound, to educate them, but I didn’t see the point because sometime, hopeless people are hopeless. Maybe I shouldn’t have given up so quickly there, but someday, I get tired of preaching knowing that despite the things I say, people continue with what they had anyway.

Well, that’s a glimpse of my last 2 months-ish. Exciting or boorish?  You decide. Me, I’m just living it. How’s that for a closing line?