You may call me "Caro"

These past few days have been pretty busy, and to add to that, it has been INSANE hot here! We have been in Asamankese for a little over 2 weeks now, and we’ve almost gone through 2 whole cases of 24 water bottles for the two of us. We drink a ton, and sweat a whole lot more!

We are, for the most part, feeling better; Pepto Bismal has been my best friend the past couple days.

Okay, so to recap the past couple days:

Tuesday:

So first of all, Happy Love Day to everyone from Africa, yesterday. I don’t think you could ask for a more beautiful place to spend Valentine’s Day than in Asamankese, Ghana. Seriously.

We woke up and Belinda treated us to boafruit for breakfast, so I am really glad that my stomach was feeling up to it! Yum!

I went for a walk by myself in the morning before Petra was awake. I just needed some fresh air and alone time. I decided to have a quiet walk, so I headed away from the town and in the direction of the school in the country. The mountains are beautiful and the landscape as I walked down the road was breathtaking in the morning! It was a good opportunity to just take time to think and reflect on everything we are doing, and just process all my thoughts.

The morning here is my favourite time of day. The sun hasn’t completely come up yet and it is nice and cool. The clouds are still hanging over the mountains, and there is a fog in the air that is so natural, it just makes you thankful for everything around you.

But, walks in Asamankese when you are one of the only obroni’s in town are never uneventful:

-on the way back, I had a whole pack of school children walking with me (literally 23 kids)

-a man with dreadlocks down his back smiled real big at me to say hello...holding a machete...in Canada that would have been creepy. Here, it is completely normal.

-following that note, there was also a woman sharpening her machete on the rocks in front of her shop...first woman that I have seen with a machete so far.

-almost all of the taxi’s here have a Christian slogan on the back window: “Holy God” or “Jesus is Lord” etc. This morning one passed me that said “Lil Wayne” on the back...haha

-a bird crapped on a little girl’s dress as she was walking to school. Her mom tried to wash it off...hopefully it all came off?

-I realized that I walk super fast here. 1. Because I naturally DO walk really fast, 2. Because Ghanaians actually do walk SUPER slow, and 3. Because as the children were walking behind me, I started to notice that they were breathing really heavily. I turned around and asked them if I was walking to fast, and they sighed and exclaimed, “yessss.” Whoops. I will have to learn to slow down.

I was JUST about in the gate at Auntie Jo’s again, when a guy called me over. Shucks. He said his name was Ben, gave me his fist to pound it and asked if he could be my friend. I, being awful at this lying about being married thing, said, “what do you mean by that?” He must have known what I was questioning, because he answered, “I don’t mean what you think I mean.” Oh geez. He asked for my contact information, and I continued with the lie about having no phone saying, “oh no! You won’t be able to reach me because I don’t have a number to call!” It has worked well so far. Ben walks in front of our house quite often now. Great.

I got back and William, the guy who works at the restaurant at our guest house, was playing praise and worship songs that we have back home. He always blasts English music and it is probably my favourite thing about staying there. Gives me a little sense of home every day.

Everyone here calls my Caro. I have realized it is much easier for them to pronounce as well as remember. So that is now my name.

For lunch, since Belinda knew we loved boafruit, we had it again. With Coke. Healthiest lunch ever? Nope. Most delicious lunch ever? YUP!

Petra called her leggings, “knickers” today...either it is the heat, or I am just crazy, but I thought it was the most hilarious thing ever and laughed for a long time. Long enough to find it worth putting in my blog I guess?

We did some lesson planning outside in the sun, and then walked to town. We needed to do some photocopying, so we went to Smart’s shop. (Yes, we have a friend!! And yes, his name is actually “Smart”). It is so nice to walk to town and see familiar faces now that we are becoming more accustomed to living here.

We went to see Cynthia since she was at the pawpaw farm the day before. We found her in her hiding place, cutting up pawpaw and putting them in bags to sell that afternoon. We watched in awe at how quickly she could peel, remove seeds, and cut up the pieces of fruit; all without cutting her finger off. She gave us some pawpaw to try; tastes kind of like melon, but not as juicy. People love it here...it’s not bad. As she cut, we talked about her business, she taught us Twi words for some animals that they have here, and she taught us her theory of how to tell which body parts your fruits are good for.

         -she says that mango’s are good for your ears, because they are    shaped like ears

-pawpaw is good for your stomach; just because. And it is good for your veins, because when you open them up, they have little pulp-like strings in them that look like veins.

Hmm, it’s a theory alright. She is SUCH a fun lady! We walked around with her for a bit after she had cleaned and finished cutting all of the pawpaw and watched at how quickly she sold them.

Cynthia and I

That afternoon, we taught literacy classes again. WE HAD 20 WOMEN!! Thank you for all your prayers. This is VERY exciting for us. There were 7 women in level 1, and 13 women in level 2. That sure beats the 5 women in total that we had had before!!!

We went over an English song that Melissa had taught some of them before she left. (“Blessed be the Name of the Lord”). Not everyone knew the words, or the tune for that matter, so guess who Auntie Julie picked to lead the song? Yup. Me.

Okay, for anyone who knows me...you know why this would be the worst decision Auntie Julie could ever make. I make people cringe when I sing. I am tone deaf and have THE worst singing voice of all time. And I had to lead the song. I did it though, and well enough I suppose because the women caught on and enjoyed singing it. I added clapping so that it would cover my voice a little more.

After class, we walked home with the women. This has become a great opportunity to chat with them outside of a classroom setting, and they definitely open up to us and we have been learning more and more about their lives and their families. They have started to teach us some Twi words as well, and a couple of them want to help me get my hair braided. Still unsure about that one yet.

When we got back to the house, we had company. I will explain. It was Valentine’s Day, and Auntie Jo helped organize a HUGE celebration for everyone that was being held in town at the Presby Church. The main attraction was this super famous singer who is really well known in Ghana (like songs on the radio, people screaming when she went on stage, filming her with their cellphones kind of famous! Seriously, google her...she’s everywhere). Her backup dancers were staying at our house.

Us with a couple of the backup dancers as they were getting ready

It is actually really funny because normally people would be really excited to see and meet the singer (Akosua Agyepong) and her dancers, but they were all excited to meet us and have Canadian friends and get our numbers and add us on Facebook.

We had hotdogs for supper. Belinda overheard us saying that we missed them, and the next day they appeared on our plate. We love her.

William played country music from the restaurant after class. I was in my happy place. It’s the first time I have heard it this whole trip; they don’t really listen to country here.

The Valentine’s Night was called “Night of Love” and apparently, little to Petra and my knowledge, we were invited guests. We were seated in chairs right by Akosua, and handed water bottles and Ghanaian chocolate.

Ghanaians love their holidays and celebrations, and this night was no exception:

LOOK HOW PACKED IT WAS!!!

-there were dancers, singers, performers

-the place was PACKED. People were in pews, in chairs, in the aisles, standing higherup at the back, looking through the windows...it was insane!

-the kids did a choreographed routine which was amazing!

-and it keeps coming up, but black people can MOVE to music, wow! Whenever another song would come on, everyone in the place would move to the front and dance like crazy.

-they waved their handkerchiefs during the songs

-the decorations were insane. Red and white balloons, streamers; it was beautiful! Everyone else wore red and white and we never thought about it. We definitely should have.

-it was SO loud. We sat right by a speaker. Ghanaians are loud all the time, but add a microphone with huge speakers and you have to plug your ears sometimes.

-it was mostly in Twi, so at one point Smart came up to me to tell me to take a video of the next dance routine. I couldn’t hear him, so I leaned in closer and he did the same. We clocked heads and I felt super bad.

-at one point Auntie Jo was out dancing and came over and put her hands out. We had no choice but to go out and dance with her. IN FRONT OF EVERYONE. Auntie Jo was holding my one arm, and some guy grabbed the other so I imagine I looked even more ridiculous than I normally would when dancing in front of a crowd?

-the program was super long; we were there until midnight and couldn’t leave early because Auntie Jo was a chair person. I think I may have fallen asleep at one point accidentally. Whoops. I also got hungry by the end, so I ate all of my chocolate.

-there was a professional photographer there and a bunch of people wanted pictures with us at the end of the program. I had no idea who any of them were haha

This morning, we woke up early to say goodbye to all the dancers who were leaving to go back to Accra.

We had class again this afternoon and again we had a large group! I taught level 1 and Petra taught level 2 today. I was starting with the alphabets; first we had to teach the Twi alphabet (which yes, it is different) and then we moved on to introducing the English ABC’s.  I am realizing how important it is to make sure that I am writing everything correctly and how easily it is to slip into bad habits that I have with how I print my letters. These women are learning quickly, and it is amazing to see progress already after only a few classes!

Part of what the classroom looks like

Okay, sorry about the rambling, there may very well be lots of spelling mistakes in here since I typed it up pretty quickly. It has been a busy couple days. And with that, I am going to bed.

haha...Petra took a picture of me looking for the Lizard

OH! PS! We had our first lizard in our house! EW! I thought I was used to lizards by now, but apparently that was only because they stayed outside. It was a baby one and it was behind our toilet. I am now afraid to go in there because we can’t find it back. I think it climbed in the back of tank in the toilet. I’m scared it will crawl on my butt when I sit on the toilet. Yuck yuck yuck! I go in and look for it every morning haha.