Of Weddings, Church, and FanMilk

After spending a week in Tamale I finally arrived in Buipe last Tuesday. I spent a few nights in staff accommodation prior to finding a permanent place to live. I am now living with a pastor and his family. There are four kids in my host family aged 4, 10, 12, and 17. I am sharing a room (which is also the living room) with the two girls (aged 10 and 17). It is definitely cozy living quarters! I will try and post some pictures of my home and family soon.

Unfortunately I have yet to have a good sleep at my host families home as my neighbours have been having a wedding. This wedding has been a three day (nearly 24 hours a day) event and has put any Canadian wedding that I have seen to shame in terms of music volume - you should see the size of speakers that got busted out for this event - dancing, food, and colourful clothing. I am been lulled to sleep by crazy loud base, and Saturday was extra special when Aqua's Barbie Girl was blasting at 2 am. Last night the wedding dance party migrated to be right in front of my current home. I spent about 30 seconds dancing before a huge crowd of children gathered and stopped to stare at me, the obroni (white person) dancing. Cell phones were pulled out to photo-document the white girl dancing - a truly hilarious and awkward experience for me.

I also had the experience of going to church yesterday. This was much less positive for me than the dance party. I was lectured on the proper role of women in a family in a strange little event called "Sunday School". This was incredibly tough to sit through especially because the man leading this discussion kept directing the lecture at me and was making sure that I was understanding the submissive, obedient role that he was insisting I am to fill. Church was definitely challenging for me. I think that religion and gender roles (that seem to be based in religion) are both things that I will struggle with while I am here.

Post church I went on a mission to locate FanMilk. This is an amazing Ghanaian ice cream creation which upon consumption makes everything in the world (ie. post church stress syndrome) seem okay. On that note, if anyone out there wants to start importing FanMilk to Canada you will have one loyal customer starting in September.

Thoughts on a Plane

I have not had internet access for the past week, so this post is long long overdue. Take a minute, remember what you did last Monday night, imagine you are there again. It IS last Monday.

Now you may continue reading.

I have just finished an intense week of pre-departure learning in Toronto. The past week was full of workshops, debates, and discussions with the other Junior Fellows. We were all living in the EWB house in Toronto - it was a house full of talking, laughter, music, and very little sleep. I went into pre-dep feeling very excited but somewhat unprepared for the next three months. I am leaving pre-dep feeling even more excited and much more comfortable with the unexpected.

As our final activity in pre-dep we all made a commitment for our placements. I have committed to staying present throughout my placement. This is something that I struggle with as I am forever planning/writing to-do lists/thinking about what I need to do next.  I am in Ghana for such a short amount of time and I really want to commit to being present in order to take in as much as I can over the next few months. I want to experience Ghanaian culture, learn more about what development actually looks like, and ultimately by being present I hope to be able to recognize opportunities so that I can have some sort of impact during my placement, or at least I hope to fail gracefully.

So you may be wondering to yourself: where am I now. Well, there is an interesting answer to that question. Our original flight plan involved us flying to Newark, then Washington, and finally Accra. Here is what actually happened…we ended up being very delayed in Newark and missing our connecting flight to Accra, though we tried dreadfully hard to catch that Accra flight. Picture 18 people sprinting through Dulles airport carrying multiple laptops and many motorcycle helmets hanging from backpacks…a truly ridiculous experience. After our epic journey through the Dulles airport, we were given the news that our plane had already left. Although incredibly disappointed we set up camp on the floor of the airport, hanging out, singing, snack eating and awaiting news of where we were going next. Eventually we received the news that we were staying in a hotel for the night and then flying through Frankfurt the following day.

The group of us were split into 3 flights in Frankfurt. My flight was not until 10 pm so a few of us went to check out DC today. We only had a couple of hours in DC so we hit a few of the touristy spots and wandered by some of the government buildings. There are some very incredible buildings which house the (apparently infinite) branches of the US government. Personal side note: I have now added going to the Smithsonian on my life to do list. After that it was back to the airport for our second attempt at going to Accra.

That brings me to right now, so far so good with Operation Accra Part Two. I am currently on the flight to Frankfurt. Pretty soon I will be able to stop imagining what Ghana will be like and replace those thoughts with experiences. This just in: I can now express the countdown to Ghana in terms of hours.