Musings

This morning’s run ended in pouring rain, which was actually quite welcome. I never mind running in rain. By the time Emma and I returned home, though, we could wring water out of our t-shirts. My shoes squelched as I walked up stairs to get ready for the third week of school. Hard to believe, considering I will only be at the school for seven weeks total.

One of the other volunteers warned me when I got to the school, “You will have your good days and bad days.” So far, this has definitely been true. Thankfully, today was a good day. The preschool class had 19 students today, and even though that’s a pretty big group, they were pretty easy to handle. The group sang along to songs we only learned on Wednesday, nobody tried to pick a fight with his neighbor, and all of the students stayed in their seats, looking right at me for pretty much the whole time. It’s kinda funny how music can do that, huh? I was especially excited when I brought out the resonator bells. One girl, without speech and some aggression, played the resonator bell like I asked, and then, she sang, “ahhh,” matching the pitch of the bell she had just played.

Since Mary was out of town for the last two music days, I was glad that she finally got to see it in action today. She sat in on the vocational class’ lesson, and although though she was supposed to be helping make purses on the other side of the room, I caught her singing along, and at one point, she was even doing the hand motions for the movement activity. One of the other volunteers took a break from making purses to take some pictures, and I am hoping to have copies of those soon.

After a particularly good lunch (leftovers from Eli’s), I made a significant dent in the book I started on Saturday. Later, I finally motivated myself enough to get out of bed and walk across the street to the beach resort and do yoga in the gym. I am sad to say that I have not done yoga since early April, and I have a feeling my muscles won’t let me forget it tomorrow. It felt wonderful to get back into it, though, so I think I might have to make that an afternoon ritual. Plus, I had the exercise facility to myself and it had air conditioning and full length mirrors. Two things that are hard to come by in Ghana.

Dinner at Eli’s tonight was Amouk, a coconut vegetable curry. Of course, it was amazing. She also served it with fish, which was pretty entertaining to watch. The fish was whole, including eyes and tail, with a little bit of crust where Eli had fried it. The girls just kind of stared at it for a few, and then Mel dug in, cutting it in half and scraping out the meat. Emma (also vegan) and I abstained, but everyone else seemed to really enjoy it.

Apart from upcoming weekend trips, my day-to-day doings during the week have pretty much plateaued. I also realize that dedicated readers you may be, my mother is probably the only one who realllly cares what I am eating, drinking, saying, and thinking every minute of every day (love you, Mom). Then, I thought of all the crazy things that I see every day, and how they are becoming less and less crazy to me as I settle in. So, in order to spice up the blog a bit, and to help me appreciate the Ghanaian life happening around me, I think I’ll start including a few strange sights from each day.

For today:

I rode most of the way into Cape with a cab driver who had what looked like a stick of chap stick stuck up his nose. He was sniffing and blowing his nose before this, so my only guess is that this stick is some sort of remedy for that. Sure did look goofy.

While walking in Cape, I saw a hand painted sign advertising “Peaceman Hair Cuts.”

When walking around Elmina, a young, 20-something woman walked past me. Although people do carry things on their heads frequently, this broke the record for size. Balanced in a big silver bowl was a 3’ x 2’ burlap sack, like a flour or potato sack. She did cheat a little and steady it with her hands, but still, she was walking in a straight line with something the size of a large child sitting on her head! Other interesting items I have seen balanced on heads include a sewing machine and a post-slaughter pig.

Realizations:

Ghana is a country lathered in irony. I’ll give an example. Numerous times before, I have mentioned how chaotic driving is here. I have never worn a seat belt in Ghana. I no longer think anything of it when a taxi driver passes another car on double yellow (or what would be double yellow if there were any paint on the roads) and the oncoming car swiftly swerves to make room, never missing a beat. However, at least once or twice a week, police blocks pull over my taxi to check for proper identification, licensure, and registration. So although a taxi might have seven passengers, a cracked windshield, and belongings overflowing from the trunk, if the driver is a legal one, the car can keep on driving as is.

I might have mentioned that three Global Mamas volunteers from Accra came to visit for the weekend. Yesterday, I woke up to the smell of bacon, and thought, “Oh geeze, you must miss home if you are smelling American things.” I asked around later and found out that the girls had actually brought some bacon at the request of one of the Cape Coast volunteers. Today, another girl was cutting up a hunk of cheddar cheese to put on a salad; also an import from Accra. Yet, yesterday the three Accra girls couldn’t wait to get into Cape Coast to get their usual goods at a lesser price. We couldn’t wait for them to bring us things from Accra, and they couldn’t wait to take back things from Cape Coast – ironic, no?

It is just a few minutes shy of 9pm, and Erin is already asleep. In a few minutes, I’ll join her in dreamland. Funny to think that while we are calling it a day, our friends and family in the US are probably still cooking or just sitting down to dinner. The heat takes a lot out of you, especially the humidity. Today was cool and breezy, but starting in July, the rain stops and the humidity shoots up. Should be fun!