A fine mess of contradictions

One day, on a nice hot afternoon when all of the chickens and roosters are fast asleep in the sun, I'm going to run outside and start screaming at the top of my lungs for 3 hours. This is exactly what they do to me every single morning at 3 am! It's NOT sunny at 3 in the morning. It is not even close and yet every day I hear those stupid birds starting up and then its all over. Its actually funny, and I think by the time I leave here I will be able to sleep through anything!

Life in Kumasi has been interesting, hot and very educational. Last week we went to the clinic as usual and saw a lot of very ill patients. Some of these people have to wait for 8 hours in the clinic for the one HIV/AIDS specialist doctor to come and give them their medications and check-ups. It must be so hard.

The kids at Fiayse, the school for vulnerable children are the cutest things- though quite insane. They get us more dirty than I could imagine. I left last week and my whole outfit was brown- and I'm not exaggerating! I brought them some little dollar store jungle animals and they were so happy! They usually spend the whole day beating the hell out of each other when we don't completely occupy them, but when you give them toys they actually sit down and stop hitting each other. They don't have anything here- so it was really fun to watch them play. They are also learning the alphabet- though I think they understand the song- they definitely don't understand the concept. I could definitely see myself adopting when I'm older- these children need so much love and there are many people who could offer them an education, and proper health care. I'd never really thought about it before but with the amount of orphans in Ghana and worldwide I would definitely consider it . There are these twin girls here that I'm in love with and would love to take home with me! The other older girls at the school are also apparently getting pregnant more frequently so we are trying to increase our sexual health talks and teach them how to prevent pregnancy. It think it is very discouraging for Agnes the coordinator because she works so hard trying to teach them skills that they can use instead of just having babies. It is a "country without fathers" as she said, because most men want nothing to do with the babies they are creating so the woman is left to look after the children alone.

I wasnt feeling well last week (I'm pretty much the same this week and though I dont feel horrible by any means my stomach is not happy to be here and will probably stay like this for the next month!), so me and my host sister who was also not feeling well were convinced by my host mom Agnes to see the doctor while we were at the hospital. Let me just say that I am praying I never get very sick here because I think I would have a huge freakout if I ended up in the hospital. These poor people wait in line all day to be seen. The dark waiting room was full of crying babies, had a vomit bucket in the middle of the room, and people with bloody stumps were just sitting and waiting for the doctor. It was not a place I could have spent a lot of time without going insane. Because I was a volunteer and sadly I think because I'm an obruni I got in to see the doctor ahead of a huge line of very sick people. I felt really bad because I was definitely in better shape than most of the people there. The doctor asked me about 3 questions, asked for my address in Canada (he wanted help getting his son a Visa apparently!) and gave me a prescription without any tests. I went to the pharamacy and asked what the prescription was for and it was for blood thinners and malaria pills! Note: I have literally no symptoms for malaria. It was very strange so I'm definitely not taking them, but I think its the norm here. If youre sick, its malaria no matter what. Funnily enough, Gill (my friend from Western who is here with me) just found out she has malaria today with only one week left. It totally sucks and I think she's disappointed, but at least she caught it before she got really sick and she seems to be doing okay. I will do my best to look after her!

This weekend me , Gill and Femke another Dutch volunteer all went to Cape Coast. We took the 4 am bus so we had to get up really early to make it to the depot across town. After almost getting stuck in a very sketchy motel we managed to get a room in a beach resort for only 60,000 cedis a night- about 6 USD. It was nice, had outdoor bathrooms and a shower but the rooms were clean looking and it was right on the water. We went to the Cape Coast Castle- a major port for the translatlantic slave trade. It was really interesting because I had learned a lot about it in my postcolonial classes so it was really informative to be there. We went to the dungeons where they held slaves and got to see "the door of no return". It was quite the bizarre experience, but they had a really good display on the history and it was such a sad and yet really educational place to visit. I would definitely recommend anyone interested in the slave trade to visit this historical site. It was unbelievable how many people went to their deaths in this place, or were completely ripped away from the only life they knew to travel to the Caribbean and Americas. We also met a huge group of European volunteers and went to Kakum National park. We did a canopy walk over the rainforest that was so beautiful and was built by Canadians!

It was nice to meet some other obruni's because we do stand out quite a bit and it was nice to share our hilarious travel stories. We also ran into 3 medical students from Germany, Austria and Sweden. You should have seen us when we found out they were medical students. We literally jumped all over them, showing them rashes, telling them symptoms, asking questions. As I learned from my 30 second doctor appointment its hard to get good medical treatment here so the whole group was asking them questions. We even coerced them into going to see one of the Swedish girls who had been having a horrible fever all weekend. It was a truly funny experience and I've never seen people happier to encounter doctors!

The beach at Cape Coast was really beautiful, but as I've learned beaches in Ghana are basically public bathrooms and dump sites. So while you see the beautiful ocean you look to the side and see a small child going to the bathroom and a huge pile of garbage. Its very sad and not great for their tourism.

Thats all for now, I have to run but will try to post or edit this later so it hopefully makes more sense. I miss all of you!

posted by Kate @ 4:54 AM