Guess I'm a village girl at heart...

I just arrived at the Peace Corps office in Tamale after a long week of traveling down to Accra (the capitol of Ghana) for medical treatment. I had gone to Tamale on Sunday night to celebrate Halloween, and on Monday morning, just as I was about to head back to site, I snatched a Jolly Rancher from the "free candy" stash at the office, only to bite down just a little too hard and hear something snap. It was a horrible, familiar sound (I've broken the same tooth 3 other times) as nearly half of my front tooth cracked apart. Needless to say, I was pretty mad at myself for letting that happen and I called the PCMO (the Peace Corps doctor) to tell him what happened and he said I should try to travel down to Accra as soon as possible. I already had a bag packed from the night before, and if I left right away, I knew I could make it to the sub-office in Kumasi, about halfway between here and Accra. So I dashed over to the bus, hopped on, and started frantically calling everyone to let them know where I was headed and have people inform my village that I wasn't abandoning them :) About 6 hours later, I arrived in Kumasi and was again struck by how different southern Ghana is from northern Ghana. For one thing, we just don't have big cities like the South. I mean, genuine street signs? multi-story buildings? traffic jams? Tamale just isn't that developed yet, and I was amazed at how unfamiliar it was to feel like I was in a regular 'ole city in the states or something...
After spending the night at the (beautiful) sub-office in Kumasi, I finished up the last 6 hours of my trip and ended up in Accra on Tuesday afternoon. I hadn't been to the capitol since the first week I was in Ghana during training, so everything basically seemed new to me. Accra is huge, and getting anywhere costs about a day's wages for a one-way taxi ride (wish I was kidding...), so that again was a shock to my system! Although I will get reimbursed for my traveling, meals, etc... by Peace Corps in my next paycheck, I was shelling out my own money for this trip in the meantime, and the Cedi just doesn't stretch down south like it does up north! EVERYTHING is more expensive in Accra, which makes sense I suppose; the more developed an area is, the more things cost to maintain that level of development. Anyway, besides the cost of everything, I was stunned at how accessible everything is in the capitol. It's sort of a Peace Corps joke that anything you need, you can "get it in Accra" and that does indeed seem to be the case, particularly when you're talking about dining options. Chinese, Indian, American, Thai... You name the food genre and you're bound to find a restaurant serving it up in the finest fashion in Accra. The way people dress is also a noticeable difference between regions. In general, people dress quite differently in the South, wearing less traditional, more Westernized clothing (forgive me for using the word "Westernized." I hate using it as the connotation is often quite ethnocentric, but it seems appropriate in this context). I don't think I've ever seen a woman in my village wear anything besides a skirt or dress, while in Accra there was barely a skirt in sight. This isn't to say that women don't wear pants in the north, or that they never wear skirts or dresses in the south, just an observation based mostly on differences between my conservative Islamic northern village and the metropolitan Christian southern city.
On Wednesday, a wonderful dentist in Accra fixed my tooth and sent me on my way, after which I stumbled on a little cafe close to the place I was staying and enjoyed an American-style chicken club sandwich, french fries, and a chocolate milkshake. All of the stress and money I had spent in the preceeding days faded away as I munched on my meal and watched the HD tv that was playing in the corner of the room... It was truly one of the only redeeming moments of the trip for me, if I'm being honest. By the time I left Accra this morning at 5am to take a straight bus back to Tamale, I was so ready to return to my quiet pace of life I was nearly giddy with anticipation to go back in the North. I'm comfortable here, and I'm starting to really grow accustomed to the atmosphere of Gushie and the people there. I miss them when I leave, I'm anxious to get back and hear if anything happened while I was gone, and most of all, I miss my house when I leave. This place is really starting to feel like "home" to me, and traveling only makes me more acutely aware of that feeling.
Unfortunately, I am making the journey back to Accra at the end of this month. Fortunately, the reason I'm going is to join all of my Peace Corps friends at the American Ambassador's house for a Thanksgiving feast of epic proportions. I think my trip there for turkey day will be infinitely better than this trip was, since I'll be traveling with friends and celebrating my favorite holiday!

Well, that's all for now. More to come soon, I hope...