Thursday, January 20, 2011

Peace Corps Volunteers Have Fun Too!

Well, it's been a while since I've written anything on here, so I guess I'll start with a little update of what I've been doing lately. I spent New Year's Eve in the village, which was pretty lame considering the Muslims here go by the lunar calendar and don't really celebrate New Years at all. I stayed in my house for the evening and ended up falling asleep around 7:30pm. I woke up a little after midnight, looked at my clock, and said "Happy New Year!" to myself. Then I promptly went back to sleeep until the morning, when I awoke to morning prayers at 4am. Pretty standard night, honestly :)

Since then, I haven't done anything too groundbreaking. I've been back and forth to Tamale a few times, but mostly sticking to my site and hanging around the village. I'm still working on helping ITFC set up their employee health and welfare fund, which is a slow but rewarding process. Now that the primary school is back in session and several of my friends are teachers, I have been spending more time at the school just hanging out with the teachers and students. Other than that, I mostly go to my friends' houses and hold their babies and struggle through my Dagbani as usual!

On Sunday, my friend Kimmy came to visit my site for a few days and spend some time in the Northern Region. Kimmy is also a health, water, and sanitation Peace Corps volunteer who is stationed in the Upper West Region and has become one of my best friends here. She wanted to brainstorm about project ideas and visit my site, so I was very excited to show her around and hang out with her for a few days. Kimmy is also originally from West Michigan, and we like to joke that we're basically the same person (She even worked at Chicken Coop for a while in high school like me). Anyway, it was great to have a friend around for a few days, and my village (obviously) LOVED having another white lady there to hang out with :) We visited the company, greeted my friends in the village, and we even went over to the primary school to teach some kids how to play volleyball after school. The primary students really want to start a sports club at the school, so I think I'm going to go help teach them sports after school and incorporate a health element as well to help educate these children while they have fun.

On one day, we went to our friend Kristina's market. Kristina is one of my closest neighbors and she has a GREAT, huge market with tons of produce, weaved baskets, fabric, etc... We found a huge pile of wonderful shirts, and many of them were pretty stylish American clothes. It is so fun to rummage around these piles, much like a massive yard sale. The absolute best part of buying clothes at her market, however, is the fact that everything is ridiculously CHEAP. I'm talking 20 pesewas for a shirt. To give you an idea of how cheap this is, I will tell you how much money I spent on 6 shirts, all of which looks very gently used and were popular brands in America (basically, clothes you would buy in the States). In total, I paid 1.2 Gh Cedis for 6 shirts, which is approximately 85 American cents. For 6 SHIRTS. I was in awe. I love Kristina's market! After buying some produce and baskets and just wandering around the massive market, we went to a pito drinking spot for a calabash full of pito. Pito is a type of beer made from fermented millet, and it's pretty popular in Northern Ghana (and some other parts of West Africa). It can only be found in the houses of people who produce it, and you drink it (usually at room temperature or warm) from a calabash. The alcohol content is very small, and it tastes sort of like a slightly bitter cider, but I definitely drink it more for the experience than for the taste. I finally decided that I should start uploading pictures to this blog to give a better idea of what I'm talking about, so below is a photo of (from left to right) me, Kimmy, and Kristina at a pito home outside of the market drinking from our calabashes!


On Kimmy's last night at my site, we invited our friend Connor to join us for dinner and to check out my site. The three of us decided to make fajitas for dinner, so we asked Connor to pick up some meat in town before he came to my village. We expected him to buy some chicken from a cold store or maybe some beef from a street vendor, but he arrived at my site with a LIVE Guinea Fowl. Guinea Fowl is a type of bird that is native to Africa and has very delicious meat that basically tastes like chicken (except better and more sweet, in my opinion). I have come to develop a love/hate relationship with these birds, since I truly enjoy their meat, but I cannot stand the noises they make in the morning outside my house, which is where many of them enjoy roaming. It's an awful, relentless, screeching sound. Simply terrible. Anyway, Kimmy and Connor, being the awesome and integrated volunteers that they are, decided that we ought to slaughter the fowl ourselves, despite several of my friends in the village suggesting that we allow them to handle the bird for us. I took photos while they killed the bird, both because someone had to document the ordeal and because I'm not all that big on slitting a bird's throat, plucking its feathers, and chopping it up. I don't consider myself super squeamish or anything, just not big on doing that kind of thing myself, if you know what I mean. Anyway, they struggled a little at the beginning, and it was pretty hilarious to see my Ghanaian friends accross the street pointing and laughing at the "Silimingas" trying to slaughter the bird. In the end, though, we ate DELICIOUS Guinea Fowl fajitas (thanks to mom who sent me fajita mix! I love packages!) and a chocolate cake (also provided by mom in a package), so we considered the night quite a huge success :)


So that's basically all I've been up to lately. Although being at site has its ups and downs just like anything else, I'm really enjoying myself and I'm so thankful for my friendships with my fellow volunteers. It's great to have friends who share similar passions and dreams, and  As much as I love learning about and experiencing this different culture, there's something refreshing about hanging out with some fellow Americans and reminiscing about our favorite foods and our lives back in the States :) Right now, I'm headed back to my site, and I just got a text from another volunteer telling me that she is on the road bringing me a kitten right now, so I'm hoping within a few hours I'll have a new addition to my little household :) Hopefully this works out, since my last three attempts at getting a cat have failed miserably... I'm crossing my fingers and looking forward to some feline company (and a mouse hunter!). Anyway, that's all the updates I have for now! Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers!