I've always been proud to be Canadian, but this is shameful.  Watch the following CBC documentary, aired on 10 June 2009:

http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/healtheducation/canadas_ugly_secret.html

Watch.  Throw a fit.  Then write some letters. 

Ok, so... life is SO COOL.

We've officially finished school for the semester, which is still a bit surreal.  I think this may partly be due to the fact that I normally jet out soon after finishing my last exam of a semester, but here I still have a little under 3 weeks left out in West Africa.  It has been terribly fun, though, to be able to just do whatever I want - go to the beach, markets, etc. for the past couple days, without worrying about being back at ISH to write papers or study.

The last 2 weeks were crazy busy, not only with a pile of assignments and exams to take care of, but also full of last-minute events, and things we had to take care of (such as heading into town to get a visa to travel to TOGO!!).  We've made it through, though, and it's kind of a little sad to be finished with some of our cool classes here.  I also can't believe we're already this far!  Is the end of this grand adventure of a semester in Ghana REALLY so close?  Hard to believe.  Time FLIES.

On Thursday (Yank Thank... aka: American Thanksgiving), a bunch of us hopped on a tro-tro and headed for the beach, where we sat and read, and where I drank a painfully overpriced pineapple juice.  I also got my toenails painted, though that was not entirely by choice... nor was the colour... and now I'm stuck with purple toenails, which I find rather strange... I'm really not a nail polish wearer...  oh well!  Anyway, a few of us left a tad early and went to Global Mamas in Osu - it's a fair trade store that sells crafts made by women's cooperatives - lots of it is also recycled (ie: beads made from recycled glass, coin purses made from used water sachets, etc.).  Very cool store -- it was one of those inspiring-type places that you want to support!  :)  In the evening we had American Thanksgiving dinner at the Institute of African Studies (IAS) Chalets, which was delicious! 

Friday morning I finished up my last paper of the semester, and then set about calling IN Network for the second time to see about setting up a visit with Opa and Oma Geleynse's sponsored child here in Ghana.  I was really worried that it would not work out anymore, but my contact there, Fred, worked a miracle and made it possible for me to go that very day!!  That was unexpected, and I dashed out the dorm right away (about 1:15), a bag of plantain chips flapping in my hand (my lunch for the day!), heading for the tro-tro station.  It was my first time heading out into Accra alone, so I was kind of proud of myself... though some credit has to go to Bliss, a young woman whom I met on the tro-tro and asked about our stop.  She ended up helping me WAY past the stop, taking a taxi WITH ME to the IN Network office, and then refusing to let me pay!  It was such a cool encounter!
Anyway, the visit itself was amazing.  I met the little girl and her Mom and sister, saw her school, went to their house... It was just such a unique and cool experience!  There she was! -- this beautiful little 6 year-old girl who my grandparents back in Canada support to go to school!  What a connection!  THANK-YOU, Opa and Oma, for asking me to visit her! 
On the way back, I had a fantastic discussion with Fred about education, development, etc., and got to ask him a bit more about the community we had visited and about the IN sponsorship program.  It was great.
When I got back at around 7, I was exhausted, but went to the Bush Canteen with Libby to see if our clothes were finished being made.  We sat there reading in the darkened little market, waiting for the seamstresses to finish Libby's things (mine were still not finished... sad day)... which, despite my fatigue, was another cool and unique experience when you think about it!

Yesterday, most of us went marketing, just because it's ridiculously fun (and some of us still wanted to get some things before we head out traveling... gifts, etc.).  I've realized just how cool it is that we can find our way around, that we know where in the markets to go for certain things, that we are familiar with certain vendors, etc.  We've also become better at bargaining on prices, and even had a downright good time with some of the people at the art market/cultural centre (which is pretty high pressure!).  It was so great, and on the way back a few of us stopped at the Accra mall (which is fairly new).  I hadn't been there yet this semester, and it was really overwhelming in its modernity, etc.  The foreign population also sky-rocketed, which actually made me feel like I stuck out much less... which was an interesting feeling.  And the washrooms!  They were average mall washrooms by Canadian standards, but they were the nicest I've used all semester!  I think the contrast from the street to the mall was especially striking after spending the day in the markets... I didn't totally know how to handle it, despite having dealt with the same kind of thing before in connection with our time in Haiti.  Anyway, we enjoyed some cold drinks there, indulged my curiousity by visiting the grocery store briefly (where we got some wine samples!!), and then tro-tro-ed back... ending yet another LONG (but good!) day. 

Anyway, that's been life as of late... I probably won't be online for a while now, because of our upcoming plans.  Tomorrow (Dec. 1... wait, what?!  DECEMBER???!!!) we leave on our final group excursion to the city of Kumasi until Dec. 3.  On December 4, we leave for free travel time... I'm going with 4 others from our Calvin group to Togo and Benin for about 8 days, taking only a backpack each.  We're getting creative with our packing... (ie: taking 2 yards of fabric to use as a light-weight towel... which doubles as a skirt if need be!!).  Our little trip sounds ridiculously exciting! 

We hope to return on Dec. 12, on which evening we have our final party scheduled for all those who've had a special role in our semester. 
On the 14th-15th we will go up to Akropong for our last time for final discussions/debriefing.  Our flight is scheduled to leave Ghana on the evening of Dec. 17, and if all goes well, we should return to Grand Rapids the evening of the 18th!  I'll stay in GR for a day, then fly back to BC for Christmas on the 20th. 

It is so crazy that the end is so close!  I can hardly believe it!  I'm looking forward to seeing my family and people again, and Christmas sounds nice... but I'm also feeling sad that this whole grand escapade is so close to ending...

Anyway, thanks for reading!
With best wishes to you all from Ghana,

Maria ;)

Ok, this is going to be a long one again, folks!  I'll try to cut out some of the smaller details and won't comment on everything I wish I could in an effort to not keep you all sitting here for a year!  Here goes...!

Day 1 - Monday, 27 October
We left campus at about 6:45AM (supposed to be 6...) for our 13 hour trip to the North in our little bus.  We made only short stops along the way for an interesting assortment of washroom facilities (seriously, the places we've peed this semester deserve a separate blog entry all to themselves...!) and some snack purchases.  We reached Yendi a bit before 8, and ate supper somewhere outside in the dark.  After that we headed to our guesthouse, which was nice enough, but had no running water, random large bugs in the hall, and no top sheets on the beds...  but, oh well -- all part of the experience!  And it just goes to show how little is really needed...  :)

Day 2 - Tuesday, 28 October
We spent the day being toured around by a man who works for a local NGO in Yendi called BIRDS (mainly works to empower and care for women and children).  We were briefed on BIRDS, then headed out to visit a female chief.  The visit was interesting - we all took off our sandals and went into her hut for an audience with her, where we could ask her questions through an interpreter.

After our visit to the chief, we went to 2 women's cooperatives that BIRDS works with - the first group makes shea butter and the second processes rice.  It was so cool and interesting to see the idea of microfinance and empowerment of women through cooperatives right up close and personally!  We also got to speak with the women and ask them questions through an interpreter as well. 

After eating lunch, we drove along a long dirt road for a little under an hour outside of Yendi to visit a witches' camp.  Alleged witches are sent away from their villages to go to the camp to be purified by a fetish priest (who lives there and cares for the witch camp community), and many stay there (they're often not welcome to return home).  More than 800 people live there, and there are a few men and a whole lot of children there too (some are sent with the alleged witches to care for them, some are children that have been raised in the community, etc.).  The children latched onto us right away, and we walked along the path under the roasting sun with 5 or 6 hanging onto our various fingers and clothes with their dirt-covered little hands.  Some spoke enough English to tell us their names when we asked.  The children were beautiful - and amazing!  Small girls carried babies on their backs (as adult women do here) - one little girl looked only about 6, maybe, and she was carrying a baby on her back at the same time as holding one in front at one point!  That's a lot of weight for a small child!!  Anyway, despite the dirt, the children completely reinspired my desire to help/work with children somehow.
We spoke to the fetish priest and to some of the women through interpreters, learning that most of the women are older and weak, and that the community has food and water problems.  Eventually, we left, traipsing back along the path with children hanging on all around us again until we reached the bus.  Then we had to free our hands and board, leaving the children standing there looking at us, our temporary connection severed...  I felt like a horrible person.  I felt like a useless, stupid, perhaps even destructive white spectacle, and was quite conscious of the bus as our convenient, air-conditioned escape...  the members of the camp have no air-conditioned escape from their problems, but there we, the good old white folks, boarded and took off after swooping briefly in for education's sake.  The whole experience was interesting, hot, sweaty, and dirty... and unsettling.  I left being reminded of the harsh realities many people face everyday.  On the bus, I sat pondering a billion things, and feeling once more frustrated and confused about any role of the West in development, my role and stereotype as a white Westerner in a world where I have so many problems with what white Westerners have done, etc, etc, etc!

That night after supper, we went to a gonje (traditional Northern one-stringed fiddle) performance at the home of the BIRDS man who had toured us around for the day.  There was a dog, a cat, and a goat in the courtyard at the beginning, which reminded me of "The Bremingtown Musicians" that I used to read as a kid.  :)  Anyway, we all danced and enjoyed the music, and by the end, much of the community was filling the small outdoor courtyard.  It was delightful, and was a great peek at traditional family entertainment and social life.  It was also a good end to a day that had not been the easiest...

After taking a bucket shower (yes, showering with buckets using hauled-in buckets of water), I went to bed, exhausted.

Day 3 - Wednesday, 29 October
The day involved a lot of driving, but was super duper!  We drove for about 4 hours, went through Tamale, and then Bolgatanga, and saw the first Catholic church/cathedral built up North here (finished about 1928, I think). 
After eating lunch at some guesthouse, we drove to Paga (almost right on the Ghana-Burkina Faso border) to see a sacred crocodile pond.  Apparently, the crocs there have never harmed a human, so naturally, we all (ok, not all!) took turns holding their tails or straddling them while touching their backs... yup, it was sweet.  I walked away wiping crocodile mud off my hand, contemplating how totally sweet it was that I just basically sat on a crocodile in the wild in Africa...  Our tuition dollars paid for 2 chickens to be "sacrificed" to the crocs - which was a little sad, poor birds, but was also interesting in that we got to see the powerful jaws and teeth at work of the creatures we'd just touched!!

After that little activity, we drove a couple minutes to reach the Burkina Faso border (yup, when I say we went North, we WENT NORTH!), which we proceeded to walk across... without passports.  It was SWEET.  We were only across for a few minutes before walking back into Ghana (again, without passports...), but signs were in French and we high-fived a few French-speaking Burkina Faso kids!  We were SO in Burkina Faso.

Then, we drove all the way back to Tamale, where we set up camp in guesthouse #2 (Tamale Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies -- AKA: TICCS) of our trip, which was nice and had sheets and running water!  :)

Day 4 - Thursday, 30 October
NGO visits!
In the morning we visited Catholic Relief Services Ghana and GILLBT (Ghana Institute of Literacy, Linguistics, and Bible Translation -- I think that's right...) to learn about the organizations and ask questions.
After lunch we went to a small cultural market for about an hour, where I got a few things, including a nice fabric to get another dress made.  It was a pretty fun little stop, especially as the market wasn't big, crowded, or pushy!
Later in the afternoon, we had a briefing and question period about TICCS.
More random small things, but this is going to be an insanely long blog entry, so they get skipped over...  :)

Day 5 - Friday, 31 October
Yes, we all realized it was Reformation Day and Halloween.  (SOOO nice to miss all the tackiness of North America's halloween!!  At least, in my opinion...). 

More NGO visits.
We went to World Vision Tamale to learn about them and ask questions (and use their doorless bathroom stalls... haha... again - bathrooms totally deserve their own blog entry!).
After that, we piled on the bus again to drive for about an hour and a half to what seemed like the middle of nowhere to visit an NGO called Northern Empowerment... which actually proved to be a rather confusing session, and left us feeling that the organization is very much in transition.  Apparently it receives CIDA funding, though...

We returned to TICCS to debrief on our 2 days of NGO visits.  I actually quite enjoyed the visits -- it was very interesting to visit NGO's out in the field after reading and hearing so much back home about NGO's in Africa...

Oh, this was also the day that our bus driver bought himself a goat to take back down to Accra... He was quickly named Oliver by our group, and got to ride on top of the bus with our luggage for the whole rest of the trip, poor creature!  It was slightly comical, however, to have a little goat on our roof...

Day 6 - Saturday, 1 November (yikes!  How the heck is it already NOVEMBER??!!!)
We drove a little over 5 hours (mostly on a poor dirt road lined with bush) to get to Mole National Park, which is a huge wildlife preserve.  We had lunch on the move again, and stopped for bush pees a couple times (we are getting SOOO good at that... seriously!  It's quite the art not to splatter your feet!  :) )
We got to Mole around 3, quickly checked into our rooms, and split into 2 groups to head out on a walking safari in the bush led by guides with rifles.  The grounds of Mole are covered with warthogs, and I had a nice scary little run-in with one -- he was much, MUCH too close for comfort, about a metre away from me, staring at me, as I stood trembling with a suitcase between us... then he snorted and randomly left... PHEWF!  Anyway, our walk allowed us sightings of baboons, kobs, bushbuck, more warthogs, funky bugs, and some cool plants.  It was hot, but like so many other experiences here in Ghana, SO SWEET!  Yup, we just trekked around through the bush on the West African savanna, seeing wild African animals in their natural habitat... haha - reminded me of Chris and Martin Kratt, for those of you who ever watched Kratt's Creatures... :)

Day 7 - Sunday, 2 November
We got up early to leave around 7AM for another safari walk.  This time we went down into the plain behind our accommodations.  The walk was GORGEOUS - the morning was fresh and new, and cool to begin (by the end, the sweat was dripping again!).  We waded and swam through tall grasses and trees as bugs buzzed around our sweaty bodies, crossed a stream on a fallen tree, saw more kobs and bushbuck, saw some green monkeys, birds, and bugs, and tracked an elephant (but never found him) using footprints, fresh elephant droppings, and a cracked small tree.  It was again, SO SWEET to be walking the African savanna like it was the most natural thing in the world -- it was all kind of like a dream!
We returned for breakfast around 9 or 9:30, then went for a swim in a little pool before leaving Mole a little after 11AM.
We bumped and bounced along the same road as Saturday, making another bush pee stop (we're SOOOO good at this now - we all just march into the bush, hike our skirts or drop our pants, and go -- it's actually a very communal and fun activity...) and eating lunch on the road.
After about 4-5 hours of that, we drove paved roads to Kumasi for about 5 more hours, arriving at our guesthouse at about 9:30.  We ate quickly and headed to bed, exhausted again.  I kind of like the long bus rides for thinking time and for writing in my head, but my butt was sore and I was ready to step out of that bus and sleep!

Day 8 - Monday, 3 November
We had our luggage out by 7:30AM to load onto the top of the bus (with little Oliver!), and hit the road AGAIN in our worn and weary bus.  The drive was actually quite beautiful, though about another 5 hours long, and landed us finally back at ISH around 2:30PM.  We all gratefully stepped down from the bus (our virtual home for the week!!).  It was really nice to be back, even though the trip was good and full of cool experiences.  I was tired, as I think we all were, and it was strange to have been away from ISH for that long!  It almost seemed like a dream that we'd ever been there!  Road signs for Accra on the trip back left me with feelings of "awwww!  home base!!"... like I get on the way back from camping in the summers back home...  crazy that I'd get to feel that about Accra, Ghana in my life!!!


All in all, the trip was good, and full of cool experiences.  The North is quite different from the South... Mud buildings and compounds.  Greater presence of Islam - mosques, calls to prayer, etc.  Lots of NGO's.  Lots of bikes and motorbikes (there's even a bike LANE in Tamale!!).
We spent hours on the bus, and I was often left again with that strange feeling of being such a spectacle as this bus full of white Westerners parading on through... I guess we can't really hide it, but it feels strange.  And I'm left wondering what everyone thinks of us... what is our true image here? 

Ok, enough of that for now...  and enough of this for now.  I think it's high time I put all my thoughts and ponderings on hold and close this entry...  I was hoping to make it all beautiful and creative, but it didn't happen -- maybe with a shorter entry...?  :)

Thanks for reading!

Peace,
Maria