Thursday, December 27, 2012
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Monkey Sanctuary with Very Cool Trees
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| The monkeys are considered sacred and are buried alongside village fitish priests. |
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| Cute Mona monkey |
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| Mahogany Tree |
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| Parasitic tree -it grows around another. |
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| Base of tree |
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| Do you see the giraffe? |
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| Local village next to sanctuary |
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| Village church |
Public Library
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| Look closely on left -the library got a few sets of new basal readers for primary grades! |
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| Children's books |
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| On the righthand side, those are old Ghanaian newspapers and Newsweek magazines from several years back. |
Hospital
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| Main entrance to hospital |
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| OPD AFTER it has cleared out! |
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| ER |
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| Laundry drying outside hospital. Patients need to bring their own sheets, food, and go to the pharmacy to buy and bring back their meds. |
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Cultural Miscommunications (or I’m Just Stupid) and Endearing Ghanaian Quirks
When I first arrived in Ghana everyone was
saying, “you’re welcome”, meaning, “welcome”. I kept thinking, but I didn’t say “thank you”.
Sacked = fired
You’re invited = an offer to share food
Big woman = compliment, as in successful
-thought maybe I needed to lay off the fufu.
Finished = Sold out
Whenever something is “finished”, if you ask
when they might be getting more in, the response is going to be, “come back at
5:00PM” (they actually have no idea, it could be days, weeks or never).
When you get a phone call, no one says who’s
calling.
It’s not unusual for the unnamed caller to ask,
“where are you right now?” First
time this happened, I thought, who’s this creeper who knows my name, hasn’t
told me his name, and wants to know my exact location? My bad.
Palms clapped together and then arms opened into
a ‘’V” = “that’s it”, “whatever”, “so it is”
“Eh-haaahhh” (“a” is in hat, only drawn out) is
interjected throughout speech, mostly as a filler.
“Ay” (spoken very fast and with the “y”
immediately clipped) = “wtf”, “no way”, “you’re kidding”.
Even in the middle of the night, there is no
such thing as too loud.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Shakedown
Not too much new.
I’ve continued to be busy with the stuff I wrote about in my previous
update. I also visited a monkey
sanctuary, finally found the cocoa trees, and traveled to Sunyani, the regional
capital.
For those of you who don’t read my Facebook posts, I learned
first hand that if you don’t pay your water bill, the water company comes by
and cuts the pipe to your house; no advance notice- nothing. Anyway, it was not our responsibility
to pay the bill; this was supposed to be taken care of by the people who manage
the house we live in. Nonetheless,
we decided to just go ahead and make the payment to expedite getting hooked
back up. Funny thing though, no
one was able to produce said unpaid bill and/or tell us the amount due. So, we just proposed a figure …yeah, so
that fiasco was on the up and up.
Speaking of shakedowns. When we were in Accra, we got in a taxi and the driver took
us to a couple of different spots (the first stop was going to be quick, so he
wanted to wait for us to drive us to our next stop – he even left the cab to
“escort” us). When we were getting
out of the cab at the second destination, he was insistent on giving us his number
so we could call him the next time we needed a taxi. This was fine, but I thought it was a bit weird that it didn’t
occur to him that we’d just grab one of the half dozen cabs outside of our
hotel. Anyway, we discovered later on that we were both missing our
phones. So, thank God for the
remarkable luck that we had the cab driver’s number to see if we left them in the
cab! Before the words were even
uttered, he said he picked some people up right after us and took them to the
airport, so they must have taken our phones. About 20 minutes later, he called to say that he was going
to go to the airport to track down the passengers and search them. Then he called to tell us he had
“seized” the phones, but, stressed that he had to travel very, very far to get
them, so he wanted to be sure we were going to pay him for his time. He proceeded to call no less than a
half dozen times to let us know he was traveling very, very far. Anyway, he finally meets us, produces
the phones, which were obviously in his possession the entire time, and tells
us he wants $200.00. Other than somehow
getting our phones, he really gets bad grades for execution. First, the airport was ten minutes away
and exactly how legit does walking into the airport, finding taxi passengers
from earlier in the day and “searching” them sound? Not that he cared that much about how legit his story sounded; he had something we wanted.
His biggest mistake though was that he handed over the phones before
requesting $200.00 (mine was a $30.00 dumb phone from Ghana and Steve’s was an
old iphone he was using only for the camera -not worth $200.00).
Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting that figure. Anyway, after a whole lot of commotion,
he got an appropriate “reward” and went on his way.
Okay, so stay tuned for pictures next month. I’ll try to upload a bunch with the
free wifi in Cape Town.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Update
All has been well back Kintampo. It felt good to get “home” after the
week in Accra. Though, the time I spent there around some of the Americans who
have a lot of experience working in international public health was really
helpful. Obviously, I understood
that it will take years/decades to effect big changes; but I think I came away
with better appreciation for how much inching along actually does matter.
Things have been busy in
Kintampo. At the junior high, I’m
essentially teaching one section of English/Language Arts. Originally, I was hoping to collaborate with
the teacher to find ways to break kids into groups since it’s such a large
class; but the teacher pretty much never shows up, so
I’m just doing what I can. At the
Psychosocial Center, there is a great group of motivated, compassionate people
who are, quite admirably, trying to take on some new initiatives to support
mental health in the community; it’s pretty cool to be able to work with
them. Also, I started lecturing at
the College of Health. The
director of the two mental health certificate tracks is very much interested in
what I do as a school psychologist and is eager for me to present on anything
and everything ..multi-disciplinary evals, ADHD, LDs, FBAs, etc. Who knows, maybe they’ll start a school
psych program someday!
Weather-wise, we are going to
be entering the dry season and I already feel the change. It definitely rains less; there are
fewer clouds and the sun feels like it sits about twenty feet above my
head. I get a lot of conflicting
reports regarding the dry season, so I’m not entirely sure what to expect. Intuitively, seems that dry
season=hotter, but, maybe not if it’s less humid. I also heard it’s often windy, which originally I had been
pretty pumped about; who wouldn’t like a nice breeze on a 100+ degree-day? But, I’ve since been told that this results
in a constant haze of red dust. So,
given that I wear contact lenses, I’m thinking this might actually suck a little.
TBD I suppose.
Okay, onto yet another
completely different topic. I’ve
been asked a lot about the food.
While there are many fruits and vegetables available, the tricky part is
that they are not always available.
This is true for many things actually. My first few weeks here I spent a lot of time trying to figure
out where to get what. I
discovered which shops sold lettuce, wheat bread, nuts, diet coke (well coke
light –not the same thing),
shampoo, etc. But, then I found
out that that doesn’t mean that they will have it again anytime soon, as in
ever;-). As the Ghanaians say when
something is sold out, “it’s finished”!
So you really have to grab it when you see it. Also, the fruits and vegetables can be a bit of a mirage; for
example, at the market there will be barrels overflowing with tomatoes, but
often when you get up close you’ll find they are all rotted. Protein is what I miss most. I want cheese, nuts, chicken breast, good fish and more. But, on a positive note, there is no shortage of eggs and Ghanaian eggs
are the best I’ve ever had! All in
all though, I’ve got it figured out and the food situation is under control.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
House pics
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| Our bedroom. The mosquito netting comes down at night. |
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| Spare room that has become the workout room. |
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| Third bedroom that has become the laundry drying room. |
Thursday, November 1, 2012
A few of our housemates.
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| Very big moth. |
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| Cool twig bug. |
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| Yes, the lizard is on the inside of the screen. |
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| African millipede. |
Random
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| Another reason to avoid falling into the roadside ditches. |
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| Shopping for a light bulb at the electric supply store; but they were out of stock. |
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| Typical spot to grab lunch. |
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