going north for awhile

I'll be away from blogging for about a week because I plan on traveling to the north near Mole national park and the Larabanga mosques and back down the west side of Ghana to the small town of Nzulezo, better known as the stilt village.  Yeah! Elephants, lions, baboons, stilt villages, oh my!

See ya next week!

The Hamburglars.

So my roommate and I got mugged a couple blocks away from home last night. They stole our hamburgers.

We had come home from a fantastic night out at a local Reggae bar that played outdoor live music and it was around 1:30 a.m. when we decided to hit up the 24 hour prostitute hang-out/all night food club a few blocks away from our residence. We even endured the hour long wait with plenty of curious men and women coming up to talk to the two very sleepy white women so that we could go home and eat an overpriced, juicy western-style hamburger with cheese. As we rounded the last corner, we both realized that two men in their 20's had come out of nowhere behind us and were whispering to each other. We tried to calmly walk to a house a few feet away where other volunteers lived. The two men passed us up as we pretended to unlock the gate. Unfortunately for us, the gate was tied securely and we couldn't get in.

We hid behind a broken down van in the dark alley trying to decide whether or not to go on, finally we chose to keep moving (our house was just around the next corner). That's when the two guys stepped out of the shadows and walked directly toward us and grabbed our arms. They got my roommate first and we both didn't try to struggle and gave them the bag we had with food in it very calmly. We were pretty pissed off and told them off angrily after they walked away.

The next morning I realized we had been attacked by "hamburglars," ironically enough.

Ghana is a relatively safe place by African standards for foreigners, but I was being careless and was VERY fortunate that nothing more happened. Overall, it wasn't very frightening, but my roommate and I were both a little unnerved by how completely out of our control a situation can become. We had no choice but to give them what they wanted, and it was that fact that made the whole situation very unsettling. Also, that night in about the same location our two friends were walking home from our house and got attacked and mugged. One got a cut on her face and a bloody nose and

both their purses were stolen so we are all being much more careful around Accra.

A Reggae band plays live at Bywells, one of our last stops before heading home Thursday night.

Health Care

Yesterday, I went to the only children’s hospital in Accra to write a story on a new surgical facility being built there. In a hospital the size of a medium apartment complex, nearly 200 to 300 young patients lined the benches and walls waiting their turn to be seen by one of only ten doctors.

The emergency room is packed with children laying two to a bed severely sick with complications of anemia, malaria and other water-born illnesses. The nurses say they are sometimes treating a dying child on one side of a bed as another sleeps uneasily beside. With the new facility, the hospital will be able to perform surgeries on young patients instead of referring them to Korle-Bu, the largest Accra hospital.

The children’s hospital has two vehicles available to transport children when they need to be taken to the other hospital for operations, and one of those vehicles is being repaired for a leaky roof. The other vehicle was purchased 11 years ago by Italian children who gave up their Christmas presents to raise money for the ambulance and it also is in dire need of attention. Back in the emergency room, the children appear waxy-skinned and deflated looking. I watched a mother cradle a small boy as his eyes rolled up into his head and his eyeballs fluttered to correct it. Keep in mind, this children’s hospital was ranked the no. 1 hospital in Accra last year and it really is a good facility for West African standards.

Kids grow up so fast here

I went exploring along the coast until I hit a small fishing village and stumbled upon this pair of young boys looking for coconuts to sell. They were keen on having their pictures taken so I snapped a couple shots of them and recorded a video showing the incredible precision and accuracy of this little one who can cut open a coconut with a machete ha

lf the size of his body.

I’ve read too many things about child soldiers to not feel a little frightened when these pint-sized kids run toward me with machetes in their hands. They probably have no idea of my reaction because to them machetes are just tools that cut coconuts and meat, and I can’t believe it either when they get closer and I see how young and innocent they

look. But watching them handle sharp tools at such a young age always leaves me a little shocked because I realize how much damage a young boy can do with a weapon – These Ghanaian children, ho

wever, are the farthest thing from dangerous and I’ve found them all very eager to talk to me and willing to to be my personal tour guide whenever there's an opportunity.

It's nice to be nice

OK, I know. I promise to start blogging much more often after this weekend, but I'm heading to Takoradi, which is about a five hour drive and I'll be staying there all weekend with no access to power and minimum cell phone coverage. Green Turtle Beach is located west of Accra and I'm spending the weekend there with about 9 other intern/volunteers. I can't wait - those who have been there before say it is fantastic and very relaxing.

I also promise to post pictures when I get back no matter how many hours I have to sit in an internet cafe and deflect marriage proposals.

One more thought: I'm in the midst of a journalism meltdown. *more on that later.

Last night I went to a Reggae Party right on the beach. I enjoyed watching the Rastafarians swaying to the music and chatting up the locals.

*think corruption, grammar and laziness all rolled up into one.

Mary's Hello

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjedLmI_wmM

Akwaaba Obruni!

Hello! I am living in the colorful, lively city of Accra in Ghana for the next month and so I’ll be taking my blog hostage with photos and videos of my life during this time.  I’ve been here a few days and I’m still struggling with how best to describe this place.  The heat always comes to mind first, but there’s more to Ghana than sweltering heat and buzzing insects.  The people and their culture are arresting at first because everything is so unfamiliar to me. It has been difficult to find the right way to describe something when I haven’t encountered anything like it before.

The only way I can do this so it isn’t an overwhelming amount of my own blabbering in a stream of consciousness is to try a summary of a few topics:

The People: You look around and wonder why everyone is staring at you and calling out things and then you catch a flash of blinding pale skin on your arm and realize that although you know you are white, damn, sometimes you forget how different you look from everyone else. I need a tan, fast. One volunteer had someone tell her: You must drink a lot of milk because you are so white. When I went out by myself yesterday into the city I got a lot of “Obruni!” (white person) and then a hello or a hey sweety, I love you. Etc. There was some touching or pinching of my arms, but for the most part it wasn’t too hard to go about my business without being too hassled. You get used to it. Or you have a nervous breakdown from the pressure of a dozen eyes and catcalls in the middle of a marketplace. I sat next to a girl on the tro-tro and the first words she spoke to me were, “I want to be your friend”.  After we exchanged names, there wasn’t much else to talk about so I left it at that.

 

Accommodations: Well, it’s very basic. No air-conditioning, so everyone sort of accepts that you will never be dry or cool.  Also no running water in our house – some parts of the city get it, but it’s temperamental at best.  That also means the toilet doesn’t work unless you flush it with a bucket of water from a nearby tank. (That only gets done a couple times a day…) We shower from the bucket also…makes cleaning hair kind of difficult.  I realize there are a lot of things I thought were essential that really aren’t that necessary.

 

Tro-Tros:  To paraphrase Nicholas Kristoff here, the most dangerous men in Africa are… the drivers*. Yes, this type of decrepit transport that defies mechanics and runs with only the basic metal shell of what one day must have been a van deserves its own category.  They are death traps of metal and rubber.  They are always crammed with 15 other passengers and a ‘mate’ leaning out the window.  They are cheap and they are hard to avoid.  Whether inside or just in front of their tires, I am always looking for my escape when the inevitable crash occurs. 

*OK, there are a couple instances that are more dangerous…a couple volunteers almost got mugged a couple days ago by a man with an AK-47 and a machete. But that’s more the exception then the rule and the volunteers said they were the “worst robbers” they’d ever encountered and didn’t know what they were doing so they actually didn’t steal any money.