Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

I realize it’s been a while since my last post, but I’ve been keeping myself busy here in Hohoe. The past two weeks have been filled extra hours at Happy Kids and visiting the regulars around town. I was glad that our schedule finally calmed down a bit and we stopped doing all of the touristy Africa stuff. There are a lot of new things going on at Happy Kids so I’ll dedicate a full update on that sometime soon, but for now I’ll share the story of my chicken dinner.

A while back I mentioned to the guys at the shop that I wanted to kill a chicken and cook it. They said that would be easy to do if I actually went through with it... so last weekend we made it happen. I figured since I’ve eaten a lot of chicken in my lifetime and was sure to be continuing my carnivorish ways I should be able to do it myself. We scheduled a large saturday chicken dinner complete with yams and kelewele (fried plaintains cut up really small and cooked with lots of spices). 

The Chicken Coop

After some questioning about what would be involved in killing the chicken, I learned that Courage had the most experience in killing animals to cook them so we took the lead on the meal. We went to a nearby chicken coop where I sized up the chickens and picked out one of the fatter hens. The woman tied up its legs and its wings and Courage and I made our way down the street to begin preparing the meal. The word had gotten around that I would be killing a chicken that afternoon so all of the guys gathered at Godson’s house to witness the event. 

Before the killing

I’ll skip all of the bloody details, but the whole thing was much harder than I thought it would be. Long story short... we dug a hole, pulled some feathers from the chickens neck and I was instructed on how to properly hold the chicken in order to cut his neck and let the blood spill into the hole. I got about half way through when I just couldn’t do it and Courage quickly stepped in to put the chicken out of its misery. 

We then dipped the chicken in boiling water to loosen his feathers, plucked it, burned the extra small feathers off and watched as Courage butchered it up. I’ll save the pictures of the butchering for those who are really interested. After the chicken was all cut up we boiled it with lots of seasoning and fried it with our little outdoor stove. Once the yams and kelewele were ready we gathered around the table to eat Ghanaian style, with everyone using their right hands to dig into the piles of food in the middle. The guys made sure that Mike and I got the best pieces of meat and they wasted none of the chicken. Almost every part of the chicken was eaten including the head, feet and bones in the legs. The kelewele and the yams with the special red sauce were delicious, but the chicken was too tough for me. 

Ready to be plucked

Boiling before frying the chicken

We spent the rest of the night sitting and talking outside after toasting to new friends and me killing my first chicken. I say first because we’re planning another big dinner for before I leave. I’ll either get another try at a chicken or move up to a turkey.

Random Things I’ve Learned/Noticed:

• Real cheese doesn't exist here. They have the small spreadable Laughing Cow kind, but that's it. The kids in my class had no clue what cheese was and it's really hard to accurately describe.
• When I walk around town by myself, I don't get the Yovo call or get followed by herds of waving children. I've also noticed that more and more people try to talk to me in Ewe when I'm out and about and are surprised when I respond in English.
• Because thin plastic bags are cheaper than plastic bottles, many items are sold in a little plastic bag of some sort. Pure water comes in a 500ml bag, salt is sold in a bag and bars sell little baggies of gin or bitters. It's a good way to keep costs down, but all of these bags just end up on the side of the road. 
• Rainy season started last week so we've been getting a solid 30 minute storm every other day or so. The rain is good because it cools everything off, but has also brought out tons of bugs.
• Midterms were last week at Happy Kids any didn’t involve exams of any kind. Midterms mean that all of the students at Happy Kids must have half of their semester school fees payed. The school was closed for two days so that students who hadn’t payed yet were able to go home to help their parents earn the money. The few kids that hadn’t payed spent the two days helping their parents in their shop, working on the family farm or selling items at the market.

A Snake and a Goat

It's been an eventful weekend...

A huge snake was spotted behind Happy Kids, from my window on Friday morning. The entire school instantly paused all classroom activities to try to kill it. Apparently this happens quite frequently because there was a definite plan of attack. This is the 10 step plan to catch a snake on the run around the Happy Kids School:

Nelson during the snake hunt

1. If the snake was spotted from a 2nd floor window, drop a huge slab of cement on it  

     a. If the snake runs, it's alive and needs to be chased. Continue to step 2.

     b. If the snake doesn’t run, it’s dead and no more work is needed

2. Alert all of the teachers, nursery staff and the headmistress about the snake sighting

      a. This will cause all of the students to run outside to join the hunt

3. Gather all objects that could be used to fight off or spear the snake (this should include 4x4’s, long pieces of plywood and metal pipes)

4. Assemble a watch team to stay on the 2nd floor to keep an eye out for the snake or any sudden movements in the grass

5. Find matches

    a. If matches can not be found in the office, get the fastest boy to run to the boarding house to get a new pack of matches

6. Light pieces of the brush on fire in areas where the snake could be hiding to flush him out into the open

    a. If snake doesn’t respond to the original flame, light lots of little fires to scare him

7. Chase snake to new hiding spot while throwing rocks at it (this step is tricky because some people will want to run away from the snake)  

8. Stand on alert near the snake’s new hiding spot with spears ready to attack

9. Throw an occasional rock into the bushes to scare the snake

10. If the snake cannot be found, return to step 6

Looking for the snake after
starting the first fire

Everyone on alert at the snake's
new hiding place

Some of the 2nd floor lookout team

The big palm tree next to the school was
set on fire after returning to step 6

We chased the snake from behind the school into a heavy brush area with a big palm tree and weren’t able to find it. When we returned to step 6 of this process, the headmistress instructed someone to light the palm tree on fire. The tree burned for a while, but the snake was no where to be found. We finally gave up and headed back inside after we had been on the snake hunt for about 45 minutes. The new teacher, Felix, thought that the snake had run away, but everyone left their branches, pipes and pieces of wood by the front door of the school so they could get to them faster if the snake was spotted again.

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I don’t think theres a way to ease into this, so I’ll just put it out there. I ate goat on Saturday. 

Nicole and I headed into town to meet up with the guys at the shop and were reminded that we would be spending the afternoon making fufu. Saturday was Nicole’s last day in Hohoe, so a special meal was  needed to properly see her off.

The soup

Fufu is a popular dish here in West Africa and is usually prepared with cassava and yams or plantains. (We used cassava and plantains.) Preparing fufu is a strenuous task that involves boiling the cassava and plantains and then pounding them into a dough with a huge wooden mortar and pestle. The dough is then eaten with a special soup with a tomato base and added onions, green peppers and ginger for flavor. Because Saturday was such a special occasion, our soup included a whole Red Fish and some goat meat. I helped cut up the vegetables for the soup, but was only able to help a little with pounding the cassava and plantain. This is by far the hardest I’ve ever seen anyone work for a meal. As the cassava got doughier, I could barely even lift the pestle out of the mush to mash it more. Courage and Enoch took turns pounding the starchy foods into dough for about 40 minutes while I held the bottom of the mortar in place with my feet. 

Pounding the Cassava

Courage. The fufu master.

Once the dough was done, the soup was poured over it into a bowl and set on the table. After washing only my right hand in the water bowl (as is custom here in Ghana because the left is considered unclean) I pulled up a seat around the table with Nicole with the 4 guys. Everyone dug in and after asking a few questions about what exactly the goat meat would taste like, I finally tried it. I was nervous but it wasn’t bad at all... kind of like a more chewy piece of beef. I told the guys I thought the meet was really chewy so they gave me a different piece to try. I noticed the texture was completely different and when I asked why, they said because that was a liver piece. After hearing that, I quickly traded my piece of goat meat in for some of the red fish. I thought the fish was great, but it took me a while to figure out how to eat around the bones while only using my right hand. I’ll need a little more practice and don’t plan on eating any more goat, but was glad to finally have a truly traditional Ghanian meal. 

All of us around the table

The so-called Red Fish that
went into the soup... whole

The final meal

While we ate, one of the guys shared a story about his experience killing a goat and the rest talked about other foods that they thought we should try. I told them that I want to kill my own chicken, pluck it and cook it with them before leaving. They said that wouldn’t be too hard to do, so we’ll see.

Random Things I’ve Noticed/Learned:

• 'I’m coming' means a lot of different things, but usually never ‘here I come’ or ‘I’m coming right now’. Most people say 'I’m coming' to mean ‘hold on’, ‘I’ll be there in a minute’,‘I’m leaving for a while’ or ‘I’ll be right back’. This may sound confusing, but I usually can figure out exactly what they mean.
• The majority of people in Hohoe are Christian, but there is a small Muslim population who lives in their own special area of town. I thought the separation was interesting, because all of the Muslim residents of Hohoe only live in that part of town. I finally crossed the bridge and ventured into the Muslim part of town this weekend. Like in the rest of Hohoe, everyone was very friendly. The only real difference is that most Muslims in Hohoe speak Housa amongst themselves, not Ewe.
• Sitting under a big mango tree is usually the only option for air conditioning. There's lots of shade and usually a nice breeze.

Mia Dogo. We will meet again.

   

The Crafty Art Shop

Last weekend was the first weekend that the whole group stayed in Hohoe instead of taking some sort of trip. I was glad to have some down time, but even more excited to have time to visit the people I’ve met around town. A few of us had spent some time looking at the artwork in one shop called ‘Crafty Art’ where the guys inside always invited us to stay and hang out. Last Friday afternoon, we had the time and finally went down to the shop just to talk. We easily spent 3 hours there just getting to know the guys that work there and talking about anything and everything. We talked about music, gender roles, the upcoming presidential elections in both Ghana and America and the term African-American. They are a special group and kind of remind me of some friends from home. Their group includes the quiet artist, the politician, the goofy little brother, the lovable drunk and the renaissance man who draws, paints, sings and writes poetry. The conversation in the shop is always interesting, but I am always most impressed by the artwork they are able to create almost effortlessly. Their rasta friend comes around every once in a while, but they don't seem to ever know what he's doing. I’ve seen numerous paintings sketched and completed and chairs carved out of wood while we’re just there hanging out. Here are a few of pictures of some of the guys.

Courage

Inside the Shop 

Yao 

Godson

Koffie

Enoch

Free Hands

On both Friday and Saturday nights we met up with the guys from the shop at our new favorite spot, Obama Gardens. We gathered around a large table (with our favorite server Divine) and taught each other our favorite drinking games. The guys seem to like 4 and Kings the most and I am excited to bring the shoulder game (better known as free hands) back to the States. 

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On Sunday morning, myself and another volunteer attended Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church with our staff member Rebecca. We arrived for Sunday School a little after 8:30am and the morning service started promptly at 9:30 as promised. The service and style of worship was very similar to Pentecostal services I’ve seen in the U.S. with lots of singing and dancing. The choir even sang a song that I recognized from my home church, “Higher, Higher”. The one thing that surprised me was how many people from the congregation were invited to the front of the church to speak. One man came up to give a large donation to the New Building Fund and told a lengthy story about how he had came about the money. Others were specifically asked to come up to testify and some just wanted to make an announcement. I also thought it was interesting how much time was spent speaking against the recent decision of the United Nations (and the U.S.) to pressure Ghana to be more accepting of homosexuals. 

I’ve experienced an occasional long sunday church service before, but didn’t account for the time it would take for everything to be translated from English to Ewe. A translator had a microphone during the entire service which means everything was said twice. I enjoyed the service, but around 12pm we realized that we hadn’t asked anyone to save lunch for us so we decided to leave early and head home. I told Rebecca that I would be sure to come back with her another Sunday.

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Ghana is currently playing in the African Cup of Nations which is a huge deal here because the Ghana Black Stars are so highly ranked worldwide. Sunday evening we headed back to Obama’s to watch the quarterfinal match against Tunisia. We piled into a large outdoor tiki hut and gathered around a 20inch TV with 40 or so other people. The crowd was hilarious and was very happy to see that we were cheering for Ghana. A few red cards and an overtime later, Ghana won 2-1. We immediately poured into the streets with the rest of Hohoe. It was 10pm on a Sunday night and pitch black outside, but the whole town seemed to be out celebrating. Kids ran through the streets singing while their parents gathered together to bang pots and pans. All of the cars and motocycles on the road speed past beeping their horns and flashing their lights. As we headed towards home we discovered that a big crowd had gathered in the town square to dance around the statue and sing Ghana’s praise. I’m sure this celebration was more exciting than any Superbowl party that happened on Sunday. Ghana lost the next game in the series, but I'm still amazed at the level of spirit people here have for the Black Stars. 

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My free time this week was spent visiting new friends and learning more about the everyday happenings here in Hohoe. My usual stops are at a shop in town to say hello to ‘grandmama’ and her grandkids, my favorite seamstress Divine and of course the guys at Crafty Art. All of these people have been so welcoming and have really made me feel more connected to Ghana. I’m looking forward to spending more time with all of them and now know to say mia dogo upon my departure to let them know that we will meet again. I'm sure that it is the relationships I'm building with the people around town, our staff members and the other volunteers that will make this trip such a great experience. 

One of our security guys, Immanuel
and one of the neighbor girls

 

Grandmama's Shop

Learning how to weave Kente

Random things I’ve noticed/learned:

• If you want to get the cheapest price for a cab, you must be willing to stop and pickup others who are headed in the same direction. I got a ride for less than half of the usual price after riding with 3 other adults and a baby in the backseat of a regular sized taxi. 
• Most barbers here use regular clippers to cut hair. The only real difference in hair cutting techniques is the use of an open flat razor blade to lineup the edges. The kids at Happy Kids cut each other's hair using only an open flat razor blade and a comb. 
• Public Displays of Affection don’t happen here in Hohoe, among any age group. They’re highly frowned upon and the occasional couple holding hands or walking arm in arm definitely stands out. It is common, however, for friends of the same sex to hold hands as a sign of their friendship. 
• The town of Hohoe starts to run low on water as the dry season comes to a close. This shortage caused us to lose running water at the Home Base for a few days. We still had access to water, just not through the pipes so I'm slowly getting used to bucket showers.
• Wednesday morning is worship time at Happy Kids. A teacher leads the students in a bible study kind of service consisting of a song, scripture and prayer. I was surprised to see that an offering was collected and the kids were asked to give any extra change they brought to school that day. One of the teachers told the students that their “coins could go towards ice cream or the Lord.” That's a rough choice for 2nd through 6th graders to make, but I noticed that most kids who had change quickly gave it up. 
• Never Eat Salty Watermelon is the most commonly used mnemonic device to remember the proper North-East-South-West order. 
• Friday is gameday at Happy Kids and most other schools around Hohoe. Classes end at the 10:15 break when kids run to the park to play soccer. While the boys play soccer, the girls jump rope and play handgames. These girls are the highest and quickest at jump rope that I've ever seen.

Charlotte jumps so high!

Some of the boys getting ready for
the weekly Friday match

"Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family." Kofi Annan

Kofi Annan is a well known Ghanaian diplomat who was the seventh Secretary General of the United Nations and won a Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Global AIDS and Health Fund. He spent most of his time with the UN and WHO backing HIV/AIDS education programs, but was a big proponent of education reform across Ghana. I thought the quote was fitting due to the amount of time I've spent thinking about education in Ghana over the past week.

These same 4 kids run out of the nursery
to greet me every single day 

As you all know, I’ve been spending all of my mornings at the Happy Kids Prep School. The kids are still happy and I've enjoyed really getting to form relationships with the kids there. While I came to Ghana planning on just helping out around the school, due to a severe lack of teachers I have become the classroom instructor for what I thought were students in the 4th and 5th grade. This past week, I realized that my original P4 class was really grades 3 and 4 combined and the group of 5th graders I took in when another volunteer left was actually grades 5 and 6. This means that I’ve been the teacher for the 17 students in grades 3 through 6 at Happy Kids. 

Last week brought about big changes at the school as they were finally able to bring in a new permanent teacher. Wednesday morning I arrived at the school and was immediately introduced to Felix and told that he was the new teacher for the P3 and P4 class. Definitely a bittersweet moment. I was excited to hear that they were finally able to hire someone, but realized that this meant the end of my time with the group of happy kids that I started with 3 weeks ago. The kids definitely need a real teacher who will be around longterm, so I made the move to the empty classroom right next door with the 6 kids in grades 5 and 6. 

During the school wide break at 10am, Madame Elizabeth (the headmistress of the school) thanked me for taking on the big group of older kids and asked if I could help Felix get to know everyone at the school. I of course told her that I would help him out. She also let me know that they have been trying to find another teacher for the P5/P6 class and that I could pick which class to work with once they hired someone full time. Until then I’ll be with P5/P6. It’s a really small group, so I’m excited to do more involved and grade appropriate activities with them. 

Some of the P3-P6 group

My 5 regulars in the P5/ P6 class

The lack of structure at Happy Kids has been the source of many questions for me, so I was glad to have the time this week to learn more about how schools work here in Ghana. Our past two guest speakers have been about the education system and child labor here in Ghana. I quickly realized that the child labor problem is really an education problem.

Here’s a quick overview on the Ghanaian school system:

Public Education is ‘free and compulsory’ for all children through Junior High School. (free, except for a family must provide the necessary uniform) A child must pass the required entrance exams and be able to pay tuition in order to continue on to Senior High School. I got the chance to observe classes at two different public schools on Thursday and was pleasantly surprised at how much more structured and organized they were from Happy Kids. Both schools had full time teachers that were following the outlined curriculum given to them by the Minister of Education. One of the schools even brought in students at the nearby teacher’s college to act as student teachers in the classrooms.  

Although public schools are free, many families decide to send their kids or private or prep schools. Private schools, mostly private boarding schools, are super common around Hohoe and provide parents with the option of their child living at school. Most of these boarding schools, like Happy Kids, charge families a small fee to provide all housing, food, access to water, housing and an education for their children. The fee is much less than it would cost to have the child live in home throughout the week. The kids live at the school during the week and those who are able travel home during the weekends. 

The issue with these private schools are that they are much less regulated than public schools across the country. This lack of regulation and stable funding sources causes them to not really follow any curriculum and bring in teachers without full training. For example, Happy Kids is a private boarding school in the small village of Gbi_Wegbe, right outside of Hohoe. The school opened in 1995 with the mission providing a quality education and housing for children of needy families. At the time, most of these children were orphans. Due to both lack of funding and the poor regulation of private schools, Happy Kids currently is severely understaffed. I mean I’ve been acting as the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade teacher for the past 3 weeks. 

This span of 4 grades at Happy Kids still only left me with less than 20 students because most students don’t make it to the higher grades, especially in a small village like Gbi_Wegbe, for a variety of reasons. Both our speaker on education and child labor stressed that it is common for families to pull their child (especially girl children) out of school at a young age to focus on learning the family trade. If children do make it through Junior High School, many choose to begin working to help the family instead of paying the high costs of continuing through Senior High School. While this obviously was disheartening to hear, I instantly thought of the career paths of some of my happy kids. Two of the girls in my class want to be seamstresses when they grow up. Many of the boys want to be farmers like their dads. Keeping this is mind, I know that after completion of 8th grade their parents will be left with two choices. They’ll have to either find a way to pay the high price of upper education in a less than favorable school system or remove them from school and lead them down the familiar path of the family trade or local business that will help bring in money for the household. In a huge understatement... I strongly believe in the value of education and think that a quality education should be easily assessable for all children. While I’ve dedicated much time to spreading my belief in education to those around me, I can’t help but wonder if the financial strain of high school in the Hohoe area would be worth it to prepare a child to be a Ghanaian seamstress or cocoa farmer.

To take it back to my Happy Kids... I’ve become more purposeful with my daily english and math lessons. I’m hoping that the structure of my activities like the ‘day at the market’ word problems or grammar games will help develop skills they will find necessary as they move on. I will continue to try spark their creative thinking, reward their inquisitive nature to ask about the many things in the world they have never been exposed to and encourage them to always hold onto their desire to learn. 

The P3/P4 girls playing during break

Thinking longterm, I briefly talked to Felix (the new teacher at Happy Kids) about working to establish a set curriculum or some sort of standard guidelines for the school. Felix grew up in the Hohoe area and recently graduated from a nearby teacher’s college and was excited that I also saw the need to bring some more structure to the classroom. The hardest part will be adapting a traditional public school curriculum to fit a school that is used to grouping grades together. At Happy Kids, the P3 and P4 students share the same classroom and same teacher, same goes for P5 and P6. Also, I’m hoping to have a girls only class sometime this week. Madame Elizabeth gave me a book of materials for women’s empowerment and girls health activities that she would like me to do with the girls. I’ll have to talk to Felix to see if he would be willing to take my boys in exchange for his girls one morning, but he should be ok with that. Madame is all about it so I’m hoping myself and future CCS volunteers can make this ‘Girls Circle’ type thing a regular occurrence at Happy Kids. I'll be sure to keep everyone updated on my time with the kids!

    

Mr. Wisdom Wise from P5

Moda and me in the main office

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Kamilah

In one of my first posts I had a picture of a not so shy girl named Ruth. Turns out she's quite the ham and her real name is Kamilah. She frequently makes her way into our yard and charms her way past the security guy on duty to find someone to play with. The weekend I learned that she loves to take funny pictures of herself and has completely figured out how to use photobooth on my laptop. She now has her own album of pictures on my computer, so I figured I'd share one.

Things I’m still not used to:

• Cold Showers - It’s hot and I spend a good portion of my days walking around in the sun, but I’m still not used to the whole cold shower thing. It just seems wrong. Even if I come home super sweaty after walking around town all day, I just want a nice steamy shower.
• Lizards - My classroom at Happy Kids has two large windows (really just two open holes in the wall) with no screen or cover to them. These windows are nice for letting in an occasional breeze, but also allow the biggest lizards I’ve ever seen to freely roam around the room. Even if the class is super focused on our word problems or geography lesson, a huge green lizard with an orange head crawling up the wall is enough to completely throw me off.
• The Yobo (or Yovo) call: Kids in Hohoe are used to seeing CCS volunteers, but still instantly shout Yobo or Yovo (which means white american or white man) whenever they see anyone in the group walking around. Recently we've learned of a special song that they sing to say "hello white person". They still call me the black american, but I get the song sometimes too. 
• Vultures - They’re gross and everywhere.
• The combination of consonants in the Ewe Language - I just can’t pronounce words like dzigbzoudi or gbi correctly. The kids tell me that my tongue just gets in the way and I have to learn how to keep it under control.  
• Sleeping with a mosquito net -  I never really thought I was claustrophobic, but sleeping with a mosquito net in the bottom bunk is just weird. I feel like I’m trapped in a cage and it doesn’t help with the heat either. 

Day trip to Accra

Time is still flying by for me here in Ghana. I'm still spending my mornings with the Happy Kids and venturing around Hohoe in the afternoons.This week, most of my nights have been spent playing cards, reading and preparing lessons for my Happy Kids. I finally finished the Autobiography of Malcolm X and have just begun reading Team of Rivals, a book about the pure genius of good old Abe Lincoln that came highly recommended.

Before I get too far into the week, I want to catch everyone up on my weekend. On Saturday another volunteer and myself decided to take the trip to Accra to spend some time in the city. One of the other volunteers was heading to the airport to fly home, so we figured we would bum a ride to the city. We didn’t really have an agenda or anything in particular that we wanted to see, but knew it wouldn’t be too hard to find something to do. Accra is the capital city of Ghana and has a huge mall, lots of outdoor markets and ‘cultural centers’ to check out.

Our taxi was scheduled to arrive between 8 and 8:30 that morning, so when a different taxi driver finally showed up to the house around 9:15, we were ready to go. We loaded up the car for our ride and were off. Thankfully one of the staff members was heading to Accra as well for the weekend so could help us navigate what would be an interesting journey. I somehow managed to fall asleep despite the huge potholes so the ride was pretty uneventful... until we got stopped by immigration. 

We’ve seen these check points in our travels around Hohoe, but with our usual driver and our usual van never had to stop. This time, with our backup driver and new van we we had to get out of the van so the officers could check the car. I woke up to an Ghanaian officer decked in his blue camouflage telling us to get out of the van. I still wasn’t fully awake and figured maybe someone in the car just wanted to take a bathroom break or something. Once out of the car is when things got interesting.

We followed Rebecca (the staff member who was with us) to a small stand on the side of the road where a man was collecting money from people who needed to use the bathroom. We were a little confused, but quickly payed him the 10 pesways (less than 5 cents) and headed towards the little tiled shelter marked women. The best way I can describe this “bathroom” is a room with a big wall in the middle and a gutter surrounding the perimeter. After a great explanation from Rebecca, we realized that we were somehow supposed to keep our balance, aim, and use the gutter. I’m pretty sure the man who took our money was laughing at us trying to figure this out because the bathroom walls only went up to our necks. Luckily, we were prepared enough to have a roll of toilet paper. 

We survived the bathroom and started making our way back to the van, when one of the officers waved us over to his table. He immediately asked us for our passports, which we told him they were in the van. This apparently angered him as he started questioning Rebecca in Ewe. I still don’t know what exactly was said, but could understand her tell him we were volunteers with CCS who had been in Ghana for weeks and that she was from Ghana. This was apparently enough and we were waved on through immigration. Although this really was an immigration stop, I’m still confused as to where we were immigrating to because we were still in Ghana and about 2 hours outside of Accra. 

The rest of our ride was uneventful and we made it to our drop off location, the Accra Mall where we said goodbye to our driver and Rebecca. Accra is a pretty modern city so I was happy to hit up Shoprite for some essentials and eat a burger for lunch. Also on the list of things to do was to get new battery for my camera, because mine mysteriously decided to stop charging. The volunteer who was heading to the airport met up with an old friend at the mall who so graciously offered to show us around the city. We hopped in his car and began the tour. He drove us past all of the hot spots... the President’s House, the Art Center, a huge outdoor market and the financial district. He was a great tour guide and even helped me bargain my way into a new camera charger in the market. 

We knew that we would eventually have to part ways from our tour guide so he could make his way to the airport, so he dropped Nicole and I off at a huge ‘cultural market’. This market was filled with different vendors selling their artwork. It was a little overwhelming, but I was impressed. There were masks and figurines carved by hand, beautiful paintings, little thumb guitars, leather goods and jewelry for days. Altogether there had to be at least 200 different shops with items for sale. We somehow made our way all the way to the back of the market to a small store that was filled with wood carvings, all done by hand. After fighting the urge to buy a huge drum, I mentioned to one of the guys working in the store that I just learned how to play mancala and wanted to buy a game to take home. He instantly led me to their huge stack of hand crafted mancala sets and opened up the one on top. I wanted to buy one and told him that I had just learned how to play so he figured we could play a few games. Why not? An hour later, Ishmael and I were still playing mancala. His friend Rauf had become my personal coach and promised me that in the end I would be victorious. As we played we talked about life here in Ghana, schools in America, Rastafarians and tattoos. I’m not really sure who ended up winning, but it was great.

Around 5pm, Nicole and I realized that we still needed to find our way to the TroTro station to catch a ride back to Hohoe. (TroTros are the most widely used form of public transportation in Ghana.. check out the pic for a visual) We were a little unsure about how to get there, so one of the guys from the shop volunteered to show us the way. I honestly don’t know what we would have done without him. Kofi not only walked us the 7 or so blocks to the ‘TroTro’ station, but navigated his way through the crowds of people and buses to find a TroTro that was headed back to Hohoe and made sure that we were charged a fair price. I wasn’t able to take a picture (because my battery was still dead), but to the left is a picture I found that looks exactly like the TroTro station we were in. Pure chaos. There’s no way we would have made it without Kofi.

We sat on the TroTro for about an hour waiting for it to fill up and then we were off. By fill up, I mean fill every space available. There was a sign on the side of the TroTro that said “12 person maximum”, but we made it back to Hohoe with 15. The man sitting next to me had a suitcase on his lap the whole time and the boy sitting in the middle seat between the driver and passenger in the front rode with his bookbag on his back the whole time. It wasn’t the most comfortable car ride of my life, but I shouldn’t complain. I’ve seen TroTro’s packed with more people and babies sitting on laps and kids hanging out of the windows. Although we stopped 4 different times so people could hop out and use the bathroom, we had no crying babies and there was only a kid on someone’s lap for about 30mins of the trip. Plus, we had air conditioning. A little over 5 hours after departure, we were back in Hohoe and happy about the 20 minute walk home to stretch our legs. 

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Sunday morning we all decided to sleep in and have a lazy day around the Home-Base. My entire day consisted of napping, reading, playing volleyball and finally doing laundry. After spending an hour scrubbing and rinsing my clothes by hand in the heat of the day, I will now be waking up early on laundry days. 

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The rest of my week has been filled with my normal Happy Kids routine and a few extra activities that all seem to relate back to the education system here in Ghana. I’ve been really interested in figuring out how these schools work and will have a lot to report on that topic. Also, there have been some big changes at Happy Kids so I promise to make myself buckle down and write about it soon.

Much Love!