One month later...

Hello, all! Here is a (sorry, but, I don't have time on the computer)
generic update on my activities in Africa:

I've been in Ghana for about six weeks now, and in my community for
about five. I live in a cement "compound" (a house with a courtyard)
with my immediate family of five and my older host-sister, who does
not live with us but visits a lot. She just had a baby yesterday! So
now I have a new host-niece. Her other daughter is absolutely
adorable, two years old, and prefers shrieking high-pitched sounds to
talking.
On a typical day, I get up between 5:30 and 6 AM (with an internal
alarm clock-- the ones I've bought have stopped working!) and then go
to school after a breakfast of bread with scrambled egg. The kids have
"silence hour" where they sweep the school, and then classes begin.
Teaching is HARD, but my kids are starting to understand things more
and more. This is decidedly a good thing, as I have three more classes
with them before exams. The school schedule in Ghana is very much
different from what we had all thought it would be...
After school, I go over to my partner's house, and we eat the papaya
his mom always cuts up for us. We play with the boy who might as well
be my nephew by this point, practically my partner's son, and then I
go home. If I am unlucky, I go home to gare, which is essentially cold
shreds of wheat with far too much sugar and cream. If I am lucky,
there is bread. I wash the bowls, prepare for the next schoolday, take
a nap, go on a walk, and eventually sit down to a dinner of rice with
pepper stew, fufu with groundnut soup, or banku. (Fufu and banku are
mashed-up starches in balls which are dipped in spicy stew to give
flavor.) My family and I sit and listen to their new radio before I go
out for the evening, to a friend's house or to read Shakespeare with
some teenagers at the "market." The market is like a dirt town square
with a light pole in the middle of it. Anybody who wants to hang out
goes there, to the "learning light" in my suburb, or to the "dame
light" (pronounced Dahm-Eh) up the road. Dame is a game they have here
that's a lot like checkers.
In other news, my host-sister's baby is a girl named Akwia (because
she was born on a Thursday). She is currently getting a blood
transfusion here in Cape Coast, so we are all hoping everything goes
smoothly until she returns home this weekend.
In my family, there are some pretty strict gender roles; the girls do
the cooking and my dad might sweep, but his sons fetch water. My
family works SO hard. My mother leaves the house before five-thirty AM
on Tuesdays and Fridays to sell produce at the market, and will not
return until late at night. My father is always at the farm or selling
palm nuts. My host-siblings are very often doing extra work to help
themselves learn.
Graham (my village partner) and I have a friend named Naomi who speaks
excellent English, and sometimes we will go to the nearest small
town's market with her to buy Fan Ice (cake ice cream), a Fanta, or
clothes for church. The market is an incredibly colorful and noisy
experience-- quintessential Ghana.

Sorry for the briefness of the update-- I have less time than I
thought I'd have!
Cheers,
Samantha

QUICK update

Highlights of the last few days:

-Having a monkey take a banana from my hand.
-Dancing in a traditional drum-and-dance party.
-Climbing to the tallest points in Ghana.
-Swimming in waterfalls.
-Learning basic Fante.
-Going to my community tomorrow!! Turns out I won't be living in a mud hut, but running water is a thing not happening.
-Exploring Cape Coast: It's hot, it's colorful, and everything is cheap. There are goats on the roads even here!

Ghana is beautiful.

In Accra

I got off the plane at around 7:30, and the first thing I noticed was that it was extraordinarily hot. Then I noticed that it was humid. Then I noticed that we were de-boarding to an outside lot. Yup. Ghana. Everything so far is hot, humid, and, surprisingly, very, very sandy despite the humidity. We're in the 'dry season' right now, so everything will continue to get hotter and hotter (right now it's hanging out in the nineties) until the rains come in May and, with them, the mosquitoes. There are a lot of strange plants, bright colors, and friendly people in soccer-team ("football") tee-shirts. A sign welcoming visitors to the airport reads "Welcome to Ghana: The Football Nation" (another sign reads (Paedophiles not welcome here; We suggest you go elsewhere.) So a lot of fun so far, I really like all my group-mates. There are six of us all-together, two boys and two girls in the group with the program leader and a guide. Right now I am in an internet cafe, having just experienced the roads of Accra for the first time. There are a lot of tro-tro's around, which are essentially vans serving as public transport, and nobody stops for ANYTHING. As our leader put it, "You fall off of a motorcycle here, you die."
Also, there are a lot of fruit stands. We had papaya for breakfast this morning (yes, I know you're jealous, Dad.) The mosquitoes are actually not that bad so far, and I am enjoying the fact that, for the most part, even "inside" is relatively "outside." There are a lot of open windows, and in the hotel where we stayed last night there was a courtyard with an open top to it. Also, there is cold running water (SO nice to shower in), but beware if you open your mouth! Nobody drinks the tapwater here, as it is full of typhoid and other fun things.
So that's all for now, we're off to the Volta region for the remainder of orientation. We'll be overlooking the Togo border without actually crossing, which will be fun. Our guide's name is Nanaa, and he wears a bright-red soccer jersey. So far, every one here seems really laid-back, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the week! Soon we will meet with a drum-maker (we were introduced this morning, and he was wearing an Obama tee shirt), hike to waterfalls, and visit a monkey sanctuary.

Packing and Address

Okay, so, the panic has finally settled in! I am now in the final stages of getting everything together before my flight tomorrow, having just discovered that there is no way to ship the books I got for my village school. Packing has decidedly been a lesson in creativity. First aid supplies live in a water bottle, impromptu frames have been created from various objects, and my pillow, bugspray, and sleeping pads live on the outside of the pack. To top it all off, I am preparing my room so that my brother can live here while I am gone! It feels exactly like getting ready to go to college, or at least I think it does.
Also, we just got our mailing address for the program. Please note that it can take two weeks at minimum for letters to get to me, and packages probably won't get to me at all. That said, I would love to hear from you! Please send all mail to:

Global Routes
P.O. Box AD 1205
Adisadel, Cape Coast
GHANA (all this center of the envelope as usual)

Sam Sheahan (bottom left corner of the envelope)

Thanks, everyone! I'll write again when I'm in Ghana!

Samira