cat food, tamale, and turkey

Let’s see. I haven’t written since again in a while. I’ll catch us up. I tend to lose info when I’m writing online, and the internet cuts out, and I give up and don’t post forever and ever. So I’m really behind, and skipped a couple weeks…and even forgot to write about a day trip I took to Boti falls with my friend and her aunt. It was nice. We hiked and swam near the waterfalls. And I’ll expand more on that later, but just realized I didn’t write about it. But o well. There’s so much here…you’ll be bored anyway, but here’s a re-cap:

My second homestay experience was very different from the first. I stayed with a family in the completely opposite part of town, and they were even from a different ethnic group, so very different. A much smaller group decided to participate this time around, less than 10 of us. Some were going back to their first homestay, and some had missed the first homestay experience because they were ill. I wanted a new experience, because I knew I could go see my first family anytime, and I have, and I’ll talk about that later. But when we got to the AFS office, I actually went home with one of the young men who work there, and stayed with his family. They have three boys in the family, Eugene, Edmund, and Emmanuel. They all were nice to me in their different ways, and I generally enjoyed spending time with them. Edmund works at AFS, is 22, and had fun taking me to the beach and showing me around and off to his friends. Eugene was older and lived elsewhere, but came to visit and we had a nice chat. Emmanuel is only 18, but has gone to the US with his church, Lighthouse Chapel International, because he is the primary singer it seems in their church music group, and they did a tour. When I went with him to the youth service, I actually had a good time, and am going to try to go back (it was much better than 4 hours of twi. Whew.) The family spent a lot of their time sitting out at the little shop they had in front where they sold drinks (typical) but most of them would just sit and watch the street children run around….or take their baths in the street. It was an experience. The next day my host mother fed me banku, which I just could not get down, because of the consistency. It’s a doughy thing from cassava or yam, and I just can’t handle that texture. So I ended up being kinda rude, but I tried. And the next day I think I redeemed myself..not to her, but in the whole spirit of being adventurous/ trying new things, I had octopus out with edmund’s friends at the beach, (as well as went swimming in my clothes) and then he asked if I wanted what I thought was ‘cut meat’, but when we got to the place, and I was presented with the meat…I asked again, so wait, what exactly is this..and he said…caaaat meat. Caaat…..cat. so I apparently tried some cat meat. Which they apparently get from just killing their own cat. And it tastes like chicken. And that was just about the last thing I did with them before showering (which was really a bucket bath) and then getting in a tro back to the center of town, ‘circle’ and catching another tro-tro to labone. And that was that weekend. But as a beautiful transition, their house was labeled/ titled, (which is a pretty common thing to do) TAMALE HOUSE. And then-

The next weekend we went to Tamale. We drove away at 5 am on Thursday morning, and sat on a bus for about 13 hours. I had stayed up all night before, and got on the bus later than some people, so I was in the back, next to a huge box with lunch packages, and at some points used the box as a pillow of sorts. After lunch I slept more comfortably against the window. When we arrived we had a nice little dinner, and I passed out pretty early. The next day two days were packed with activities. The first day we went to a mosque early in the morning, and talked with some religious leaders. Then we went to a doctor’s (dr. abdulai) clinic, and his story was pretty neat. He fixes the poor, and houses and feeds people with leprosy and aids and with mental illnesses who would otherwise be ignored. He does all of his work for free, and although he had been called away for an emergency, it was still pretty cool. We also went to see traditional diviners, and some people had some creepily accurate things told to them. My experience wasn’t that special.
The second day we drove even farther up north, leaving the northern region and going into the upper east region which was more devastated by the floods. We went to a site where people’s homes were destroyed. And learned more about how the floods washed away people’s homes, although the region is completely dry and barren now. We also saw the Pinkoro Slave camp, which is where captured people were brought from nearby places up north before they were sold and marched down to the coast to be shipped across the atlantic. We visited a group of widows as well and bought the neat baskets they make. At that time we were so delayed we only had a short time at the market, so you should have seen us running around this little grouping of shops trying to buy goods which are pretty dif from what we find in accra.
Sunday all we did was drive again. For 13 more hours. And we spent a good part of Saturday on the bus as well cuz Bolgatanga is several more hours north. So it just felt like a really long uncomfortable bus ride. But, since a large portion of the trip was spent in transit, it became a good time to read, knit, and have interesting conversations with people/ take horrendous pictures of everyone sleeping with their mouths open. But the conversations on the bus and late at night at the hotel were good. For the past few weeks we had also had a nyu med student visiting, and I thought he was a bit of a creeper, but he actually has worked out a pretty cool thing connecting Ghanaian doctors with one phone network. His original idea had been to set up a great website to connect doctors in the country, but after arriving here he realized that is not going to help just yet, and instead worked out something with a phone network here. Cool stuff. Which I’ll talk about later.

Finally, as a brief synopsis of the past few days. Thursday as you are all well aware was thanksgiving, and we had a catered dinner with turkey and such, but it wasn’t unhealthily large portions like I would have liked, so it was probably the first turkey day where I left the table still hungry. But it was nice thought, and after we were done I got to talk to most of the dad fam, and that was really nice to hear voices I hadn’t heard in a while. And I’d chatted briefly with momo fam on Wednesday, so good stuff. Then on Friday I went back to visit the first homestay just for Friday night and Saturday. And like before it was uneventful. They served me fries and chicken. And rice and chicken. And KETCHUP. And nothing really happened. They wanted me to watch tv. I’m not even sure why they like me coming to visit, but whatever. I hung out for a bit. And got to be away from the nyu dorm drama for a bit, and got some reading done, and it was just a nice night. The next day I waited around and hung out with one of the boys a bit, and met their dog, and eventually my host parents came back from a funeral, and then took me to a wedding, which was very Christian and normal, but was nice anyway. And then when I got home I was going to study more, but instead just finished the third season of Lost. Today we went to Aburi Gardens, and that was similarly uneventful. We saw some neat trees…not really flowery at all. Just some cool trees, and I rode a bike for the first time in forever. So I guess that was nice.

And now…I have a ton of school work to do, because I have a huge research paper due in a week along with several other little papers, and we start shooting our documentary this week. So it’s going to be hectic. And I also need to finalize more serious planning for Ireland and whatnot. But I had meant to write before about some exciting things going on, and all I can think of right now is how I finally read the Color Purple, which I love as a movie, and as a play, but for some reason could never get into the beginning of the book, but we had to read it for a class, soooo I got past the beginning and then loved the book even more than either the movie or play. So yea. I’ve read some really good stuff here, both for class, and not, and I wish I’d taken more advantage of my free time to do more reading, but I think I did well enough, managing my knitting and some movie watching and dealing with the slow internet and personal growth –writing thoughts in journals and stuff. But it’s crazy to think I’ll be leaving so soon. There is so much more I wanted to accomplish, but there’s always next time. Is what I keep telling myself. Our last big trip is next weekend to Wli falls. I’ll write again….at some point…(I’ll be an aunt probably by the time I get around to writing again…YAY!!!) Much love to everyone-