After returning home from the beach last weekend, the second school week commenced. This last week was our first ‘real’ week of school, with classes and internships/ volunteer work being more officially in place.
Before that, though, I got to see Miss Emily Buehler, a good friend from GMS last summer who is studying abroad at the University of Ghana, which is very close to me in Lebone. It was great to see her, and she brought me desperately needed refills of my malaria medications (and Jiff peanut butter! Thanks mom!)
Tuesday night was a movie night, where we watched the documentaries made by NYU Accra students from previous semesters. One was about HIV/AIDs in Ghana, which affects approximately 1.9% of Ghanaians- fairly small for an African country, but larger than in the US. The second was my favorite, and it was about being black- various black NYU women talked about their lives and what being black has meant to them. Some knew their heritage (one girl was Ghanaian), but most of them did not and came to Ghana looking for a sort of home-coming experience. The overall artistic quality of the production was astounding. The next film was about homosexual culture in Ghana which is fairly controversial as homosexuality is illegal here. Then there was a film on Kwame Nkrumah, the first Ghanaian president who helped bring independence to this country (another controversial figure- he is painted as a sort of saint, but also tried to give himself a life-long reign…) and lastly… we watched a film about FanIce! FanIce is an ice-cream product sold on the streets. It costs about 50 peswes, and comes in Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry, or Yogurt flavors. They come in little pouches and you have to bite off the corner to eat it. I had my first FanIce after watching the film, and it was fantastic.
Thursday I visited the City of Refuge, where I will be spending Thursdays and Fridays this semester. This is an NGO dedicated to the rehabilitation of trafficked children, generally from a nearby fishing village. Kids as young as two are either orphaned, abandoned, or sold, and then forced to work at the fisheries. This organization takes the children in out of slavery, and provides them with a home and schooling. The children were very sweet- they currently house seven girls and six boys (plus a few babies), and the couple who began this ministry is eager to continue serving the needs of these people. You can read more about this program online at:
It is also possible to donate at this website using Paypal. I urge you to consider making a contribution to this worthy program. They are currently working on expanding in order to provide more opportunities and house more people. I will be posting pictures and such, and anyone with questions can feel free to contact me.
Something that the couple running the place told me, which I really appreciated, was that they “don’t want to put a sad face forward.”- there are a lot of orphanages in Ghana (and around the world, I am sure) that exploit the children for money. At this house, the children are WELL taken care of, and well loved, and it shows.
I will be working on helping the children communicate their story through the form of drama- they will each be doing a piece on either their unresolved pasts, or their life at City of Refuge, which will be presented to their community. Additionally, I will be doing some basic drama therapy and play therapy excercizes with the children, as many of them are in need of psychological healing. Other than that, I am around to help in any capacity- teaching, playing, and generally loving.
This place is about an hour and a half away from my residence, so I will have to take the Trotro- basically a really crowded van. Because it was our introduction to the site, NYU drove us out and toured us around (there are four volunteers total). On the way home, we saw a baboon strolling down the street! We see plenty of lizards and stray dogs and bugs and bats, but no cool animals until that moment. It made me feel like I was really in Africa (even though all of Africa is definitely not covered with elephants and lions and tigers… but still, I am a child of The Lion King generation, no matter how hard I fight it).
Today I made the trek to Shai Hills national reserve- about 8 of us went in all. There wasn’t a ton of information available in my guidebook or online, but I had passed it by when I had gone out to City of Refuge, and it looked like a great place to see some cool animals.
Off we went, expecting to take a leisurely walk through the wilderness and photograph moneys and antelopes, when we arrived to find a guide waiting to take us on a full-fledged hike. In 90 degree weather. I had brought a 1.5 liter water bottle, but many of the people in my group didn’t have any water at all (1.5 liters was definitely not adequate, by the way), none of us had brought any food. It was beautiful, and we did get to see some amazing wildlife (baby baboons!), but pretty strenuous. We all regretted not having the foresight to bring more water and food… that is the understatement of the century. But the view at the top was worth the struggle, and we all lived.
After our hike, we were having difficulty catching a taxi (we actually needed two due to the size of our group), and we were all eager to get home. We ended up taking a trotro- the local ‘bus’ system, which basically consists of a 16-person van stuffed with as many people as will fit. All 8 of us piled in, I am pretty sure that there were around 35 people total- it was kind of hard to count. Yet we ended up paying 2.5 cedi each for the ride, roughly a third the cost of a cab, and we were all pleased to have taken our fist trotro ride. I will have to become more familiar with the trotro system for my volunteer work.
Today, our RAs hosted a cooking workshop, to teach us how to make some Ghanaian dishes. I worked on Jollof rice and chicken— it’s a long process but really worth it. I might try and post the recipe later. Other dishes were redred (fried plantains paired with a bean dishes), spicy plantains, and tiger nut pudding.
Later today I am going to make banana pancakes- I realized that I have the necessary ingredients and got super excited. I am going to give some to the RAs, because they have never had American style pancakes before. It'll be nice to have some American food :)
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