THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2011

The numbers are in. As of this morning, I have 66 mosquito bites on my right leg and 59 on my left leg. I am dying.

As of this evening, aka now, I know these are not mosquito bites. A day at the Crystal Eye Clinic resulted in my learning that there are maybe 10 mosquito bites on my right leg. The rest are hives spots. I am the itchiest I have ever been in my life. Even though an anesthetic has been applied to both of my legs, I am still squirming. I can’t take this! I am terribly uncomfortable.

This is the worst part about my Ghanaian experience. Worse than having my wallet stolen and then having hope restored and then crushed again after a person had contacted me and said he had my wallet with my cards and then demanded money and then was unreachable; worse than being bitten in the face; worse than bruising my toe while deciding to run in the waterfall; maybe not as worse than the feelings associated with not being able to help people who really need help; but, definitely worse than all those times I was shouted at, grabbed, and ripped off because I am white; and also maybe not as bad as how I felt when my car ran over a baby goat; but, worse than when I had to rewash all of my clothes in my suitcase by hand because I put a wet towel in my suitcase and then my laundry was returned to me smelling musty because it was sitting in a bucket after it was washed and couldn’t be hanged immediately due to the rain; and worse than when I was having many a very frustrating vocal battle, during which I took sides against blindly accepting literal interpretations of the bible and against the supposed fairness of Ghanaian’s law stipulating that men can marry as many women as they please, but a woman can marry only one. These hives are making me terribly uncomfortable just sitting here. I’m so itchy I could cry. I can’t resist scratching.

There are, of course, good things happening in Ghana as well. I’ve felt so happy to be able to use my French language skills when we’ve neared the Togo and Cote d’Ivoire borders during outreach. In fact, I was able to see buildings in the capital of Togo while on a drive on a broken road across a marsh in Ghana’s central region, and then ate the delicious food of a Togo native who, prior to her arrival in Ghana five months ago, was a cook for the Ghanaian Embassy in Togo. I witnessed the famous Dr. Clarke perform 22 life changing eye surgeries, including cataract managements on both eyes of two infants with congenital cataracts, and Unite For Sight’s first white patient who could only speak Italian. I’ve tried and enjoyed many a Ghanaian food from many different places: chop bars; street stands; from the buckets on street hawkers’ heads while riding in cars; from the comforts of people’s homes. I’ve sat through a traditional meeting with a village chief and bowed to him; I’ve seen a Ghanaian football game (Kotoko vs. Asowase); I’ve learned a ton about a different culture. While getting attention simply because of the fact that I’m a female obruni often makes me irritated, sometimes it results in bottles of Obama of Africa wine from Highway View bar at the reduced price from 15 Ghana cedis to 6 Ghana cedis. I’ve seen both the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of global health delivery through NGO-private clinic partnerships, and have realized my strong interest in public health. I’ve met a lot of intelligent people pursuing medicine with whom I’ve had great conversations, a few of whom are Yalies I’ll keep touch with in the fall.

I’m really looking forward to my fall semester where I’ll hear and learn about others’ amazing summer experiences, and seeing how my travels this summer inform my judgments, decisions, and academic performance. I think I’ll see some positive improvements.


TUESDAY, JULY 26, 2011


Ghana is full of surprises and adventures. Friday night I was surprised by the worst nightmare of my life. It was much, much worse than Thursday night’s hives.

After a tame night of ice cream and dancing, my friend Kristen and I were headed home via a cab. These four street kids tried to help us navigate Accra’s traffic and get us a taxi. When we entered one, the kids demanded money. Of course we said no—we could have easily found ourselves a taxi without their help. Since cabs are mostly bare bones vehicles here, the windows are always open to accommodate for lack of air conditioning. I said in the front and, upon my refusal to give money, one among of the pack of four threw himself inside my window and snatched the pouch that was sitting atop my lap and started dashing. It happened in an instant, and I reacted by climbing out of the window (I could have just opened the door), screaming at the top of my lungs and chasing after the senseless prick. I was running super fast and definitely would have caught up with him; but, as soon as I became aware of my surroundings (a pack of other boys were chasing after and encroaching upon me in a dark alley, and the wall I would have to climb was far too high), I grudgingly stopped running and stomped back towards the street where the incident had initially occurred. I was overcome by a huge sense of defeat when I saw that nothing had changed from the first scene. The taxi cab had driven away and people were carrying on with their business as if nothing had happened. I felt helpless and violated.

Hope was restored when a woman named Christy had attested to hearing me and rounded up the three remaining boys. Her method of solving the situation was reassuring in its sincerity, but not its promptness of action. At first the three boys played the ignorant card and would not admit they knew who the culprit was. After I was met with profanities when I used Kristen’s phone to call my stolen phone, I handed the phone to one of the boys who inadvertently slipped the name of the culprit. Christy spoke Twi and caught his slip, and would not let the boys leave her sight until they promised that they would help retrieve my goods from the stealer. We had planned to have Christy call Kristen’s phone when the boys had returned to her the goods, and I would give the boys some money in return for their “services.”

I wasn’t really satisfied with this plan and, despite Kristen’s insistence that we leave the premises, I kind of resisted because I felt like I hadn’t done my best to obtain my belongings that really meant a lot to me. I trudged back to the street and hesitated to enter the taxis she pointed out to me when a silver Mercedes Benz pulled up with its windows rolled down with a very large and intimidating black man peering out from the driver’s window. He asked me, “what is going on?” in a tone that suggested that he was displeased with the vibes of his surroundings. Hope was again restored when I informed him of the problem. It took about two hours of standing amidst a growing pack of aggressive Ghanaian men in a parking lot and behind the bar of the club Bella Rosa where Kristen and I had been earlier (because one of the men “leading” the effort was the club manager) during which time the three remaining street boys were whacked around and faced with threats to spend time in prison until they fessed up about the whereabouts of the fourth boy. When they did, my camera and cheap Ghanaian phone were retrieved and delivered to me as I was receiving my second free drink behind the bar at Bella Rosa. In the end I was short of 7 cedis, a pouch that had maybe cost me 5 cedis, and some pride.

Two parts of the scenario stood out to me as reminiscent of what I’ve seen in Ghana. First, the lone police officer I desperately begged for help did nothing to help me. He stood outside the crowded huddle comprised of a very apparent hierarchy of Osu (downtown Accra)-goers. Since the men who were trying to help me were badge-less, I wasn’t sure I could trust them. They constantly reassured me that all of their intentions were good; but, they were speaking Twi and I could not properly keep tabs on the progression of conversation and action, so I could not help but be skeptical. I was very disturbed that the police officer did not bother to take notice to the very apparent troubles and to my pleas for help. Instead, the entire fiasco was dealt with by this hierarchy of Ghanaian locals.

This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me because twice in the past, I’d seen Ghanaian police officers let misconduct slide with small bribes. Both times I was in taxi cabs in which we packed in more people than the seatbelts for which the seatbelts could provide. Standing police officers are dispersed along the roads and scan cars as one might see when trying to cross the Canadian/U.S. border. When the cops noticed the cars were overly packed, the cab drivers briefly chatted with them and cupped into their hands a few cedis, and the worries of arrest or being ticketed were eliminated.

The second part of Friday night’s happenings that struck me as typical, yet still upsetting was the fact that not a single woman was present among the collective that was working to obtain my belongings. Ghana is supposedly progressive in terms of social equality relative to most countries in Africa. This may be true, but I still see Ghana as very far from my ideal of social equality. For one, I am treated completely differently because I am obruni. Everyone shouts “obruni!” at me whenever I pass; I am grabbed all the time; I am always asked for money; I constantly feel the air of lust when men look at me. As an obruni woman, I truly feel that my experience here is limited. I hardly ever feel as if I am having a genuine conversation with someone—it always seems as if there is an ulterior motive to marry me. The conversations I’ve had with women have been worthwhile. Just yesterday I was out for a late afternoon jog in the Akoasi village when a 20 year-old English-speaking woman named Abigail on a bicycle caught up with me from behind, rode with me the rest of the trip, showed me her home, bought me a bottle of water (I was sweating bullets), introduced me to her family including her 7 month-old daughter and one of her six siblings, and told me about her life. She wasn’t able to finish school because her mother has been living alone since her husband fled to Nigeria with some other woman he married, and she cannot afford the small fee to send her child to public school.

Tangent not averted, sorry about that. Women are very kind to me here. I really appreciate that. I don’t know how I end up being this target, but even among my fellow obruni volunteers, I still seem to be the one putting up with the most frequent heckles and advances by Ghanaian men. The way I am treated is undoubtedly a consequence of a society that is highly patriarchal. Did you know that a man could marry as many women as he likes, but a woman could marry only one man? There have been so many times men have whispered in my ears that they want to see me alone and talk to me and have my contact information. I am constantly addressed as “wife.” Men tell me they love me all the time. They call out to me on the streets. I am so, so sick of it. I miss being respected. My “strong, footballer-like body” is often a conversation starter for these man whores. On Saturday, I went to a fruit stand and purchased a mango and a papaya. There was a 16 year-old boy present who was teaching my friend some Twi. I ended up hanging around the fruit stand because I was waiting for my friend who had to run back to the Telecentre to get something. I had to go to the bathroom, so he showed me to this place where I could use the washroom. He then proceeded to tell me that he had a secret for me that he would only tell me tomorrow. He insisted that I give him my phone number, and, figuring that I only had 7 more days until my Ghanaian phone number expires, I decided to give it to him. Bad decision. He calls me five times the next day, tells me he loves me and misses me and begs me to love him back. Ask me to read the text messages he sent me. When he called me again on Monday morning, I had to cut him loose.

Sometimes I’ll go for a run because I’m seeking alone time. When I am stared at lustfully and jeered at, however, the pleasures of exercise go remiss in place of frustrations with feelings of powerlessness. My runs produce the opposite effect of what I’m going for: instead of releasing my pent up energies, they build them up even further. Lately, I’ve been a shaken up bottle of soda ready to explode. I really desire some peace and quiet. I miss my developed world. I want to go home.

By the way, Happy 19th Birthday, Henry! I love you.

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FRIDAY, JULY 8, 2011
Outreaches this week have been few and far in number because the Kumasi program coordinator has been sick. Of the five days in the week, I attended three outreaches and each of them had fewer than forty patients. Wednesday I was at clinic and spent about an hour observing seven surgeries. Thursday we were off because we missed viewing post-op patients, and I ended up hanging around Kejetia to try and do some mild errands that amounted to an eventful afternoon, including: fixing Omar’s camera that broke at the Indian restaurant when the waitress dropped it after trying to take a picture of us, and a confrontation after a misunderstanding over an unintentional free taxi ride for the Apricot worker Ansare; prowling for what they dub long “light crème” colored hair for my next “do” as opposed to my current “blonde” which is much darker than the blonde I’m used to; trying to figure out why Omar could not withdraw money from the ATM and a way for me to obtain cash from my traveler’s checks (I’ve tried six banks over the past two days, and still the best option I have is to wait for three weeks to have them processed, by which time I’ll have almost left Ghana); hitting up the Vodafone internet café and seeing other obronis; and, filling out stomachs with cheap, authentic street food with the assistance of a kind bohemian/Jamaican-like lad named Gabriel who sadly knows me as Britney from Barcelona. I gave my stomach a go with “cow meat,” which is not so much beef as it is some gelatinous skin part of cow, which was gross (and my stomach is fine! Woohoo). INSERT STREET FOOD PIC HERE!!!

The UFS van picked up me, Ali, and Omar from Vodafone and we were off to see how publicity works. When the publicity is unsuccessful for an outreach, few patients show up and it’s rather upsetting because of the distance we travel and the investment we make in planning. I still would like to be more informed of the management processes behind the coordination of the eye care programs abroad. Much of the large-scale coordination is done in New Haven, but I am most curious about the micromanagement. Yesterday I learned that a representative from the outreach team meets with the chief of the outreach village the night before an outreach to verify the facility and to make announcements to the community via a prerecorded tape with health information on a loudspeaker atop the van. That was pretty sweet.

Today I went to an outreach that was sub-40 patients and sad and was getting rather frustrated with my lack of work this week. I started to feel better when I ate red-red off the street for the first time and when Kate accompanied me and Ali to the seamstress/tailor to have clothing and other things made from the cloth I had bought at Kejetia the day my wallet was stolen. If we had been there alone, there was no chance we would have been able to communicate our desires for a non-obroni price. Nevertheless, I am still expecting some surprises when I pick up my items on Monday.

Tagging along with Kate and Steve after those two pick-me-ups was fantastic. We drove about 2-3 hours each way to this very rural village. The drive involved some monster truck-style maneuvering and left me unable to sleep in the back seat because of all of the ditches and bumps and general unevenness in the road. However, the Africa I got to see during this car ride was the picturesque Africa I’ve grown up to imagine from documentaries on rural villages and from my Disney movies like Lion King and Madagascar. The fauna is absolutely stunning. We made the most of our speakers atop the van and configured it to play the South African FIFA World Cup song from last summer as we sang along and drove with our fists high in the huge skies out the windows. It was a glorious karaoke van. We had to get out to push the car once when we were caught in a mud puddle. During that push I noticed three iridescent blue beetles to the left on some knee-high plant, and I snagged a picture.  INSERT BLUE BEETLE PIC HERE

We arrived at the chief of the village’s place after driving past some bare skinned youngeons with real outie belly buttons (I’ve seen this quite a bit here) and others with distended stomachs in front of their clay houses roofed with palm leaves. We were confused when, after we had sat down after making our rounds shaking hands with all of the villagers present, the villagers then got up and made their rounds to shake our hands again. This was apparently the traditional African greeting. The circle of benches on the sand between some clay houses inset from the road in the unkindly dark was very intimate, and everyone was attentive as Kate gave her spiel about the upcoming outreach the next week. We sat for about a half hour and returned to the van to drive around the village to announce the outreach via the van’s loudspeakers.

This will be a huge outreach with maybe 300 or so patients. The night before it, I’ll be sleeping in the electricity-poor village. Witnessing this process today was surely one of the highlights of my trip, and I am so looking forward to seeing the outcome next Wednesday.

SATURDAY, JULY 9, 2011
New discovery: eggs don’t make me sick anymore! For the longest time I would only eat eggs if I wanted to be sick so I didn’t have to go to school or practice. Now that I’ve had the same fried egg breakfast every day this past week in my lodge in Kumasi, I’ve discovered that I can eat eggs for breakfast and not have to worry about them making me nauseous! There are pros and cons to this finding. Pros: I now have more eating food varieties from which to choose, and a new domain to explore for experimental cooking! Cons: I’ve lost my go-to food that has always guaranteed me a stomach sickness. If I could choose I’d probably choose what I have now because eggs are very delicious. I can’t wait to go home and make some omelets de fromage. Mmm.

We hit up some obroni hot spots today. I was crushed when, along the way, our van hit a baby goat. I love the goats. I want a goat someday. I couldn’t believe that I was in the car that made this innocent creature who was being chased into the street by a stray dog go spinning off the side of the road in front of what I’m sure was its goat and human families. The roads were god awful, and at one point we had to get out and push the van in a depression where the rainwater had collected and caused the wheels to have no traction for a good half mile stretch. It was a bit too close for comfort when the huge Yak obronimobile behind us approached and two taxis came from the front. It was a four-way car pileup and all it would have taken was the slightest incorrect maneuvering of a driver’s wheel and it would have been dominoes volume 2: cars in Africa toppling and mashing the pie of doom in their passengers’ faces. Despite such vehicle troubles, I am still upset that the goat did not survive.

Obroni hot spot number 1 was the monkey sanctuary where we learned about parasitic trees and how they are awesome to climb; saw monkeys of the mona and colubus breeds and listened to them squeal to each other as they hopped from branch to branch; and, were educated about how only descendants of the original priests of the village could truly “own” the monkeys and be buried with their monkeys in the monkey cemetery within the forest. We spotted at least 5 obronis there.

Then, along our way to obroni hot spot number 3, the waterfall at ___, we stopped at a chop shop and saw a few more. Despite the abundance, the waiter spit in my ear and told me that he’d like to “see me” after I was finished eating. I couldn’t escape skidaddling without his notice, and I ended up having the same conversation I have with a million other Ghanaian men: they all want me to take them along with me when I go back home to America, and they love me and want me to marry them. Oh and a lot of times they’ll say “Ahh, America, you mean Obamaland!” They are rather obsessed with Obama here. Yesterday I saw man a-walking on some random street and he was sporting a shirt that had a background with red and white stripes and white stars on blue and then Obama’s face on both the front and back. People here see Omar and ask him if he’s Obama. He respectfully corrects them and says he is Obama’s son.

When we arrived at obroni hot spot number 3, I had decided that each time I see another obroni in Ghana, it is weird. They just don’t fit in and they look painfully uncomfortable. I hope I don’t look like that, because I am rather comfortable on Ghana’s lawn and they kind of look a little pitiful. I suppose this won’t translate to when I’m back in the U.S. with its obroni surplus.

The waterfall was absolutely beautiful, and the entire time I went barefoot. It was wonderful to hear and smell the evanescence of the surrounding nature reserve. This waterfall was much more fun for me than the one at Lake Volta because everyone in the group wanted to jump in and play around. It was so much fun! My favorite activity was definitely log rolling down the rocks, and my least favorite was running because I ended up stubbing my toe and bruising it enough such that not even two Advils alleviates any of the pain. My excitement from the latter part probably came from all of the positive attention I was getting from a pack of schoolchildren from Mali who wanted me and the other obronis to stand in pictures with them. It was adorbs.

It was time to go home, and it was another 3 hour car ride, during which I could not sleep and could not read because it was dark, so I listened to some music from my iPod and tried to make myself comfortable. I also munched on the hugest pineapple I had discovered. It was delicious.

Closing up. Ghanaians don’t really eat much. They’ll eat a solid one or two meals a day. I call the late afternoon meal that I have come to know and love here, “dinch,” for “dinner” and “lunch.” What, dinch doesn’t sound appetizing to you?

SATURDAY, JULY 2, 2011
The white breasted crows infest the streets of Accra like pigeons do in New York, and, with each sighting, I am breath taken by their beauty and elegance. I have never seen such unique looking crows until I crossed the Atlantic this summer. Their black coats and white underbellies are reminiscent of that of a handsomely dressed man in a tuxedo at a black tie event. I’ve tried to take some nice pictures of these avian creatures, but, I do not think justice is being served to their bounty. Photographs just do not captivate motion the way it is seen by the human eye. I hope I’ll get a chance to do some more formal bird watching at a national park around here before I leave. Anyhow, this is what I’ve got for you: INSERT CROW PICTURE HERE!!.

I am certain that when I come home I’ll be missing these birds.

In other animal news: I still haven’t succeeded in picking up a goat and petting it. They are all too fast for me! INSERT GOAT CHASING PICTURE HERE!!!

I miss my dogs Sasha, Tiffany, Kashmir, and Tate at home. The dogs here are not cute. They roam freely and are unkempt and of the same breed. They bore me. I miss my American Eskimo Dogs’ fluffiness, neediness, and constant displays of affection.

There were some pigs playing in the mud at a very filthy, trash-ridden beach which my group and I had the misfortune of encountering. The pigs actually grossed me out a little bit. I am not usually satisfied with admiring animals from afar, but here I was comfortable maintaining my 30 foot distance that would shield me from any accidental mud splashings and hoof kickbacks.

The pig sighting occurred on the first day of my first and probably one and only three day weekend! Friday was July 1st, the Ghanaian national holiday Republic Day, which was instated to celebrate the milestone of Ghana becoming a republic. For some reason this holiday exists in addition to Independence Day on March 6th, which basically exists for the same reason and, yet, is more extravagantly celebrated. Still, I’ll take any second-rate holiday that gets me a day off. :P

Our journey to the arts center was quite eventful. It began with bringing the n00bies in town (the volunteers who had just arrived) to exchange their U.S. dollars into Ghana cedis. We could not hitch a tro-tro because all of them were full, but we were able to make our way to Nkrumah Circle via taxi. Nkrumah Circle is a landmark in Accra that is named in honor of Ghana’s first president. I had tried to find some information on Republic Day via the internetz, and I had come across a website that said that the government had put together a photo exhibition of the history of Ghana and that it would be near Nkrumah Circle. Well, that was nonexistent. To discover this was a process involving many arm grabs by Ghanaian men as we were walking on the sidewalk, many attempts at hustling by market vendors, a walk across a bridge above a street congested with cars and crazy drivers, and a run-in at a dance party within the market where everyone was dressed in red and black and apparently celebrating the life of their friend who had just died (which we joined). Needless to say, we may never know if the photo exhibition actually existed, but, in looking for it, a good time was had by all.

We then caught a tro-tro out of Nkrumah Circle that took us to the arts center, which I had assumed was a building with art in it. Turns out I had assumed incorrectly, as it was just another open market with even more persistent sellers than what I was used to. It sucks having the name Chelsea because everyone remembers it, and I had sellers to whom I had not introduced myself calling out my name from afar. It was unpleasant. Our group thought it would be a good idea to take a breather in the beach area behind the market, but all we found were some pigs rolling in mud and trash everywhere.

So we went back. I went into a few shops and bought some awesome African carved goods. I am not a wealthy woman; in fact, I am a student without an income. When presented with stuff I lust for, I am like a cougar that prowls for young men: I simply can’t help myself. What I spent that day amounts to a number that would put my mother who raised me to shame, so I won’t say it.

It has been an interesting experience to watch volunteers come and go. More and more I am becoming the veteran. I could not fathom spending just 10 or 20 days on this trip. It takes just about the same amount of effort to plan this trip to spend 10 days as it does to spend 60. The only difference between a 10-day and 60-day trip is the cost incurred from lodging. Otherwise, the required fundraising amount is still $1700, the 500 eyeglasses still must be procured, the plane tickets still come near $2000, the required vaccinations are the same, the visa still must be obtained prior to traveling, and the training modules are the same length. Even so, I have seen volunteers come and go. Fleeting friendships are kind of a sad thing to think about, but they are inevitable in life. We simply cannot avoid the fact that we will not ever be the same group again, the same n00bies in town in Accra, Ghana for our first volunteering experience abroad. I don’t know if I’ll ever see many of these people again. For a few of us, Wednesday’s reggae night at Tawala Beach in Osu was the last “hoorah!” before leaving Ghana, maybe forever. We saw many an obroni and did much mingling and chatting beside bamboo fires on the crowded beach. I’m looking forward to Kumasi to get to know the next new bunch, and I’ll probably have to deal with confronting the same inevitable fate that I may not see these wonderful people again. Life can be sad sometimes.

Chyeah. Kumasi will be fun. I’ll be rocking MY NEW HAIR THAT IS NEW AS OF THIS MORNING! World, I have to tell you something. I look different these days. A little more African, a little less Caucasian. Get ready to have your socks blown off. It only cost me 31 GHC (US equivalent of 20 bucks). This success might have launched a new phase in my life. I love the idea of being able to fully customize my hair without having to commit to a color or a style for more than a few weeks. I’ve always wanted to experiment with my hair, and I think I’ve finally crossed the threshold of fear that has been holding me back all of this time.

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SUNDAY, JULY 3rd, 2011

Things I’ve lost during this trip: my sunglasses; one of my two eyeglasses cases; the cord that connects my camera to my computer (sorry, no more pictures for the blog because of this loss); and, my wallet, which probably had around $300 worth of cash in both Ghana cedis and U.S. dollars. A traveler’s nightmare.

It was almost as if losing my wallet was an act of fate, because a few events of the past week seem to build to this loss. First: I had noticed that I had no use for my traveler’s checks because no place accepted them, so I removed them from my wallet and placed them with my stash of cash that I kept separate in a safe place. I should be able to cash those checks to myself at a bank (yes, there are banks in Ghana)! That is a sure plus.

Second: While purchasing cloth at the Kejetia Market in Kumasi today, I must have been caught up in all of the pretty patterns and shiny colors that I was imagining as pants, shorts, bags, shirts, etc. FYI, this market is the largest open market in West Africa. Anyway, I had left my bag open after making a purchase and a Ghanaian woman came out from behind me and was holding my wallet. She said “you need to close your bag because the next person who sees this may not be so nice.”

Then, after splurging on a pretty huge amount of traditional African kente cloth and various apparel plastered with “Chelsea Football Club” on the front, I had reached my threshold. As the member of the group everyone else had to wait for because I was busy buying things, I knew it was time to call it quits. I declared, “mark my word: this is my last and final purchase!”

Somewhere between my declaration and getting into the cab to find a restaurant for a late lunch (which was actually necessary because everything is closed on Sundays), I either dropped my wallet or someone stole it from me. Whatever the case, someone has my license, credit and debit cards, my toothpicks that I’ve been collecting from my sliced pineapple purchases, a fairly heavy sum of Ghanaian and some U.S. cash, my Yale student ID, and some business cards I collected from a few interesting individuals during this trip. I was super bummed. Some Ghanaian person has a lot of my identifying information and spending money I was hoping to use for this trip. All gone. I felt like an idiot. I still feel like an idiot for letting this happen.

On the bright side: I had some amazing red-red today. Red-red is by far my favorite Ghanaian food. I’m surprised how difficult it is to find relative to other Ghanaian staples that I don’t think taste as good. I also had a slice of pizza, which was not like the pizza I’m used to, but still a friendly reminder of home. The money I had spent on all of those purchases went towards the purchases, not to the person who has my money! So that’s good, I guess. Also, I rode three tro-tros today. This is getting to be too normal.

Ahh. This is just really cruddy. I figured out a way to work out in the hotel. I suppose I felt like I needed to do something good for myself after the not ideal happenings of the day. I ran up the three flights of steps they have here ten times and, with each descent, I ran back and forth in the hallway. Also did 100 push-ups today. Also did some of a leg workout outside. I sweated up and felt a lot better. I must say, I really miss exercise-induced sweat.

Kumasi is proving to be a much nicer city than Accra. The roads are all paved and the city’s layout is what I would expect when going to a city—it actually makes sense! I can walk places and not feel as if I’m going nowhere. Even with this sour beginning I think there’s hope for an excellent next two weeks. I’ve counted up the money I stored elsewhere (thank you, Daddy, for this very sage advice) and calculated roughly how much I’ll need for the next month. I should be fine for the rest of the trip. Vundahful (in Ghanaian accent)! I love the dynamic of the group with whom I’m traveling and I’m super excited about our optometrist, Kate, who is a female! She is so warm and nurturing and is a great motherly figure while I’m here. She can surely provide me with advice with my first African hair style.

P.S. I wore pigtails today.
INSERT PIGTAILS PICTURE HERE!

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MONDAY, JULY 4, 2011
Dear USA,

Happy 205th birthday! I love you more than I ever could have imagined. I wish I could have watched your annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest in Staten Island either in person or live on tv. I would have loved to see fireworks displayed in NYC over the water. ‘Twould have been splendid. The idea of eating at a barbeque with meat patties fresh off the grill and corn dogs and ‘freedom’ fries and onion rings and full sour pickles and pasta salad makes my taste buds feel like they’re going for a ride on Aladdin’s magic carpet. I realize I am so fortunate to have been born on your lawn, and I promise to never let a day go by that I do not appreciate your existence. Thank you for being awesome. I love your continual investment in my life. Also, thanks, Mommy and Daddy, for choosing this place to raise me and make my home. I am eternally indebted.

Love always,
Chelsea

Location/current state of being: Directly across the street from Fingalix in an internet café that is also a barbershop. True story. Jazz music playing. Pineapple appetizer from the fruit stand has been eaten. Just completed my daily bathroom run diagonally across the street at the gas station (the finest establishments in Ghana, believe me. They sell top dollar items like Obama in Africa wine). Jollof and kelewele and fried chicken dinner from Fingalix has been delivered to my internet cubby. Currently, the barber seat is empty.

Ready to hear about my fully awesome and eventful weekend in Ghana? Ready? Here goes!

I spent approximately five eighths of my weekend in a sorta broken and misshapen bed in my first floor room in the Telecentre Bed and Breakfast. Of those five eighths of my weekend in my bed, approximately three quarters were spent sleeping and the other quarter spent killing How I Met Your Mother episodes on my laptop. I read about 40 pages of Catch-22. I did my laundry yesterday so that I would not have to pack my suitcase for outreach this week with wet clothes that would make the rest of my clothes smell musty… and they’re all dry! I’ve been wearing the same clothes since Friday night because of yesterday’s laundry adventures. I am simply not one to upset a perfectly harmonious balance of yins and yangs. My laundry pile was overworked this weekend, and it would be terribly unfair for me to just dump more on her after all that she’s been through this weekend. I also did some mild exercise yesterday and today and also ate some food and watched several minutes of Ghanaian commercials on the tv in the Telecentre’s lobby. My favorite was the advertisement for the fitness center’s “pilates” classes which was a video clip of a bunch of people sitting on big blue bouncy pilates balls and a series of camera zoom ins and outs of their pelvic regions, which were ever so gracefully thrusting forward and backward. It reminded me of my favorite dance move, the Epic Sax Guy dance.

Exciting? I thought so. This is the kind of thing I’d do on a lazy weekend at home or at school.

Ooooo wait… there is that… one detail I’m leaving out. The one that explains my fortune cookie paper that one time that said that all of my dreams would come true and that I’d be wealthy someday.

Yes. I’m a Ghanaian celebrity! Friday night after returning from a very hectic car ride from a Crystal Eye Clinic outreach near Cape Coast that involved my first experience with motion sickness and an emergency bathroom run at the gas station that was so perfectly timed with the traffic that it wasn’t even necessary to move the car out of the lane of ongoing traffic, there was a mysteriously attractive group of casually dancing people in front of a bunch of lights and cameras plopped on the Telecentre’s driveway’s brick ground. We couldn’t help but to wonder what was going on, and so I asked if they needed an extra actress for whatever they were doing (we had assumed a music video filming) and they said “sure!” despite the fact that I was all sweated up and dressed in a pair of jeans that had ripped on my front thigh that day to reveal a battle scar from a clumsy stumble into a protruding nail from the corner of a wooden plank in the outreach’s church (thank the almighty Buddha for his grace in making me get a tetanus shot, for that darn rusty nail broke my skin!) and a blue Samsung Chelsea football t-shirt that like everyone has because it costs like 10 Ghana cedis (the equivalent of about $6.66). So I joined in and danced next to the guy in the suit, who was apparently the star of the Ghanaian film to be released in July. In English, it’s called “The Woman.” I’m sure it’ll be a soap opera-like film typical of the Ghanaian media industry. If you know me, be prepared for a mandatory viewing party next time you see me. They’ll be sending me a copy of the movie once it comes out.

Long story short, I’m finally agreeing that it pays to be obroni in Ghana. Even if you get overcharged when trying to buy things sometimes, and even if kids chase you around and say “obroni, cash! Obroni, cash!” and don’t let you have your peace when you’re trying to exercise solo outside, and even if taxi drivers honk at every sighting of you because they assume you’re lost and need help finding your way.

Currently, my biggest problem is how I am going to go about watching the next episode of How I Met Your Mother. I had downloaded the entire seven seasons before I left for Ghana, expecting that all of them would function properly. While I was bored on my plane ride, I discovered that season 4 was dysfunctional. I had held off completing season 3 for fear of arriving at season 4 without any episodes to watch besides season 5, and so I began to download a torrent that took me three weeks to complete with my on and off dial-up connections in Ghana. Yesterday I had realized that the first 12 of 24 episodes of season 4 had actually downloaded properly on my laptop with my first torrent! So I was set for the first half. My extremely lazy day made it too easy to complete those twelve episodes, and now I am at an internet café struggling to deal with the fact that the season 4 torrent download I had begun a few weeks ago produced 24 seven seconds of blank MVK videos. Do I move on to season 5 after having completed half of season 4, or do I endure the torturous wait for an uncertain outcome from a third torrent download? And if that doesn’t work out, do I wait to finish the episodes when I return in August? How do I resolve this huge dilemma?

…clearly, my life is in shambles here. I love Ghana.

These really long blog entries are getting increasingly more difficult to keep up with. Each week I am here presents new information and experiences that I want to document and share with everyone I love, but sometimes when I’m tired I want to just lay in a bed and be a couch potato and serially watch episodes of How I Met Your Mother on my netbook, like I did last night.  But now I’m in the UFS van with two and a half hours left to go until I’ve arrived at Jasikan, the town where I’ll be staying until Tuesday for my next outreach with the Crystal Eye Clinic. I’ve been told there is no running water there. Given this, I think that I’m fair game for no internet until I’ve returned to the Telecentre again at the end of this week. So this post is a delayed update of my life thus far in Ghana until Sunday, June 19, 6:03 pm GMT.

So it turns out I am missing another holiday for my dad.  Today is Father’s Day! Happy Father’s Day to my dad, my uncles, my friends’ dads, my friends who are dads, Grandpa Joe, and my forefathers. Without your masculine presences, I’m sure I would be among the females who would gravitate towards fulfilling your manly niches. And I’d probably become more manly than I already am. And that’s a rather scary thought. So, thank you for your existences and presences and influences. You are my chains of femininity.

Anyway, last week I was teamed up with the North Western Eye Clinic, which is another among the several UFS partner eye clinics in Accra. Monday through Wednesday I was out in some faraway village whose name I do not know, and each night I was there I stayed in a different hotel/motel/lodge/guest house/a word that probably does not exist in an English dictionary that properly defines these places. Monday night’s lodge had brown water in which I was supposed to bathe. When I first assessed the room, I noticed the toilet water was brownish and had just assumed that the last person to use the toilet had had a very fibrous meal for dinner. Then when my roommate for the week, Sayo, had begun to fill up the bathing bucket from the bath faucet, we discovered that our suspicions about the toilet water were wrong. Whoever ate that dinner must have taken his deuce in the main water supply for the hotel, because that water was brown, too.

Tuesday night, I was confronted by one of my greatest fears: cockroaches. Yep. The big roach I discovered on my shower bucket handle almost makes the lizards and wooly bears (this was what I called these black fluffy caterpillars in my youth) seem okay for a room for which I’m paying. I was absolutely terrified of the roach. Bugs and creatures usually don’t faze me. In my suite this year, I was the designated person for dealing with our surprise mouse guests. For some reason, cockroaches are completely paralyzing to me. They make me squeal like a dying pig and frantically run around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. Is there a term for cockroach phobia? Maybe this condition could get me on the Maury Show!

If it wasn’t the pineapple I had eaten from the street earlier that night, then maybe my cockroach anxiety had caused me to become sick in the middle of the night. I had awoken in the middle of my sleep to an extreme wave of nausea and no subsequent excretions. I haven’t been feeling well ever since. Now, whenever I eat food, I become nauseous. I just tasted one of my fellow volunteer’s boiled yams, which is a very simple dish, and I feel nauseous. My inadequate bacterial flora in my stomach for Africa can go to hell.

Thankfully, Wednesday night’s hotel was actually pleasant. There was hot water and only one or two spiders. I didn’t want to stay out in the rural villages for another two days if I was still feeling sick. Luckily, the UFS van departed to Accra early Thursday morning with the outreach patients who were referred for surgery. Since I was feeling sick, I wanted to tag along the ride, but that would have left the outreach team short of a volunteer. Kind, loving, generous, amazing Page saved my day and offered to stay in outreach and let me replace her in observing surgeries at the clinic. I was so flattered. I had been enjoying the many eccentricities of outreach, including the pink chicks I saw at one of the churches and the donut balls I was eating off the streets and getting to sit next to the optometrist Dr. Kchei (no idea how to spell it) and seeing really interesting cases, such as a displaced lens on a young female with Marfan’s Syndrome.

Taking Page up on her offer ended up being a great decision, because I was able to rest at the comfortable Telecentre and go to the eye clinic and observe surgery! It was amazing to meet the ophthalmic staff at the North Western Eye Clinic. Dr. G was a champ in powering through a straight 22 eye surgeries in about 7 hours. I watched all of them up close! IT WAS SO AWESOME! The reason UFS has its volunteers observe the surgeries is to have a designated witness and sign off that the surgeries are being performed. I was with Sayo. It was so cool to put on scrubs and look over the surgeon’s shoulder the entire time as he was doing his work. It was even cooler to see him work under stressful conditions, with the power coming in and out and the lights and fans going on and off. The surgery he was performing for cataracts is a “SICS” for small incision cataract surgery, which is a much more difficult procedure than what is done in the U.S., but uses much less resources and saves a lot of money. Because there is a large volume of outreach patients and there is only so much financial support available, cheaper and more difficult routes are sometimes taken. But still, quality is not compromised, and the end result is the same. And the surgery is way cooler to watch! It was a party. The next day was a bit of a failure because we were supposed to make it in time to observe the post-op patients. Unfortunately, taxi difficulties got the best of us, and, though we made it to the clinic, we missed the post-op patients and we were just occupying space.

I promise that our lateness had nothing to do with the fact that Sayo and I had gone to the club Aphrodesiac’s reggae night in downtown Accra the night before and returned at 3 am. I promise. I promise that the woman who bit my face in the VIP booth did not prevent me from leaving the premises a sane person. Yep. That happened.

After leaving the North Western Eye Clinic, I was on the prowl for some Coca-Cola light. It is SO hard to find here, and I think it’s because they like their women “jiggly” here, in the words of Dr. Kchei. I miss my coffee and diet Coke so much. Oh god. I found a 12 pack. I felt like an ex-alcoholic after a drink; a serial killer after a long awaited kill; a teenager after his first piece of cake after returning from a few months at fat camp; a person who has found love; an Olympic gold medalist. All those amazing feelings.

I also realize that I’m yearning for something I never could have anticipated missing, and that is fresh air. There are a few smells that I will forever associate with Ghana. Some combination of soot, dirt, car exhaust, fire and burning, body odor, and must will do it. I love the outdoors. I love my home in East Northport that is parked within 2.5 acres of woods and where my dogs can run outside and roam and where I can lay in the grass on my backside and look at the stars and hear nothing but the sounds of the trees swaying and the birds chirping and taste the freshness of the air entering and exiting my system. I love that I can walk and run outside without the worry of feeling as if I’ve smoked cigarettes all the while. In Ghana where the streets are unpaved and there are few car exhaust regulations, it is never pleasant to walk outside, even when the sun is shining and the weather is beautiful. While in taxis or on tro-tros (aka the Ghanaian nickname for buses that drive around and casually pick people up from the sides of streets and are packed to the max with people and are amazingly cheap… I went on one this week and it was so exciting!), oftentimes there is no air conditioning, and the windows are open and I have to cover my face with my shirt because I can hardly breathe in the air from the outside. My clothes are usually filthy with exhaust and dirt that were stirred up from the many vehicles on the roads. I realize that when I decide where I want to live someday, I need to have fresh air. I need to have clean air for me as soon as I step out of my front door of my home. I love unpolluted nature. It is beautiful.

Speaking of nature, I am obsessed with the goats I keep seeing here. I never tire of seeing them. They always make me excited.

I also saw and fed a family of baboons yesterday! And then there was a pack of antelopes! Along the route to walk to see the baboons, I saw a millipede for the first time and some snails that I had also seen in their live form at a street vendor who was selling them as food. Ew. Along the cow tracks to see the antelope pack, I saw a crazy red crab-like beetle and some beautiful dragonflies. As we were about to leave, I noticed a tree above the car that had grape-like fruits on it. I asked our tour guide what the fruits were, and he said the tree was called a nim tree and that the fruits were edible. I was curious, and so I plucked a ripe yellow one off the tree after he showed me that they’re not dangerous to eat. I bit into it and was met by horrid bitterness and crunchiness. Well. Turns out you’re not actually supposed to bite into it. Rather, you suck the fruit until you reach the seed. This is also the case with cocoa fruit! Cocoa is taken from the inner seeds of the fruit that you can suck on. Cocoa fruit actually tastes like sour apple! It’z cray cray.

Lake Volta is the largest artificial lake in the world, and Ghana is its home. I swam in one of its waterfalls yesterday (like a boss). There were two waterfalls adjacent to each other. The right one was the female and the left was the male. The couple was named “Boti.” At first I was grossed out at the thought of swimming because the receiving waters were completely brown and the dude who was leading our group had said that there were tilapia and eels and crabs in the water. I had brought my bathing suit with the expectation that I wouldn’t be the only one who was going to swim. But I was. And I’m so glad I did it, because I discovered that the water was brown not because it was dirty but because of the waterfall splashing up all of the sand at the bottom, which was so comfy and smooth to my gritty feet! And I did not encounter fish. It was actually incredibly refreshing. And I have definitely elevated myself to boss status.

Eh. That’s all for now. Nap time. Ask me about the market and sunburn and Kahuna and corsets becoming illegal in Ghana and my body’s unwillingness to take down food without a grumbly fight sometime, because there were many interesting happenings surrounding such events.

--
TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2011
Mood: irritated.
This entry will be choppily schmoppily doowapdiddly fadroppily poppily written, for I am anxious and needing some place to vent and I have no outlets for stress relief here and I’m thinkin bout lots o thangs.

Little kids calling me obroni and suffocating me with their voices and cuteness all the time is fun at first. So are the constant requests for my contact information by, well, everyone. By everyone I mean all the people I’ve encountered in Ghana who fall into one of the following categories: men who want to date me; men who call me their “wife” or who proclaim their love to me or who want a second chance after my first rejection of their marriage proposal; women who want me to be their best friend; school children who want to call me all day long and ask me questions (they’re still doing that, by the way); people who want me to give them my money. A few examples:

The main worker at the “hotel” I stayed at the past two days, after standing beside me as I took a picture of the two toads that I found on the hotel staircase, told me that he would give me his address so that when I go back to the U.S. I could mail him a camera.

The 80 year-old man I was interviewing for my research study had somehow felt more intimate with me than he did with the male ophthalmic nurse Dennis, and he had confessed to me that he had though that his bacterial conjunctivitis (eye infection) was the reason he was having erectile dysfunction, which was why his wife had left him. Unless I was completely mistaken and the translator had been making this entire thing a joke as a means of picking me up (which is very possible because he asked me for my contact information after the interview), I believe this Ewe-speaking elder was begging me to cure him of his condition, because he knows of “so many men who are older than him who do not have this problem!” So I wrote down Viagra and Cialis on a little slip and handed it to him. I desperately tried to drill the fact that I was not a doctor and that I was not adequately versed in the pharmacological literature surrounding erectile dysfunction to give him proper suggestions, and that what I wrote down were some options I had heard of that might be worth looking into. Hah. I guess this isn’t something I’m upset about. I live for instant classic stories like this one. But it is an example of how people here think I have superpowers (and, I’m letting you in on a little secret: I do have superpowers! Puauahahha). Ok, continuing:

There was a man yesterday at our outreach who asked me where I was from and when I was leaving Ghana. When he learned that I am from the US and leaving on July 30, he told me that I will buy a ticket and then bring him with me. Just to clarify, I am not bringing this man home with me.

At one of the North Western outreaches last week, a drunken man stormed into the church in which we were working and slobbered all up in my face and was shouting that I am a princess and that everyone should know that I’m a princess and that anyone who tells me I am not a princess is a liar and a terrible person. When he was too close for comfort, I tried to briskly get out of there, but he followed me. I’m a tough cookie, but I don’t think it would have looked good for my selfless volunteer image if I threw a punch or a swift kick in the tuchus or in the testes. I guess that makes hubris my tragic flaw, because after he had been gone for a while, he returned once again to haunt me.

People see obroni in the UFS van and smile and wave. It’s cute, but would you wave to us if we weren’t white?

I was sitting and eating my waakye breakfast on a stoop with four other volunteers for the North Western outreach last week when a hobo approached me and was all up in mah grill. I don’t even remember what he was saying to me. The only way to get him away was by passing him over to another volunteer, which was not what I had planned to do. Just sort of panned out that way I guess.

Other things I’m think about:
People in the United States will snap at you to get your attention. Here, they’ll hiss to get your attention. I don’t like it. I think it’s rude.

Can I bring home a pet lizard? There are these super awesome green and orange lizards here that roam around everywhere. Is there any rule against packing up a live creature in a suitcase back to the U.S.? Would my pet lizard make it through customs? I’m curious, because I’d tots take on one of these bad boiz.

I tried to pick up a goat today, but it ran away. Wahh.

I have been taking bucket showers and sleeping on sheets that I am provided with and using towels whose origins and the nature of whose washings I am unaware, and I’m really not caring all that much. Whenever I have an overnight outreach, I have no expectations for where I will stay. I don’t wear bug spray or sunscreen. There was no running water where I stayed the past two nights, and I didn’t care one bit. I am not averse to peeing and pooping in open fields. I’m pretty used to these conditions now (though I still use bottled water to brush my teeth and I’m still deathly scared of bugs. I see new ones all over the place, and each time I’ll scream and get jitters and “dance” (if you will) as if I am barefoot on a pile of burning coal.).

Popcorn bought off the streets here is absolutely delicious and rather cheap. I buy a huge bag of freshly popped corn for 20 pesewas (about 12 cents). I am on the hunt for it every time I am out and about.

I’m addicted to caffeine. I’ve been carrying around that 14 pack of Diet Coke and drink one every day around 2 pm. It puts me in an amazing mood.

Pineapple is where Spongebob lives and is also very abundant here. From watching so many street vendors cut up pineapple for me, I think I definitely know how to cut a pineapple like a champ.

Lalalalalalalala. Bye bye bwog. Time to bum chill in Wurawura, which sounds like “ra ra” when Ghanaians say it. Ciao.

A one picture summary of why I am an international celebrity and my life in Ghana is amazing:

A one picture summary of why my life in Ghana is sometimes not so amazing and evidence that I do not get special treatment like that of an international celebrity:

Updates are imminent.

The hotel in which I stayed during the Crystal Eye Clinic overnight outreach in Takoradi was called the Super Gardens Hotel. Architecturally speaking, it reminded me of an Embassy Suites, with its guest rooms comprising the outer perimeter of the building and the middle commonly shared area with the real outside fauna and skies chiming in to form a beautiful, not-constructed version of the Embassy Suites's constructed inner tropics. I think I'll take authenticity with bugs and power outages and highly variable shower and toilet water pressure and ear-exploding music through a Sunday night for an extended high school graduation celebration for 40 cedis/night (with the option of no AC and within-room showers for the bargain of 12 cedis/night) in a rural Ghanaian town over a commodified hotel in any given suburb in the United States.



It was really pleasant working with the Crystal Eye Clinic staff. Ernest was the optometrist and John was his side-kick and driver who assisted in the financial management and communicating in the local dialect to the patients prescribed medication or eyeglasses or donned referrals for surgery. They also do fun things with us and share with us a lot about Ghanaian culture, such as introducing us to the local food and bringing us to beaches.

Each day in Takoradi I ate the same breakfast as Ernest, which was waakye. Waakye is a traditional Ghanaian dish that is made from rice, beans, and noodles with a spicy sauce. Atop my rice, beans, and noodles were two sauces: shito and a spicy tomato-based marinara-like sauce. The shito is commonly served with rice dishes to spice them up. I'd love to learn how to make it. It is dark and has a thick and pasty consistency. According to ghanaweb.com, the shito is made from a cooked-down mixture of onions, tomatoes, cayenne pepper, powdered shrimp, powdered herrings, salt, and fish seasoning. As much as I have been craving vegetables, I opted to not have the accompanying coleslaw lettuce and carrots because of my worry of getting sick from food that may have been handled with untreated water. Among the group with whom I was traveling to Elubo, I comprise the minority. I haven't yet been sick or experienced stomach upset since my car ride to JFK, which I still believe was induced by Doxycycline. Diarrhea and general nausea and malady are immediately surrounding me and, for some reason, they have either had a delayed onset in me or they are simply not happening for me. Whatever the case is, I am fully appreciative of my healthy state of being right now!

Back to Ernest and John. They introduced me to the Ghanaian "chop bar," which is a joint for cheap and quick local dishes made by local people. Chop bars often sell a few staple dishes that can be jazzed up or mixed and matched with different sauces and/or meats. As is the case with basically every place that I encounter here, most chop bars are named with some reference to God. The one in Takoradi with the women who wore white and orange aprons and who treated me like a goddess was called "God Is Love Chop Bar."



The old Chelsea would have been irritated by such a restaurant title and such indications of the deeply religious nature of the Ghanaian people as the seemingly ubiquitous presence of this West African gye nyame symbol and people's frequent references to the Bible and Nyame (Ghanaian term for God) in conversations and the all-too-often question of what church I belong to. I took this picture of the gye nyame symbol at one of the outreaches from earlier this week.



Being here, I am learning to come to terms with the fact that, in not believing in God, I am a religious minority all over the world. And that's ok. I'll take your good blessings and just keep my beliefs to myself. :)

The God Is Love Chop Bar presented fufu and banku as the two main dishes with options for choosing either the traditional palm tomato or a groundnut (their term for peanut, which I like because, when I think about it, "peanut" actually sounds like a toilet term) and adding a type of fried meat--chicken, cow skin (I'll get around to trying it, even though it appears disgusting), beef, grasscutter, or tilapia. I think I've mentioned fufu an entry or so back without explaining it. Fufu and banku are Ghanaian staple dishes that are similar because they are both essentially sticky balls of a uniform composition that are eaten with a soup with the hands. Kenkey also falls into this category, but it is not as well known because the dish is more localized to the Akan, Ga, and Ewe inhabited regions of Ghana (and probably because it doesn't taste as good). I like to think of the three dishes in a sort of rainbow spectrum of ingredients, with kenkey being the leftmost dish with (fermented) maize as its sole ingredient, fufu being the rightmost dish with cassava as its main ingredient, and banku in the middle with cassava and cornmeal as its two main ingredients. The spectrum also satisfies my taste preferences, with the rightmost fufu as the most tasty and kenkey as the least soothing to my palate.



When I return, I'll be scoping out all the African markets and definitely bringing fufu home with me. Is there anywhere I can get some cassava in the United States? Actually, I just Wikipediaed it (yes, it's a verb now) and it is apparently the third largest source of carbohydrates in the world. I should be good. It is a woody root of a shrub and, although it is indigenous to South America, it is the most heavily cultivated in Nigeria. The outer encasing of cassava (there are many regional names listed for it, and I am most familiar with "yuca") is rough and brown and long and tubey, and its inside is firm, white, and striated. Yay additional food knowledge! I'm getting excited to read The Curious Cook once I finish Catch-22 so that when I return from Africa with my one month at home I can cook up a storm and then when I re-enter Yale's annual Iron Chef competition I will bring home a trophy for Calhoun. Yay.

Ernest (to the left of me in the picture below) and John (right) also took us to a beach after one of our outreaches. There was a woman who came up to me while piggy-backing her infant daughter who was strapped to her by a cloth wrapped tightly around her bosom. That seems to be the style here. During the visit to the beach I met my daily quota of seeing a naked person (thus far I have seen at least one naked person each day and I plan to keep this up) and the woman came over to me and introduced herself and, to her fortune, asked me if there was anything I could do about her infant's eye problem. I quickly identified the problem as an eye infection because that is what I am researching while I'm here and the green discharge and young age of the child were heavy indicators of such. I got Ernest's attention who was able to better communicate and diagnose the child, and he promptly brought the woman to the Unite For Sight van and gave her eye drops and warned her of the dangers of how she was caring for her child, which was by washing his eyes out with breastmilk.



I'm so happy to be doing research here because I am interacting with the outreach patients on a level that is helping me to gain really valuable insight into the mindsets and lifestyles of rural peoples in developing countries that I'm not sure I would have if not for the extensive questionnaire and patience and elaborate responses of the small pool of eye infections patients at each outreach. This was outside my research setting and was the first time that I would have had to mark down breast milk as the self-treatment practice by the patient.

However, I've been shocked to hear about the beliefs many of the surveyed patients hold regarding healthcare practices that could have been easily rectified with some proper elementary health education. For example, I encountered a nineteen year-old female who washes her face with her underwear. Another example is one of the common replies I have received regarding patients' suspected cause of their eye infections. They will tell me about their "pales," which is a spiritual term for hemorrhoids and which they believe are curses by God that cause other bodily maladies. So, to treat their eye infection, some will seek out a traditional healer and will take supposed pales remedies. Usually, the patients find that there is no improvement in their eye health and attribute this to the curse.

Ernest showed us a video of a "couching" procedure that had the Elubo team and me cringing in horror and disbelief. Couching is apparently still a problem in the world. I am doing some light research right now and learning that couching was the main cataract operating method from the 5th century B.C. until the 19th century A.D. The "technique" (if you can even call it that) involves taking a curved needle (hello non-sterile practices and infections and danger) and pricking the sclera temporal and pushing the lens of the eye down into the vitreous humour, which is the inner gel encapsulated within the eyeball. The cataract is not removed. Instead, along with the lens of the eye, it is relocated within the eye so that it is outside of the line of vision. The procedure is ineffective and dangerous and often results in the patient remaining blind or only with partially restored vision. Sadly, the video he showed us was produced in 2005 in Nigeria.

I am loving the nature of my volunteer trip here. The volunteering I do is no cake walk. Sometimes we station visual acuity 30 feet from an outhouse, and we must endure the strong scent of urine for hours. Sometimes there are flies buzzing around everywhere. Sometimes we don't eat for hours. Sometimes the patients have strong body odor. Sometimes we move really slowly because of communication barriers. Sometimes I simply tire of labor. And then sometimes when the day is over, the conditions in my designated home for that night are not refreshing. Power outages and rain and mosquitoes and stained bed sheets and tough mattresses and poor water pressure for showers and toilets and unfamiliar pubic hair-ridden bars of soap often leave me craving an escape to my comfortable Western world that is hundreds of miles away. But all of this is forcing me to experience a world to which I never would have imagined I could have been accustomed. I thoroughly appreciate the clean home in which I grew up and the opportunities that have been provided for me simply because I was lucky enough to be born to two loving and ambitious parents who lived in the United States and who were educated. Such things I always thought I appreciated, but, assessing where I am now, I realize that I took them for granted. I am in a state of graciousness for the life I have that I could have never conceptualized until I came here. I'm loving the changes in my perspective that I'm sure will inform how I conduct myself and lead my life when I return home this summer.

And now, tuning into the stories of Friday’s and Saturday’s shenanigans!

Friday night was wonderful, as it involved pizza and western civilization and good taxi rides and my first experience club hopping (really wasn’t that pleasant, as there was the annoyance of Ghanaians on the street who kept following our group and of not getting into clubs because of our lack of high-heeled shoes) and a free round of drinks thanks to a rando at the Highway View spot which had begun our night. Funny how “Highway View” is seen in a positive light here. Spot is the term used for bar here. The pizza was absolutely incredible. I haven’t felt so satisfied by any food here as I did that night. And what a feeling that satisfaction is! In the midst of what would turn into an unsuccessful string of club rejections, we stumbled upon a street acrobatics show! Three Ghanaian men were doing some crazy flips and flexibility moves. I wanted to jump in but I knew I’d be shown up. Well that’s just an excuse. I should have joined in. I was wearing pants that were adequately stretchy for some gymnastics maneuvers. I guess I’ll have to make sure I catch the next random street acrobatics performance. But I don’t know if I’ll ever return back to that same corner. It was too sketchy for a second visit.

On Saturday, I rode with a group of 10 UFS volunteers out to Cape Coast. The trip there was four hours long. I felt so sorry for our driver Bismarck who had to schlep us about. Along the way I purchased kenkey from a street vendor for the first time and realized how gross it is. I also saw The really long UFS rides are generally tolerable despite the scarily narrow and bumpy and unpaved and dark and traffic-ridden roads because of our frequent stops at gas stations, which I’ve found are the most evidently wealthy establishments. The gas station marts are always clean and have excellent selections. I am always impressed. We made it to Kakum National Park, where I traversed the canopy walk and guzzled the insides of a macheteed coconut and bought a Ghanaian cookbook from the gift shop. The canopy walk was incredible. I imagined how it could have been if I had been taking strides in nothing but my birthday suit, and I imagined exhilaration. Not that the exhilaration wasn't there. I just see a naked canopy walk as something I absolutely have to do before I die.

Or. Bring my brilliant idea of a naked canopy walk to the United States as a business venture. This is one of my two great ideas for business at home. My other idea is to bring the African people who carry the foodstuffs on their heads in their African garb to New York City. I think there would be huge market for that. I’mma make it happen!

If I had been able to plan the weekend myself, I definitely would have opted to rent out a hotel for a Friday and Saturday night to go on some of the trails. There were many obroni making their ways through the beautiful woods. I wanted to join, but I had to get back in the UFS van to make it in time for our second destination, which was the slave castle at Cape Coast. The tour guide was absolutely fantastic in how he presented to us the gruesome realities of the Triangular Trade. I’ve always felt emotional for slavery, but I can’t say confidently that I ever really thought for a second as much as I did during the tour and during my stay inside the slave dungeons how disgraceful humans could be. The experience was incredibly moving. It’s a new level of understanding I could not have ever fathomed just by reading a textbook. I felt claustrophobic within the sparsely distributed tour group inside the dark dungeons that had been cleared of the pools of blood, vomitus, urine, and feces that had piled up several feet high and had left traces on the concrete walls. I then tried to fathom that claustrophobia times a kagillion. I’m pretty sure I failed. But in the process of trying to understand by exposing myself to that setting, I think I’ve matured. It was truly moving to go there.

Anyway, that was the weekend and the week. I probably won't have internet access again for another week, as I'll be doing another week-long overnight outreach with the Northwestern Eye Clinic this time. I hope I'll get to eat red-red this week, which is a red bean and plantain dish, another staple Ghanaian dish that I have not yet sampled. Much love to all of my family and friends back home. I miss you!