Visit to Ayuwaho

The village chief

Visitors from Holland

     This week the women from Holland who built the orphanage arrived. It's been a bit crazy, I don't think the Ghanaians like having her here. I went with her and Leo to Cape Coast yesterday and it was a difficult day. I feel like I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have gotten used to the Ghanaian culture but at the same time I can relate to the European white woman, so she and Leo both look to me when they are sort of arguing.

   When Henriette first arrived, she asked me what I was doing here and I told her about Mercy's Dream, and how we want to get sponsors for all the kids. I'm not sure how she took it, but she replied with, "Well, you know we already have sponsors for all the children to pay for schooling, food, etc." I was taken aback and just said, "Yes, and we want to help you." I'm not sure what she thought of me. However, last night I was talking to her and she was saying how things are becoming more expensive and they will appreciate our help with getting sponsors for the children. I think she likes me because she has invited me to go with her and Leo whenever they have to go somewhere. I have been very lucky to go to some rural villages. One  had no electricity and we had to walk thru trees and a beach to get to it. And we went to Cape Coast and attended some village meetings.

     Saturday we are taking the kids to the beach :)

 

Wildlife in Ghana

This is Pinky, he lives in my kitchen, along with another lizard. And another lizard has taken up habitance in my room. Yes, I name them because it makes me less frightened of them.

This is a millipede. When it is not curled up it is about as long as my foot.

New volunteer room

     I moved into the official Mercy's Dream room with 4 beds that will be used just for our volunteers (and so far we have a volunteer for December and one for Jan-April).

    

    When I moved in Daniel mentioned the ceiling was lower than my other room, and I really didn't take any notice....until I was untangling my laptop cord and my finger got caught in the ceiling fan! Luckily it was on the lowest setting but it was going pretty fast and the tip of my index finger got what looks like a blister filled with blood, and my finger was all swelled up. Leo told me to let the blood out, so I let him use scissors to cut it open and I squeezed the blood out and he put disinfectant on it. I will either have an awesome immune system or be very sick by the time I get home! Today alone I probably could have gotten multiple diseases!

     The kids eat sugarcane like crazy and they want me to eat it too. Basically they use their teeth to tear it apart, then give it to me and you just chew it to get the sweet sugary juice out of it. Today they wanted me to drink coconut water, and I didn't realize the straw was actually the outside of a pen...who knows where they found that! I have also gotten blood on me from 2 different kids, the first a mentally disabled child who tried to jump off a swing while I was pushing her; she fell flat on her face on the concrete; the second was a boy who stabbed his hand with some sharp metal thing and was bleeding all over the place. I also have about a hundred mosquito bites (or as 6-year-old Florence says, "Moquisto" bites!) no matter how much bug spray I use!

     I made the mistake of letting 11-year-old Raheal stay the night with me last night, and now she wants to stay every night in my room! It would be fine, except tonight Madam Henriette arrives. (The kids call everyone Madam, even I am Madam Jen...well, until I went to the Catholic Church and now I seem to be Sister Jen!). Madam Henriette is one of the founders of the orphanage and she is from Holland. From what I gather, things are a bit uptight while the Holland people are here (she is the first of 3 to be arriving for the next couple weeks). Leo said she would probably not approve of me letting Raheal sleep in my room, and I can understand that. Leo also said they will try to ask me questions to try to get something on the staff (this apparently happened to another volunteer, and the staff was not happy with her after the Holland people left). Then they go tell the staff what I say. I will need to learn to keep my mouth shut, since they are white and European - I may feel at ease with them...

Computer lessons

I’ve been teaching computer skills to the children BUT there is only

one working computer and the program I was going to use doesn't work

on the computer so it's all just by my memory. Today I couldn't

teach because the electricity was off for about 6 hours.

 

I think I'll be starting at the school to help in Kindergarten! (Could they be any cuter?!)

SAS Visits Orphanage

Students from Semester at Sea came to visit the orphanage.

School starts again

It took a full 24 hours of planes, taxis and buses to get me here, but I have finally arrived at Egyam Orphanage. Leo, the social worker at the orphanage, has been wonderful. He knows alot about working with Americans, so he has been very accomodating and welcoming. It would have been tough without him!

I spend most of my time playing with the kids. I have never played so much football in my life! They also have a game (I think it's called Mancala) that they love to play, which is good because it's about the only game I think they have, and they want to play it constantly. I arrived at a very good time, the kids had a 2 week vacation to visit their extended family, if they had any. About 15 kids were left at the orphanage and I got to know them very well. I got to go with Leo to drop off and pick up the other children in their home villages and even met some of their families.

I go to the Catholic church with the kids on Sundays, which is very different from church at home. The great part is half the service is spent singing and dancing; the bad part is they speak in Fanti and the service lasts for 3 hours!

All the children are back now, and they have just started school. Last night, they received their books and I helped them put book covers on them. Their books aren't like what I am used to when they say "books". They aren't textbooks, they are pretty much just notebooks and the younger kids have books with words in them to practice writing. I believe the teachers just teach from their own notes, not textbooks. I am supposed to be helping at the school soon, so hopefully I'll be able to see firsthand how a Ghanaian classroom works.

Really the only tough part is the language barrier. Everyone speaks and understands English, but the children often tell me I speak too fast. It's also hard for me to understand them sometimes. They speak to each other in Fanti, so it's hard for me to join a conversation. But the children try hard and want me to be included in everything. The kids have taught me some words in Fanti, (I'm not sure of spelling) Kadiya: How are you? Mawkay: I'm fine. Brauflay/brauny: White person. Beebeelee: Black person. I am very glad I know how to say white person, because everywhere I go people yell Brauflay, and I know when they are talking about me.

I think they have gotten used to me being here by now. It's easy to just play with the younger kids, but it has taken longer for the older kids to come talk to me (the older ones have decided to teach me to dance to their music). My favorite time is after dinner when the kids watch TV or movies until bedtime, and I have about 4 of them who just want to snuggle up to me. They have a DVD player with a bunch of Christmas carol singalongs, Christmas movies and Jesus movies; I think we have watched it 10 times since I've been here and all they want to do is sing the Twelve Days of Christmas song! When they go to bed they always say goodnight, see you tomorrow. It's going to be really hard when the day comes that I won't be able to say "see you tomorrow".

Chicken project

The Beginning

     The second I stepped off the plane I knew I was in Africa, there is a smell that is specific to Ghana (and maybe Africa in general). The best way to describe the smell is like a mixture of humidity, toilet and garbage (luckily that's just in the cities, and Egyam is rural so it doesn't smell...or maybe I've just gotten used to it). It took almost a full 24 hours for me to get to Egyam, Ghana. I spent about 16 hours on planes, then an hour in a taxi, 5 hours on a bus, then spent 20 mins waiting for the security guard to pick Leo (the social worker at the orphanage) and I up from the bus stop at 2am (not the number one place I wanted to be at 2am, being a white female in Africa) and finally take me to the orphanage. The next morning I woke up and opened my door to find 20 orphans staring at me curiously.

     The shower is basically a waist high faucet that has a small stream of water that runs out, no where near the equivalent of my shower at home, or even my kitchen sink! My room is actually pretty nice, 2 bunkbeds with some plastic chairs and a table with a TV on it, though it gets one fuzzy, sometimes black and white channel that just plays Ghanaian soap operas. My kitchen is a room with a small table, chair and sink; and I bought a small gas burner for cooking (I definitely regret not bringing a knife or dish soap). I eat either rice or noodles for every meal. One of Leo's friends, a police officer, I guess really liked me and bought me a bunch of fruit and vegetables. Unfortunately I let Leo put it in what I thought was a fridge but turned out to be a freezer...let's just say fruits and veggies don't last very long when they get semi-frozen. The electricity tends to go out for about an hour at a time, and the water has gone off once or twice; I have definitely learned that I need to keep a supply of water that could last me a couple days.

    

     For 2 weeks, all but about a dozen children, went to visit their extended families (since one day they won't be living in the orphanage and will want to live in their home villages). The dozen kids that didn't have families to visit and stayed at the orphanage, I got to know them pretty well. Liky and Denis, both about 8 years old, are my little buddies. They like to spend one on one time with me. The rest of the boys want me to be goal keeper when they play football/soccer. And the girls just want to braid my hair.

     Liky has very good English, I think because he is so outgoing and loves to talk to people. The kids all understand and speak a good amount of English, but there is still a language barrier and they generally talk to each other in Fanti. It has been hard trying to talk to the kids and people who work here, mainly because they don't talk to each other in English so there is no way for me to be part of any conversation unless they actually speak to me. The kids are better than the adults (except Leo, he speaks very good English and will translate for me), the kids love to teach me words in Fanti. I now know that when people yell blauflay at me it means white person, they told me to say bebelee which means black person.