Stateside!

We just touched down in NYC, which feels really good. Not that I did not enjoy my experience in Ghana, but after the travel experience we had yesterday, I'm excited that I'm here at all. It went something like this:

3:00: We attempt to check in online, only to find out that our flight has been canceled
5:00: We head to the airport six hours early hoping to get rebooked on another flight back to the States
6:30: We finally get our tickets, though two of our group members discover they do not have confirmed seats
7:30: After an hour in the Customs line, Kofi uses his status to bump us to the priority line
8:30: After nearly finishing checking everyone in, Lauren urgently steps out of line to run to the bathroom, nearly passing out on the way there
8:40: Lauren is taken out of the bathroom in a wheelchair and rushed to a nearby clinic
8:50: We are told to wait with Lauren's luggage while a Delta attendant tracks down Lauren for her passport
9:30: Per the advice of another agent, we assign one person to wait for Lauren's passport, and the rest of us head to our gate
10:30: After finally making it through Immigration and Security, we finally make it to the gate (5.5 hours later!)
10:45: Lauren finally makes it to the gate, and we all get our seat assignments (even the two girls flying on standby tickets!). Most of us end up flying business class, and Erinn is bumped to first (which she graciously offered to Lauren).
12:15: Over an hour after our scheduled departure time, we finally take off

So it all turned out fine in the end, but what a hassle in the interim. I'm just glad to be back in a city with flush toilets again :)

Departing Already

Interesting facts about Ghana:
- The three cell carriers here, Vodafone, MTN & Glo, have painted their logos on nearly every stall in every town in this country, so everything here is either red, yellow, or bright green

- There's only one road from one major city to the next here, so traffic is terrible.  Most of the major roads are really nice, though.
- Many Ghanaians are named after the day of the week in which they were born; for instance, if you were born on a Friday, your name would either be Efua (for a female) or Kofi (for a male)
People's names here have Muslim, Christian, Western, and Ghanaian influences, so they're all unique
- Ghanaians are perpetually late
- Many Northerners are "branded" with markings as children that denote the tribe they belong to
- More than 75 dialects are spoken in Ghana
- No one smokes here
- Many of the teachers here keep canes in their classrooms, which they use to punish their students
- Polygamy is legal here, and is pretty prominent in the North
- The unit of currency in Ghana is the Cedi, named after the word for cowry shell, which was once widely used as the medium of exchange
- Primary school is supposedly compulsory here, although 20% of children don't go
- Cocoa farming is a major industry here, although chocolate is scarce (due to the issue of storing it, I'm sure)
- Tourism has grown 1000% in the past decade
- 45% of the population of Ghana lives on less than $1/day, and 79% lives on less than $2/day
- No one here wears sunglasses


Foods I've eaten here:
- Fufu
- Banku
- Teazet
- Omo tuo (rice balls)
- Okra stew
- Groundnut stew
- Jollof rice
- Red red
- Fried plantain
- Boiled yams
- Tom brown porridge
- Pineapple
- Mango
- Fried rice - very popular here!


Things I will miss about this country:
- The signs that say "Except God"
- The creepy Jesus pictures everywhere
- Clothing styles you could never get away with in the US
- How goats & sheep roam freely everywhere you go (including church and clinics)
- How fights can break out anywhere and under any context
- How many people they can fit in a tro-tro - or pretty much anywhere for that matter
- How many things women can carry on their heads (the winner was a woman carrying a tray upon which she had placed three 10-gallon pots)
- How every taxi is inevitably missing something essential, including mufflers, working window handles, and even door handles - but never horns
- How everyone sleeps at all hours of the day
- How you don't actually have to go into a shop to know what it sells
- How every child here will say hello to you, and how if you offer to photograph them, you'll have a flash mob on your hands
- How everything is painted with MTN or Vodafone logos, including the trees
- How all restaurants here call themselves fast food restaurants, although they don't actually sell fast food
- How you can get anything in a bag - including alcohol
- How fertile everyone and everything is here
- How the only utensil required here is a S-P-O-O-N (count that with all five fingers, and you realize you only need your hand)
- How cookbooks instruct you to first kill the goat before you prepare the meal
- How everything closes when it rains
- The "Don't Urinate Here" signs
- How women breastfeed anytime, anywhere
- How everyone wakes up at 4 to sweep their floors, and how it takes them forever to do it
- How many purposes buckets have
- "African time"

Yes - I can add elephants to the list! We were about 200 meters from this pair:

We also had a monkey come into our room as we were packing up this afternoon. I easily shooed him away, but it was still exciting.

We then spent the remainder of the day (12 hours in total) en route back to the south of Ghana, which was largely uneventful with the exception of the overturned semi-truck that we watched be turned upright by a crane (and a fight break out, but we've sort of come to expect that here).

Safari - Part 1

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting under a gorgeous, starry night sky, with a giant, red moon. It's one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen.

We are currently at Mole National Park, where we spent the afternoon hiking. No elephants yet, but so far we've seen warthogs, tons of monkeys and babboons, bushbuck, and various other species of deer.

Goodbye, Tamale

After two full weeks there, we are leaving Tamale. I'm going to miss this place - especially my homestay mom, Mary.

Some of the memories I have of this place:
- Spending three hours washing clothes on Saturday mornings
- Explaining dryers to Mary, which blew her mind
- Mary always making me way more food than I can eat (I typically ate my meals from serving bowls)
- Children crying out "Saminga!" (white person!) when we walked through town
- Mary walking around topless around the house (which is culturally acceptable here but difficult for me to adjust to nonetheless)
- Being awoken at 3:30 every morning by the rooster and again at 4:30am when Mary started her day
- Don't Mess with an Angel, the Spanish telenovella dubbed in English (although the content was clearly edited)
- The soccer game we attended, which morphed into a riot after the ref made an unfavorable call, a fan rushed the field to try to fight him, and 30 armed soldiers stormed the field to take him down
- Mary's tough love parenting tactics (every time Melissa did something Mary didn't like, Mary would threaten to beat her)
- Taking bucket baths every night
- Sitting on the floor eating with my hands
- The torrential rainstorms (nothing like the rain we get at home)
- Shopping for fabric, which I had custom-made into skirts for only $10
- Playing with the neighbor girls, Wendy and Mena
- Wendy and Mina's obsession with my hair
- Fati, one of Mary's students, who insisted on cooking me dinner and washing my clothes the entire two weeks I stayed there
- Pounding fufu and banku for dinner
- Melissa calling me "Auntie"
- Mary buying the two of us matching beads, which she replaced the beads she had worn since her daughter was born with

Tamale (Funny Story)

This deserves its own blog post. I took Mary and Melissa out to dinner tonight at a fairly pricey restaurant (by Ghana standards, at least). A couple minutes after we got there, Melissa told Mary she had to pee, so Mary took her around the side of the building to relieve herself. (Melissa is technically potty-trained in that she can control her urges to pee, but like many other kids her age, she strictly pees outside.)

Well, Melissa had half a bottle of Fanta for dinner, so she had to pee again about 20 minutes later. This time, however, our food had just arrived, so instead of taking her around the side of the building as she had done the first time, Mary simply instructed Melissa to pee along the fence next to our dinner table (we were on the patio). The most hilarious part of the story, though, is that we were seated next to a group of Americans who were completely horrified by the experience.

Ah, Ghana.

Tamale (Hospital Visit)

We spent our morning touring the teaching hospital in Tamale. A couple things I found notable:

- Some of the most prominent diagnoses here are liver disease (primarily the result of hepatitis B, which they just began vaccinating for in the last decade), motor vehicle accidents, malaria, snake bites, meningitis, bowel perfusion d/t typhoid, malnourishment, HIV/AIDS, and TB. We also saw an infant with hydrocephalus and another infant whose skull had fused in the womb.
- One of the women on the medical floor was highly suspected to have pulmonary TB, but because she wasn't diagnosed with TB upon admission, she was unlikely to be moved to an isolation ward due to all the red tape the physician expressed he would encounter if he tried to do so. (The "isolation ward" is not comprised of private rooms but is simply a separate wing of the hospital where all the patients with TB are treated. Seems suspect to me given the prevalence of multi-drug-resistant TB strains.)
- Everyone here brings their own food and bedsheets
- There had been a bad motor vehicle accident a couple days before we arrived to the hospital that injured 30 people, but because of limited capacity, most of them were forced to lie on mattresses on the floor
- I asked one of the nurses how he avoids being exposed to diseases here since masks and gloves are in such short supply, to which he responds that he just trusts in God
- The OR staff is required to take off their shoes prior to attending surgeries
- The ICU here is actually very nice
- There is a VIP room adjacent to the ICU that they use to treat politicians and ministers
- Nearly all surgeries here are paid for in cash, and the hospital will not discharge a patient until his family pays for his operation in full
- Malnourished children are given wide beds so their mothers can lay next to them, which helps promote their growth

Tamale (Schools)

We spent the morning at a primary school here in Tamale, teaching the kids about hygiene and illness prevention. Our group chose to work with the first and second grade classes, designing a craft for them that involved them tracing their hands and was scheduled to last for 20 minutes max. Well, as it turned out, none of the kids had ever traced their hands before, and most of them had a really difficult time figuring it out, so it took much more time than we had anticipated. We also didn't realize that the kids here don't have lessons in English until they're in third grade, and very few of them understood any English at all - thankfully, we had teachers to translate for us, but it did make it more challenging overall.

A couple things we learned today:

- There are many more boys enrolled in school than there are girls, as parents are more likely to send their sons to school than they are their daughters
- 50 pesewas, or approximately 32 cents, is budgeted per student for school supplies, so the kids do without anything but the very basics
- Many of the children carry bookbags to school made from old rice bags
- To prevent truancy, each school requires a different colored uniform (so passersby can easily identify students who are skipping school, and know exactly which school they go to)
- One of the secondary schools here offers sewing and home ec classes but does not have a sewing machine or a kitchen for the kids to use to learn these subjects

Tamale (Clinic Visits)

We spent the last week assisting in clinics here, which was really interesting. My favorite parts were educating new moms on feeding their children (one of the brand new moms I counseled was only breastfeeding her infant three times a day!), performing antenatal exams, distributing flour, sugar, iodized salt, and fortified vegetable oil donated by the World Food Program, and weighing babies (pictured below).

A couple observations I made this week that I thought were interesting:

- Patient assessments are limited to "Are you feeling well?"
- There were 153 cases of malaria documented at one of the clinics in May of last year and only three recorded in May of this year, which the clinic physician chalked up to the use of malaria tests to diagnose febrile patients. (Prior to this year, everyone who came in to the clinic with a fever was diagnosed with malaria, but now they're realizing that many of those patients may have actually had other diseases.)
- Children here get vitamin A supplements, as many of their diets are deficient in this nutrient
- Only 25% of the community here is using family planning, and many of the women who use birth control get the Depo shot so their husbands don't know about it
- A large part of the work the clinics do is completed on home visits, where nursing staff goes out into the community to treat patients who may not otherwise come in for care

Tamale (Soccer Match)

After getting home at 1 last night, Laura, Erinn, and I decided to get up to go to church with Mary this morning. Mary attends a Catholic church, which holds a mass pretty similar to that of most churches in the US except that this service was two hours long - torture after only a few hours of sleep. So, despite my best efforts, yes, I did fall asleep during prayer - and again during announcements...

After church, we attended a soccer match, which turned into a riot after a ref made an offsides call that cost Tamale the game. It was total chaos - one guy tried to attack the ref, upon which dozens of armed guards (with machine guns!) appeared from nowhere to detain him, then half the crowd rushed the field, with fights breaking out all over the place. And to add to the chaos, dozens of kids ran out to the field and started doing cartwheels and back handsprings. It was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.

Tamale (Market & Concert)

I told Mary I wanted to help with chores this morning (really, though, I was just hoping I would have a chance to do my laundry), so I asked her what time I should awake. Turns out that was a big mistake, as she suggested I get up at 6:30 (and since she was up at 5, I still looked like I was sleeping in). The first THREE HOURS of the day was then spent washing clothes, during which Mary asked me all kinds of questions about technologies like washers and dryers.

The plan was then to go to the market to pick out fabric for skirts; however, Mary had some errands to take care of before we went to town, so we played with her daughter, Melissa, and two of the neighbor girls, Wendy and Mina, for the next three hours. Mina, six, is my favorite. She wanted to try on my sunglasses, use my camera, braid my hair, and generally hang all over me. Definitely the sweetest child I've ever met, though.

When Mary finally returned, we went into town to find fabric. Four-and-a-half hours later, we finally returned, each of us having found exactly what we had wanted. (At $2.50 per yard plus tailoring fees of $5 per garment, I indulged and bought two skirts :))

After coming home sweaty and exhausted, the girls convinced me to venture back out to go to a hip hop concert at the stadium, which was definitely an experience. Ironically, most of our group dressed in African-inspired sundresses and head wraps, and nearly the entire crowd dressed in Western clothing (and one plastic red vest).

Paga (Crocodile Pond)

Busy day. We began with a talk from the UNICEF director here, which was really interesting. It's great to get a perspective on healthcare in this country from an organization like UNICEF, as it deals directly with issues on the ground here.

After meeting with UNICEF, we headed up north to Paga. Paga is best known for its crocodiles, which you can take pictures with once one of the guides feeds them live chickens. (It's pretty horrific.) Paga is also known for being a major city along the slave route in the late 1700s and early 1800s, so we stopped to see a few major landmarks while we were there, as well.

When I got back, Mary had banku and okra soup waiting for me. She always makes me way more food than I can eat, which was no exception tonight. My soup was served in a serving bowl and could have probably fed a family of four. Most of the meals Mary makes me actually go to waste, which is ironic considering how Western families seem to like reminding their children about the starving children in Africa when they don't finish their meals.

After dinner, we visited the dorms of the secondary school where Mary works (she lives on campus here), which was a madhouse. Dozens of girls are packed into tiny rooms, and although each bed is meticulously kept, the room is still unbearably crowded. (All I can think of now is how great an environment this would be for communicable diseases.) And since all the girls must wash their clothes on Thursday or Friday, there was laundry hanging everywhere around the building. The girl who showed us around also told us that all the kids must be in uniform both during and after their schooldays, so all the girls we saw were dressed identically.

Tamale (My First Bucket Bath)

We were awoken to sounds of roosters this morning!

We then spent the morning touring a nursing school in Tamale, visiting the Royal Museum, and heading north to Tamale to meet the families we'll be staying with for the next few weeks. I will be staying with Mary and her two-year-old daughter, Melissa. (Mary's husband died last year in a car accident.) Mary teaches biology at the business school here in Tamale, which her apartment adjoins. She's great - she has been extremely welcoming so far, letting me stay in her own bedroom and feeding me a huge meal even though we didn't get in until after 9pm.

She also does not have running water, so tonight, I took my first shower via bucket. Even despite the heat, dumping a bucket of cold water over my head to try to wash the shampoo out still felt torturous to me.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to spending the next couple weeks here. Mary has promised to teach me how to cook - which will start with jollof rice tomorrow for dinner - and it will be fun to hang out with the two-year-old!

Trip to Kumasi

After spending the night in Accra, we're already on our way to Kumasi, about a four-hour drive north. Unfortunately, this meant we had to spend another day traveling, but on the other hand, this will mean we will get to Tamale (where we will be working) earlier!

Sadly, it's now our second night here, and the only notable thing we've done was eat - dinner at a gas station and lunch at a Chinese restaurant.

My first impressions of/experiences in Accra and Ghana:
○ Accra is not nearly as urban as I had expected
○ It's really muggy
○ Ghanaians are really friendly
○ Ghanaians are also really attractive

Trip to Accra

Wow - I just realized Ghana will be the 17th country I will have visited over the past year. Being that I'm doing this as part of a group this time, though, it feels completely different (and already much more relaxing knowing all I really had to do was pack a suitcase and show up at the airport).

Our trip is off to an adventurous start so far. Due to impending tornadoes, we boarded a 6:30 Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt in place of a 7:30 United flight to DC. Fortunately, we made it to Accra without any issues - though we did have to endure a six-hour layover.

Finally heading to bed in a REAL BED - I'll write more tomorrow!

Tel Aviv

Just got back from Tel Aviv! Blog post to come, but here are some pictures in the time being: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilydarnbrook/sets/72157626210082332/

Places I've Been

There are still so many cities left!

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Home Sweet Home

It's funny... touching down in Detroit was just as exciting after two weeks away as it was after three months. Ironically, the first thing on my to do list today was to get a new passport, as they stamped the very last page of my old one in Zurich, and I leave for Peru in only six weeks! (I had intended on just adding pages, but it turns out they charge for that now... grr...)

Till then!

Prague (Things I Love About This Place)

We're currently on our way back from Prague, where we spent the last four days of our trip. Though it's a gorgeous city, I honestly didn't think it lived up to my expectations. The nightlife was a little lacking, the city is flooded with cheap souvenier shops, and street names change every 2-300 meters. (Look at these directions!)

Things I did like about this city, though, included the following:
• The Czech language and its utter lack of consonants (for example in the word trdlo), plus the fact that everything ends with the letter "y" (republiky, mapy, cigarety, salaty, etc.)
• The people (we stopped to get directions to our hotel at ANOTHER hotel, and the guy at the reception desk went through the effort of actually printing us directions)
• The free tram rides (we've paid for two tickets so far and still haven't validated them, which no one else seems to do, either)
• New Year's Eve (you can buy REAL fireworks here, so the whole city is aglow)
• Being able to buy Absinthe
• The hot chocolate (which is a little bit like a liquid candy bar)
• Our hotel, which had the largest breakfast buffet ever
• How descriptive traditional Czech food is (pork knuckle, pork neck, lamb knee...)
• How well we've eaten here (we could have probably eaten really cheaply, but when you can get wine for $3/glass and entrees for $15, why compromise?)

)

Munich

Since I'm lazy, I'm just going to list the things we did while we were here.

• Spent lots of time in Munich's beer halls ("biergartens" in German)
• Ate lots and lots of Bavarian food (sausage, sauerkraut, and potato pancakes....mmmmm :))
• Visited the BMW Museum, which was largely uneventful (though the building itself was pretty cool)
• Visited Dachau concentration camp, which was a very sobering experience (pictures below)
• Shopping (after Christmas sales here are amazing!)
• Drinking hot wine and watching ice skaters downtown (which we had intentions of doing but never got around to it)

And things we didn't do (which I really wish we had…):
• Visited Neuschwanstein Castle (which just means I'll have to come back... :))

And finally, some interesting facts:
• Germans use the letter ß in place of "ss"
• Most luxury car manufacturers in Germany follow what is known as a gentlemen's agreement by limiting the top speed of their cars to 250km/hour (155 miles/hour), though this is easy to remove
• Doing the Nazi salute is punishable by a fine of up to 10,000 Euro
• 80% of Munich was destroyed in WWII
• There were 42 assassination attempts on Hitler during WWII, most of which were by Germans
• BMW, along with many other companies, employed slaves from German concentration camps to work on their assembly lines during WWII
• The tea party in America has used propaganda identical to the propaganda used by the Nazi party
• Oktoberfest celebrates the anniversary of former German King Ludwig I