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.
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