Leaving for the village again

So I'm enjoying my last night of electricity before leaving for the second half of the village stay. We had a very enjoyable retreat but I think we're all excited about seeing our families again. I'm really excited to go back to the ugly turkeys of Dudevi. Man, they're really, really ugly. They have layers and layers of skin hanging off of their faces....euugghh. Anyway, one night in the village, we were sitting outside digesting our nighttime meal--delicious as always--and we were chatting by the lantern light. The moon wasn't out so it was pretty dark. Woesta was telling me that it was a taboo not to whistle at night, because it disturbs the spirits, and attracts dwafs. I thought she said giraffes so I got really excited, but she was like, "No, dwafs, you don't know what they are?" A dwaf is a creature that lives in the forest area. It looks like a man and is about three feet tall. It has a long beard and its feet are turned the opposite way so its footprints can be very deceiving. They're magical creatures, and if you ever encounter one in the forest, you may never be seen again. They can take you into their world and pass along their magical powers. If you do manage to survive a dwaf kidnapping, chances are you won't be the same person when you get back. My "uncle" told me a story of a friend of a friend of his...A man was out in the forest with his son one day, and all of a sudden, the son disappeared! A few days later the son was seen following a group of dwafs! The man said, "Son! Come back to me!" But the son looked at him and said, "You are not my father. I belong to the dwafs!" So another man in the village went to go hunt down the boy, armed with rifle and cutlass. He spotted the boy amongst the dwafs and just as he reached for his gun, his weapons disappeared and appeared in the hands of the boy. The boy shot out all of the ammo from the gun into the air, disappeared, and the weapons magically returned to the man. A few months later the boy returned to his family, and he seemed just as he did before...UNTIL one day there was a soccer game and the crowd started going absolutely nuts. Everyone was in a brawl, so the boy single-handedly beat the crap out of every person there. That's when they discovered that he had inherited superhuman strength from the dwafs!!! So that night I was pretty scared that a dwaf was hiding under my bed. When I told the rest of the group about this they thought I was crazy, but everyone in my village tells me about dwafs with the utmost serious of faces and I really don't think they're lying. So watch out for these dwafs. We spent the last week in Nkawkaw with Father Paul learning about African Traditional Religion and a dwaf is among the "magical creatures" category of beings, somewhere between Supreme God and us. Father Paul is quite the awesome priest, I really enjoyed my time there. He took us on a couple of excursions around the area. The six of us piled into his white truck, with four of us squished in the back. We passed several police checkpoints along the way, luckily not getting caught. We visited a school and as we were leaving, one of the teachers mentioned how there were too many of us in the back seat. He said that Father would be arrested at the gates, but Father just smiled and said, "The guards are Catholics too" and we drove away. Oh, can someone tell me what are some of the things Johnny Bravo says a lot? I can't wait to go back to Dudevi, to drive down that red dirt road. Many a time I've biked down that road and thought, "Wow, I'm in GHANA..." I had a lizard fall from out of the sky and crawl down then up my back, over my shoulder, and almost down my shirt, while I was eating some really, really spicy wachee. At the school I found a page of Romeo and Juliet in the English textbook. I read it over with a few students and I even tried to get them to act it out. It was really nice to read Shakespeare, and it felt even better to be able to share that with them and try to teach them what it meant. One night I went to visit someone with Woetsa, Woe, and Ado. We were walking down the road in the dark with a blanket of stars above us. I started to yell out "HELLO!" into the night, and it soon turned into us yelling out "My name is..." and then it turned into me yelling "MY NAME IS NOT YEVU!" It felt pretty good to let that out. Something I have for breakfast sometimes: Spaghetti with a bit of extra water that they add milk powder to make it milky. It's actually quite good, almost like cereal. Awkward experience: having the students at the school as me about sex and prostitution and giving a mini sex ed. leson when I was trying to teach population growth... I really admire the women in my village who totally embrace the toplessness. It really makes me want to give it a try, but it might not be the best idea... There's this song about patience that my family taught to me and then they tried to teach me the Agbaja? which is an African dance. I'm not so talented at it, however Grace didn't really care when she pulled me up in front of the naming ceremony of Agatha's baby to sing and dance--and I still can't believe the father named it OBERT! I think the name Diego is much better and I think Agatha thought so too... I had a wonderful dream of being at a buffet with pasta and pudding and lots of other lovely things and then I woke up drenched in sweat once again under my mosquito net only to realize that yes, I'm in Ghana. I had another dream where I was playing some sort of cops-and-robbers game with the Take-Home Chef...:) I wonder if he'll ever do an episode on Ghanaian food. At least I didn't have to dance the agbaja in front of the church in Dedukope like Sarah did... Sarah's family told her about a tribe of people in the north who turn into elephants when they're old and that's why they never kill elephants. Katrina made a really good point today: my host mother is so much even more incredible than I ever thought she was, because she had TRIPLETS! It's soooo much work taking care of one baby, and going to the farm, and taking care of the house. But she also had one child four years before and another three years after...wow! And on top of that, she's a seamstress. She sews pieces of clothing from anywhere between 10 000 to 20 000 cedis. She only really gets business around Christmas when she has up to 20 customers. $1 US equals just under 10 000 cedis, to give you an estimate. So every night for the first two weeks in the village I'd been hearing scurrying noises around the house that I stay in. I stay in a house that belongs to an uncle who is away at school. It's pretty sweet, I've got a sitting room and a bedroom. Anyway, I figured these noises were coming from the tons of lizards that crawl all over. I definitely didn't make the connection that the combination of noises, my allergies acting up everytime I was in there, and the random turds I found lying around was a MOUSE! I was about to get into bed one night when I noticed that there was something running around inside the mosquito net!!! I ran to Kekeli's house, who was the closest, and got him to get the mouse out of there. We put some mouse poison under my bed and the mouse was found a few days later, dead near the door. Now it stinks. New favourite snack: tiny fried fish that you're served with kenkey. They kind of remind me of goldfish crackers, because they look at your when you're eating them. So the proposal count is currently up to 26. I don't know what's been the worst: being proposed to by a man in Ewe, in front of his wife? Being proposed to through a boy's dad, who's trying to marry him off and trying to settle it through Sarah and then having him bring me a gift? Or, being proposed to by a Fetish priest, which would mean that I would be a trokosi, which is a girl who is sent to live and please the priest in order to pay for someone else's sins? Feedback, please. I love how the speed bumps in Ghana come in rows of three. The nights here are so beautiful. Sitting outside in the moonlight and gazing up at the stars is absolutely incredible. I tried a drink called ableha--it's kind of like Coke, only made with chili peppers!! It's really, really hard to drink. I learned how to make wongashee or cheese, in a pot, and with bamboo? I love gari! Can anyone see if you can buy this in Canada and get back to me? I tried palm wine, it's sweet. And I also tried two sugary drinks made from corn?! Apparently I saw an alligator which I thought was just a really big lizard, so I'm living near alligators...cool! Woetsa came home from school one day and told me that a girl from her school wasn't allowed back to class because she got pregnant and gave birth to a stillborn baby. She didn't want to have the child so she drank a lot during her pregnancy to kill the child. She is 14, her boyfriend is 19. She isn't the first girl at her school that this has happened to this year. So Christmas is coming up soon, and I won't have email until then. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. However I do have a request: If you would like to send me a present, that would be awesome!!! I like candy, and I'm also curious to know what's going on in the world out there, big news. I'd also like to see some pictures of you guys so that I remember what you look like...heh kidding I remember you all! However it would be nice to get some lyrics to songs that are easy and really nice to sing because I can't remember any. One in particular that's been bugging me: Since you've been gone by Kelly Clarkson. Strange request I know, but it's really really been bugging me. My address is below, and it takes about two weeks to get things here. I'm really not expecting anything, however it would be nice to hear from any of you in an email at the least. Peace.

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