Travel time begins

Sooooooooooooooooo.... A few days ago I left Dudevi, crying uncontrollably and ungracefully. The last three weeks went by much too quickly. But I don't think I really elaborated on Nkawkaw, so I'll start with that although it was a while ago. Father Paul, the greatest man alive, took us sightseeing around the area. We went to the top of the mountain where it really doesn't seem like the top of a mountain because there's a few villages up there and you could pretty much live there your whole life and not know that you were on top of a mountain. We went to go visit one of his priest buddies where they served us beer at about 10 AM. We also went to the dam at Akuse, where this guy took us around and explained everything about the dam to us but spoke very quietly and had his eyes locked on Sarah the whole time. He was also probably half her height. We also went to see a waterfall, where we were led through these caves and to a big rock that looks like an umbrella and a palm tree with two heads. To get to the top of the rock you had to climb a sketchy bamboo ladder. It broke on the way up. The Ghanaians called us heavy. The view was fantastic though, the rock was very similar to Pride Rock. Hmmm, I think I'll stop talking about Nkawkaw and more about the village. I was welcomed home with a big YAWA! and they lifted me above their heads as they jumped up and down and screamed in excitement. It felt really, really great to come "home" to that. I started to learn how to play the drums! It was really fun, but I was really scared about even trying because I have no prior musical experience and I'm just a yevu who doesn't know what she's doing. By the end of it, they gave me 100%! Heh, and half the guys proposed to me. I experienced another naming ceremony. Moses' baby, Emmanuel, was introduced to the world. His name was supposed to be Julian (my idea) but Moses' father told him to name his son Emmanuel the day of the ceremony. AHHH I was THISCLOSE to naming a Ghanaian. Agatha calls her baby Diego, even though his real name is Obert. At 9:10 that morning they poured libations and we had a shot of akpeteshie. Alex took us to the banana farm he works at, and we ate bananas! :) It's a really, really big place and the work that they do is so hard. It's 50 km away and Alex bikes there and back everyday. There was a centipede? millipede? in my room and I screamed for Ado to get it out and pretty much the entire village ran over to see what the heck was going on... By the way: I NEED UNDERWEAR because all of mine are wearing out. Thanks, Merry Christmas. Oh actually we all need underwear, small medium and large please. It was Ado's 16th birthday on December 9. I learned that Woe wants to be a hairdresser so I let her wash my hair....because I'm too lazy to do it myself. She washed my hair the same way she washes clothes, so it kind of hurt, but it was really good to bond with her because I had been bonding more with Woesta. Oh, I bought these gigantic bright yellow shorts from Value Village before coming here and one day in Accra Katrina spilt this delicious chocolate drink all over me and I sat in gum. I was walking down the road and someone called me "messy shorts girl!" The shorts are really comfy though. Alex taught us a song: "Shake, shake, shake, shake your bottom. In the name of Jesus shake your bottom." Woesta went to school for batik a few years ago, and we did some! Batik is a form of dyeing cloth art. We dyed the cloth turquoise and brown and we all got clothes made by Grace. It made me really happy to have everyone in the family have outfits in the batik. Katrina broke a chair. I went to the farm and picked sticks for charcoal. I sweat a bunch and really didn't do much work at all compared to Grace and Woe. I got a bruise that looked like a happy face on my knee from falling off a stool. Speaking of stools, we've had some pretty bad pooping experiences which I won't get into right now. "Let's get naked" has transcended the language barrier and we have written a cheer in the Ewe equivalent. We told Kofi about "Hay una fiesta en mis pantalones y estas invitado" and what it means in English and all he says now is, "I have a party..." The thing is though, that pants means underwear and trousers means pants. Grace took me to Ada Junction to visit her friend that's a teacher and we watched a Ghanaian film. It was really, heh, interesting? I'll try to find a copy to bring home, I'm sure a lot of you would enjoy it. I met Christian/Taller the catechist at the Catholic church in Dedukope, where Sarah is staying. I was afraid of meeting him because everyone else had and he made them each stand at the front of the church and answer questions in Ewe which they didn't understand and have everyone laugh at them. Taller even caused one of us to have a breakdown, but do not worry it was nothing serious. They call him Taller because he's taller than everyone, in the world. So you can probably imagine what it was like seeing me standing at the front of the church looking all the way up at Taller, who was shooting the questions out in Ewe at me. I got nervous and forgot everything I had learned, so I ended up saying that I was staying in Dudevi for the rest of my life? Taller has this way of morphing anything you say into something completely different, it's quite amusing to have a conversation with him. I went to a funeral. They started it on a Wednesday night and drummed from 8 to about 12 then started again at 3 AM and went until mid-morning. Elisha and I were hanging out with Alex, Moses (the love of Elisha's life who is married and just had his first child but proposed to Elisha nonetheless) and Kofi, and they were saying that there was NO WAY we could go to this funeral because at funerals all they do is drink, dance, and get naked. And the men count the women's waist beads.....whoa!! Beads are not to be shown to anyone so this is like heavy stuff. And we were thinking.....yeah right NO WAY we have to see this to believe it. So we went and there wasn't any nudity, except for the drunk guy that had his shirt tied around his head. Everyone was dancing in a circle around the drummers, it was fun. Some girls tried to teach us how to dance. There's this bobobo dance that they do where you sort of have to walk/dance around in a circle and you stick your butt out a bit and shake it as you walk. The point of the dance is to try to grab the person's butt in front of you. We didn't realize this until someone told us afterwards. Luckily I was in front of Elisha. Oh and on December 26th there's a big party at Joy Beach where you can meet Batman. I went to the funeral the next day and I played the acaya? for probably an hour and a half straight. It's an instrument made out of a calebas and has beads draped around it. You shake it like a maraca. And I got a shot of libations at 8:04 AM. We danced the agbadza as well, which is really, really very difficult. I couldn't believe that they were drumming for so long because after one drumming practice of two hours my hands really hurt. Funerals are very partyhardy here, I think it should be introduced in Canada. Anyway, it was really interesting to watch the funeral, the passion in the drum playing and dancing, and just how completely different it is from home. It wasn't until they brought out the coffin that it really hit me that someone had died, that this wasn't just a big party. Oh and I don't like the people at Immigration because they wouldn't give me my passport back until over a month after I gave it in to get my visa renewed. Everyone else got their passports only a three weeks after we brought them in. Malt and Milk biscuits....find them, they're somewhere in Canada. I had an awkward conversation with a woman at Immigration who wanted me to marry her brother, Ebenezer. I biked all the way to Battor to take part in a kenkey eating competition only to find that it was postponed. I went to a random funeral in Folkbe? in the middle of the night. There was "spinning": big speakers and Ghanaian highlife music. We all made up "guy names" for each other, which I will only share to those that offer a worthy sacrifice. Apparently all the guys here have nicknames for each other, which makes things even more confusing when you're trying to figure out who people are. Oh, there was a big giant Church of Pentecost Convention the last four days I was in village, which kind of sucked because I didn't get to really spend time with my family the last few days because the girls were heavily involved. This convention involved speakers which blasted out people SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS INTO THE F'N MICROPHONE AT FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING! I was half an hour away and it woke me up, and I can sleep through anything! BAH. Uh, it was pretty much like four days straight of church, in a different language, so I sort of found excuses to leave and I felt bad for it becuase I was leaving my mother and sisters but I didn't want to spend my last hours in the neverending mass. Instead I got to hang out with Ado and Atsu and play cards. I successfully taught them Crazy Eight Countdown, which is really difficult because they have different names for all the suits. On the last night, Elisha and I hung out with Alex, Moses, and Kofi. This random large vehicle pulled into their living area in the middle of the night and they were thre to do a ritual with the priestess at the shrine there. A man and his daughter were sick, so they killed some chickens, poured some libations (perhaps a few too many), and made cuts all over their bodies. The daughter must've been 3 or 4 years old. It was really difficult to watch, we were exhausted at the time from lack of sleep over the whole last week, and slightly boozed, as Ghanaians like to say. The chicken was pretty tasty though. HTen Elisha, Moses, Anani, and Kofi went out into the bush to kill a rabbit. They were out there, in the dark for an hour and a half and came back empty handed because they made Elisha wear gigantic rubber boots because they thought that the bush would worry her feet but they all were barefoot so the rabbits wouldn't hear them. Elisha had to walk way behind Moses and his 5-foot...rifle, too bad. I stayed behind and sat between Alex who was sleeping and Gideon who was watching me laugh for the entire hour and a half at the fact that they were out in the bush in the dark looking for a rabbit?!?! We got to bed at 4 AM that night. Leaving the village really sucked. I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do before leaving, I didn't get to say goodbye to everyone I wished I could've. Seeing Grace and Woetsa cry when I left really hurt. I was a mess. I can't believe that part of the experience is already over, and that half of my trip here is finished. Sometimes it seems like I'm never going to go home, and I still have moments where I look around and think, "What the...I'm in Ghana?!" Now travel time beigns. Tomorrow we embark on the day-long bus ride to Tamale at 5:30AM. If I don't write anything else until Christmas, Merry Christmas. Also, if anyone can figure out a way to send me Manchu Wok noodles, I'll forever be in your debt. Proposal count=42. Peace.

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