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Published: September 7th 2008
We did not go on our 4 day trip this past weekend. The bus we were going to take ended up breaking down so we had to reschedule the trip for the third weekend in October.
The past few days have been filled with soccer, kids, and beaches. Thursday I finally got to go to the Peace and Love orphanage. We (my roommate and this girl I met also studying abroad) took the tro-tro to the orphanage. I'm getting more comfortable with the tro-tros but it's still very new. They let us out and we followed the signs to the orphanage. Once we arrived we walked into the gates (which one of the children opened for us) and spoke to this girl from Germany who was in charge at the time. Basically, there are no set guidelines or anything to follow, you just play with the kids and make sure they don't kill themselves. There are 50 children there. There are 2 infants who look to be about only a few weeks old, and then 4 toddlers. I grabbed one of the toddlers, Grace, and she stuck with me the entire time I was there. All the kids come up to you when you arrive and pretty much take over. They know what they're doing, some asked to use my phone so they could call their friends and others wanted me to give them my bracelets and earrings. They also asked if I had a camera, people here really like getting their picture taken, if you ask. I did not bring it with me because I did not want to take it the first time. Within the next couple times I will probably bring it. Two boys did my hair while Grace sat in my lap. The kids are very self sufficient because you have to be. The older children make sure the younger ones are kept in line. All these kids really want is attention, and if I can do that for them, then I will. I plan on going there Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and some weekends if needed.
We had to leave the orphanage because I had a soccer match that afternoon, but first I had to stop off in the market to get some cleats. One of the girls I was with helped me haggle so I got my cleats for 12 cedis (down from 16). I don't think I've mentioned this in my blog, but I joined a soccer team. The way that the sports are set up on the University is you have freshers (that's what they call freshmen) matches to determine who gets to be on the hall teams. Then from the hall teams they select people to play for the University. The girls in Ghana don't really play sports so the level of competition is not as fierce as it is with boys, especially when it comes to soccer (football is what they call it here). So we had our game and our team won in overtime with PKs. Me and two other girls from my program are on the team and we got chosen to go take the shots with two other girls from the team. I made mine, which is good because it is unbelievably nerve racking to play soccer in this country. The boys come down and watch the girls play, I think mainly to make fun, but they are impressed when they see you doing well... especially if you're an obruini (white person). We have practice in the morning, at 5:30. Kills me. I'm not sure when my next game is but we have made the hall teams so the level of competition should hopefully increase.
Because we did not go on our trip I went with three other girls to Koko beach. It's not far, distance wise, from the University but taking the tro-tros to get to our destination was an adventure in itself. If you are not from around here you have to ask people where to go and how to get there. The way tro-tros work is there are a lot of stations and when the mate (he's the guy that hangs out the window to shout where they're going) says the station you want you flag him down. It's all very hectic and it's really really difficult to understand. Like for instance, to get there we had to take the tro-tro from our station to the Circle from the Circle to Kenashe, from Kenashe to KoKo... in theory. What we ended up doing was taking a tro-tro to a station that would take us to Kenashe. These stations are wild! There are huge buses, big vans, taxis, and a ton of people everywhere. I have no idea how we ended up getting where we needed to, but we did. From Kenashe we got off at an even bigger stop and asked this older Ghanaian man where we needed to go to get to Koko beach. He led us up some stairs and zig zagged through a market and we found the right tro-tro. All in all it took about 2 1/2 hours to get there, but it's really really cheap, I think I spent a total of around 3 cedis to get there. Once we were there we knew of this resort that we should look for but we ended up finding another one. The tro-tro just kinda dropped us off on the side of the road and so we just kinda headed to the beach hoping to find somehwere. The place we ended up staying was called Big Milly's. There were these houses on the beach with an outside bar and restuarant. We checked in and then went out on the beach. The beach was gross, there was trash everywhere! It's a shame too, because it would've been really awesome looking with these big boats and what not. We ran into these little kids while we were walking on the beach and this little girl (she had to have been 4) had an attitude of a grown woman on her. She was yelling at us in some other language (might have been twi, but there are so many tribal languages that I can't be for certain). We later found out that she was asking us why we did not have slippers on (shoes). I guess she thought these crazy obruinis should not be walking around the beach with no shoes on... but she didn't have any on either. All I know is that she was mean and I was a little scared of her.
We had dinner and there was a live band that was playing reggae music so we hung around there for a bit. The male to female ratio was very disproportionate. I'm learning that most Ghanaian women don't generally go out and the ones that do are prostitutes, so that would explain that. There were a few other foreign girls there (German and British) but it wasn't enough to tip the scale. We went to bed pretty early. We got up this morning and made our tro-tro trip back, taking some other route which I cant even begin to tell you, but we made it back, and that's what's important.
We are going to Kumasi next weekend and this coming week I just have classes, soccer, and the orphanage on my schedule. I might try to find a place that will cut my hair but so far I haven't been able to. I asked this place on campus if they would cut my hair and they said no. I then asked if they could tell me where I could go, and they said no. I think they're afraid to mess up my hair. I have white people hair so it's quite different from black hair. All I know is that I need a haircut and this could prove difficult to find one, so the hunt is on.
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chels
non-member comment
you would
haha i can so see the whole scenario with the little girl with attitude and your reaction in my head!