Blogs from Teshie, Greater Accra, Ghana, Africa - page 2

November 19, 2014 To everyone who has been reading this blog for the past 6 months: You have heard my stories and seen my pictures. I love each and every child at the Lord Arm’s Christian Foster Home. The orphanage needs your help. The lease on the property is running out and the owner wants to sell rather than sign another lease. Dream Africa Care Foundation is trying to raise $65,000 to buy this property. This property is important because it provides the space for many things, including a school, the chance for expansion to the house, areas to help the orphanage become self-sufficient, and most importantly a chance to keep this family together. It may not be the kind of family we’re all used to, but they are brothers and sisters nonetheless. A child like ... read more

September 29, 2014 A typical day with me leaving for the orphanage around 8:00 A.M. I go to the orphanage to teach pretty much every day now. Before school went on vacation I was the only one going to Faith Academy, but now a lot of people are going there in the mornings. The orphanage is where I’m needed and I prefer to be. I don’t always teach the same class. In fact tomorrow I want to teach the oldest class science, which might surprise some people. A volunteer who just left gave a good science book to one of the girls, and while I was reading the first part of it with her I realized that the scientific method was something that would be good to teach to her whole class. However, I do prefer ... read more

August 28, 2014 Another Homowo festival: this time Selina, who’s the teacher who runs our fishing village project, took us to Labadi. Apparently at the different places on different days there is a theme that runs through the day. One place might have a day for drinking, and yesterday at Labadi it was a day of hugging. Basically if anyone came up to you and hugged you it was acceptable. I’ve never been hugged by so many strangers before. Many of the men wanted to hug us bruni (that’s the correct spelling of Bernie) women. Some of the men were more aggressive about the hugs than others. One guy actually picked us up, and at one point on of the guys kissed me on both cheeks and I had to push him away. Another fun thing ... read more

August 24, 2014 Yesterday afternoon we went to a street art festival in Jamestown, which was one of the local festivals for Homowo. Homowo literally means hooting at hunger, and it’s a festival that is done every year to satisfy the gods to prevent famine from happening. This is specifically a Ga festival, so the different areas in the Greater Accra region have their own small festivals, and at the end they all come together for one grand festival. Technically Homowo starts in May before the rainy season when they plant the millet. After they plant the millet they have a month of silence where it’s forbidden to drum. The festivals happen at the end of August to the beginning of September when they harvest the millet, which they use to make kpokpoi (the festival dish). ... read more

July 21, 2014 I know it’s been a couple weeks since my last entry. These last couple weeks have been insane at the house with people constantly coming and going. The house is literally overflowing with people. Currently there are 33 volunteers with Dream Africa. Jamal finally moved out of the house to his own apartment where he finally has some privacy. That gave us another room with beds and another room was just finished outside, but even with those two rooms (eight more beds) we’re still struggling to find enough beds for people. There are so many nationalities represented. There are 4 Americans right now, quite a few English, a group of Northern Irish, 6 Spanish, French, Japanese, Swedish, Ethiopian, Greek, Italian, Austrian, Swiss, Italian, and even a Nigerian. Most people aren’t staying very long ... read more