Church, First Sickness, African Cup of Nations...

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Last blog, if you read it, I ended rather abruptly. This is because the only access to the internet I have is through internet cafés, and I was running out of internet time, so had to wrap it up quickly. I recently acquired the ability to get wireless internet in my room using my laptop, by buying a little card that gives me a password that works for 5 hours. And conveniently, my room, and specifically my desk, seem to be the only place in the whole International Students Hostel (ISH) that receives reliable and relatively stable wireless signal. So that’s really unexpectedly good.

So yes, after I got ran out of minutes at the internet café, I had planned to use my newly acquired wireless connection later after dinner to continue updating, etc. We ate dinner at Mercy’s home, and then I came back to the ISH and wanted to take a shower quickly before I hooked up my computer. The shower happened. The computer didn’t.
Why you ask?
I’ll tell you.

Rolling power outage.
Yup. They exist. It’s not a myth.

I had just stepped out of the shower, with my towel around me, dripping wet, no one around (and the bathroom is a bit of a distance away from my room)… and the lights flickered for a minute, and then went out. Bathroom was completely black. Once I found my way out of the bathroom, the hallway wasn’t ay lighter (which is essentially outside, because it’s made up of one wall and a roof, being completely open on the opposite side). Needless to say that night (only our third night in Ghana) was quite eventful, and actually turned out to be a lot of fun, despite the lack of the ceiling fans we rely on so heavily. 10 of the 11 kids in our SUNY program gathered in one room with all our flashlights and bug repellent and played cards and Mafia all night. All in all it was a really good chance for us all to bond, and everyone really had a lot of fun. ☺ The power only stayed off till the next afternoon around 2pm, which was also excellent because it has been known to stay off up to 3 or 4 days!

The next day, Sunday, a small group of us opted to go to church with Mercy and her family at her Interdenominational Church. Christianity is beyond huuuuge here. A majority of the stores have names like “Lord Jesus is the Savior Beauty Salon,” and the back of the taxis all have some Bible verse or verse number written on the back window. It’s crazy. It was really neat to see all the people so dressed up in such incredibly vivid prints, and some even in really traditional African dress. Lots and lots of unusually long songs and dancing throughout, but there seemed to be no logic to the order of the service. We sang/danced for a while, then a woman preached for a few minutes, we sang/danced some more, a baby was blessed, more singing/dancing, preaching, singing/dancing, blessing a baby, parish announcements, preaching, singing/dancing, etc, etc. I thought it had to be done soon, but then the real man preacher got up and proceeded to give an hour long sermon. The bulletin said it was on “discipleship,” but I’m not honestly sure I could attest to that or even tell you what his main point was. After we got out, one of the Norwegian girls asked me, so innocently I couldn’t help but laugh, “The preacher, all he did was repeat himself. Why did he do this?” I didn’t really know how to explain it but to say that preachers do that sometimes. lol

All in all, the service was just so completely different, and hot and long, that I was really unable to get anything out of the service spiritually or otherwise. I'm hoping that will change though as I get used to the culture differences, and go to the Catholic Church next week. The people were so friendly though, and the church elders gave us a small very nice reception after mass, and I'm really glad I went.

The service apparently took a lot out of me though. The moment I got back to the ISH I felt really sick, and started having dry heaves. No fun. The electricity still wasn’t on at this point either. I opted not to go out to lunch with the rest of the group, and took a nap instead. When I woke up I felt infinitely better though, so I was really really glad that passed. Just getting a small taste of what it feels like to be sick in this difficult climate, I hope never ever to be sick again here. Ever.

The group came back from lunch sooo excited, saying they had found out that tickets to the African Cup of Nations Football (soccer) Championship game were only 5 Cedi ($5 US) and only 15 mins away being that it was hosted in Ghana this year. This is like the World Cup of Africa, except Africans are absolutely insane about football because absolutely everyone and their mother play footall. So the 11 of us and 2 other international students and 2 Ghanaian students piled into a tro-tro and rode to the game (thank goodness I was feeling better because I would have completely hated to miss it).

This game was possibly the most insane place I’ve ever been in my entire life… Think like the SuperBowl, minus the alcohol and commercials, but on crack cocaine. Ghana had been eliminated 2 nights before, and had placed third. But apparently that doesn’t really matter in Ghana. Everyone was decked in Ghana’s red, yellow, green, and black... even though the teams that were playing were Egypt and Cameroun. They gave out blowup noise maker toys to every person at the gate, so the place was always only slightly below absolutely deafening. We kept trying to figure out which team the Ghanaians were rooting for, but I quickly came to the conclusion that they really didn’t care; when the Egyptian goalie made a save: mass cheers and insane dancing, Carerounian goalie: same effect lol While though ridiculous, it was so so so much fun laughing at everyone around us and being in a place with so much energy.

There were 4-5 pep band type ensembles with trumpets, trombones and native drum-type instruments at various places throughout the stadium. Sadly though, none were close enough to us that we could hear over the noise crowd, except for an occasional screaming trumpet. The people sitting in listening distance of the music seemed to be having a small scale rave though, which was fun to watch.

Since most, if not all, of the conversations not spoken directly to us are spoken in Twi, it’s a little frustrating never knowing what the people around you are saying. So when the crazed Ghanaians on some sort of football high would start arguing with one another, our coping mechanism became trying to guess what they were arguing about. We finally settled upon the conclusion that the 4 men in front of us yelling at each other on top of their lungs were arguing which Sex and the City character they liked best. lol. I think we plan to continue this caption contest throughout our stay here ☺

Getting home was a challenge. We waited until they had given out the cup (the Egyptians won a very well played game) and the stadium cleared out some. We got a little lost and walked the entire way around the circular stadium in a mass mob of people selling everything from cooked barracuda and football merchandise, to fire-breathers and bands of bongo drums. It was really quite incredible.

We walked for quite a ways to get to the trotro stop, and when we finally got there, the trotro to people ratio was significantly less than desirable. Not a trotro in sight, but tons and tons of people. The Ghanaian student who was guiding us, Dennis, took a while before making the executive decision that we should start walking. Only being here for 3 or so days, no one knew whether that was a good or bad thing because we had no real idea where we were. Dennis encountered some of his friends and started chatting with them and Twi, but when one of Dennis’ friend exclaimed “WALKING!!!” (in English) all of a sudden and rushed over to one of the girls in our group and bent down to look at her foot and laughed “I hope you have thick feet!!”… we knew that it wasn’t good. lol

We walked for probably 10 minutes when Dennis finally was able to flag down an off duty tro-tro, and sweet talk him for quite some time until he finally agreed to drive us to Legon (the city the University is in).

Now, this particular trotro was a van equipped to seat 12 people plus the driver. We however crammed the 15 of us, and 5 more of Dennis’ friends who had been walking with us, to make a most incredibly uncomfortable 20 people into the van. Somehow I ended up sitting on Shane’s lap for the duration of the ride, and Dennis’ friends ended up in some strange half standing half sitting positions. But we got home just fine without any other mishaps.

Ghana has been amazing so far!! All our days have been incredibly action packed and I feel like I’m getting just a little bit more self-sufficient here each day… maybe even someday finally know my way around this overwhelmingly huge campus!!

Also, I really want to say thanks to everyone that has been posting comments and leaving me messages on here and otherwise. I am so touched that everyone is thinking of me and praying for me. It’s really helped me through the few low points in the trip thus far to know that everyone back home is so incredibly supportive. So thank you so much for everything, I appreciate it more than you can imagine.

(…and Jamie there isn’t any hot water here.. anywhere.. ever. But to be quite honest I can’t even imagine ever wanting to take a hot shower. The cold showers are always refreshing, but you have to be quick because once your body temp comes down, you quickly realize just exactly how cold the water really is! lol)

Peace and Love
=p

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