Answers to some of your questions!

I was about to respond to these questions in the comments section, but I was worried no one would see it, so I am posting them here! Thank you Caroline and Amy for posting your questions. They are very good. If anyone wants to know anything else, too, please leave me a comment, and I will answer them when I can.

1. what's your living space like?

In Accra, I live in a hotel called the Telecentre Guesthouse. It costs about $15 US a night (for a double), and includes breakfast (oatmeal, cereal, toast, eggs, juice, coffee etc.) It is a pretty decent hotel that has an internet cafe (where I am writing this right now) . They can also do your laundry for you, which costs one or two dollars, and they do it by hand. Otherwise, you can borrow two large plastic wash basins and use your own soap to wash your own, and dry it on the lines provided outside. One of the friends I have made here, Osman, taught me a very efficient way to wash clothes by hand. It makes clothes very clean, but is kind of time-consuming...I am not looking forward to the load I have to do very soon-- it is growing.

They have everything you'll ever need at this hotel, it's just that some things are not very reliable. The water will stop on some mornings, but it is usually because there is a large air bubble or something in the pipes, so the front desk is able to fix that problem rather easily. The internet is sometimes very slow, or does not work, but at other times, it works very well (like right now, which is why I am hurrying to get all my blogs posted! =P) It has never rained while I am here in Accra, so I have never experienced having no electricity here yet. When it happened in Offinso (20 min away from Kumasi), the hotel had a generator that was able to supply enough electricity for the building). If you like to drink water, you are in luck because that is the only drink this hotel gives out for free, all the other sodas and beers are about 50 cents CDN. People here drink a lot of soda. When it is chilled, it quenches your thirst and feels so good!

2. What are you eating?

I usually eat oatmeal, toast, eggs, and either juice or Milo for breakfast (I eat a lot, because I really enjoy all of those foods! In Offinso, I am famous for asking, "Does anyone want anymore [blank]?" and if everyone says no, I will push my chair closer to the food, and eventually finish whatever it was that I was asking about. )

I don't usually eat lunch during outreach days, because that is usually the time when many of the patients are coming in, and seeing the rows and rows of patients sitting on church benches, waiting for us to see them makes us not want to stop!

For a time, all I ate for lunch was rice, fried chicken, cabbage salad, because of the diarrhea. Now that I am healed, I have been a little more adventurous. I have begun to really like fufu (pounded cassava and plantain) which you eat with your hands, and are supposed to dunk in stew and swallow whole - instead of chewing. I watched Margaret (the cook extraordinaire at the Telecentre Guesthouse) make fufu from scratch. she chops up the cassava, boils it, and then mashes it in a heavy wooden container on the floor using a heavy wooden staff. The process of making it is so energy-intensive that in order to make enough fufu for a family to eat, you need two people to make it. One to pound the cassava and plantain, and another to fold the pounded mass in the container on the floor. I also had goat meat for the first time two days ago, and it is delicious. I also try to drink as much water as I can even though many people here drink a lot of soda (or "minerals" as they call it). Water definitely quenches my thirst a lot better! Bagged water here is very cheap, you can get about 300 ml for 5 cents.

3. What does Accra look like?

It depends on where you are. Generally, in the city, you find some tall buildings, painted with pastel colours. A lot of the advertisements are painted (instead of printed posters) and cover entire murals, advertising everything from tomato sauce to phone service, to medication and leaders of the two major political parties in Ghana. Lining the street are lots of small booths, I guess you could call them, fashioned out of wooden tables or simple barbecue-like grills. This is where many people sell tantalizing foods like fried plantain, eggs, freshly cut pineapple and oranges, or kebobs.

The farther away you get from the city, the more roundabouts you encounter. You will also see more paved roads. Closer to the towns and cities though, you will run into many that have pot holes that have been there so long that their edges are smooth and they paint a perfect circle on the ground. Riding over them in a car makes me feel like I am in a Star Wars roller coaster. Other roads are not paved at all, and so the surface is very rugged, and if you are driving a car rather than a landcruiser, you must go very slowly. There is also a lot of road construction going on, particularly for large highways that will improve the transportation between big cities. The sewage system is also above ground, so on either sides of the road, there are always ditches that transport water and, often, waste.

The main public transportation within cities or between towns are the tro-tros which are basically vans, which can hold about 20 people. While the driver is paying attention to traffic, another person (usually a young man) will stick his upper body out the window or through the gap made by the side door to call out to patrons. They collect the fare after you have been seated.When you are in a traffic jammed area, this it the best place to get out your change. There are many people balancing heavy loads of plantain chips, bread, oranges, chocolate, fried dough balls, drinks, and other foods on their heads, who weave through the cars stuck in traffic. Sometimes you will see children as young as 10 doing this. They will come around to sell them to you through your car window. It is better than "drive-thru" in Canada and the US - I think it should be called "walk-to-you." You don't even have to drive anywhere; you just have to be on your way to somewhere and the food will come to you.

As you go further North, to Kumasi, the landscape changes, and you see more greenery, and beautiful mountains and clifffs. I wish I had some pictures of these to show you. I will be going to Kumasi again soon, so hopefully I can take a couple for you. The scenes are truly breathtaking.

4. Are there any security concerns?

Theft and other crimes are committed here, but they are very few. I have not found it hard, as a volunteer for Unite for Sight at least, to find someone to go out to walk with me if I ever need to go out. Either I am with another Unite for Sight volunteer or staff member, or friends of staff from the Telecentre Guesthouse. The only dangerous thing to do seems to be to walk outside on the streets when it is very late, so I try to avoid doing so unaccompanied. Otherwise, it is very safe here.

5. Do you have to be cautious with the drinking water, etc?

Yes. I do not drink the tap water here, and only drink bagged or bottled water. I also recently learned that brushing your teeth with the tap water is a big no-no (for temporary visitors to Ghana, anyway - I think I may have just figured out why I have been having such unhappy bowel movements...)

6. Do you have to take military style showers?

Hmm..I don't know what a military shower is. What were the showers like on your mission trips, Amy?