Weekends

So a much more cheerful blog is order. First, I just want everyone to know (Mom, Dad) that my mental health although under constant stress and guilt is fine--no catch 22 here. I have become close to one of my housemates in particular--Emma is pretty ballin' and we have similar travel (as in adventure) styles/ideologies so we end up doing a lot together particularly on the weekends. For the first weekend we escaped the camp's heat--the cement buildings retain a lot--by traveling to Cape Coast a fishing village a few hours away mostly known for its huge forts that shipped out slaves. Then up to a Kakum National Park, a rainforest with awell known canopy walk. Having forgot my camera, I have done my best to preserve it in a short essay:

The Canopy Walk
It was as if I had stepped into a vintage cartoon; all that connected one titan tree to the next was a line of wood, the width, length, and thickness, of diving boards nailed one after another. It was a Wile Coyote master plan; the boards gave a bird's eye view to the the lower levels of the forest hundreds of feet below. with all the life the biosphere contained I would not be surpised if a species of road runner habitated it.
Supporting the planks were nets crisscrossed and suspended by thick ropes, reminescent of the ones from gym class. These were further reinforced by coils of metal strung across the span. There were seven bridges in total and six of us. I believe Sarah was the first to cross, the person next in line had to wait until the other was halfway across. We all walked the first leg of the sky line like a gang plank above a sea of greens. There were some trees that reached above us, allowing a closer examination of the endurance of the flora that took it to such heights. By the time I reached the first tree stand I was completely awestruck, as if somebody had taken an eninah club and beat me with Biblical reverence. The susn was out in early morning force, bright but not yet roasting. It painted birds with shadows to appear like cutouts in the sky. I don't know how to describe the view, the horizon held a tropical outline of exotic trees. The texture pushed down into th evalley twisting, contorting, overlapping, but always green. If I had jumped off the balcony circumnavigating the ancient trees, I know I would have lived happily ever after, after being caught angrily by countless branches instead of the root imbibed ground. It was a dream. Paul was almost right, it was something to cross off The List, except it surpassed The List. The List was a map of Putnam County and the rainforest was a collection of galaxies. Iwalked the last bridge as if it were a church aisle. Each slow meeting step I took brought me one step further away from Eden, from the sinless wilderness that knew survival and subsistence, and one step closer to my current marriage with consumerism and comfort and safety. Every movement I tried to absorb it all, I attempted to memorize the linesthe foliage made as if they were the wrinkles around my grandmother's smile. I looked and cherished every direction possible until my eyes became obscured with tears from the magnifence of it all. Kakum was a marriage itself, a holy matrimony between Mother Nature and God, and in the middle of the bridge, in the middle of the park, in the middle of Ghana, on the side of AFrica, on the icing of the world, I was a lowly worshipper.

This last weekend, a too large group of six traveled north of Accra into a town called Aburi and stayed the night in the Botanical gardens. Beautiful and spacious the small city on the montain gave an amazing vista of the Accra below. It was cooler and way less bustle up north. We toured the garden at daybreak before heading off to more north still. The next place we visited was Boti Falls (100 feet ish). UP and down and up some more we first hiked into the jungle and out into the grasslands to th eUmbrella Stone, a mushroom shaped rock which gave an excellent view of th esurrounding area. Then we went to the falls, usually its one big one, but this time there were two rather large ones. Throwing caution to the wind, putting our lives in Fate's hands, and ignoring all the warnings of going in to freshwater. Emma and I swam in the falls. and it was F'ing awesome. We were maidens of the mist and we shouted all our thanks for being in Africa into the echoing roar!! Everyone should swim in a waterfall at least once in their life. Then we walked for about na hour to a more locally known falls known as Akaa. Sitting on a rock cliff of about 70 feet we jumped into the waterfall........just playing we actually took a break under th eshady overhang. Then it poured and we stayed dry and watched the rain. Back on th eside of the road, we waited for a tro tro to Kofftown (large van, reminiscent of Hankins). Then the skies opened up again. A couple of us took turns to wait on the road, wihle th erest sought shelter under a nearby roof. While we were out there, Eric and I sang songs like Hit the Road Jack, at the top of our lungs. The six of us finally made it to a hotel, only to discover the prices had been raised beyond some of our budgets. Soaking wet, hungry as hell, and even, dare I say it, a little chilled, Eric and I bargained the price down to 10 Cedi (seedy=10$) and we booked two rooms and slept solidly, all dreaming of the actual showers we would have in the morning.

Its all good but hearing peoples stories can be difficult. There are a couple of women I would love to sponser, all single mothers, all sick of poverty, all sick of not being able to earn there own living. I have been working with one lady in particular Grace, she is a couple years older than myself with a month old baby. The other day she had to borrow money to buy water in order for here to be able to breastfeed her child. All the ladies want to go to school to learn a trade or finish one (one has a few nursing classes left to take before getting her degree). My next post will be devoted to them, right now, they are living on prayers. Thank you for yours!

Some things are hard to stomach

Here in Africa, and especially at the camp, you have to have a will to live. Let's face it some things are hard to stomach. Literally hard to process, such as the volunteers dinner last night, which sentenced 7/8 of us to a prolonged bathroom time, or mentally, like the first child I met that didn't smile. The poverty and the desperation of it all hadn't quite hit me since all the children I had met, ran into, carried had all smiled. Justin is tall for his age 3, but his arms and legs are too thin, and skin looks vacuum-packed to his head, showing the detail of his bones just a little too detailed. His eyes are huge, like a Summersville lake of tears waiting to be undamed (and undamned from his hungry hell). He lies on an old shirt used as a blanket; his mom points out the scabs on his head and body. He has a bad arm that doesn't quite straighten, a deformity due to the way he came out during birth. I ask his mom if he's smart. In a second, she pulls him from his sleep by his arm and tells him to recite his ABCs. With a whisper he gets to the letter G before stopping....

Meeting people like this, experiencing things like this makes me wonder: are some things inevitable?

Inevitable Death
Everybody dies. You can prolong it, but it cannot be cured. Some are admired for their death. The fallen soldier is memorialized, immortalized, but what of Renaldo? He lives in a small room painted blue at the end of a hall without windows. He has two in his room. One is boarded up, the other only lets a small rectangle of brightness in because of a crumbling wall that had been built a foot from the building. It lets enough light in to illuminate the torn mosquito net and his mattress on the floor, but not enough to erase the pungency of urine, not enough to convince the flies around the old food plates to go outside. He makes death personal by calling me sister, by praying in front of me asking for help. He brought in God and showed me pictures of his family. I ask him about the dusty keyboard I've been staring at in the corner. I want to borrow it to teach people how to type. It's not his, somebody left it in his room for safekeeping because nobody goes in there. I stil wish I could take it, and at the same time I wish I could help him. Death is inevitable and I want his to come faster. I dont want to feel the suffering. He asks me to give him my watch when I leave in July. I realize he hasn't given up on living yet. I shouldnt give up for him.

Renldo is one of the patients of the HIV/AIDS department.

Well with nothing to expect, nothing that would predict my life for the next two months, I arrived at the camp. Compared to the neighbors, the CBW volunteers live in mansions. My mattress comes with a frame with slats I can count as as I lay there under the mostquito net praying for a cool breeze will be ushered from the TWO windows into the bedroom I share with only one other person. Next to me in what could be the slowest internet cafe people beg cyber style, having gathered email addresses from anybody wealtheir than them. Its hard to describe the camp in full. About a third of the 42000 have left, leaving empty shacks and market stalls. Protests in the spring closed down the schools, and the ones that have reopened have few students--their parents are trying to save money for Liberia when they have to restart their livers. Unemployment and illiteracy both range in the 80s%age wise. Sanitation here is by our standards atrocious. There are a few public toilets, most people go into the bush but children pop a squat anywhere. Showers drain into ditches built by the camp which also drain into the bush Trash and sand will these creating puddles of stagnant water--to clean them the sand is scooped up and placed back onto the street.

There is one clinic here run by A doctor and two assistants plus a local hostpital nearby. 30000 people. There are pharmacies within the camp, so those that have the money tend to treat themselves, often overusing antibiotics and malaria treatments until it becomes useless to them. The food here is decent for us, main staple being rice and fired chicken (def. not KFC). I miss vegetables so much that have decided to be a little less cautious just to eat the green.

The people here are pretty amazing. Most of the people I live with are teachers, most in the later twenties. Talkative and traveled. I hung out with a prostitute and her friend yeseterday--by far the most disturbing thing so far--both have a couple of children and don't seem to care about them (not the sole caretakers of their children); both of the girls are around my age. My neighbor across the street taught us how to make fufu and a fish/chicken stew--she has a beautiful independent baby. Another neighbor has three children back at home in Liberia, one of which was her dead sisters (the boy doesn't know this) and asked me to help her in any way possible to help her renew her nursing degree (she really was a nurse because she showed me her diploma and pictures of her in uniform). Everybody here wants to be your friend, everybody here needs fininacnial help, its's realistically the most pathetic thing I've ever seen. My heart breaks a little with every child I hold that is too skinny, with every baby I notice with a swollen belly, with every smile I see on all of their faces--the glimpse of hope they gain with every additional email address they gain. The people here are incredibly nice, over friendly to a point of desperation. We have begun to call our house the zoo--when we are outside the children play with us constantly and when we hideout inside they peer into our windows. We have also started charts, the six girls are competing for marriage proposals (I am winning with 4 so far, but I have been in the country the longest) the 2 boys have a proposition chart (aka after business hours, everyone wants an African princess, etc.). Any sense of privacy and cleanliness has diminished considerably: I take a shower from a bucket in a enclosed wall along with cockroaches the size of flattened Twinkies, toilets are comodes without plumbing that you just pour in some water post usage, sleeping privacy is hard since I really just not wear anything in the heat, but the cleaning/water man comes at 5 ish every morning. Which brings me to one of the perks at camp. Everybody here is beautiful. The men here are hard not to drool over: your choice from Usher, Abercrombie model, Kayne, muthaf#$%ing Samuel Jackson. All the way I would like coffee if I drank it--strong and dark (sorry Dad). The same goes for the women, plus such incredible hair! I haven't looked in a mirror for half a week now.
Some of us watched a soccer game the other day: midday heat, uber humid, playing on gravelly sand--oh my, I can't even imagine the endurance it would take.
The sun rises around 5:30 and sets around 6, but the people at the camp run much later. Every night there is some sort o f party going on.
What I do at camp: yesterday the 8 of us finished orientation, I have signed up to help for the sustainable poultry project--care for chickens and collect eggs (yeah!), HIV/AIDS talk (go around make people aware involves condom demonstration, which I am not sure how I will keep a straight face for), and finally for tutoring-I REALLY want to reach out to kids that aren't in school, keep it fresh in their mind. Honestly, it feels like there isn't a ton for the volunteers to do, a lot of the programs are shutting down. What I've gotten from the 4 other volunteers that were here before is that its fairly overstaffed and under funded. But I am going to do my best just to give people the attention that they are craving, ask them what they are going to do after they move to Liberia, and encourage them to go or send their kids to school.
I love you all, and would really like to hear from people--anyone can comment on the blog or just send me an email.

Akwabaa to Ghana (welcome)

I'm sure most of you have glanced at a National Geographic, well I feel as though I have stepped into the pages! It is truly unbelievable--I keep asking myself "How did I get here?"

Besides being boring, the flights went just fine. Actually had to stop in Senegal (another West African country) to get enough fuel so the plane could make a return trip--Ghana didn't have enough. Sat next to a guy from Sierra Leone who studies at Kansas U.

I stepped off the plane and the weather hit. Even though its the rainy season all this month, the morning was clear and sunny but really thick. The air had the same feeling as after you've snuggled with somebody you like on a summer day--even though its a little too hot and you kind of stick together you don't really mind because its comforting.

Took a cab to the hostel--definitely not in the center of the city. I was a little freaked out because the driver said "this is is" and it was this old shack the size of a two car garage "no this can't be it" I saw a pair of eyes peeping from between the slats. It turns out he and taken me to the back of the gated compound where there was a door I could walk in rather than being buzzed through the car gate.
Outside of this door there is a small stand run by Auntie Grace, where I bought some bagged water and fresh bread. That's how most of the stores are--stalls set up by the side of the road. It's beautiful; mom's work with their babies tied to their backs, they sit together and just chat, and most start up conversations with you as you walk past. As far as advertising goes, it's Evangelical all the way (Ghana is 60% Christian, 25% Muslim--more north) Tro-tros (vans that you can get to the city in for 40 pesawes=40 cents have pictures of Jesus on the bumper with signs like "God is." Other examples include, Best Service is with God Cellphone stand and my personal favorite" Not By My Strength Alone Beauty Salon.

Overall, people are really friendly, but you do have to bargain because they will give you the Obruni price (the white price). The first day I was here, I met up with a girl Joy from Oregon and we went around the city together. You can buy fresh fruit on almost any street, and I found a place where I could pick up school supplies if need be. We went to Fort Usher, a place right on the beach where they sent off slaves, but most recently housed some Sudanese refugees. We then had some dinner in a small restaurant along the coast. Food here is spicy--enough to make your lips a little swollen--, but overall delicious. Rice, chicken, yams,.......I ate a banana. Then Joy from Oregon and I walked around some markets--stands on the streets. The smell was so alive too. Food being cooked right in front of you, hot bodies, a little bit of sea breeze, urine, ripe fruit, open sewers (ditches that run on either side of the street, most I've seen are stone); when all together it doesn't smell bad, it smells bustling.

The second day I was here, a girl named Ashlee who's studying peaceful resolutions for her masters from New York and I took a walk around Dakuman road, the area outside the hostel--poor neighborhood, used to be a slum but now is not so much. School had gotten out and uniformed boys and girls with short cropped hair were making their way home. Ashlee knew one of the little boys and we were invited to his house. It was a bit of a maze, dodging goats talking to old ladies cooking over smokey fires with little babies running around. His house was as small as an average dorm room, but he did go to school, have a electricity, and his mother had a cellphone so they were fairly well off. He had a two week old sister (or relative) and his brother had cholera; a lot of other kids came in the house to watch us and the futbol game going on (Ghana v. Nigeria).

At night, I have been hanging out with other hostel people. Mostly American law students and British med students, one Dutch guy. I think I'm the youngest, but its pretty neat being able to talk to others about the world and they know what's going on. It rained for my first time yesterday--a huge downpour--more water pressure than most showers and the sky was mauve. Off roads are mostly unpaved and the sewers will overflow and mosquitos will breed in the stagnant water so it does get a little messy. The Brits, Ashlee and I are going to try to go to the beach today so that should be fun.

Things I love: sounding reggae when I talk, calling people Brudda, Auntie, Uncle, Sista, eating this frozen chocolate milk, everyone's friendliness in and out of the hostel, little boys who confess their love for me, goats everywhere, big thunderstorms, being able to walk around without being neurotic and chatting.

Funniest thing that has happened to me thus far: While on the way to the boys house, this older lady started calling Obruni, Obruni (white person) so we turned around, she shook our hand--they have an awesome handshake here!--and she would grab these little toddlers running around and hold them up to us. She was trying to scare them with our white skin, some of them were scared, others were curious (one started poking my freckles).

Twas the Night Before....

For the billionith time today, I have reassured people that I was not nervous or frightened or scared (mostly my parents who are). I was, in fact, antsy. I was counting down the hours until I boarded my first flight(currently 11.92). I've traveled before, I've flown alone. The first leg of the branch, a 4 hour drive to my grandparents house in Pittsburgh, had already taken place. A drive I've taken many times. Tomorrow, I will fly to New York, and then New York straight to Accra, the capital to my new home, Ghana. An ample layover reassures no rushing and a regular trans-atlantic flight. I will arrive at about 8 in the morning, the time difference is 4 hours ahead with a new friend in tow. I am meeting a girl from Georgia in New York and we will be exploring greater Accra together until we start volunteering on the 1st. She will be teaching in village, and I will be off to camp. I will be staying in my first hostel!!! and learning about the culture by the family who runs it.

Please join twitter (link below my profile) that way in case something should happen to me, I can send out a mass message and be able to get help if needed.

Things I know about Ghana: currently in the rainy season, average temperature 90 degrees F, little/no air conditioning, nice beaches on coast.

Things I know I will have some difficulty with: not being able to make plans via cell phone. All meeting up by my fellow volunteers has to be planned ahead of time. Sometimes....I'm not very flexible...

I know that my trip will not always be fun or adventurous; I will probably want to go back home at some point or another. But right now, I really need to get away. I need to escape from all the ease and wastefullness. I need a break from sitting around watching Sex and the City and running errands back and forth across town. The silver spoon of it all has begun to leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

I found this story, the perspective it has is the same as why I'm going:

A rugged individual was walking in the woods in front of a fading sun.
Clomp, stomp, step.
"Who is this walking?" a young tree pondered aloud.
"I am me," the individual replied to the dusk.
The tree strained, but only saw a skeleton.
"What happened to you?" the tree asked quietly.
"I have been walking for a long time. There were plants with thorns that ripped my skin. There were plants that had broken petals that needed mending. There were small caves in which I could not fit, and too large of leas that I tried to fill. My body left me piece by piece."
"Oh," was the trees solemn reply. "Take some of my leaves to protect your soul."
"Don't worry tree. I will not lose my soul. You see, my being is in everyplace I have left my body, not in the flesh itself, but instead, in the idea."
As the individual was explaining, a small shower of green fell like tears and wrapped themselves around the remains of the body.
"I've learned that we are part of all of what we meet, but as a tree I know that roots are vital to life. Without stability, a sense of self cannot be established, and death will fill the void of the purposeless," said the tree.
Both acknowledged what had been gained and lost. The individual passed through the woods with the gift of the tree and a path in mind. The tree shivered tall; it could give and still be.
Above, a cloud moaned past noticing the nakedness in the canopy.
"Oh tree," was all it said, and as it went by some of the mist clung to the empty branches, protecting it from the night.

The First

This is a test blog to see if the email stuff is working.