Something Exciting! Just kidding… Same old thing

This morning we had our cocoa puff soup for breakfast again—yummy! While we were splashing ourselves clean with our buckets of water, Mama exclaimed she had to go to Ho as well, and sure enough, as we rode off on the bus, we saw Mama standing next to a waiting tro-tro at the other end of the village. Once we got off the bus in Ho, we ran into Mama again. She was all dressed up; I wondered if she was going to see her husband today. We had a fairly leisurely morning in Ho. We walked the mile or two to the intersection where the BRIDGE office is, exchanged money in the air conditioned bank for our Cape Coast excursion this weekend, and spent some quality time at the internet café. Of course, I always forget one or two things to do on the internet, which is annoying enough but especially today since we won’t have internet again for 8 days. I forgot to check my grades from the semester. Although I do know that I got an A- in project management, which is good. I did some digging, and after some extraordinary detective work, I came across the phone number for Oasis Beach Resort—the budget hotel in Cape Coast that I am praying we can get a room in. Mama will let us use her phone tonight to call and make a reservation.

After internet, we went to White House as usual for lunch, but it took longer than usual, which meant we were late catching the 1:30pm tro-tro, which meant we wouldn’t get back to the village until probably 3:45pm. On our walk back to the tro-tro stop we took some candid pictures of Ho to show to you all once we’re home. One of which is a severe oxymoron in my opinion; I posed, smiling, in front of the… “stream.” The stream though is the exact stream you may remember that I described stepping on stones to get to the other side via Emil’s infamous short-cut. It was a milky teal green in color, saturated with sewage and garbage. The oxymoron part is my smile. It is a horrific site, and if you stand down wind, it can be a vomit-inducing scene. We also took a picture of the house nearby that a quarter of it is missing, burned at the edges from I can only assume a fire that swallowed that part of the house. People still live there, and every time we walk by, there are large metal barrels outside the house billowing smoke from whatever they’re burning. Perhaps the fate of the house was an occupational hazard of its inhabitants. A man named Ben saw us on the street, and exited his barbershop to introduce himself to us. He was friendly enough; for any American I would think this type of behavior is like seeing a fish out of water, or a teacher at the movie theater. Ghanaians are pretty friendly for the most part, and usually if you walk down the street, a handful will stop to say hello and ask where you’re from. Some pride themselves on “having friends in the US,” which really means they’ve met people just like you on the street and said hello. It’s a little unnerving at first, but you get used to it, and after a while, you welcome it since many people stare at you with somber expressions which can be slightly intimidating. Most of the time if you smile and wave first, they’ll return the gesture with just as many smiles, but some continue to glare.

We got to the tro-tro area just in time to see the 1:30pm tro-tro pull away, with Mama waving at us from the front seat! Samuel greeted us and told us to wait, since his tro-tro was next to depart. As it backed into position, Samantha snapped a picture, accidentally getting some man selling Fan Ice (sort of an ice cream pop) in the process who became quite irate that his photo was taken. His anger is captured well in the photo, but we did manage to calm him down enough. The ride home was hot, sweaty, and unbearably crowded as usual. Samantha sat next to the giant window and felt like she would fall out, just like me.  She was giving me impromptu agriculture lessons by quizzing me on the kinds of trees we passed. I can now successfully identify banana trees, palm trees, and coconut trees. I mentioned that the view was pretty, which caused Samantha to turn toward me when we went over a bump, which then caused her to smack her head against the top of the window just in time for Samuel to look at us from the front and start laughing. Samantha and I were laughing too, but I could tell from the tears in her eyes it must have really hurt. The tro-tro slowed since there was a tree lying in the middle of the road. A man stood by it, and when the driver asked him to move it, he begrudgingly obliged as he exclaimed, “speed bump!” The rest of the ride was ok I guess if you’re going by tro-tro standards. The skinny man on my right sure was taking up a lot of room though. I couldn’t put rest both shoulders on the back of the seat, only one, squished behind Samantha’s shoulder.

Finally we made it home 15 minutes before we were supposed to meet the Primary 4-6 kids. Luckily no one showed up, so we stopped at Mama’s to say hello but she was lying down on a bench with a headache. I offered her some of my Excedrin, which seemed to help. We went home to take a nap and clean the dirt and sweat from Ho off our skin, but of course it’s impossible to simply be left alone. Apparently the headmaster told the children 5pm instead of 4pm, so at 4:50pm, a young girl showed up to make sure we were going back to the library. *sigh* We did, and by that time, I had a headache. The group of children were pretty well-behaved, and it did last almost an hour. We had them read a story of their choice from their designated shelf in the library, and then draw a picture from the story with some crayons we brought. It went well. Afterward, we came home, closed our door, and laid down to rest just after I consumed some Excedrin for myself.

We had rice and pavlava sauce for dinner, which was good—spicier than usual. I selfishly hoped Bright wouldn’t come by for computer training tonight since I just wanted to sleep. My headache wasn’t completely gone, and my stomach was aching. He did come though, with his sister so I supervised while they practiced typing. Mama brought her friend by for an interview, and afterward I showed Mama a picture of me and Sean on my laptop. She said “Hello Sean I will say hello to you when I come to the US!” She also said he was very handsome, and noticed his long hair. She said when he comes to visit her in Ghana, she will grow her hair long and shake her head, haha. I asked her if she saw her husband in Ho, but apparently his sister was renting a room to a young woman and her son, about Michael’s age (5). The child mysteriously died in the night and Mama’s husband went to inform the family. We also talked about Mama’s mother who seems to be having severe pains; she was diagnosed with breast cancer and did have one mastectomy, so Mama is confused why her mother is still having so much pain… The water in the barrel used for pouring down the toilet (to flush) had run out, and the well in our compound was dangerously low on water. Samantha and I helped carry a few buckets that Mama managed to fill over to the outhouse. We were really scraping the bottom of the well—which isn’t pretty. Luckily it was night, so I couldn’t see very well what was in the buckets, but Mama’s friend did scoop some things out of it before handing me the bucket… It was late so we said goodnight and parted ways.