Days 14-18

       "You'll be on your way up! You'll be seeing great sights!

You'll join the high fliers who soar to high heights.

                      You won't lag behind, because you have the speed. 

          You'll pass the whole gang & you'll soon take the lead.

                                  Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best

Wherever you go, you'll top all the rest."

I survived my first week of school!... Which wasn’t very hard since the first week of classes here doesn’t really involve going to class at all. Most Ghanaian students use this first week to figure out their schedule & start going to class next week. I still attempted to attend my first class on Monday, leaving an hour early to give myself plenty of time to find my classroom, or so I thought. I asked a group of girls where the room “R3” was & they told me that is was on the 2^nd floor of the physics department, so I walked over there to find that the physics department is a one story building. At that point I was definitely going to be late so I gave up & made my way back to the hostel.

Later that afternoon a group of us went to check out the drumming course list & also stopped by the study abroad office. It’s air conditioned in there so we like to come up with excuses to go hang out. I asked them where R3 was & found it later on that afternoon, so I’ll be at my Monday class next week for sure! 

 Tuesday was out first day of drumming and it was so much fun! It’s offered 4 hours a week, but we only have to attend 2 of them. I think a lot of us will go to all of them because we had a blast. After class we went for lunch at our favorite campus pub – Tacobel. I had a night class that night but wasn’t brave enough to walk across campus in the dark just yet, especially when most classes this week didn’t really happen. So I’ll find that one next week too!

I didn’t have any classes Wednesday so I spent part of the day at the mall & the rest of the night hanging out at the tables in the hostel with a few of my friends. I also took another walk across campus to check out the schedule for African dance courses. Looks like I’ll be beginning that class next Tuesday morning at 6:30 am! At home I would never sign up for a class at that hour but here the sun is always up by 6 am & set by 6 pm. My sleeping schedule has shifted a lot. I generally head to bed around 8 or 9 pm & wakeup around 5:30 every morning. Not only is that because it starts getting light then, but it’s also the only semi cool part of the day where I can get some exercise.

Yesterday we had drumming class followed by a meeting with our director, Auntie Theresa. We call her Auntie as a sign of respect. In the Ghanaian culture you call the adults in society Auntie & Uncle even when there is no relation. We straightened out our volunteer programs with her, so I will be working in the orphanage as well as a school for underprivileged children.

After the meeting we went to a little outdoor coffee place & hung out there for a bit with some more delicious African coffee. Then I went to my last class of the day to find I was the only white person there. That was a first! That might have been the moment that it really hit me that I wasn’t in Montana anymore or the United States for that matter. It was the first time I can remember being truly nervous in class. It’s pretty obvious I’m not from around here & everyone stared at me as I made my way to my seat. The men here are often a little friendlier than I’m used to with the “obrani” women, but the women that are my age tend to be a little intimidating, and a lot less friendly. I’m hoping that doesn’t last & I can make friends with some more of the local girls here.

I got back to my room to find I finally had a roommate! She is Ghanaian girl named Harriet, and she is beautiful. She is a senior & wants to continue on to law school in the United States so it’s nice to have something in common! All the Ghana locals are gorgeous people actually. I’m not sure what’s in the water around here, but I’m a little disappointed we’re not allowed to drink it :) I’m convinced Beyonce must have some Ghanaian blood considering how beautiful the genes are in this part of the world.

Last night we gathered in one dorm room & played games, laughing all night. We have all gotten to know each other pretty quickly here, but I guess that’s what happens when you throw 25 Americans into Africa for 5 months. I never used to think I had an accent but I frequently get made fun of for the way I say words like “bag” & “avocado,” but I don’t mind. It’s just another reminder of how big the world is.

This morning a few of us went to check out the volunteer opportunities at the West Africa AIDS Foundation & the Mawuvio Outreach Programme. The AIDS foundation doesn’t have openings for volunteers right now, but the outreach program really interested me. I wasn’t originally planning on doing my volunteer work there, but when I walked through it I really felt like I wanted to be a part of it. I would go over there a few days a week & help teach the kids & tutor them. There are 65 children between the ages 5 & 14 who cannot afford schooling on their own so they come to this program. 

 When I was there, I looked over at a group of kids in their classroom section sitting in front of a poster that read, “You can Change the World,” and that was all the convincing I needed. Seeing that was just a huge reminder of why I’m here, not so that I can change the world but because the kids in that classroom can & I have the ability to help them get there. I will start with the school sometime next week & the orphanage on Monday.

After the volunteer tour was over I attempted to go to my last class of the week but after sitting in the room alone for a half hour, I figured it probably wasn’t happening this week so I left and went to a soccer game a few of our orientation leaders were playing in.

One pretty awesome thing about the food here is that there are no preservatives in anything. It’s pretty crazy how much better that makes you feel. I bought a loaf of bread last Thursday to make PB&J and the bread was already moldy by Monday. 

 This is one of my favorite juices that I’ve found here, made of all fresh fruit. It goes bad in only 6 days because there’s nothing but pure fruit in the bottle. Any fruit juice at home would last months before going bad. 

Also, this is the size a banana is supposed to be naturally. Crazy!! I actually feel way better without all the added stuff & it tastes better too!

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you back home. I am missing you all today but also very blessed by the love I am surrounded by here in Africa. Love to you all,

Kasey

Days 11, 12, & 13

"Out there things can happen & frequently do

          to people as brainy & footsy as you.

                   And when things start to happen, don't worry. Don't stew.

  Just go right along. You'll start happening too."

I had a very eventful weekend followed by a pretty lazy Sunday. I guess that's how I usually do things at home so not too much has changed. Thursday night we went to our welcoming party & had a blast! The place was packed with University of Ghana students & we danced all night long. Everyone was moving like crazy, so carefree. With that many people & the high temperatures outside, you can only imagine how hot it was. But we danced & sang along through the heat anyways.

Friday morning we woke up & began our trip to the Cape Coast. It was a little under three hours in our bus but I was so engaged in scenes outside the window that I really didn't mind the trip at all. There is more poverty the farther we get outside of the city. This is where you see huts made of mud & straw but also people working incredibly hard to make a life out of the small resources they have. All the people who are outside wave & smile at us as we drive by. I don't think they've seen so many white people before!

We stopped for lunch when we arrived in Cape Coast & then went to the Cape Coast Castle which was by far on of the most heartbreaking things I'd seen in my life. The castle took 300 years to finish building & was in use for slave trade for 400 years. The amount of lives lost in that amount of time is unbelievable.

A model of the outside of the castle.

We had the same tour guide as President Obama did when he & Michelle made the a trip out to visit the castle.

The British ruled the castle & brought in African slaves to work there. They said most died within the first 6 months of being there & none lived longer than about 4 years.

This picture was taken when we were inside the male slave dungeon. The dungeon was build to hold 1,000 slaves but as the demand for slaves increased they fit about 1,500 slaves inside. They turned a light on for us while we went through the tour but he shut it off to show us the conditions that those men lived in. They were basically on top of one another in the dark with very occasional food until they died. Any who tried to escape were brought back down into a separate room where they were chained to the wall.

I believe this picture was taken when we were entering the woman's dungeons. There was such a dark & evil feeling throughout the entire castle. almost like the pain & fear had never left those rooms & I think we all could feel it. There were separate dungeons depending on whether or not they accepted sexual advances from the soldiers. He told us rape & abuse were very common weapons used against both woman & children. If the women fought back then they were put in a dungeon with worse conditions until they died. Many of the slave women would become pregnant in the castle & they were taken upstairs until the baby was born & then the mother was thrown back into the dungeon if they survived. If any woman became pregnant out on the ships then they were thrown into the ocean to drown.

If the salves made it through this door, they were likely to never return to the castle. They were taken out on the ships where they told them they would be as comfortable as they would be in their own coffin, meaning they had to lie there naked & stiff as a board side by side for a weeks on end. Every few weeks they would tell them to get up & dance for exercise so that their muscles wouldn't lose all their mass completely.

I saw this quote at the end of our tour & it gave me goosebumps. I do believe that Africa is on the rise & I feel so blessed to be here & see them coming back into the world as a stronger power than they ever have before. There is no way to justify the terrible way that they were treated & yet they aren't looking for revenge. All they want is equality between all people & all nations & that is a truly beautiful thing.

Our friend Alex likes to take a lot of candid pictures of each of us without our knowledge so here is a couple that he took when we were at the castle. The first one was taken before I entered the castle & the second was somewhere along the row of canons surrounding the building.

After leaving the castle we went to our botel. I'm not sure why it is called a botel rather than a hotel, but they are basically the same things. We got our rooms & my roommate & I ended up accidentally taking naps, later waking up to the rest of the group playing marco polo in the pool. We got dinner that night & enjoyed the music of a live band. When the band was finished, a few musical people from our group took the stage & we all sang along as they played "Lean on me" & "My Girl."

The restaurant at the botel was on a body of water filled with several crocodiles. While I was accidentally sleeping a group of the kids got to touch the crocodiles with the trainer, so I was a little disappointed that I missed that, but I still got to view them from a distance.

There were lots of pretty creatures surrounding the water.

Saturday morning we woke with HOT showers!! It was a great way to begin the morning. Then we had breakfast prepared for us by the botel restaurant. I had my first cup of coffee since being here & it was surprisingly delicious! I think I like African coffee more than American coffee.

Then we packed up our van again & took off for Kakaum National Park. This where we did the canopy walks in the rainforest. It is the only canopy walk on the whole continent of Africa. They are built with ropes & boards about 1,200 ft above the ground. There were 7 walkways total. The heights didn't scare me, but the first time I went I had both hands full of stuff so it was little freaky to walk along without being able to use my hands at all!

 

One of the girls & I stopped into the museum and were getting all kind of looks. I don't think people that far out of the city see white people very often. They were asking to take pictures with us & of us & the little kids were touching our skin. There was a woman with an adorable baby boy named Prince at the end of our walk so I talked to her for a little while & got to hold the baby for a little too!

We took off for home which was a little over three hours this time & spent the evening visiting, looking through each others pictures, & watching tv shows we have downloaded on our computers. 

When I woke up for my run this morning I realized all my friends back home had probably just began their Saturday night festivities. The time change still blows my mind a little bit. When I was finished jogging I went to church with a few kids from the group & a couple of our leaders. African church is pretty awesome! It reminds me of the southern gospel churches I've seen on tv. Everyone was singing & dancing, clapping along to the music & praising Jesus! It was pretty incredible to see how much they celebrate The Lord when they truly have so little. Church is a big celebration for them, yet it's a burden to most Americans who have so many more things. I think people are much happier here than most of our population & I guess that just goes to show that the little things we buy & own can never truly make us happy.

After church I took a long nap & hung out with a few of my friends. We're just now heading to the night market to grab a few things & then I'll be off to bed in a couple hours & starting my first day of classes tomorrow! Love to you all!

Kasey

Days 8, 9 & 10

I survived my first week! (plus a few days :) and I am still having a great time here! I feel like I'm falling in love with it a little more each day. We've been incredibly busy this last week & a half but we are leaving for a weekend at Cape Coast tomorrow morning.

Tuesday we had another informational morning followed by an afternoon learning how to ride the public buses which are called tro tro's & walking through one crazy busy market. The tro tro's are very interesting to say the least. We walked to a stop to wait for one & all this buses (I think they look more like vans personally) fly down the road with one man hanging out the window yelling whichever stop they are off to next. They only cost around 60 paeswas & can take you all over Accra.

Yesterday we began registration for school, which is nothing like it is at Montana State. I used to complain about that process, but this one is so much more difficult. A group of 4 of us spent about 3-4 hours running all over campus trying to figure out the days & times that classes are offered. They are each only held once a week for a two hour lecture. We have to just show up for the rest of the month & then we don't technically register until the end of the month. I'm still trying to figure out how it all works. I did stop into a little brass artifact museum to cool off & ended up learning a ton inside. The guy working it showed me all these tiny metal structures of people, animals, swords, all kinds of things & explained to me what each of them meant. There were tons of pieces in the exhibit that Ghana had just bought back from a woman in Germany for $75,000 in 2005.

We got our ID cards that afternoon so now I'm officially a student at the University of Ghana! Then we had a short lecture on the Cape Coast. The short version is that it's a castle that was built by the Europeans for slave trade. That's where we will be this weekend so I should have a better knowledge of it when I return.

Last night a few of us went with some of the Ghanaian students from our hostel to a reggae night on the beach. There was hundreds of people there & live music up on a stage. We sat in wooden chairs in the sand & took walks down the beach while we listened to the music.

We were out pretty late but luckily had a day off today so I slept in until around noon which I never do at home so I guess that goes to show just how exhausting it's been here so far! I'm finally getting used to the heat & humidity even when I'm walking a million miles every day. My first are consistently dirty no matter how clean I get them in the showers. I'm starting to get used to the cold showers too. They really aren't that bad when it's a million degrees outside :)

We spent most of the day at the mall today looking at the clothes there & running other random errands. The malls here are not the ordinary malls that we're used to but you can find a lot of things you need there. They even have little grocery stores in them. Today I found some peanut butter & crackers so I was very excited to eat something besides rice! Everything here is so spicy so I've had a hard time finding things that I like. I'll ask my Ghanaian friends before I eat something if it's spicy & if they say no then I'll give it a try. I don't think they know what spicy is though cause every time I bite into the food my mouth is on fire!

We found a movie theater this afternoon & saw the movie Frozen. American movies don't make it over here until after they have been shown in the US, but I hadn't seen that one yet & it was adorable! Ghana is currently a developing country which is super cool to see. They are starting to get a real economy going but still not as strong as the US. They warned us that the resources are still scarce so we will experience water & power outages, but this doesn't seem so bad when these things are relatively new to this part of the world anyways. I would love to come back in 10 years & see where Ghana is then!

Everyone here already knows me as the girl that loves all the children & babies. I melt every time I see one! Today walking from the tro tro to the mall a little boy grabbed onto my arm & asked me if he could have some of my water & I couldn't resist so I just gave him the whole bottle.

One thing I have really had to learn here is patience. I keep thinking my dad would never survive here (sorry dad :) Everything takes forever & nothing starts on time. My form of communication is very slow. My phone isn’t on most of the day & I now have a Ghana phone number connected to a Ghana network. Internet is the same way, it is very slow & it’s hard to find spots with good connection. They tell us lunch will be at noon & we won’t end up eating until 3. But so far I don’t mind, it’s just something that I am getting used to. I actually kind of enjoy it. All of my friends here are so engaged in everything we do because we aren't sitting around on our phones or laptops while we're all hanging out everyday. It makes me feel like I really missed out on a lot of little things in life back in the states. 

I have met some amazing people here so far & began some pretty awesome friendships. It's hard to believe that I've only known them for a little over a week. The boys in our group are so awesome & big brotherly towards us girls. They're always helping us out & looking after us. But I still miss & love all of my people at home :) Tonight we are going to a welcome party that they are throwing for us so I will check in again when we are back from our weekend trip! Love to you all,

Kasey

These are a few of the Ghanaian bills. They are called cedis (pronounced CDs). One American dollar is about 2.4 cedi's so the prices always seem so expensive until you do the conversion & realize it's actually much cheaper!

 A picture of me taking a picture at the beach.

They have the most beautiful flowers here! I'll have to start a collection :)

Days 5, 6, & 7

     "And you may not find any you'll want to go down.

In that case, of course, you'll head straight out of town.

          It's opener there.

              In the wide open air."

We’ve had a crazy past couple of days! Saturday was filled with visits & tours all over the capital city of Accra. We went to 2 memorials of former presidents, the beach, 2 markets, and looked at all kinds of sights through the window. We learned a lot about Ghana, it’s independence, & it’s history.

The first place we got to explore was the Ocean. We looked at the fishing boats & spent some time climbing the rocks, but didn’t hit the beach just yet. 

After that we went to Nkrumah’s memorial, who was the first president of Ghana. On our way there we went past the Accra sports stadium where the world cup soccer team plays, the US Embassy, & many other sites that represent Ghana’s independence. Ghana was established as a country fairly recently. The country is less than 60 years old.  

This is the newest statue of Nkrumah at the memorial.

 The memorial had a mango tree planted by Nelson Mandela 13 years ago.

 This was the original statue of Nkrumah. It was vandalized many years ago & the head was just returned to the park 5 years ago by an old woman.

We also went to the memorial of W.E.B. Du Bois who was the president after Nkrumah. It was actually very interesting to learn so much about the history of this country. The Ghanaian people are very proud of their country, there are Ghana flags everywhere & a lot of things are painted red, green, & yellow. 

This statement was said by W.E.B. du Bois right before he passed away. It's a very beautiful statement that he left the world with.

 We also went to a couple of different markets where we were advised not to buy anything yet, since we have to barter for everything there. When I told the locals I didn’t have any money with me, they offered to trade my camera or my jewelry for the things they were selling. All the jewelry I have here with me has some sentimental value so I stopped wearing it out in the city after that. 

Three different vendors offered me free bracelets, but I only accepted one. This man followed me up & down the street making this for me because he told me that he liked my smiling face & wanted to welcome me to Ghana. 

Sunday morning we went to the beach. It was absolutely beautiful.

I brought headphones & a book out to the beach with us, but when I got there I couldn't take my focus off of the water. I have been to the ocean several times before, but living in Montana it is easy to forget how peaceful the waves sound & how beautiful the look rolling up the shore.

 We met many young children out there. They asked us our names & we wrote them in the sand for each other. Two little guys asked me for 50 peswas (their version of coins) to help buy books for school. I only had 30 peswas in my wallet so I also gave them all the American coins I had & told them what they were & which presidents were on them.

 We played soccer & football with them on the beach that day & also swam in the ocean with them. They come from very poor areas lining the street leading to the beach & didn't own swimsuits so they all had to swim without any clothes on, but they didn't mind. It's moments like that that are so humbling here in Africa.

I took these images from the bus window on the road leading out to the beach. There are a huge number of people living in these tiny little shacks. They have small wooden structures lining the streets where they sell whatever product they can. Behind them are a cluster of little houses where there were many children playing & people of all ages working on various projects.

After the beach I took a three-hour nap & then a group of us went to a pub called Honeysuckle to watch the Super Bowl. It didn’t start until 11:30 pm but we worked up the energy to go watch it. We had fans from both teams, but enjoyed watching the game together. We didn’t get any of the American commercials so unfortunately we missed out on that. They turned up the volume for us during half time as we all danced & sang along to Bruno Mars. 

 This is my new friend Alex. We danced in the pub when Philip Phillips performed Gone, gone, gone.

I lasted until the end of the third quarter. It was 2:30 am here & I was ready for bed.

Today we mostly attended orientation seminars & toured our enormous campus once again & we were all pretty worn out again by the end of the day. We just finished a long night of games in one of the guys rooms & now it's time for bed. It's still crazy to me that it is 11:30 pm here & only 4:30 pm back home. Love to you all,

Kasey