Missing Mekulu!

It feels like it’s been an eternity since the last time I posted a blog. It’s been a busy few weeks, unfortunately not the best few weeks.

About two and a half weeks ago Mekulu, my puppy went missing! She ruled my room, I let her roam in and out at her leisure. She spent some evening in my room with me normally stinking up my room with terrible gas. I don’t think she agreed with fish, but she sure did love it. She also spent several evenings out side roaming around and visiting the neighbors, she had a play mate puppy at the neighbor’s complex. A few weeks ago she went out for her evening on the town and when I woke up the next morning she hadn’t returned but, I didn’t think much of it. When she hadn’t returned the following even I started to get a little concerned, as did Ateiko, my landlord. We walked around the village, from end to end; we asked all the villagers if they had seen her and followed ever lead. Ateiko threatened to arrest anyone who might have taken her and offered rewards for any information and we hired kids to find any information they could. Ateiko called the local police authorities who are several villages away, they held a week long investigation before giving up. Following leads and roaming the village become our nightly ritual for about a week straight. It faded to searching ever other night and stopped all together a few nights ago. I try to ignore the rumors around the village, they say she was stolen and eaten. I’m convinced that she found a puppy love and ran off to make babies some where. I’m sure she could sense that I was going to take her in to be spade in a few more weeks. Either way, at this point I don’t think she is going to return. I’m really going to miss her, she love to run on the beach with me, well run circles around me on the beach. She would never go in the water with me and she hated baths. When ever I came home she would be there with her tail wagging, it would wag so hard her whole body would be swing side to side. It was too much excitement for her little body to hold! It was great having someone excited to see me ever time I came home. I think the hardest part is my village, they show their condolence by asking where she is ever time they see me. My landlord wants to buy me a new dog already but I have asked him not to. I haven’t decided if I am going to try it again or not!

In the mean time, I have been assigned to start 42 environment clubs in surrounding villages for GWS. The task seems tedious and nearly impossible! I taught my first class last week in my village. I went to 3 junior high school classes to teach them about career planning, which lead to the importance of behavior and education. It was a difficult task, I had to speak very slow and repeat myself several times. I’m still not sure how much they understood! I was supposed to go in last week and teach about HIV and AIDS but they had to cancel because there is a very important 5 day soccer tournament that all the schools are taking part in. It’s much more important than education, so much so they are taking all the students out for a week. We also took the sea cruise on a trial run! A school with 60 kids came and we took 3 separate trips out 20 minutes off shore and 20 minutes back. When we made it out there we jumped off the side for a quick swim, just the fishermen and I, everyone else was afraid to swim in the “deep sea” or didn’t know how to swim. It was an exciting fun ride, when we came in they would let the boat turn parallel with the waves and we almost flipped several times.

So all in all, I’m still surviving in Ghana! I miss you all dearly! Oh, I picked up my packages yesterday and I have my camera back again, so I will be posting more pictures next time!

Game Day

I’ve had a very busy few weeks! It started with a trip to Kumasi to visit some very close Peace Corps buddies, Terri and Janet, and catch up on some gossip. Biggest news on the gossip mill is Janet’s engagement to a Ghanaian chief. Janet is 59 and the chief is 55, she is high school sweetheart, head over heals, in love with him. While we were in Kumasi Janet decided to extend her trip and go to Accra with me to talk to Bob about getting married. They have decided to wait till they return to the states to make their marriage official, only because it will be easier to get him a visa.
We got to stay at the KSO (Kumasi Sub-Office) and cook American food, watched TV, and relax, it was great. The KSO just isn’t the same without Sharon though! We stayed at the sub office for 3 nights and went to an African Cup of Nations game. It wasn’t a Ghana game, but the PCV where there in numbers…around 8 of us went to the game. With my recent fear of being robbed we left everything at the KSO and took $10 in our pockets. We had a beer at a small spot just outside of the stadium and I won a Guinness jersey. On the way to the stadium we had our faces painted with Ghana flags… it felt a little odd to stand in a line with 30 kids ages 12 and under, but they all had a great time with us. The stadium was beautiful; I forgot that I was in Ghana for a while. We watched two games, Egypt vs. Sudan and Cameroon vs. Zambia, and then headed back to the KSO around 10:00 pm absolutely exhausted.
The day after the game Janet and I said our good-byes to Terri and headed to Accra. Unfortunately we caught one of the worst tros I had ever been on. 28 people with 6 babies on laps! Fold down chairs are normally built into the isles for more seating. In my opinion they are the worst seats to sit on, besides the fact they are incredibly uncomfortable and have a tendency to tip over on hard turns or bumps putting you in your neighbors lap, they have no where to put your head for a nap. Well, I ended up in a fold down seat that was next to a Ghanaian woman with a baby. She kept falling asleep on my shoulder, dropping her sleeping child on my lap. Things that would make any normal human being uncomfortable no longs faze me, not only were the mother and child sleeping on me, but the breast the child was attached to was resting on my arm also! When I say child I mean 2 to 3 year old kid, still breast feeding which is normal in Ghana. They would wake up and readjust but always returned comfortably to my shoulder and lap. I found it quite funny… for the first 6 hours! But then, we heard a loud chime, the sound of something dragging on the ground as the engine cut off and we coasted to a stop. Everyone unloaded and urinated all over the place as the drive crawled under the tro to take a look. He quickly realized the drive shaft fell off, an essential component to a working tro! But we are in Ghana, and they can fix any problem on a tro with a hanger and Q-tip. A man was sent to find the drive shaft a returned about 15-20 minutes later. It took about a half an hour and the tro was up and running again. The last two hours of the trip I prayed the mother, child, and breast would fall back to sleep…no such luck. The mother spent the remaining 2 hours teaching her child to hit my leg; she thought it was cute and funny. After 6 hours on a hot tro nothing is cute or funny! Janet and I were thrilled and exhausted when we finally made it to the bunk room in Accra at 9pm.
My original plan was to spend one night in Accra to check my mail and then head back to site. With little trouble the crowd of PCVs in Accra had convinced me to spend one extra day there to go to the Ghana vs. Morocco game. I scalped a ticket off a Ghanaian who asked me to marry him in our first 2 minutes of conversation. After I purchased the ticket he informed me that I had the pleasure of sitting next to him the whole game… with no PCVs near me. The crowd of 12 PCV went to buy hamburgers (since we were in Accra enjoying American food) and also bought some sachets of whiskey for the game. We made it to the stadium, had our faces painted again and meet up with 3 PCV who were just getting in. Jacquie and Ira quickly convinced me to sit with them and hope there are empty seats. We went to their section and there were plenty of seats for about the first 10 minutes. The stadium was packed and the seats were filling quickly. The owner of my seat came so I stood up to move to another seat near Jacquie and Ira. I felt a strong grip on my right arm and then I was swiftly pushed back down in my seat. I turned around and a Ghanaian man was in my face screaming, “You are blocking my vision” (you learn to love the Ghanaian English). After 3 sachets of whiskey I decided that I wanted to say something back. I had never been in a verbal argument with anyone before in my life. (I’m going to warn you, the next things I said were vulgar, rude, and out of character…LOL!) I snapped back, “I don’t care, don’t touch me!” He replied, “You are blocking my vision!” so I said, “I don’t care, don’t touch me!” This went on for about a whole minute before I got up and switched seats. Not 5 minutes later my new seat’s owner had arrived and the man I had just been fighting with was inviting me to sit next to him. He and I were buddy-buddy the rest of the match, yelling and cheering together. We beat Morocco 2-0!
I had made plans to take a tro 8 hours home so that I could leave early the next morning to head to Volta on a business trip. It made more sense to have them pick me up in Accra on the way to Volta and save me from 16 hours in a tro. I spent a whole day in Accra relaxing and eating more American food and visiting Casey in the hospital. He had surgery on an infection on his shin. His leg was swollen to double its normal size! The doctor said that if he had come in 4 days later they might have had to amputate his leg. He was flying to South Africa for better medical treatment the next day. If he hasn’t healed before March 9^th then he will be medically separated and sent back to the U.S.
The next afternoon the tro with our tourist sub committee had arrived on the way to Volta. I was stuck in the bad seat again, the fold down chair but decided not to complain after missing out on 16 hours there. 4 hours later we were pulling into a guest house in Hohoe. It was very nice, running water and electricity, mountains and woods, and harmattan weather AKA cold. The purpose of this trip is to show the sub committee (the team of local residents who will take over the Nzulezo visitor center when Ghana Wildlife Society pulls out) what other tourist attractions are like, as well as show them how other tour guides operate. Many of the committee members have never left their village so driving through Accra was quite the experience. Our first day on our trip we woke up at 5:30 for breakfast and then the tro took us to climb Ghana’s tallest mountain. Mount Afadjato stands tall at 2,905 feet, or 5 km and 2 ½ hours of hell. The Ghanaians all put on shower shoes so they wouldn’t get their good shoes dirty. I was wishing I had anything besides my rainbow flip flops. The last words out of Patrick, the tour guide’s mouth were, “We are going to take this slow and finish as a group!” A quarter of the way up the mountain with 5 men back he stopped to see how we were doing. Two more turned back before we reached the top! It was beautiful, although I couldn’t see very far, the harmattan winds made the mountains very dusty and the visibility low. Descending the mountain might have been more exhausting than the climb up. Our muscles were flexed the whole way down trying to avoid sliding down the leaves and falling off of very steep cliffs. It didn't help reading this sign before we left! They Ghana men were not too macho to tell me their muscles were shaking.
I was happy to survive Mount Afadjato and was looking forward to getting home for a nap when I was informed we were going to hike to the Wli falls next. The tro took us to a spot that served palm wine before heading to the next visitor center for another hike. This was another 5 km out and 5 km back, but luckily no altitude. The falls were amazing! The water fell off a solid rock cliff that was 60 meters tall with millions of bats flying over head. We tried to swim in the small pool of water at the bottom of the falls but changed our minds after we were ankle deep due to the temperature of the freezing water. By the time we made it home after our 20 km or 12 miles that we had hiked we were all exhausted. We at rice for dinner and all fell asleep. Day 2 of our trip took us to the Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary. We walked just a few kilometers through the woods before the tour guide told us that because it was harmattan and very dry the monkeys had left to find more food. I was disappointed that I didn’t see any mona monkeys. All the pictures that I’ve seen of mona monkeys very cute, they have black fur around their eyes that make them look like they are wearing sunglasses. We spent the afternoon relaxing at the guest house and taking about pain in our legs.
After a week and a half away from site I was excited to get home. We left at 4:30 in the morning to head back to Beyin. I didn’t get any sleep the night before we left, and you guessed it… I was stuck in the fold down seat! Not even the fold down seat could’ve brought down the good mood I was in finally returning home. Not the fold down seat, or the oil leak that caused us to break down in the middle of no where for an hour in a half, or the second oil leak that took 30 minutes to fix, or the third oil leak that took another 30 minutes to fix. I made it home at 9:30 pm after 17 hours on a broke down tro. I walked up to my house and found 30 Ghanaians screaming and Ateiko trying to mediate, his job as a village elder. He was so excited to see me he stopped everything to hug me and give me a kiss on my hand. I told him I was going to sleep and I would tell him about my trip the next morning.

I decided to skip church on Sunday and catch up on a few things at site; number one priority was my wash. Without a clean stitch of clothing I spend 3 hours washing everything I owned. I was so carried away with washing I gave Mekulu, my puppy a good scrub down next. After two weeks away from her she must have doubled in size. She was so excited to see me, and not happy with me after her bath. After I did my wash I headed into town to buy a cell phone charger and replace my broken one. I made it to Tikobo 1 and everything was closed because it was Sunday (I don’t know what I was thinking). I found a hardware store that was open and bought some mesh to build a mesh guard for my garden. My garden survived one week against the snails and lizard that ate everything that had germinated. I also bough chicken wire so I can build a rabbit cage. I have decided to become a rabbit rancher! ***This coming from a girl who had pet rabbits her whole childhood. My landlord had tried to raise rabbits once before but the burrow he dug for the rabbits collapsed and killed his rabbits. I would never be able to eat rabbit, especially after I raised them, so I will be a breeder. Rabbit is a fast producing was of getting protein for villagers. It has not caught on in my village, however Ateiko is willing to try it and he can help spread the word. I came home and replanted all the seeds that had been in the water sachet bags (make shift pots). I also bought a bucket to replant my mango seed that has now grown leaves.
I went to our village meeting today and was shocked when a more serious than coconut thieves was brought up. The village came in numbers when the elders demanded that the kids be brought from school to attend the meeting, and the parents were also required to drop what they were doing and go to the meeting. The topic of the meeting was the lack of respect the children were showing as well as their slipping grades. I wasn’t too concerned till the teachers stood up and told about the two students that were caught having sex in the school house. When caught by a teacher they said very rude things to the teacher, which resulted in the teacher quitting. After the meeting I was taken to the school by all the teachers to speak to the students impromptu. I introduced myself to all the classes, although they already knew me. I told them that starting next week I would be coming in once a week to talk to them about behavior, their future plans, the environment, and HIV and AIDS. I am planning to go in with games and treats. I will talk to them about what they want to be when they grow up; most of them have very few life goals. After we identify their goals we will talk about what it will take to get there, leading into a talk about grades, education, manners, and respect for others. The following week I will lead into HIV and AIDS. The kids caught were only 13 and 14 years old and having unprotected sex, fortunately she announced to the village that she was not pregnant. I swear Africans just don’t get embarrassed ever! It amazes me!
My two week vacation/work trip was just what I needed to recharge my batteries! It feels great to get back to work!
Skip and Teri corner: For family and friends concerned about my health! I’m sad to announce that my worm has died. I guess I wasn’t the best host! My toe has also healed up along with the rest of my bug bites. I am still battling heat rash; I’ve noticed it is just on my right side. I finally realized that I sleep on my right side; I fall asleep and wake up sweating most nights…so that is where the heat rash is coming from. Besides that I am in perfect health, and getting a little of my tan back. I have been going to Nzulezo a lot this week trying to put together a brochure, so I’ve been in the sun more than I should. Try explaining to an African why your skin has turned red, I have to reassure them it will turn back white. I had a Ghanaian try to scratch off once of my freckles for 10 minutes yesterday before I convinced him that it wouldn’t come off.

I miss you and love you all! Take care!