And so it begins!

14/10/13   Entry #1

The Setting: Hello friends, family, and strangers!  Although this blog has taken me a while to set up, we are now in full swing!  As a background, I am Living here in Ghana for six months volunteering at an orphanage and traveling around whenever possible.  I arrived here on September 30^th and have been having a great time ever since.  The weather here is hot a muggy, so I find myself constantly damp (as expected) and greasy.  Soon we are going into the summer season where just sitting, one will break a sweat. 

            The Living Arrangement: I am living in a house with five other volunteers (and our cook), which is luxurious by Ghanian standards.  We have both electricity and running water, which is quite the treat on the hot Ghanian days.  The orphanage I am working at services 38 children with shelter, schooling, showers, and 3 meals per day.  The home is called the Achiase Children’s Home and is run Mama Sarah, Mr. Sam, and Auntie Mary, with help from the older children (16-18).  We have one child who is deaf and goes to a Deaf School school in town where they can tailor to his disability. 

            The Milieu: Many of the kids come in family groups, so most of the children have a couple siblings living with them.  Kids can come to the orphanage a couple of different ways, either parent’s are deceased, or more commonly, the parents have too many kids to take care of, so they send a couple to the orphanage.  The kids will occasionally go home, but usually end up back at Achiase within a week or so.  A couple of other kids have just been left by their parent’s in public places e.g. a market, and are then brought to the orphanage.

            Traveling: This past week, four other volunteers and I traveled up to Mole National Park for a couple days, which was quite the ordeal!  We started in Achiase around 5 am Monday morning, and took a taxi into Swedru to the tro-tro station, where we caught a tro-tro for a six hour van ride up to Kumasi.  If for some reason those of you in the USA are dissatisfied with public transport, Traveling for even a day in Ghana would lower your standards exponentially.  In short, we fifteen adults were crammed into a vehicle the size of a mini-van with no air conditioning in 85 degree weather! As a bonus the elderly gentleman next to me was eating pungent dried fish, but hey, all part of the experience! When we arrived in Kumasi, we were dropped off in the largest market in West Africa, which, for someone from Juneau, Alaska who gets stressed out being in Fred Meyer’s on a Saturday morning, was almost unbearable! We quickly took a taxi to our accommodations and settled in for the evening.  The next morning we took a massive bus up to Tamale (another 7 hour bus ride), then caught a final bus up to Mole National Park which we heard was supposed to take 2 hours, but in reality took six. (Surprise!)  The next morning we went on a walking safari where we saw, tons of warthogs, water buffalo, monkeys, crocodile, antelope, deer and tons of gorgeous birds!  At breakfast, a monkey jumped up onto our table and stole a handful of jam and a ton of sugar cubes, quite exciting! We spent the noontime in the sun at the pool, and all received severe sunburns just in time for the afternoon driving safari, which was just as you’d imagine.  Eight of us sat atop a jeep and drove all around the national park, seeing many of the same animals as the morning safari. The trip was a blast, but we were all excited to get home and see the kids again and eat the cooked food!