Here Today, Ghana Tomorrow!

10.25.12

Alright, I know I've been slacking lately, so I'll be starting up a lot
with everything! I have lots to talk about! But tonight is just for
Ghana! :)

So I met this family on the ship. I first met Elena (she's 15 and a
dependent child) when she was sporting an NKU shirt! I immediately went
up to talk to her because I know I'm the only one from my campus here,
and it turns out she has a cousin who goes there! Well then we didn't
really talk because we didn't see each other. I randomly met up with
her family on the train in Portugal, and that's how I became involved
with the Freeman family! Harry is a psych professor here, and Grace is
his wife. Aside from Elena, they have two other children: Harrison, who
is 11, and Willa who is 8. Ever since Portugal, the Freeman's have
basically adopted me into their family. Since I had no plans for Ghana
aside from my field lab, I decided to hang out with Grace and the kids
the first day since Harry was busy.

I can't tell you the amount of times that Elena and I got proposed to
that day. I think it was over 5 each! It got to the point where Grace
would call me her daughter and that I was too young. That usually
worked! So basically the first day we just walked around Tema, and it
was pretty fun. We looked at the market, and Grace wanted to go down a
neighborhood, so I helped her convince the kids to go down as well. You
could tell they were uncomfortable, but they went along with it, and I'm
glad I got to visit! That night, much to my surprise, Grace invited me
on the ship to ice cream. She said that I had really helped her
children today and that it was nice that a college student wanted to
hang out with them. That surprised me because a) I felt like I pushed
them to do something they didn't want to do and b) they're a really cool
family-I'm surprised that not a lot of other people hang out with them
in port!

The next day I went to Accra with the girls. We went to the Accra
market on the beach. It was fun, but very overwhelming! Basically if
you said you would look at someone's "store" then you were practically
forced to buy something. I got a lot of cheap souvenirs that way...But
one really cool thing I got was a Ghanaian drum! I wasn't planning on
buying one at all, but we sat down in the shop and got a lesson on how
to play! It was definitely really interesting, and then they let us
pick the symbols we wanted carved on our drum! I picked a sun, meaning
Child of God, and what is considered "a snake climbing a palm tree," (it
doesn't actually look like that, it looks somewhat like a ladder) but
that means to do the unusual or the impossible. I thought they fit
well! I was getting irritated at the end because we hadn't eaten lunch,
and all we really wanted to do was get back to the ship to cool off and
eat (it was so hot!) so finally we were able to get away from all the
shop keepers in order to leave. That night we stayed near the ship, and
talked to one of the sellers who set up a market right outside our
ship! His name is B.A. and he taught us how to play a game called
"Umpay." It reminds me of rock, paper, scissors!

The third day was also pretty awesome. I hung out with Harry and
Harrison, and first we walked around again. We managed to go find the
Church of the Prime Meridian! There's a plaque there that shows where
exactly the Prime Meridian is, so we stood in both the West and East
hemispheres of the world at the same time! Then later that day, we went
to a soccer game. It was completely different from the one in
Portugal. First off, the tickets were only 5 Cedi ($2.50!). After we
got into the stadium, it was not what you would expect a soccer stadium
to look like. *Nate, Dad, and the rest of my family are probably the
only ones to get this reference.* The stadium looked like St. Monica's
field...only surrounded by a fence. So basically imagine a regular
soccer field, surrounded by a fence. That was the stadium. There were
only two areas to sit, and both were V.I.P. sections. These sections
were only 5 more Cedi, so we decided it would be fun to say we sat
V.I.P. and also we really just wanted the shade, because again, it was
so hot! Well the teams playing were Tema Youth vs. Accra Heart of Oak.
The game ended in a tie of 1-1. As we were walking back to the ship, a
local came up to us. He was yelling excitedly the entire time, "You
guys were on TV!" We had no idea what he was talking about until he
mentioned, "You guys were at the game right, at the park?" To which we
nodded, because he was definitely talking about soccer! The local then
repeated, "You were on TV! I remember seeing you and the little boy!"
(meaning Harrison!) So who knew?! Pretty neat that I'm able to say I
was on TV in Tema, Ghana!

The last day I had a field lab. It was not really what I was
expecting. We went to visit Friends of the Earth and then a fishing
village. Field labs are required for class, just to let everyone know!
Well, while we were at Friends of the Earth, we were lectured at...for 2
hours. I was expecting to learn about them, not what I had been
learning in class, so it was a little bit of a disappointment. The
fishing village wasn't much better. Basically we got off the bus and
walked around for a half hour...but the smell was so bad due to all the
dead fish. I felt so bad because most of us were having trouble keeping
lunch down, and I could only imagine how we looked to the locals. Rude,
ignorant, etc. It was definitely interesting to see how they dried the
fish and prepared it! They lay it out in the sun to dry, and there are
hundreds of boats in the lake! There were thousands of dead fish laying
out, and it was next to all their garbage and waste as well. Overall, I
was not happy with the field lab, but the fishing village was definitely
more educational than FOTE.

Well tomorrow I'll update more! Sorry everyone that I've been busy and
haven't had much time, but that should change now that we have 10 days
at sea! More updates tomorrow!

SH