Akwaba (Welcome) to Ghana Obroni (White man)!

After 30+ hours on a plane, and sleeping about 3 hours, meeting lots of new people, I stepped out of the plane and hello humidity, hello Ghana! 

The road to Asunafo!

We arrived in Abomosu the following day, a village, and I love it here!  We live “in the bush” as they say.  So if anyone ever offers you “bush meat”, you may want to think twice.  All the children shout “Obroni, Obroni” 24/7 because we are white and we say “Obebini” (Black man).  For the first couple of days, the noise at night was very different between the roosters, crickets, goats, birds, and who knows what else.  Nothing sleeps here as far as I can tell except maybe between 2am and 4am!  But now I can sleep no problem, especially after walking for 10 miles a day.  We are staying with the Abu’s, and only Stephen is here right now and Hannah and George cook for us.  They are the most charitable people, and our family. 

After about 1 week!

We have gotten the classes all set up and we taught last week even!  Our classes are about 1-1.5 hours away by walk and my Chaco lines are looking pretty good.  Sweat has taken on a whole new definition!  Except one time we took the “tro tro” (basically imagine a hippie bus jam packed with people cruising through a road with potholes everywhere…and me in the back seat of the 3 benches between 3 farmers) since Stephen was in and stopped even though I said "No ride, no ride" because I didn't know he was in there.  He got out and said, "Rachel, are you scared"?  When I saw him we said "Oh it is you!"  One village we are setting up the program for the first time so we met with the chiefs, elders, and all the people in the town hall last week.  I am pretty excited to teach them.  The only downside to the classes is Ghana time…2pm class to them means 3pm, 4pm, 5pm….but they are getting better. 

We are also teaching at the World Joy RC school to the kids.  I am teaching level four in the primary school, and after arriving I was told to teach so I asked for a book and 2 hours later…!  It was pretty good though because me and the teacher taught together so the kids could understand.  The teachers have a very good relationship with the interns though and so they came last week to invite us to the traditional wedding for the engagement of one of the teachers.  Next weekend we will travel with them to attend, I am excited! 

Visiting a school in one of the villages we teach business classes.  I will have to get a picture of the class we teach soon!

Yesterday we went to two funerals with Stephen.  When you come in you have to shake everyone’s hands, even if there is 100 people.  At one, we even danced!  Country swing.  They all went wild to say the LEAST and everyone dances because it is a celebration.  That was quite the experience, I had no idea what we were signing up for going to a funeral.  There are tons of funerals here as far as I can tell and everyone wears their black and red dresses so maybe we will get one of those. 

The church here is growing so fast and the members are very humble.  Usually half is in English so that makes it easier to understand.  The singing this week with the piano sounded much better than acapella last week, but some do not know English so we are just happy for them to sing!  We just help wherever they need each week for the most part, the primary kids are big fans of Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam even though we sing and they just jump and say BEAM!

So I am an African Woman!  Akosua is my name since I was born on Sunday, my hair is African (after 6 hours of braiding) and weighs about 10 pounds more, I drank my first coconut, drink oranges, eat plenty pineapple, Red Red, Fufu (even with our hands), dream the way they speak, and say Medasi (Thank you)! 

After 6 hours, apparently to finish they put some sort of wax or oil and then torch your hair!