i dislike frogs. and saying goodbye.

This past week was my last in Ghana - after saying goodbye to everyone and attempting to come back to life I was kicked out of my dorm and on a tro tro to Busua, which is about four hours from Accra. We needed to heal ourselves with sunshine.

People in our program had gone to Busua and come back saying it was a life changing experience and so amazing and that the burritos were above all the best. So I was going with pretty high expectations, which, scenery wise, were met. The beach is absolutely spectacular and was pretty deserted for the week we were there - right in the center of your view is a picture perfect deserted island, complete with two palm trees. There's a surfshop (yes, there is surfing in Ghana) and a few restaurants but it's mostly just different guest houses and hotels that are spread out along the beach. We were staying at Peter's Place - this is the cheapest place to stay and rightfully so. I was used to staying in crappy places after fall break, so it wasn't that bad. A basic room, with a toilet and shower separated by a partial wall - a bit awkward, but nothing too bad. The first night was uneventful, we ate at the surfshop, got our first taste of the burritos that were AMAZING, and went to bed at eight when the sun went down. The second day - lovely. Our room was literally 100 feet from the beach so we could wake up early, walk outside, and be ready to go. We laid out all day, got incredibly sunburned, swam, napped in the hammocks that belonged to the other hotels.

Then it was night time. Nights were not so exciting in Busua - there is nothing to do when the sun sets, which is at about seven. There's a few people here and there, but it's nothing like Accra. So we're in the room because we are all bright red and exhausted, and I go to use the bathroom, lift up the toilet seat, and sitting there is THE BIGGEST FROG I HAVE EVER SEEN. Just hanging out. IN OUR TOILET.

So I scream and dart out of the little passage that separates the bathroom and yell about frogs being in the toilet, and Holley and Brenda look at me as if I am crazy. "I SWEAR THERE WAS A HUGE FROG IN THE TOILET." Brenda is brave enough to go look...and there is nothing there. OF COURSE. I though I could have been delirious from the sun, my eyes were playing tricks on me, whatever. Brenda and Holley have a laugh at me and move on. So a few minutes later, I'm still afraid to go to the bathroom and Brenda is nice enough to go check again. Ten seconds later, I hear a scream. THE FROG HAS REAPPEARED. This thing is huge - and absolutely disgusting. My biggest fear is having snakes come up through the toilet, so a frog is far too close for comfort. No one uses the bathroom that night and we put a huge bag of satchet water on top because you never know...that frog could have superhuman strength and dart out of the toilet during the night. Meh. Gross.

So the next morning I complain to one of the boys who works for Peter, and he doesn't believe me and goes to check and tells me that I am being silly and there is nothing there. For the rest of the day we snuck into different bathrooms at the other hotels and the surf shop, and finally later that night Peter comes back and says that he was very disturbed by what I claimed had happened and has something to show me. He grabs my wrist and starts dragging me to the room and I am convinced he is going to show me a dead frog so I start screaming NO I DON'T WANT TO SEE and then he sighs and goes OH MY GOSH COME ON and brings me around the back of our room...and shows me the enormous hole in the pipes leading to our bathroom. Fantastic. This hole was probably the size of a baseball, and as it is above ground, is the perfect escape for little creatures such as frogs. He promises to get DDT and kill it as soon as possible...which is the next day.

Watching this man 'take care of' our pipe issue was the most entertaining hour of the week. First of all, he brings in DDT, which is a bright neon green liquid in an old liquor bottle. No labels, no nothing, just the radiating odor of chemicals. Holley and I are sitting on the bed and he is in the bathroom, and I hear "Ohh it's BIG BIG FROG! Let's let it die a little more." So I'm assuming the frog is in the toilet and this man is pouring chemicals on it - for the next ten minutes he walks in and out checking on the progression of this frogs death. "Little more! Little longer!" He finally flushes it, and after fixing the pipe with cement tells me that there was not just one frog...there was actually three. Then a few minutes later...there were actually four. Three little frogs and one "BIG BIG ONE". So we killed a mama frog and her three babies - and no, I don't feel the least bit guilty.

I realize I have written a ridiculous amount about frogs and toilets, but aside from this experience the week was literally all reading, hammocking, talking to our new friends (such as a Serbian named Milo who spoke with a southern accent and went through half a bottle of whiskey in an hour), and getting as much sun as possible. And it paid off...when we came back Marjorie told Holley and I that we had different skin and we looked like the Ghanaian flag (I'm not sure if she meant the red or yellow part...).

Since we've been back we've been hanging out with Marjorie and her adorable daughters, using the Academic center's internet/shower/refrigerator because we are pretty much homeless, and attempting to stuff four months into two suitcases. Last night we saw New Moon with our CRA Abynnah and it was the most enjoyable two hours of my life - a little dose of American culture in the form of bad movies was a lovely preview for my life starting Wednesday.

My flight is tonight...and I am still in denial. Saying goodbye to people and to places when I don't know when I'll return is incredibly difficult - also, it is Christmas in two days?? WHAT?! I am definitely not ready for snow, 2010...I have a feeling I am going to be terrified by Manhattan after being in such a relaxed 'city' as Accra...obrunis everywhere! The culture shock is going to be quite interesting.

I'm excited to get back to America and see how different it feels, but I'm definitely going to be leaving a big part of my heart in Ghana. I've promised myself (and countless others I've had to say goodbye to) that I'm going to come back one day, so that is what I'll be holding onto. It's been an amazing, ridiculous, crazy four months being here - and I've loved every day of it.

nyu in ghana, me dowapaa

Today was the last day of the NYU in Ghana program - as I'm writing this, I'm sitting in my dorm room, by myself, terrified that at any moment there will be a massive raid on the compound and I will be target number one. Why am I still in my dorm when everyone else is gone? Well, Holley, Brenda and I are all staying an extra week to go to the beach and spend some more time in Accra. I want to avoid winter in Maine and try to make my skin as dark as possible. So the plan was to leave at noon today and be at the beach by tonight. We're going to Busua, which is supposed to be like heaven on earth and I am so excited to see it, but when Holley and I are involved in travel plans, nothing is ever simple.

So it was the last day - everyone is trying to see everyone and say goodbye and get everything packed and get as many hugs and last moments in as we can. The past week has been incredibly emotional with final projects and papers and packing, and as Maggie said, we are all on an emotional cliff. The other day I couldn't find a match to light the stove and make french fries and I nearly started crying - this is a true story.

So I woke up this morning, or rather I was woken up by Maggie, and realize that not only do I have an absolutely terrible headache, but I can barely open my eyes and my skin is burning hot. Mama Maggie took my temperature and surprise! - 38.9 degrees Celcius (for all you Americans, that is a lovely 102 degrees). I felt like Beth March when she got scarlet fever. I looked like shit, I felt like shit, and I was supposed to be packed and on a tro tro in two hours <--- something that did not happen. Because we are obrunis, the first thing we think whenever we get sick is that it's malaria. I am terrible at remembering to take my malaria medication - how are you supposed to remember to do something every day! - so while everyone went to eat wakye and visit Marjorie one last time, me and my CRA Douglass took a nice little trip to Nyaho Hospital, which Douglass told me was the best private hospital in Accra. I wasn't impressed. I was there for four hours. We waited in reception, we waited in the 'temperature room', we waited in the waiting room, we waited at the laboratory. I've been tested for malaria before and it was so painful, but the doctor today, who was probably about fifty, told me that this one wouldn't hurt because he'd mixed in sugar and honey and all that sweet stuff. Charming. He then told me that he'd come to America with me and I should pack him in my luggage.

I got my test results and they came back negative, although the doctor told me that the pills I take could affect the results. It was quite a letdown - if I'm going to be this sick I want to be able to put a name to what I have, not say "it's maybe malaria it's like a virus or the flu or something like that I'm on antibiotics". Especially if it meant missing everyone's last day. Which was incredibly not okay - it is so surreal that this experience is over. The fact that tomorrow nearly everyone will be back in America and in all different places and eating McDonalds is too strange for me to understand when I am still sitting here - well, laying here - in Ghana. It's never going to be like this again - although we'll all see each other in New York and all of us want to return to Ghana, it's never going to be the same as the past four months have been. Which, if I had to sum it up - was amazing. I'm lucky that I was too sick to go to the hospital and say goodbye to everyone - it was hard enough saying goodbye to everyone from the couch. The past four months have been filled with beautiful moments and wonderful people - I feel so lucky to have had the chance to experience it. I still have a week and a half left, but it already feels very different being here without everyone else - sitting in my dorm room without Maggie across from me just doesn't feel right, and while it's sad, and change is never easy, I mostly feel grateful to have been here.

And now I must continue my aspirin regimen so that I can make it through a seven hour tro tro ride tomorrow. Busua - you better be worth it.

it's beginning to look a lot like...no, not really.

This was my second year in a row being away from home for Thanksgiving, and the two that I have had abroad have been...interesting. Last year when I was in London, I won tickets to see MGMT on Thanksgiving night in the most intense and epic ebay battle of my life. The concert was amazing - Ben and Andrew dressed as pilgrims and Indians, I danced and fell more in love with Andrew, and all was good.

NYU in London did nothing for us for Thanksgiving, so I wasn't expecting anything from NYU in Ghana, but I guess because we're in Africa and about as far away from American holiday culture as you can get, and because lately all we've been hearing about the holidays is that we have to protect our valuables because there's been an increase in machete attacks, they decided to throw us a big dinner event. And when I say big, I mean big. Turkeys were flown in, our director brought Ocean Spray cranberry sauce back with her from her last trip to America, and everyone started planning desserts to contribute. It was very fancy schmancy - tablecloths, candles - much more formal than any Thanksgiving I've had, where we usually wear pajamas and watch television until its time to eat. I'm a vegetarian, so the turkeys they brought out didn't interest me, but according to the carnivores it was amazing and 'juicy' (that sounds disgusting to me). They also have some amazing mac and cheese and SO MUCH mashed potatoes, which they thoughtfully set right in front of me. Snickerdoodles, chocolate chip cookies, Mississippi mud pie - so much food that none of us could do anything after but fall asleep or moan about our stomachs being full. After we had all stuffed ourselves, they switched from elevator music to hiplife, since any night is not complete without dancing to Bumper to Bumper and World Trade Center (youtube it).

I have always been the number one Christmas enthusiast, and Thanksgiving is the time when I create my massive Christmas music playlist and force everyone to listen to it incessantly, but this year I have felt absolutely no connection to the holidays. It's very strange to be sweating your ass off in ninety degree weather and see wreaths and garland randomly hanging up in stores. It was amazing to be in London around the holiday season - Harrods beats Macy's any day - but here...not so much. It is December and yet I am waking up covered in sweat because our air conditioner has been broken. Snow? Christmas carols? Doesn't really fit in here. I am fine, however, sitting in the air conditioner watching Elf and Love Actually instead of working on my final paper. Christmas may not translate, but procrastination does.

this is another cab story...

Last night I was riding home in a taxi with Caitlin, Holley, and Maggie. We had just had a goodbye ice cream dinner with our CRA Debby, who is fantastic and leaving the NYU empire, so we all wanted to get our goodbyes in.

So we are driving home and we are all chatting and we're passing a road on our right - there's two men sitting on a scooter waiting to pull out, and for some reason they decided to pull out in front of us.

And then we hit them.

When I say hit, I mean it was a good hit. We saw them coming and our driver slammed on the breaks and I screamed and we all screamed (not for ice cream, we'd already gotten that), but we weren't able to stop fast enough. We ended up tapping them pretty hard, and they the scooter and the two men riding on it just toppled over onto the ground. One of the men got up right away and ran off the road, skipping a little like he'd hurt himself but he was smiling so I took that as my cue to start laughing hysterically. It's terrible, but I found it hilarious. Especially when a car drove by and the man in front leaned out the window, pumped his fist, and yelled at us "OH YEAH! THAT'S GHANA FOR YOU!"

The other guy and the driver yelled at each other for a bit and then the scooter man brought his scooter to the side of the road. He waved over our driver to stop and then I heard the word police and then I wanted to get out and take another cab - I didn't need a repeat of last week. Taxi drivers and policemen and I have too close a relationship. The driver gets out of the car and we are all trying to do the same but because some of the cabs here can be in pretty bad shape, no one's door would open except for mine, and when I tried to get out I wasn't allowed to. Then another man gets into the car and takes on the role of our new driver. The entire time this was happening I was either laughing or was panic stricken trying to get away from the police that may or may not be coming to arrest another of Caitlin and I's taxi drivers. The laughs started again and this time our new driver joined in, so I did not feel as heartless.

It was a lovely way to start a Saturday night.

just a typical afternoon in accra

Let's quickly talk about what happened yesterday.

So Caitlin and I are on our way to Beacon House, the orphanage where we go to hold babies. We get in a cab and tell the driver East Legon, near American International School. Like most cab drivers here he half listens to what we say and just motions for us to get in. Naturally...we miss the turn we have to take and so I'm like, oh hey, you need to turn around, we needed to go left. The cab driver starts complaining about 'meh meh meh you confused me blah blah' so Caitlin and I are like, uh huh, make a u-turn. The first attempt to make a u-turn he is motioned away by a cop who tells him to go further down before he can turn around. We do this and manage to get going the other way.

So now we are heading the other direction...we need to make a left turn but there are no simply left turns in Accra so we end up needing to do another u-turn. The cab driver is moaning like a little girl about this and how long it's going to take. So we get to another area where we can turn and there are two cops patrolling it. One of the cops sees what the driver is trying to do and motions him to stop, but our cab driver ignores him and makes the reverse turn anyway. And then all hell broke loose.

We make the turn and suddenly there's the other cop in front of our car with his hands out YELLING to STOP THE CAR AND PULL OVER. So he pulls over the car, out of nowhere the passenger door and the back door open and the cops are telling me to move over so that they can get in the car with us. They start yelling at the driver and at us and are all like CAN'T YOU READ STREET SIGNS?! YOU CANNOT TURN HERE!!! WE'RE GOING TO THE STATION! And our driver is all blaming it on the girls for 'confusing him' and in his mind ordering him to make illegal turns.

Me and Caitlin hear the word 'station' and are immediately FREAKING out and ready to call Christa, our program director, and tell her about the latest mess we've gotten into so she can spring the two spoiled NYU girls from jail. So we're like, please please pleeeease can we get out of the cab??? We want to leave can we get out?? And the cops are like WE'RE GOING TO THE STATION. So we continue asking them to let us out and finally they're like yes you can get out and get another cab up here. And then they dropped this lovely line:

"We're not trying to kill you. We're trying to save you."

GET ME OUT OF THIS CAB RIGHT NOW.

They let us out at a tro-tro stop and Caitlin and I ran from the car into another cab before the police changed their mind and decided to take the two manipulative obruni girls as well as the reckless driver to the station. It was a lovely experience. As we're driving away in our new cab and staring behind us to make sure we're not being followed, we see our old driver running after us trying to flag us down. Fantastic. He wanted to be paid before he was taken into the police station, so we gave him some money and he took it, but not before informing our new cab driver that "these girls confused me, they told me to go to Legon and then they changed their minds and made me turn around". And all we wanted to do was hold some babies.

little women makes everything better

Early early early Thursday morning we left Niamey, Niger for Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. The night there had been a HUGE rainstorm and lightning storm that lasted for at least an hour - it was amazing, so leaving Niger the air was a bit cooler than the usual stifling heat. We were able to find the bus station and get tickets without any problems, which we were really lucky with all week - all the books were telling us that this company or this bus was ALWAYS sold out so you had to go days before, but 90% of the time we arrived about an hour before all of our buses and always got tickets. The night before I had started feeling really sick - like very very sluggish and nauseous and just a whole bunch of bad things. So for the twelve hour bus ride to Ouagadougou, I took about four sleeping pills and passed out, only waking up when Holley and Maggie would shake me to hand my passport over or to get off the bus and get a soda. We ended up arriving in Ouaga in about ten hours, so we were there early afternoon, and I will say that it was the quickest bus ride of my life.

When we got to Ouaga (pronounced "Waga") we got into a the most broken down and janky cab I have ever seen - the front window was all cracked and you could not see a thing and the inside had absolutely nothing in it. I didn't care - it was time to go to a hotel. Any hotel. We ended up staying at the Hotel Delwende on - GET THIS - Rue PATRICE LUMUMBA. If I used blog speak I would say that I did a big ZOMG to that. It's amazing to finally hear and see the names that I've been studying. Anyways - we get to the hotel and I am ready to pass out. The only nice thing was that there was a man in our hotel that was in love and would call me 'beauty' and wave whenever he walked by the room because it was so hot we would always leave our door open.

The only thing that could stir me out of bed was the promise of french fries, so we went to Sindibal's, a Lebanese fast food place, to eat, and we had the cutest child waiter in the entire world. He told us he was twelve but he looked about eight and he was the best waiter I ever had even though it was a little disturbing to watch him fetch our drinks and food. After we ate we decided that to get us home somewhat on time we should attempt to find the bus station and get tickets beforehand, so because our driver had no clue where the station was we ended up driving around Ouagadougou for about an hour. Great for pictures, quite annoying to pay for. But we ended up getting to the station and having to decide whether we wanted to leave the next morning and have five hours in Burkina Faso, or stay until Sunday and not get back to Ghana until who-knows-when Monday. After the week we'd been through we really didn't want to go home saying that we had three awful days and two lovely ones, so we decided to stay in Ouaga for a few more days.

So for a few more days, I think I traveled at most about a quarter mile from the hotel. The next morning when we woke up I was so nauseous, achy, and all around disgusting feeling that for the rest of the day that I could not even go to breakfast at this AMAZING patisserie, and after breakfast I made Holley read Little Women aloud to me while I laid on the bed with a cold washcloth over my face. It was a lovely afternoon. We were able to take a little stroll to the Centre National d'Artisanat d'Art Galerie, which is like a big compound with lots of different traders selling bronze and jewelry and clothing. After we shopped there for a bit we made our way to a fabric store - it was at this point in the weekend that I learned the phrase "Je suis malade" (I am sick), so I decided to use it as a bargaining tool with the men working there. I did not care about politeness or social graces - I sat in a chair pointing to the fabric that I wanted and when they would tell me the price I would go "NO! JE SUIS MALADE!" so that they would lower it. The men there were actually really funny and nice - one of them was Holley's soulmate and just kept saying "Love me! Love me!" and asking us if we were married. Also - like HALF of the fabric in this store was from Ghana, and since they knew we were from Ghana they would not let us buy it. We'd pick something up and they'd cut us off and say "NO! That's from Ghana", take it out of our hands, and put it back. I was able to get some lovely fabric from Mali and Niger and after we hung out with these men for like an hour they bought us oranges and taught us the most AMAZING way to eat them - you cut off just the top so you can squeeze it and drink the juice. It was lovely and this style of citrus eating has been brought back to Accra.

Another amazing thing we discovered in Ouagadougou - nun-run restaurants. Seriously - for dinner two nights in a row we ate at these restaurants that were run by nuns, and it was the best food of the trip. Our second night we ate at Restaurant l'Eau Vive, which was outside and beautiful and we had the nicest and sweetest little Asian nun as our waitress and then in the middle of the dinner they brought out an acoustic guitar and sang 'Ave Maria'. The food was also AMAZING - I got potato soup and we all got these great ice cream desserts and it was so homey and comforting. I loved it. The next night we ate at another nun restaurant -this one was also a hotel so it was more like a dining hall than a restaurant. They even made us special vegetarian food - I got potato soup AGAIN and roasted potatoes (I do not understand the nuns obsession with potatoes but I have NO problem with it) and baguettes (great thing about being in Francophone countries - fantastic baguettes everywhere you go). No singing this time, but it was still lovely as anything.

Second to last piece of drama in Fall Break 09 - this time it was my turn again. For most...okay all of the time in Ouaga I was pretty much only able to leave the hotel for like an hour before I had to go back and rest and force Holley to read to me. I could walk for about ten minutes before needing to sit down - I was having chills at night, I was achy all day, had a constant headache, and I was incredibly nauseous and having terrible stomach pain. I was the most fun travel partner ever to exist. So by Saturday morning it had progressed into me having dizzy spells and not able to swallow anything because it had become painful, and Mama Maggie decided enough was enough. She had consulted her guidebook and decided that I could have malaria. Now, I do not take my malaria pills on a regular basis whatsoever. I'm supposed to take them everyday...and I have a terrible memory and probably remember every four days. So Maggie starts reading to me about malaria and how it is fatal if not treated and you shouldn't let it go too long...so we decide to get to a clinic. Second hospital visit of the trip. I walked in and said "JE SUIS MALADE!" and then I let Maggie talk and had her come in when I saw the doctor so she could translate for me - after we chatted he said that he was pretty sure it was malaria, but that we'd do a test to be sure. The test turned out to be the MOST PAINFUL finger prick of my entire life - he would not stop squeezing blood out of my finger and I was wailing and complaining to Maggie and the technician was laughing at me. The doctor must've heard me because he came in and asked the technician if he was "enjoying the Americans" - I'm sure he was. So I wait for the test and it comes back...negative! Yay! Which meant that...I had an intestinal infection. Disgusting. So the doctor asks me like twenty times if I'm pregnant and if I'm sure I'm not pregnant and if there's any chance I could be pregnant and then prescribes me four different medicines that I have to take three times a day - I have never felt more like a pill popper than those five days where I was ingesting six pills at at time three times a day.

Last piece of drama - it really is Holley's story but I will give a basic rundown because who knows when she will finish her recap of fall break. Sunday morning we're leaving the hotel and we're chatting about the week and how NOTHING more could happen - we're in the clear. We get in a cab, take it to the bus station, and it drops us off literally twenty feet from the bus. As we're driving up a bunch of people run up to the car to sell us this or that and we're walking to the bus and I look back and see Holley's face - and hear her say that her camera was gone. Twenty feet from the bus and one of us gets pickpocketed. It was terrible. It was just...not good. But to Holley's credit, she let it BE KNOWN that it was not good.

And then we got on the bus, which is going to be about 18 hours, and they tell us that we're going to make as few stops as possible because of the armed robbers that attack vehicles driving through the night.

And so concludes Fall Break 09 everyone. It's been fun!

hungry hungry hee-pohs

Day Five. YAY I'M ALMOST DONE WITH THIS. So day five, Wednesday, was our second day in Niamey. After eating a breakfast of leftover pizza because the idea of eating three real meals a day was now strange to us, we decided to head to Boubon, a village outside of Niamey where there was supposed to be a market with fantastic pottery and the chance to ride on boats down the river.

We read that in Niger people dress as formal as they can afford to, which we saw as our cab driver wore a striped suit with nothing underneath. The ride took about a half an hour, so we were able to see some amazing views of the country - all this orange and red and dried up lakes and rivers. We drove into Boubon and it looked like something out of a National Geographic magazine - all the buildings and houses were made of clay and mud but there were so many of them it created this network of pathways. When we drove up we were approached by a group of guys who started asking where we were from and who told us that if we really wanted to see the real Boubon, we would need one of them as our guide. We started negotiating prices and after telling them that we were poor students, they told us that we could pay whatever we had. "I have nothing, so I will pay you nothing." I told him, and he responded with, "You pay me nothing, I will still be your guide. WELCOME TO BOUBON!!" And we were best friends.

The first thing that our guide, Soumaila, showed us was the animal market. Which was lots and lots of animals herded together with lots and lots of people standing around them. Donkeys, cows, goats, and then a little bit way was a group of about six camels hanging out. They were the epitome of chill and all I wanted to do was ride them until I saw their skin that was all raw and exposed from carrying around people like me all day. So I left them alone. I did find out, though, that camels are worth about 500,000 CFAs (about 1100 dollars), but that they don't eat camels because their meat doesn't taste very good. Goats cost about 50,000 CFAs - they're pretty much disposable. In fact --> horror goat story - when we were riding on the bus home we passed this motorcycle that was driving with a goat tied up on the back of it, and I got to watch the goat fly off the back of the motorcycle and land on the road, still all tied up, after the driver went over a little bump. It was disturbing.

So anyway, after we saw the animal market we went to the regular market, where there was lots of fabric and scarves and clothes to buy. I was bartering with a man for some fabric and he was arguing with me that "even a black woman would pay 6,000 CFAs" - but he still gave it to me for 5,000. There were lots of children running around looking for bottles because bottles are like the "it" thing among children. Not everyone spoke French which was nice for us - our guide told us that common languages in Boubon were Hausa and German (through all of our travel in West Africa we were often asked if we spoke German - I don't know if it was because we were white or because we gave off the European vibe, probably a combination of both).

After the market we went down to the riverbank and got in a canoe to cross the river - yes, a canoe. It was made of wood and I got to sit next to our guide who would very nicely scoop out the water that was collecting at the bottom of the canoe and would grab onto me when we were tipping back and forth. It was very fun. Across the river was an old campground where there were all these huts you could sleep in and a pool that had not been used in several years and a restaurant. We were pretty much brought there to spend money, which we did, and to get to know our guide. We started talking to him about if he was married and if he wanted to be married, and he told us about how he was pursuing his psychology degree but was working as a teacher now and hating it. He also said that he wanted to get married but that women required a lot of things, so he needed a steady job first, and that he was also looking for a woman who was educated like he was, not a village woman. He looked like he was in his late twenties, but when we asked him his age he told us he was thirty-five, and we were all shocked and demanded to see his license. He was born in 1968, so he was actually not 35...he was 41.

Once we had gotten to know our guide a little too well we got back on the canoe in search of hippos - by this time the sun was right overhead it was ridiculously hot and all I wanted to do was jump in the mud brown river water but I couldn't because we had read in the guidebook that hippos are incredibly dangerous and love eating people. Fun fact about hippos - according to our guide they're really good-tasting. We had been paddling around for quite a while without anything happening, although we did get to go past lots of people on the shore taking baths in the water. There were two young guys who were the ones bringing us around in the canoe, and they would randomly yell out "HEE-POH HEE-POH!!!" and bang the oars against the boat. Soumaila also got in on the hippo calling - he started yelling out some nonsense song in another language, and when we asked what he was doing, he answered "I'm singing to it,", as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The first time they called out "hee-poh" in a normal voice I expected to see it lurking over to our boat to topple us over and eat us, but we saw the head and the little ears and it seemed to just be hanging out and swimming. After awhile it went back underwater and swam some more, and it was quite a bit of a wait before we saw its head pop up again. After we were able to see it about three times our canoe-ers started asking us, "It is good? It is good?" - they were bored and ready to go back. When we got back to the water we had a photo session with our Soumaila and the canoe boys and then got ready to go - we did end up paying Soumaila even though I had promised him I had nothing, because he did an excellent job and we wanted to contribute to his 'find a wife' fund since he was 41 and getting really old.

We spent the last night in Niamey at the Grand Hotel watching the sunset over the Niger River, which was lovely and a good way to end our time in NIamey, which was my favorite place we went over the whole week. An extra add in about Niger - the people in Niamey were so nice. Everyone was really helpful and always wanted to chat with us and made sure we said "Bonjour" before we asked them a question or started talking to us. Later that night we went to an ATM to get money - all the 24-hour ATMs are guarded by one or two police officers, and in Niamey after saying hello to us they literally stood outside of the door while we got our money and made sure that we had locked the door behind us. Such gentlemen. The next day we were planning on going to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Our time there would be just as dramatic as the first half of the week, with another visit to the hospital and (gasp) a theft!

the day we went back to America...for an hour

Day Four --> The next day after our fantastic Monday of traveling we woke up at the crack of dawn and booked it out of our nasty hotel. We were trying once again to get to Koure to see some giraffes because thus far in the trip all that we had seen was hours and hours of roadside scenery. It was gorgeous, but we needed something more.

We had learned our lesson and decided to take an actual bus going to Niamey that would drop us off in Koure - this bus was exactly like a tro tro in that there were tons of people crammed into it, but the engine actually worked and it was not completely rusted on the inside. It was probably about an hour or so until we reached Koure and got dropped off, and I will say that I am so happy we did not continue to Koure the night before from Dosso, because we would have been worse off here than staying in the town with kidnapping warnings against Americans. Koure consists of a roadside shack and a couple of buildings where the giraffe guides work. That is it. No restaurants, no hotels, nothing. The only reason we knew it was the right place was the sign that advertised 'the last remaining herd of giraffes in West Africa'. Oh yes - we saw them.

We negotiated a price with the guides, which pretty much is like a standoff between the tourists and the locals - we say a reasonable price, they say an outrageous price, we raise our price, and then they stare at us for awhile until we pretend we're walking away and then they agree. This is usually how it works - at the giraffes it was about an hour long process trying to figure out a price with the guides and then with the driver, who was asking us to pay a hundred dollars to drive us the 12 kilometers into the bush to find the giraffes. It was ridiculous, and he wasn't backing down, and for a second it looked like we would be getting back on a tro tro to take us into Niamey, but because we were so desperate to do something other than ride in a car we ended up paying more than we should have. We deserved it after what we had been through.

OH MY GOSH I AM SO GLAD WE DID NOT ATTEMPT TO WALK TO FIND THESE GIRAFFES. We would have walked into the desert in Niger and never been seen again. So we get in the back of the driver's pickup truck and we start driving down these old paths that have been made in the bush. Our guide is in the back of the truck with us holding a stick and without talking he would point the stick in the right direction to show the driver where to go. I have no clue how he knew - I would pretend to be a guide and look for giraffe heads that I assumed he could see but I saw nothing. He also has this amazing balance where he would not fall over or even have to hang on while we are barreling down these dirt paths with so many bumps - I was sitting on top of Maggie's bag and it was like going tubing on the lake. I was getting so much air every time we went over a bump that I was holding onto the sides of the truck and to Maggie and Holley with all my might.

We drove for maybe a half an hour when we found them. The first ones we saw were a grown giraffe and a baby giraffe standing next to each other in front of a tree - it was like a scene out of the Lion King and I was expecting them to bow down to Simba. These animals really are freaks of nature - their spots look painted on, they are incredibly tall but also bony and their necks are leaning forward like they are constantly slouching. But they're beautiful - as you can see, and we were literally fifteen feet from them. After we saw the first two we noticed four or five more standing at another tree or eating a bit further away from a branch. It was an amazing moment being able to watch them so closely without them even acknowledging we were there. As the sign said, this is the last remaining herd of giraffes in West Africa - the number of them left is also rapidly decreasing, I think now there are about fifty, so it's not even certain how long they will be around. AMAZING and so beautiful and ridiculous - I can now say I have stood in the presence of giraffes and I feel a connection to these lanky and awkward creatures.

On the drive back from the bush we passed a HUGE group of obrunis sitting under a tree eating lunch and we flipped out. Obrunis with cars = a possible ride for us, and we were all over it. We waited at the giraffe hut with the other guides until they drove back with their guide, and then we really awkwardly introduced ourselves and relied on being foreign and American to help us out when we asked them if we could sit in the back of their pickup trucks into Niamey. Luckily they were very friendly and super nice Norwegians and Americans with lots of adorable children who are living here for a couple years and doing mission work, and they agreed. Although we got incredibly sunburned on the 45 minute ride in, we also got an amazing view and a drop off right to our hotel in Niamey.

In Niamey we stayed at the Auberge Dragon, which is probably the nicest hotel we stayed in during our entire trip, mostly because of the location. We were right next to a roundabout where the Grand Hotel is, which is right on the river and is where the rich businessmen and super wealthy families all stay. They have a beautiful terrace and pool with an amazing view, and we were able to walk over and hang out there whenever we wanted. Our hotel was also really clean and had a television where we could watch Shakira music videos, so I was a big fan. I was also a big fan of Niamey and Niger in general - it's ridiculously hot there, but it's also beautiful and everyone is so friendly and we had our best days of the trip there.

After we checked into the hotel, it was early afternoon so we went and visited the Grand Mosque - it was absolutely gorgeous and we were able to get a private tour through it. The ceilings and columns were decorated with marble from Morocco and there was so much light in the mosque that every room was bright and beautiful - the tour guide only spoke in French so Maggie was translator once again and she did an excellent job. We were brought into the mens prayer rooms which was not allowed, but the tour guide told us he didn't care so it was fine. We took our shoes off outside but throughout our visit we had to go back outside to get to another part of the mosque, so our guide would yell "HAH HAH HAH" to get us to run because the ground was so hot. It was an exciting visit.

Our day so far had been amazing, so as per the pattern something had to go wrong to balance it out. After the tour we made our first visit to an ATM because we were all running low on cash, and then Holley realized her card was not working and she wasn't able to get any money out. No money in West Africa, a place where putting things on a card is just not possible, is not a good thing. So we went upstairs to talk to important bank people and while we were there Maggie realized that her eye, which had been red for a few days, was getting worse and she needed some medical attention. I thought Maggie's eye problem was because she decided to put her contacts in on the back of the pickup truck going to see the giraffes, but she swears it had been hurting before then. The bank problem was not solved and we had no clue where to find a clinic, so we decided to go to the US Embassy because we are Americans and we were sick of dealing with problems on our own.

We got to the embassy and we all expected to be immediately let in and given soda and candy and put on a couch so we could cry and talk about our problems and they would solve them. That's not really how it was. First of all, it was really awkward when the guard asked what we wanted and our response was, "Well, our friends eye really hurts and our other friend can't get any money out of the ATM so...we came here." We had to wait like ten minutes and then be searched by security and our phones got taken away and when we got walked through there was not even a McDonald's there. Lame. I will say that in the room where we were there were magazines and couches and water and movies sensationalizing America where all these different people are smiling and saying, "I AM America" - all of us got a little teary. I feel bad for the man who had to deal with us - he was very nice and listened to all of our complaints and then told us that he couldn't let Holley use the phone to call her bank and he couldn't let Maggie see the doctor at the embassy, but he did tell us never to go to Dosso again because there are kidnapping threats and that he would register us so that if we did end up in another little town like Dosso someone would notice we were missing. He also gave Maggie the names of some clinics and let us take home Time magazine, so it wasn't a complete waste of a visit, and we got to be on American soil for an hour.

The next stop in this incredibly long day was to the clinic to fix Maggie's eye - there was a coke machine and gossip magazines so I was completely happy and Maggie was able to get medicine for conjunctivitis. This would be the first of two hospital visits during the trip, but I never felt like they were unclean or that I wasn't getting good service - both of the clinics we went to were wonderful and took such good care of us. I mentioned earlier the Grand Hotel - it was beautiful and definitely way otu of our price range, but because we are a bunch of foreign girls we were able to take advantage of their services because eveyrone assumed we were guests there. So while Maggie went with a hotel worker to get her medicine and Holley tried to work out her bank situation I went out on the terrace and watched the sunset over the river. It was beautiful and it was so nice to feel like a normal person again. We had been doing so much hectic traveling that we really needed a break and needed to be able to stay in one place for awhile. After we stopped at the pharmacy we decided to binge on dinner at this diner. It was like being transported back to America and we were able to eat french fries and pizza and watch this adorable little boy who stared at us the entire meal smiling and then hiding. It was lovely. Another fantastic thing about Niamey - they have amazing patisseries which we also took advantage of. It was so nice to be able to eat and go back to the hotel and relax and not worry about waking up at an ungodly hour to find a tro tro - but that absolutely did NOT mean our 'little' challenges were over.

alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Weeks after fall break and I am only on the third day, but these are stories that need to be told.

Monday morning our plan was to get across the border into Niger, travel to Koure to see giraffes, and be in Niamey, the capital of Niger, by the end of the day. None of this happened. But we had the best intentions? I don't know. West African travel is freaking difficult. So we left our hotel and got on motorcycles to cross the border into Niger, and it was probably the most beautiful and also most heartbreaking thing that I have ever seen - still trying to process the news I had gotten the night before made it a very difficult morning for me. We crossed over a river into the country and drove down a road with trees hanging over both sides...it was probably the prettiest sight I have ever seen. This was the last of the green for awhile - as we got further up into Niger it become more and more red and orange aside from the greenery surrounding the river. It was also in Niger that it became SO HOT. Like you cannot breath you are constantly sweating hot. It was at least 100 degrees everyday we were there.

Anyways, we took a motorcycle over the border and into Gaya - traveling on motorcycles is the way to do it. You get a breeze, you get an unblocked view, and you also get to have awkward conversations with your driver who keeps saying, "America is good, oui?" because he does not speak any English and I do not speak any French. We got to Gaya and negotiated a tro tro to get to Koure. We could have taken a bus but...that would have been too easy. So we got on the tro tro and of course it is crowded and hot and we had no food and weren't planning on eating. But this tro tro was different. We got around the corner the first time it stalled, and they turned it off and then back on again and we kept going. And then we got about thirty more feet and it stalled again. And then we made it to the bottom of a hill, but at the first hint of an incline, it stalled again. This happened again, and again, and again - we were moving at the pace of a golf cart with thirty second breaks every minute. At times one of the guys working would jump out and start pushing the car or would look under and bang on things. And then one time, probably after forty minutes of this, the car stalled, stopped, and refused to start again. It was dead. They pushed the tro tro under a tree and then everyone got out to hang out, take naps, and play music, while Holley, Maggie and I stood around staring at each other incredibly confused. We are New Yorkers - if there is a problem we want it solved and solved quickly. The way to solve a broken tro tro is to wait until there is another tro tro that 1) will stop for you and 2) has enough room to let you on. A bunch of cars and tro tros passed that didn't stop, and then some of the super nice buses that we could've taken passed us, and then the first tro tro stopped. And there was a mad rush by all of the men we were traveling with to throw their bags on top and get in the tro tro and drive away, leaving the three little obruni girls and four other men behind. Chivalry is dead.

We went back to the broken down tro tro and ate peanuts and sat around miserably for another hour watching comfortable cars and buses pass us until another tro tro finally stopped for us. Our bags were thrown on top and the old driver and the new driver screamed at each other about price and then we were shoved in the new tro tro and I got to sit in a lovely seat that had no back to it. My stegosaurus spine was so pleased. We start driving in the new tro tro and had gone about an hour and I am listening to my ipod which I am so so so so so so happy I brought because I do not know how I could have gotten through a week of this nonsense without something familiar when there is a BOOM noise and it feels like we have just sped over a speed bump. The tire had blown out. Second broken down tro tro of the day. We all get out of the tro tro and go sit on the street once again. I am not a car expert, but when I see a blown out tire, I think that it is a pretty easy problem to fix. Old tire off, spare tire on, lets continue our journey. That would have happened if the spare tire that the tro tro was carrying around had fit. But it did not, so once again we are lounging on the side of the road. Over the next two or three hours several tro tros passed by, some stopped to laugh or tell us they didn't have anything they could give us, and lots of spacious SUVs taunted us as they drove by . To give you an idea of where we were, it was in the middle of nowhere in Niger. No store stands, no street lights, nothing but a single road. It was at this part of the trip that we also realized our phones would not work - the provider we use, MTN, doesn't exist in Niger! Lovely. The trip to Koure where the giraffes are was supposed to take three hours - we had not even made it to the next town, Dosso, by the time it was about to get dark. We had absolutely no idea where we were, we knew no one, and we had no way to contact anyone who could help us. We were between panic mode and 'I am so tired/hungry/over this day' mode that we did not know what to do with ourselves. Shortly before it got dark we were able to find another tire and we all held each other and cried of happiness. Not really, but I got to climb into my backless seat once again and everyone stared out the window waiting until we got to Dosso.

We had originally wanted to go past Dosso to Koure, but by the time we arrived in Dosso it was dark, we were tired, and we really did not want to stay in a vehicle any longer, so we changed our plans and decided to spend the night in Dosso. First impressions - a quaint little town, very charming. This was destroyed in about five minutes. We went to a hotel and were shown our room - there were two beds, a bathroom, and lots of mosquitos, cockroaches, and other lovely bugs flying around to greet us, as well as dirt covering the walls and floor and mildew, mold, and rust all over the plumbing in the bathroom. The sheets were a white-ish color, which highlighted the bugs crawling over it, and the pillows looked like they had been in use for a few decades. Whatever, we will leave early in the morning, lets go get food. Turns out in Dosso...there is NOTHING left to eat after eight thirty at night, so for dinner we had a lovely plate of plain white rice and bread. Yum. We were finally able to buy cell phone minutes from this incredibly nice man who sat us down and chatted with us, but all I wanted to do was call my mom and try to reach out to someone in the Western world to reassure myself that I was not crazy and that my life at home did still exist and I was not trapped in this alternative Niger world forever . While I was talking to her I had the pleasure of hanging out with a little boy who followed me around showing me his infected stitches in his arm and asking for money. Awesome.

Cherry on top of a fantastic day - the next day when (spoiler) we finally made it into Niamey, we made a little trip to the US Embassy where we were cautioned NOT to go to the east of Niger, especially Dosso, because there were kidnap warnings against Americans there. How did I make it home alive?

XOXO

I have been desperately trying to wrap up this recap of fall break so that I can move on with my life, but right now I am at a standstill in my summary of the trip. Sunday night, after we had escaped the harassment of our driver, eaten our dinner in darkness, and gotten into our mosquito-netted room, I found out that my grandmother had passed away, and I can say without a doubt that it was the hardest night of my life having to process this information while in a hotel in the middle of nowhere in West Africa.

I cannot even describe how important my grandmother was to me and to my family. She was kind, she was smart, she was witty, and she was incredibly sassy - she definitely gave all the women in my family a little (or a lot) of her attitude. She was the perfect grandmother to be at the center of our dysfunctional family. My childhood is chracterized by my 'coffee breaks' with her, where she would pick me up from school and bring me to her house to drink pepsi with a spoon and eat chocolate cake with my hands. My caffeine addiction in addition to my excessive sarcasm can be blamed on my grandmother. She was my nurse when I would hurt myself, my cheerleader when I graduated high school, got into college, and became her 'world traveler', my second mother whenever she felt the need to lecture me on my driving or about being nicer to my sister, and a friend I could go to anytime when I just needed someone to listen. She comforted me more times than I can count with her words, her promises that things would get better, and, of course, with chocolate. When my grandfather died, she wrote to me about my courage and how proud she was of me despite how much I knew she was hurting.

I feel incredibly lucky that I had Holley and Maggie with me on the trip and I'm so grateful that they were there to talk to me, to let me cry, and to read Little Women out loud to me when I was too sick to get out of bed. Just being around them gave me comfort when I was so far from home.

My grandmother always wanted to be known as 'crazy', and she was. She gave us zerbetts and always told us what good doobies we were. She baked angel food cake every Christmas and made us sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. She was fantastic, and no words can describe how much she will be missed and how difficult this loss has been and will be to handle.

Grammie, you told me that after Papa died you still talked to him every morning - that it brought you back to when you were together and when you would laugh and joke, and I've found myself doing the same thing with you. I love you. XOXO

je suis petite femme!

Fall Break, day two

Oh yes, we are only on day two. So far...we had gotten into Cotonou, Benin. The plan for our second day was to travel north up Benin right to the border of Niger and then cross over into Niger the next morning. The trip was only supposed to take twelve hours, and we were planning on taking a bus to get there. As would happen many times during the trip, this did not happen. It did not take twelve hours, and we did not take a bus. I had joked about how I wanted to take a variety of transportation this entire trip...dear goodness I also did not realize how far that would be taken as well. So in Benin, and to a lesser extent in Togo, the ONLY method of transportation is a motorcycle. Or moto-taxi. We realized this the night we arrived in Benin, but we had had Justin who was nice enough to give us a private tro-tro ride to our hotel. The next morning we were not as lucky, and although I was doubtful that Maggie with her enormous camping backpack could get on a motorcycle and not topple over, it looked like we didn't have a choice. So we got on the motorcycles and it was SO MUCH FUN. I have never been on one before and I loved it - it was so comfortable to ride on and so cheap (it's about fifty cents each time you take one) and I felt like I was straight out of The Lizzie McGuire Movie or a Mary-Kate and Ashley film. I really wanted the drivers to go side-by-side so we could coordinate some high-fiving while we drove, but sadly it didn't happen.

I thought they would be driving us to a bus station, but the man at our hotel and the motorcycles apparently decided or told us that there were no buses, but that we could take a car. As in, hire someone to drive us twelve hours up the entire country. It sounds sketchy, but it actually is normal and had a fixed price, so it worked otu well. The first part of the trip was from Cotonou to Parakou, about five hours away and a little less than halfway to where we were trying to get. It cost 12,000 CFAs for the entire trip, and the first car we were in Maggie, Holley and I had the entire backseat to ourselves with a comfy/disusting blanket to rest our heads on and a man and another woman in the front seat. The scenery was so green and so pretty - it was a lovely first half of the day.

And then it ended. When we got to Parakou we dropped off 'mama' as she was referenced, hung out with all of her children and ate icey fan ice that was NOT creamy and not very good, and then we got taken to the car station. We figured we would have to wait to get another passenger for the second half. I just need to stop and say that it was at this point in the trip that the temperatures started getting ridiculously hot. Like, you could not stand in the sun hot because you would melt. And it would only get worse once we got to Niger. Anyway, we were sitting in our comfy and spacious car in Parakou when all of a sudden our drive r tells us to get out because we're switching cars. Our bags got moved into a tiny two door car and there were some complaints that the three of us had to share such a small and cramped backseat, but we said to goodbye to our driver and moved into the new car. We had been sitting there for five minutes trying to get comfortable when our new driver and all his friends come to our window and start speaking in French - "Pusse! Otro passenger" or something like that in French. As in, they wanted to fit ANOTHER person in the back seat. All of us started screaming "NO! NO C"EST POSIBLE" or however you spell that in French, and then they just kept yelling and yelling and we were saying no no no and it became a problem. For about fifteen minutes it was all of us standing outside the car staring at each other, because we insisted that we could not fit another person and they insisted that we had to. Looking back, it probably would've been about five dollars for each of us to pay to take the entire backseat, but it was the principal of the situation.

We finally got back into the car with us three in the backseat and one man in the front seat, driving about one hundred feet before we stopped in frotn of a group of people. First a boy got in the middle front seat, and then the woman came, destined for our part of the car. This was not just any woman - this was a grown woman who had birthed many children. She was not small to say the least. So first they shove her in the back, slamming me against the wall and crushing Holley and Maggie who are in the middle. We now have seven people int eh car. And then they decide to add another man to the front seat, coming up for a grand total of EIGHT people. In a two door car. EIGHT.

It took about two minutes before I realized that I was getting short of breath from being crushed. When i lifted myself up to pivot my body in an attempt to get ome air, our fourth backseat passenger took it upon herself to claim the space as her own with her child bearing hips, meaning that I was out of room. I was literally holding myself up with no space to sit down in. And that's when I started sitting on Maggie's lap. We stayed in that position for the next seven hours of the trip. Me on Maggie's lap, me on Maggie and Holley's lap, me with my feet out the window and lying behind Holley with her leaning forward. It was glorious. Not really...it was absolutely terrible and almost like a mental test to get through so many hours of being uncomfortable, crushed, and slamming my head against the top of the car. By the time we got to Malanville, which we were trying to get to, it had been dark for a couple of hours and all we wanted to do was get to our hotel. Our driver passed our hotel and then offered to drop us off at our hotel afterwards, which we gladly accepted, until we got to the drop off area and he demanded that we pay a thousand CFAs to bring us back. We had passed it earlier, we could've gotten out and walked, but we kept going further from the hotel because he had offered to bring us back. So we were not happy. It was pitch black where we were dropped off, we were surrounded by lots of guys shouting to us in French, and we had just spent seven hours in a two door car with eight people in it.

We decided out of spite to not pay the driver 1000 CFAs and got on some motorcycles to get to our hotel - it turned out to be very nice and after another entire day of eating nothing, going to the bathroom once, and drinking almost no water, they fed us a huge plate of spaghetti and french bread. After jokingly harassing Holley and I about speaking Spanish and Russian and asking me if I was married. The room was not as fantastic as the night before, a trend which would continue for another night in Niger, but the plan was for giraffes the next day and we were ridiculously excited. Even the blackout that happened during dinner for about five minutes could not bring down our spirits - it actually united a wrist slam of our friendship bracelets and a declaration of "UNITY". If only we could have seen what would happen next...

i will need to learn the art of being succinct if i am going to get through the recap of fall break.

Fall Break. I honestly have no words...or I guess that I have too many. I think it is safe to say that in our NYU in Ghana group the three of us had the most ambitious fall break plans to start with - we joked before we left that we'd come stumbling home a week or two later, bruised and limping from some injury, or that we'd get stuck in some prison in Niger and have to be bailed out by NYU. WELL. HOW CLOSE WE CAME. Not really - there was only one incident with the police, but we did make two visits to hospitals and came home with a plethora of bruises. So it begins.

Day One.
So we had planned to leave Thursday afternoon, even though I did not believe this would happen because Holley and Maggie have class on Thursday, but they were all like 'oh yes we are so amped lets start this woohoo'. And then Holley got typhoid and was throwing up and being really grouchy and had to go to the hospital. So our departure was postponed to Saturday and on Friday, Maggie and I got to go hunting around Accra for bus tickets while Holley napped in bed all day. Quite the charmed life she leads. We left early Saturday morning, Holley not feeling so fantastic but poorly attempting to hide it. We were taking a bus from Accra to Aflao, which is where you cross the border between Ghana and Togo. I will say this about fall break - we did spend a majority of it traveling and sitting, but I am so grateful for those hours (and hours...) spent driving because we really got a fantastic idea of how a place LOOKS. The scenery, the colors...it all changed from one country to the next and we were able to see that as we went. The first bus ride was no exception - I have never seen more beautiful beaches than on that bus ride. The coast of Ghana and of Togo looks how a coast should look - the water is bright blue, the sky is slightly lighter, and the sand has a beautiful golden tint to it that you just cannot accurately capture in a picture. We were passes through little towns where people were able to live right on the beach - we saw groups of forty men pulling up the boats from the water, all in a line, and people working and cooking with this gorgeous background behind them.

When we were on the first bus, the man who was handling luggage and the tickets would only speak Ewe (common language in Ghana, and also Benin and Togo), so when he was making announcements to all of the other passengers the three of us were looking at each other hoping it was not vital information we were missing. At the end of his speech he added, for the foreigners in the group - "If you can't understand me, it's because you need to learn Ewe. LEARN THE LANGUAGE!" I didn't realize then how many times we would hear this phrase --> SOMETHING TO NOTE ABOUT OUR FALL BREAK: We traveled to four countries where they only spoke French (although Hausa and German were popular as well - we got asked so many times if we were from Germany or if we spoke German). If they spoke English, people would always say they could speak "small small English", and that was usually all they could say. They were also very French-like in that Holley and I were constantly asked WHY we would go to French-speaking countries if we couldn't speak French. They were not impressed when we offered up our knowledge of Russian and Spanish. So for the week Holley and I were struggling with the language barrier - past "Bonjour" and "Je suis American" I would just smile and laugh and wait for Maggie to translate (she did an excellent job, by the way and we would not have made it through the week without her).

Over the course of break we ended up crossing a border five times, and it was just as confusing the last time as it was the first. I'm used to getting off of a plane and being shuttled by airport workers through customs. This was quite different. Every time we took a bus we would have to get off at passport checkpoints and then at border crossing and literally walk across the border. The first time that we had to do this was in Aflao, crossing into Togo, and we were a little out of our element. And it showed. We got off the bus and literally stood for at least a couple of minutes looking around and trying to see what we should do. This is not an easy task, especially when you have people hounding you to get in their taxi or change your cedis to CFAs (the currency used in all of the countries we visited). After trying to cross into the country and being shushed away by Togolese officials we realized we first had to go to the Ghanaian office, get ourselves stamped out of the country, and then make our way over to the pathway where people were crossing. The officers looked at our passports, asked how Obama was doing (he had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, so pretty good), and then we kept walking until we reached the next officer. I really believe we made a truly easy thing - walking a straight line that just happened to cross two countries - incredibly difficult for ourselves, because whenever we saw a police officer we would get all flustered and not know what to do with ourselves but hold out our passports when really, we probably could've just kept walking. So we ended up talking to a majority of the police officers working the border, including some women who wanted to know how long we were in Ghana, if we could speak Twi, and what we were doing going to Togo. Just chatting it up between Ghana and Togo. So we get to the end of this path and there's a big group of people being stopped by an official. Random people are being pulled through and everyone is pushing and we're just like wahh what do we do and then this drunk old man with bloodshot eye starts grabbing for us to come through - he's standing next to a police officer, I don't think he has any authority whatsoever but he kept motioning and reaching for us trying to pull us through...so we went. And the policeman ignored us and the drunk old man brought us into Togo. It was lovely.

We had read that when we got into Lome, the capital of Togo, we would immediately be bombarded with cab drivers wanting to drive us anywhere at a really exaggerated price, and that is exactly what we found when we got there. Although the books said that it was better to just walk a ways past the cabs and find one further away from the border area, we ignored this advice when a really attractive driver started talking to us. We were trying to get to the bus station, so we negotiated a price and got in his car. First clue that this was a bad idea - I sat in the drivers seat, and when the driver got in he got out the wires that he rubbed together to jump start the car, and then gave me a very heavy look with a extra wink thrown in. Charming. He also was in love with Maggie and kept telling me that he was going to marry my sister. Once again, Maggie gets all the boys.

As soon as we started driving he was asking us where we were going and offering us other ways to get there - 'friends' of his who would drive us there in their car for a ridiculously expensive price. We continued telling him we wanted to go to the bus station, but if we learned anything about this man it was that listening was not his strong suit. We had been driving maybe a mile or two before he pulled over the car for the first time, getting out of the car to negotiate a price for us because he thought it was a much better idea to charter a private car into Benin than take a bus like we wanted. Every time he got out we told him not to, that we were taking a bus, that it didn't matter how much it cost, we weren't going to take a car, and every time he ignored us. He kept stopping again and again despite all of us asking him to stop and threatening to get out - he though it was hilarious, and at one point he actually play-punched my shoulder and laughed like the two of us were best friends who just couldn't get over the crazy white girls in the back seat. When the moped gang of his friends showed up and surrounded our car, opening the truck and taking out Maggie's bag to move into another friend's car, we realized that it was time to leave - after repeating to him that if he did not go right now to the bus station we would leave without paying him, we just got out and walked away. This is when the joking stopped and cutie driver turned scary driver - he and his friends started following us on foot yelling at us to pay him the money he owed us, and after arguing for a few minutes with him that he didn't take us anywhere and we weren't paying we crossed the street. And then they followed us - the driver and one of his friends got in his car, pulled across the street and tried once again to get us to pay him, but we continued walking away from him. We thought that he had left when.......he showed up AGAIN, this time with a cop in the passenger seat! Amazing. It took us fifteen minutes in the country of Togo before we had our first encounter with the police.

The policeman got out and started speaking French to us, and when Maggie asked if he could speak English he yelled (I may have a limited understanding of French but it was pretty easy to figure out what he was saying) that he was in Togo and he speaks French so NO he was not speaking English. Already we were at a disadvantage in the he said/she said battle with our driver. We ended up having to pay him because apparently he had already taken us past the station without pointing it out or stopping the car, so obviously we were at fault. After we paid him the driver tried to take our bags and get us in the car again to take us to the station but we declined - once you call the police on me we are no longer friends or business acquaintances. And you will not be marrying my sister!

So it was midday in Togo, we had crossed the border and already had our first run-in with the cops, and we still had another country to get into. We had to keep it moving. The plan for the day was to get to Cotonou, Benin, to stay the night. But once in Lome, we had no clue how to go about getting a bus into the city. All we knew was that we wanted to get far far away from this cab driver and his plethora of intimidating friends. So we wandered until we found a bus sitting on the side of the road - we had no clue where it was going, but it was a vehicle. I had no clue where they were going - they were speaking French, so I wandered around looking for a bathroom and ending up meeting two Ghanaian men who told me that we needed to be careful because some people are good, but some are bad, and we needed to watch out for them. Hmm. The guys from the bus ended up being incredibly nice and walked us to the market where we could get a tro-tro to Cotonou. We ended up having to wait for at least an hour before the tro-tro left, and during that hour we met the man that we call Fred. Fred is a Nigerian who popped up outside our window and started talking to us. He made an impression, to stay the least. Holley gave us all Russian names to have, and then Fred and I fell in love. He started referring to me as his wife, even though I tolldddd him I have a husband, and then quickly made a bad impression on Maggie, ruining him forever. Holley he decided was snobby, Maggie was childish, but I was smiley. You can see Maggie's blog for explanation on that, but for the hour or so we were waiting Fred kept me company and kept referencing 'my eyes, oh those eyes' and talking about how I was 'thin like spaghetti'. All he wanted was an e-mail address or something to remember me by, but I believe in playing hard to get so I didn't give him anything.

The tro-tro we were on was completely full - Holley, Maggie, and I were in the back row, and once again, being tall comes SO in handy. The rows were so close together that I was not even able to face forward, meaning that we had to buy an extra seat so that the three of us could have our own row without having to squeeze another person in. There were also some voodoo women in front of me who really enjoyed turning around and screaming out the back window, a few inches from my face. The three hour ride ended up being about six hours which I spent turned sideways, which I'm sure Holley loved. We didn't have a Benin visa, so we had to hold up everyone while we got that taken care of - getting visas at the border actually turned out to be really easy and cost only about twenty dollars, and at times it was cheaper to get the visa at the border rather than at their embassies before hand. The tro-tro also kept stopping to buy food, or to go through police checkpoints, so ended up waiting around for a long time on the side of the road while people held plates of fish up to our window. I do need to add about the first couple days of the trip, when we were doing our most intense traveling - the first three days of the trip, none of us ate or went to the bathroom for at least twelve hours. We would go all day, from early in the morning until eight or nine at night, in the car or on the tro tro without eating, without going to the bathroom, and while drinking little to no water. I have no clue how we did it or how we did not pass out, but for the first three days we were only eating one meal a day. I never want to be called a spoiled American again. So we ended up getting into Cotonou around nine at night, when we had planned on arriving early afternoon. Te first of many times that our travel estimations would prove to be way, way off. We did get to see a beautiful sunset and absolutely gorgeous beaches, and given that it was the first day and that we had just traveled through three countries, we were all feeling pretty positive and impressed with what we had done.

It was quite dark by the time we got in, and we had no clue where we were and ntohign but an address for our hotel, so when we finally got off the tro-tro, the confused looks that we patented that week came back. Our driver, Justin, took pity on us and brought our guide book around to cab drivers, who jumped all over it and started screaming to each other "CONCORDE CONCORDE" (which was the name of our hotel). Quite an amusing sight to see twenty grown men huddled around a West African guide book. Justin ended up bringing us to the hotel in the empty tro-tro, which was pretty amazing. He gave us his number and told us to call him at any moment - he actually turned out to be super nice and helped us out a lot. Throughout the week it was amazing to see how nice people can be - we wouldn't have been able to get through itif it hadn't been for people offering to help us or bring us places or just talk to us and reassure us that we were doing the right thing attempting to see so much in so little time.

Looking over this....I cannot believe that this was day one. And that we endured seven more days that were just as, if not more, insane than this one was. There are pictures that you can find HERE, although they are from the entire fall break and it will ruin the surprise of what happened --> SPOILER: We saw giraffes.

this is a strong man. does he scare you?

This past weekend was our program's trip to Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana. It's about five hours away, so this glorious adventure was to start with a 5 am departure time on Saturday. Being the smart people that we are, Maggie and I decided that the best plan was to stay up all night. So while many NYU in Ghana people got a good night's sleep, our night consisted of a trip to Lizzy's (a nearby bar/block party), veggie burgers and pizza at three in the morning, and a very incoherent pair of girls on the bus two hours later. Good life decisions.

When we entered into the city after a few hours of sleep I got why they would want us to see other cities in Ghana - Kumasi is completely different than Accra in the way it looks and the way it's set up. There are lots of rolling hills in Kumasi and the buildings are a lot more European-like, meaning that aesthetics wise it is a lot nicer to look at than Accra - there were some churches and buildings that looked like they were taken out of Italy. There are a lot more paved roads as well and actual street signs - it was quite strange after being used to lots of dirt roads and nonexistent street markers.

After we checked into our hotel we went to the Ghana National Cultural Center, which was almost like a residential neighborhood. There were lots of roads and paths to walk on and the groups of shops were very spread out. In each of the shops would be different paintings or instruments or crafts - it was much more relaxing than the hounding that we get when we go shopping in Accra. After we ate lunch we moved on to the SOMETHING palace, which was the residence of the king...until he moved next door into another palace. The house was heavily decorated in the 70's style...although we were told that the refrigerator in the dining room was from the 50s and still working - as demonstrated by the presence of Voltic water bottles and lunch bags inside of it. We were led around on a tour by this hilarious guide who after every speech would say, "If you have any questions, you have everrrry right to ask them." There were also all these wax figures of old kings and their queen mothers, and he would point to one of us and ask, "You! Are you afraid of this man?" It was a ball, but it was also blazing hot in there and I was ready to go home and sleep. Until I was told that we were going to a stool village.

So the Asante people have a huge presence in Ghana and these stools have a ton of symbolic meaning - they're like a traditional representation of the chief's leadership and are supposed to be the 'seat' of the owner's soul. So when I heard 'stool village' I thought it would actually be a village. It was not. It was a street lined with craft shops that included stools and jewelry and bags and masks and fertility dolls. There actually was an area where a group of about thirty guys were sitting carving the stools that was really interesting to watch, and Holley ended up getting a GINORMOUS stool that I have no clue how she will take home but I'm sure it will look mighty fine in our apartment. But remember the calm and relaxing atmosphere of the Cultural Center? Not so in the stool village - it was like being back in Accra with every guy trying to get you in his shop to look at things. I've never heard the phrase "There's no charge to look!!" as much as I have here. I was able to buy somethings but the amount that we have to barter is just ridiculous - people were getting necklaces for three cedis when the original price was eighteen. I don't really blame them though - if I saw a tour bus full of young white people I would try to get as much money as possible out of them too. Even when we had gotten back on the bus and were waiting the men selling necklaces were coming into the bus to show things off and ask what we wanted. It was madness.

After the stool market and some relaxing a big group of us went for dinner at Vic Babboo's, a restaurant with a nearly twenty page menu that serves Indian, Italian, Chinese, Vegetarian, and burgers (not to mention a very, very strong margarita). Another difference between Kumasi and Accra - the streets of Kumasi are pretty much deserted at night, in a creepy way. In Accra you know that there's going to be three of four people to bother you where ever you go, but when we walked out of dinner it was like a ghost town. Spookyyy. Two of our CRAs had gone to Kumasi for school and one of them lived in Kumasi before he came to Accra so he had given us some ideas of where we could go out after dinner - he had told us about this big live music thing that was supposed to be great. We should've known it was going to be awful when we heard the name - Light FM. Turns out 'light' music is the same in Ghana as it is in America. Bad. It was like a family barbecue. So the nightlife in experience in Kumasi was not so fantastic but I'm going to stay on the positive side and say that we just had a bad suggestion (GEEZ DOUGLAS!)

So after ANOTHER wild night we had a relaxed Sunday - we went and toured KNUST, or Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, where our CRAs went to school. It was really pretty even though the dorms are like these super tall and narrow buildings that are crazy but it was like a more spread out version of University of Ghana. After the tour we went to this shoemaker to see how shoes are made - they use a plaster model for each size and made a shoe in front of us, one of those gross man leather shoes that have pointy toes that I do not prefer but the process was pretty interesting. All of their shoes say "Made in Italy" or "Made in China" because they told us that if they say "Made in Ghana" no one will buy it - except for the tourist obrunis who want to show off their Ghana souvenirs!

After the shoe village we went to the Kejetia market - it's the second largest market in Africa and it was like twenty times bigger than Makola and I was positive we were going to get lost. Our CRA told us that we were supposed to leave the market at 12:30 but they've never left on time because someone always gets lost and they have to go try and find them. So with that in mind we set out to find kente cloth, which is a fabric that is made on a loom and is native to Ghana, and more fabric in general because we have been to Makola market so many times that we can recognize the patterns. After navigating through a very large and grabby crowd we moved into the more narrow paths and were able to find some very beautiful kente cloth. Alex had found regular fabric so we asked her to bring us there, and to get there we had to cross through the largest fish market I have ever seen in my entire life. Buckets and floors just of fried blackened fish. It was disgusting. There'd be spurts of other foods, like peppers or peanut butter, but then there'd always be the fish. And the paths were so small you would get run over and I was holding on for dear life to Alex to not get pushed back on top of all of this fish. MEH so gross. So we found fabric, which was also surrounded by fish, and it was all well and good and we were on time and then we had to figure out how to get back. Which turned out to be really easy, except the way people showed us involved walking through another meat market. Raw meat on platters and entire animals getting ready to be cut. It was awful. And disgusting. And just awful. I thought I was going to be sick. Not a great end to the market, but I still have lots of love for Kejetia Market.

After our fun day spending money it was finally time to go home, and the five hours actually turned out to be like seven, but the rides back was almost as good as the entire weekend. It was such a pretty ride and a great chance to see the countryside of Ghana. We were driving along dirt roads and then through cleared areas that were going to be made into roads and we would drive right through the middle of these villages. It even rained for a bit so we got to see a rainbow...so precious. When it became dark there was a huge orange moon leading us home and we would pass through these little towns were people were sitting outside talking, and even though I had a nine am midterm the next day, I was so relaxed and happy by the time we got home. Photos here. Lovely lovely lovely time. Other than that it's now midterms.

you guys, please stop watching the west wing.

So this week has been really boring - I guess that we're getting into our routine and actually getting COMFORTABLE? In Africa?! The only thing that spices up my days are the continually awkward experiences that I have because even though we have been here six weeks we still continue to stick out.

I was walking home from school this other way that one of the CRAs showed me and you have to walk down this little dirt path and lizards that are like five different colors run out in front of you so I always feel really legit and then this woman and a man were walking the other way towards me so they stepped aside to let me pass. I said hello and then the woman decides to quiz me and went "Ete sen? Ete sen?" (How are you?) And so I responded "Eye" (fine) and she literally APPLAUDED me. She started clapping and shrieked and went "Oh yes, show that you are in Accra!" And I was like, oh yes, I have so much Ghanaian pride. The random comments that I get from peeople make my day because they always make me laugh - even if it is a group of guys calling out "HEY TALL WHITE LADY!!!" or children calling out "Obruni!" and then running up to high five us or teenage schoolboys calling me "Madame" and then waving and blushing. Oooh la la.

So this week I rode in a tro tro for the first time - tro tros are like these big, old, rusty, emptied-of-any-inside vans that they cram sixteen seats into and for around 30 pesewas (like 20 cents) you can get around the city. For those family members reading, tro tros are exactly like Uncle Frank's big white van that everyone uses on the island, but with four rows of seating in it. NYU's policy is that they 'don't recommend students using them' probably because all of these vans look like they are about to break down at any second and they don't want to be liable. So when you go to a tro-tro station there's one guy sitting in the back of each of these vans who is leaning out and screaming out where the tro tro is going and it literally sounds like this: "Aguabahbahauga CIRC CIRC CIRC". And that means they're going to Circle. It is confusing and the men working on the street with the tro tros will grab you and try to get you away from other tro tros going to the same place but once you get on, it's not really that bad and it is so ridiculously cheap that it makes more sense to take them. The only negative experience I have had with tro tros in my three instances of taking them is that I am almost six feet tall, and some of these vans can be on the small side, and it can lead to feeling like I am in a clown car. It is not fun.

I have had an issue this semester, or I guess my entire life, of breaking things and or hurting myself through stupid ways - such as slicing my thumb open while defrosting a yogurt - and my clumsy ways have not gone unnoticed here. This semester the trend has been kitchen related accidents - we use a gas stove and have no potholders, only towels, so I've lit the towels on fire probably about ten times since I've been here, and when I say on fire, I mean that there are about five good sizes holes in each of the two towels in our house. My roommates really appreciate it. The other day I was making popcorn on the stove because it is the only thing I really know how to make, and I was so proud because I had gotten through cooking it without lighting myself or anything on fire. So I took the pot off the stove and put it on the table. The glass table in the living room. Then I heard a crack. And I picked up the pot and saw that the pot had made a huge crack in the table - not because it was heavy, as I originally thought, but because I had just put a gas heated metal pot on glass. So I pressed on the glass and, quite surprisingly, it fell through and crashed to the ground! So now our table has a big whole in it that some people think looks like North America. I thought the story was quite amusing, but the person who cleans our house, Emmanuel, did not. Now, Emmanuel loves Maggie to no end, but he knows that I am the one who lights things on fire so I think that he already has a chip on his shoulder towards me. Awkward confrontation as I'm walkign out of the house and Emmanuel has discovered the hole that I tried to hide under a book cover:

E: WHITNEY! What happened here!?!
W: Oh...it broke.
E: HOW?! WHO DID THIS?!
W: Oh...I had an accident.
E: YOU DID THIS?! HOW!?
W: Hmm..I put something on the table.
E: YOU PUT SOMETHING ON THE TABLE? WHAT?!
W: Oh...a pot.
E: A POT?! WHICH POT!?

And so it continued until Emmanuel got a vague idea of what had happened...that something had made the glass break arounnnnnd the time I put something on it.

Yesterday Brenda and I spent an hour and a half navigating tro tros to get to Beacon House, and I will once again reiterate that academics should really be the third priority behind 1) playing with children, and 2) getting tan. The latter of which I am slowly working towards as I've discovered the secret - don't use sunscreen and go lay outside for twenty minutes. Your skin will be flaming red and you'll be sweating to death when you come back in, but eventually, with time and hope, your skin will acquire a little tinge of brown. Anyways, we got to Beacon House and the kids were all like AH OBRUNI PICK ME UP. Most of them didn't remember my name which I expected but they did remember my name bracelet and then they were asking me where my sister was (Maggie - lots of people slash children think that we are sisters but Maggie has been sick ALL week and is being super boring so she didn't come to Beacon House with me yesterday). The girl who got angry with me last week was like "YOU SAID we were going to make bracelets!" And I was like, "Oh, we will, but Maggie isn't here so we can't!". And luckily she didn't cry today so I didn't feel like a terrible person again. Phew. Onto other children. There is this little girl Gifty who is always the first one to run up to people and ask to be picked up and she will never leave you alone and never want to walk again unless you make her. She's adorable in the "I really need someone to clean my nose" kind of way and is so outgoing and sassy. Yesterday I spent a lot of time with Gifty and then I decided to go in baby mode and cuddled with two of the babies for awhile - one of the babies, Veronica, is a year old and has been at Beacon House for almost all of her life but when she came was so undernourished and small that if I hadn't known, I would've guessed that she was maybe six months old. She's this tiny little thing who is always frowning and has an old man face but on the rare occasions that she smiles, she is absolutely adorable.

When I get sick of being peed on and thrown up on I really like talking to the older girls at Beacon House - there's a group of girls who are around 10-12 and they are so funny and love to talk about their lives. One of the girls told me about how she is from Liberia and how she wants to be a doctor so her mom told her that she has to keep going to school and doing well. And she told me all her grades (which are like all A's) and her best subject (math) and then asked what my best subject was and I was like...uh....and then she was asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I was like...uh..little girl do not compete with me just because you have your life figured out. But then I asked her what she suggested that I be and she said a lawyer so I'm considering it. I am still running into the same problem of people not being able to pronounce my name - one of the girls told me that she can remember any name, but not mine because mine is "really weird". So they were reading it off my name bracelet which has an "x" instead of a "t" because we were out of t's at the daycare so they were like "WHIXNEY WHIXNEY!" because apparently that is easier to say. tried I told them that they could call me Whit but then they started saying it like, "WHITE! WHITE" and I was like, ho ho ho, clever, but no. And then it got REALLY interesting when they started saying it as "Whi...whi...witch! WITCH?!" Dear god no. White is fine. One of the other girls also asked me if I was black or brown or white so I'm thinking that MAYBE my tanning strategy is paying off? Maybe?

Also, I used to be able to post pictures on my blogs but now I cannot for some reason that I cannot figure out so I've created a flickr account so you can see more pictures because I know that is more stimulating than my words - you can find it here and I'll try to update it as much as our super slow internet allows.

pretty much...you just need to give them lots of hugs

At the beginning of the semester I was enrolled in Twi, which is one of the languages spoken here. I think I went to three classes and then realized that I knew how to say about three words and that I was mispronouncing all of them, so I dropped that class and decided to spend my Wednesdays at Beacon House, which is an orphanage in Accra. Can I also just add that three words is pretty much all you need because as soon as people hear you attempting to speak Twi they will 1. laugh 2. laugh some more 3. get really excited and ten correct you and then ask you five thousand more questions that we will never know the answer to because you have no idea what they are saying. Anyways. This week was the first time that Maggie and I went and I seriously wish that we could just spend the semester interning and doing volunteer work because classes just do not compare.

So Beacon House is, literally, a big house where about 30 kids from the age of 3 months to 14 years are living. All of the kids are special needs in that they've been abused in some way - not all are orphans as some have been abandoned or taken from their families for different reasons. We heard some pretty awful stories of what these kids have gone through and Beacon House really is doing an amazing thing and saving these kids lives. They told us that in the northern part of Ghana a lot of families accuse their children of being witches if they do anything that seems out of the ordinary, like being able to stack your fingers one on top of the other (which I used to do all the time!). So to save these children they have to be taken out of their homes and usually out of the area they are living so they are not still near their families, which is why a lot of children are sent south to Accra. The first hope is to eventually reunite the children with their families, but if that isn't possible (which it usually isn't) the next step is to try and place the child with a Ghanaian family. The problem with that is that in Ghana the concept of adoption is relatively new and most Ghanaian families will not adopt HIV positive children, so those Ghanaian families who do adopt usually move to another city so that they can present their adopted child as their biological child. The next step is finding an international family to adopt the children. There are also five or six HIV positive children but the people at Beacon House wanted to make it clear that they aren't treated differently and that you can only tell their status when the children leave three times a day to take their anti-retro viral drugs. The kids have house mothers and aunties that take care of them but because there are so many of them the kids are really in need of someone who can give them personal attention. Pretty much, they just want to be hugged and cuddled with for a couple hours and when we met the kids that became quite obvious.

As soon as we walked outside and were introduced a few of the braver kids ran up to us and grabbed our legs or our hands and within a minute they were asking to be picked up and were giving us hugs. And that is how we spent three hours - we read books and talked to the kids but for the most part they just wanted to sit on our laps and be carried around. As soon as you put one kid down there was another reaching up for you and of course you cannot say no because the kids are the most adorable children I've ever seen. They each have their own personality - some are shy and quiet while others are in your face screaming and laughing. When I was reading to one of the little girls she was sitting on my lap but after a while she just curled up into a ball on my legs while she listened to the book - mehhh my heart was melting. The kids could not get enough of me and Maggie's hair and while Maggie had some older children working on braids for her, I had a three year old who decided a knot would look oh so special - it was incredibly painful. They also were all over the sunburn on my back which still kills from Monday's Kwame Nkrumah centenary and it delighted them to poke my skin and see the change from white back to red. More obruni provided entertainment.

Awkward moments - the kids were all over the jewelry I was wearing. The crappy, made of yarn and embroidery floss bracelets I wear, my cheap earrings, and the one ring that I have on all the time. All of them wanted me to give them a bracelet or take off my earrings and give it to them - my first reaction was "No, I can't, they're mine!" but Maggie steered me in a better direction by pointing out that the kids were wearing earrings too and did they want to give me theirs? No, they did not. The psychology major is so much better at articulating herself than I am. The bracelet that really got to them was the one with the plastic beads that spells out my name - one girl got so upset that I wouldn't give it to her she started crying and then tried to hit me (don't worry, I was able to deflect it). When we promised her that one day we would make bracelets with her and she could have her own she just said that she didn't believe we would come back and that we'd never do it...I really just wanted to take off my bracelet and give it to her but I don't think Maggie would have approved of that.

Every time we would stand up the kids would ask if we were leaving and if we were going home, so when we finally were going home their next question was when we were coming back. "Tomorrow? Are you coming back tomorrow?" SEE why must I go to school?! Let me go to Beacon House everyday. When we were saying goodbye one girl walked up to me and asked me if I could bring her a picture of her family when I came back...and I did not even know how to respond. I just gave her a hug which is pretty much all I can do. Happier note to end the blog - all the kids were all smiles and hugs and waves and wouldn't stop calling out goodbye until we had literally walked out the door. So in my three hours at Beacon House, I got thrown up on by a baby, my hair pulled, my sunburn poked, and it was amazing. I can't wait to go back.