Our Ghanaian lives thus far (the short version)

Howdy Y'all! or eti sen! (as they say here)

We are now entering week two of our Ghanaian odessey and all is well. Our lives have been a bit hectic and scattered since we arrived, traveling all over the country in melting hot, super crowded epic journeys. We are currently starting our official two and a half months of training in a small town a few hours north of Accra (the capitol). We will be moving in with a family for the duration of the training tomorrow. Let the cultural assimilation begin.

Here is a quick recap of our situation thus far: We spent our first couple of nights in a university outside of the capitol. We were greeted by many freindly Ghanaians, current peace corps volunteers, lizards, a giant ball of fire in the sky that reduced us to sweaty zombies the first few days. We have spent a lot of time just hanging out and getting to know our fellow pcore volunteers, getting to know how things work out here, and getting to know a bit of the language. On the thrid day they sent us into Accra to fend for ourselves and figure out the transport, bartering, money, etc. The first part of this journey we spent lost and confused, as one would expect, but the Ghanaian came to our rescue several times and walked us to places we work looking. The people our super friendly here and have gone out of their way to help us on many occasions. Later we went to a party at the ambassador's mansion. We got a brief tast of the good life, hor d'oerves, wine, live music, dancing, smoozing with the Ghanaian elite. The next day we set off on what is called our vision quest where we spent five days visiting a current volunteer. It was a days journey over rough rode in a truck stuffed full of people. The travel in this country is punishing, but you appreciate getting to your destination all the more. The village we stayed in was fairly remote, tucked away in the bush, surrounded by mountains bordering Togo. We stayed with a man who was working in health water sanitation (the sector the I will be working in). He was fully integrated into his community. He spoke the languae very well and knew most everyone in the village. We spent our time greeting his friends in the village, checking out projects he was working on, attending community event, church. A couple highlights: greeting the town cheif. The ritual required us to bring him a bottle of the local palm liquor and join him in a drink. Kirsten pet a red coloubus monkey (someones pet monkey), the singing and drumming at church, walking through a local co co (chocolate) farm, which was more like fairly dense jungle with giant butressed trees and tropical plants with co co trees and banana trees scattered amongst them. Over comming our first bouts of sickness, eating fu fu (the local dish that is eaten for mots meals, which is yam that is pounded into a pasty dough ball served with soup. We are definetly living yam country. The farmers are yam farmers. They grow yams almost exclusively. They eat yams in a rainbow of varieties and depend on the yam for their livelyhoods. Yams Yams Yams Yams.......... We hope to grow to love the yam. So far the fu fu has been a bit hard to get used to, but the fried yam is delicious. Kirsten and I actually broke down and ate chicken for the first time in six years a couple days ago. The Yam, rice, plantain diet we were on could only take us so far before we collapsed form lack of protein. We are taking it slow with the meat, but are actually enjoying the taste again.

We are learning learning learning everyday. The cultural differences are many and we are working hard to not offend. In a few minutes we will go back to our twi lessons (a widely spoken ghanaian language). Unfortunatley there are over a hundred other ghanian languages, and we may have to learn another one soon.

My time is about to end so I must sign off now. Kirsten and I are thinking about all y'all alot and we send our love. We will update the blog when we can, which is unkown at this point.

until then.....