hello friends! I’m writing to you
today while sitting on a pillow because my butt bones are nice and bruised from
traveling yesterday. The roads here in Ghana are more potholes than road, which
made 10 hours in the back of a mini-bus quite the painful experience. However,
the ride and pain were completely worth what we saw. We travelled to a remote
village called Nzulezo. Nzulezo is also called the “village on stilts” and is
located in the middle of Lake Tadane in the Western Region of Ghana. In order
to get to the village we had to take an hour canoe ride through rain forests and
canals where we saw some of the prettiest scenery yet.
Upon
arriving at the village we were in awe with what we actually saw and learned.
The village is home to 450 people and has been around for 600 years now.
They’ve only had a school for the children the past couple years and have
absolutely no health services for the people. Most women give birth to 8-10
children who lay around and sleep on the dock-type streets all day. The village
has a bunch of farmers who travel by boat to another area on the lake where
they grow their crops and try to sell them to generate money. The people live
off of each other and make occasional trips to the main land when necessary.
The
pictures don’t even do it justice but it’s amazing to see how people can live
so happily with minimum resources. It’s a scary thought that most of these
people think this is the only way to live since they haven’t been taught
otherwise.
After the
village we all went to a small restaurant that’s actually owned by a couple
from Spain who moved out in the middle of nowhere to relax and retire. I’m not
sure I would have chosen that area to retire but hey, to each his own.
I guess
I’ll work backwards now and return to Thursday evening when we returned to Cape
Coast and had the best meal of our lives…. PIZZA. After our Global Citizens
Initiative class they treated us to the most amazing pizza we’ve ever eaten
(not really, it just seemed like it). Friday we spent the day in town where we
ate at a vegetarian restaurant and then sat at a picnic table on the beach for
a little bit. Weekends are something we’ve come to LOVE since they’re a
complete change from our long workdays and small town shops in Asikuma.
An update
on the health of the group; Skyler (my roommate) now has malaria but already
got the medication and is improving each day. The hospital even let us go in the
lab and help test her blood which was pretty awesome. I think I’m going to spend
a couple days in the lab just to see how they do all the different tests and
run the samples. Ashley woke up with a fever this morning but we’re hoping it
doesn’t turn into anything worse. We’ve had 3 people from the overall group (not
Asikuma) get typhoid fever but it’s very easy to control here and they all got
better within a couple days, so don’t worry!
Tomorrow
starts my second week in the ER/out patient department so hopefully I’ll have
more interesting cases to share! Talk to you soon!
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