"i like the way you train"

Good morning! Mom, you would be proud to know that I sort of went to church today. In Ghana they find it perfectly acceptable to project church on a loud speaker for anyone within a two-mile radius to hear. Needless to say, 6:30am came pretty quickly when about 4 different churches started their masses. 

Anyways, we arrived at the ProWorld bunk house on Friday evening after a public transportation adventure. From Asikuma we have to take a 45 minute taxi ride to the tro-tro station. Although tro-tros are “buses” I just need to express that they’re equivalent to our work vans in the U.S (the type electricians or plumbers use that are sometimes referred to as kidnapper vans). So just picture four American girls (in scrubs) squished in a small van with more Ghanaians than seatbelts and all our stuff for the weekend. The tro-tro ride was about an hour and a half since we stop whenever anyone needs to get out and pick up random people on the side of the road. Once we got to Cape Coast we had to take another taxi from town to the bunkhouse. What’s crazy is that the 3 hour journey only cost us 6 GHC which is $3…. something that would never happen in the U.S.

Saturday was our impact project day, which is a morning of hands on volunteering. ProWorld has decided to build a hospital in a remote village about an hour away from their offices. The hospital will have many different departments such as a children’s ward, female ward, male ward, maternity and out-patient care. Placing such a large hospital in a village like this will not only help build it up but will also provide many people from surrounding areas a new job opportunity. Since the construction is literally just starting we spent all morning moving and molding cement bricks. I also got some lawn-mowing experience the Ghanaian way….. using a machete. After a couple hours and some battle wounds, we heading back to cape coast, but not without some excitement. About a half hour into our ride we completely blew a tire and were stuck on the side of the road in the rain while the men tried to fix it.

Skyler, Christina, Ashley and I spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and walking around town where we were mistaken for athletes multiple times. I’m sure it was the sweat, dirt, and sneakers that made them all confused since we were approached and told, “I like the way you train” by a few different people. Today we’ll be hanging around the ProWorld house catching up on some work before heading back to Asikuma for the work week. This week I start in the emergency room so I’m sure I’ll have plenty of interesting stories to share about that.

Just incase you were wondering, we had our first “going out” experience to a Ghanaian bar on Friday night. Except their “bars” are gas stations with party tents and tables set up. It’s quite interesting to see. Taxi drivers also find it perfectly acceptable to pull over on the side of the road and have lunch while they leave you in the car (and no, they don’t get any for you). And in this culture they hiss at each other to get one another’s attention. So before learning about this cultural detail I honestly thought there were just a lot of people with Tourette’s syndrome who walked around hissing all the time…embarrassing.