Went to Kokrobite
beach last Saturday, which is about an hour or so drive from Accra. It was a
really last minute decision to go. I heard about everyone's plans the night
before and was considering going, and then in the morning decided not to
because I woke up too late. But then as I was heading out to go find something
to do by myself around the city, I ran into my friend outside of ISH just as he
was getting in his car to go meet everyone there. So I ran and got my stuff and
went with him. The beach was beautiful, and it was just perfect weather that
day. Later at night, we listened to a live reggae band (even got on stage at
one point) and had drinks and chatted and walked on the beach a bit. It was
wonderful because it was cool and breezy at night and there were so many more
stars out than there are when you get closer to Accra. It doesn't sound like a
very eventful day, and I know my descriptions of things are lacking in detail,
but I think it was probably the best day I've had since I've been here. I was
just in the best mood all day. I'm not really much of a writer so it's hard for
me to put it into words. I just really
love the coastal areas further away from the city, like Kokrobite and the area
around Cape Coast. It just has a much different feel than Accra does, in that
it's much more laid back and relaxed, the people seem more chill, and the
scenery is beautiful. I love it so much. Not that there's anything wrong with
Accra, but it is nice to get away from the busier feel of the city every now
and then.
On an unrelated
topic, I started working at West African AIDS Foundation on Thursday, and I
loved it. I'm so excited about this, because it's exactly what I wanted to do.
We went to a primary school in Haatso to give them a presentation on HIV/AIDS.
I mostly observed, but it was still really interesting. I was blown away by how
much the kids knew already about not only HIV, but sex ed in general. They were
all around 9-14 years old, but they all just knew so much. Much more than I
think they teach at the same level in American schools. (I was pretty shocked
by some of their questions, but I won't get into that. It's funny that
something that came out of a 9 year old's mouth is too inappropriate for my
blog, but that's the truth.) I was surprised to see how non-taboo that subject
is here. Which I think is actually a good thing because then it's easier to get
people to talk about stuff like HIV when it's much more of a problem here than
in the states.
I used to think that
sex was really taboo here, because they told us in orientation that public
displays of affection and stuff like that are pretty taboo, but I've slowly
come to learn that sex is actually talked about quite a bit. Even just the
other day, we had a guest speaker in my development studies class who was
talking about population growth and family planning, and he ended up giving way
too much personal details about his own sex life and use of different types of
birth control. It was super unnecessary to share, in my opinion, but whatever.
There's only 13 of us in that class, all from my program, and this speaker
asked the only guy in our class if the pull-out method works for him. I
couldn't believe he thought that was appropriate to ask someone. That aside, it
was pretty hilarious.
That's another
thing. I feel like there's some discrepancies between sex education in the US
and sex ed here. Because we had a professor of population studies recommending
the pull-out method to us as a form of birth control that is considered
legitimate in Ghana, whereas in the US everyone's taught in sex ed class that
it's not a reliable method by any means. We told him that, and he was actually
surprised.
So anyway, all that
was kind of interesting to me.
But back to the
school thing. It was so much fun to go there and see what primary schools are
like. They're really disciplined and the teachers seemed really strict. The
kids stood up every time they asked or answered a question, and they all stood
up when an adult entered the room, and other stuff like that. They were all so adorable too. They called me
Auntie Hannah and were begging me to come back next week. I think I will,
because I loved them so much. And the fact that they called me Auntie made me
just die. I'm used to being awkward around small children and so the fact that
these kids loved me so much made me so happy. I realize it mostly had to do
with the fact that I'm an oburoni, but whatever.
So today, we took a
day trip to the eastern region to a city called Aburi, where we toured a cocoa
farm and a botanical garden and stopped at a street lined with little shops
that sold wood carvings. So I bought a few gifts for people and practiced my bargaining
skills. I was aight. Got some cool stuff for pretty cheap.
Overall it was a
pretty good day. Aburi is so beautiful. It's on a hilltop and the view while
driving up there was amazing. And the gardens were also really beautiful. The
more I see of this country, the more I feel like it'll be really hard to leave
when it's time to. I can't wait to travel more. I'm starting to plan a trip to
Togo with 3 other people a couple weeks from now, and eventually I want to head
up north to Mole National Park, where you can see lots of elephants and stuff.
Other than those trips and the 2 I have left with CIEE, that's probably about
all I can do without going broke. But I'm really excited about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment