Market Visits and Laundry.

The past few days have been really crazy. Here's a post from the 13th

Aug. 13

             We had a ton of lectures from various faculty members from the University this morning. I was pretty tired, so I was struggling to stay awake through them. I felt pretty bad about it because I was sitting in the second row, right in view of the speakers. I couldn’t help it, my body still doesn’t really know what time it is, but it made the morning almost unbearable. Luckily, the lectures didn’t last as long as they were scheduled and one lady had been “detained” by a doctor’s appointment. I didn’t complain. 

One of my favorite things here is the Night Market. It’s the closest market to our dorm, so we get a lot of our food there—only 10 minutes! Today Krista, Anna and I stopped there after orientation to get some water and snacks. We met a few families that work a couple of the booths and we made friends with their kids. Mr. Henry makes the egg sandwich for 1 Cedi (about .50 cents) that everyone seems to like. His twin daughters Felicia and Felicity were working with him today. They were both very sweet. A few booths down a young girl named Rita stopped us. She was working there with her mom (Miss Howa) and her brother. Rita’s smile and laughter is infectious. She’s also one heck of a saleswoman for being so young. I was really thankful for the encounters I had today.  I’m excited to see how the relationships develop. The people here are absolutely wonderful. They are so warm and inviting, always telling us, “You are welcome here”. Seriously, everyone I meet tells me that. It’s awesome.

We went into the market in Medina the next day. I think it was like a 10 or 15-minute tro-tro ride from the university. Luckily, we had some guides from the with us because the place is crazy. Super huge. Our guide took us to the “more organized” section of the market…which is probably true, but it was pretty hectic in there. We saw some interesting food and people and then returned to campus for some much needed relaxation.

We’ve taken to going to this little café place called Tickles that’s in our dorm’s courtyard at night. I don’t think I will ever get over that name. But it’s been a good place to sit and get to know the other kids in our group.

The day after we went to Medina, we went into downtown Accra. And I thought Medina was busy….

We had guides again, but they didn’t want us to separate into groups for some reason, so we were a huge group of 18 white kids trying to make our way through the masses. I imagine we looked pretty strange.

We ate lunch at a restaurant downtown and everyone got FuFu. This is pretty hard to explain. It’s like a potato-ish sort of stuff that gets pounded into a doughy consistency and then served with a sauce to dip it in. Ours came with some super spicy sauce and fish. I’ll be real, it wasn’t my favorite, but I’m glad I tried it.

Our group split up after lunch and I ended up in a group of 5 girls with our guide, Sowa. She had some personal shopping to do so we agreed to go along with her. Weird decision. She needed to get fabric for a dress and then needed to find a rice cooker for her mom. Getting the fabric didn’t take that long…but we searched the whole city for a very specific rice cooker and never found it. We walked forever and then had a terrible time trying to find a tro-tro for the ride home…so we agreed to be ripped off by a taxi driver in our desperation to get back.

When we got back, Anna and I ran some errands and grabbed dinner (bread) at the Night Market. When we got back, we had to find a water source since the water in the bathrooms was out. Coincidentally, we ran into a nice guy named Benjamin while we were searching and he showed us where to go. Anna likes to call him Beautiful Benjamin now.  Hahaha

Anyways, we got our water and did our very first load of hand-washed laundry. I actually really enjoyed it. It’s kind of therapeutic.

Today we are heading to a seminary in Akropong for a group retreat. It’s about an hour north of the university. We’re going on a hike to a waterfall, which should be pretty cool.

I haven’t gotten a roommate yet. Only two of us have. Hopefully next week. Until then, I continue to live out of my suitcase.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I forgot my camera card plug in today. I will try to remember it next time.