Monday, June 14, 2010

Moving into Homestay with a family

I just moved into my homestay house! My family is pretty large: we have about 15 people living in our compound and even more coming and going all the time. Ghana played their first match yesterday and won 1-0! So, of course, there was a huge celebration in our house. Spontaneous dance parties were had too; one of my host brothers (or a kid that lives here) is about 4, doesn't realize I do not speak Twi, had the funniest dance I've ever seen. I went to a Presbyterian church yesterday just to see how it was - I had heard a bit about how different church here was... and wow! To start off with, they dance for 20 minutes before even starting ceremonies. Then they spoke in a language I didn't understand (even though I found out later it was English!), and my host mother gave me money to put in the collection bins, but she told me I had to dance and walk up there at the same time. On the flip side, I went to a fairly short mass of only two hours (again, I heard rumors of church stretching to four hours long!).My room that I will stay at is essentially a concrete cube with two windows and a door. Forget about carpet, its too expensive and hot. Running water? Negative, though we do have a toilet that you must pour water into the back before you can flush it. Electricity is nice, and while I do have an outlet in my room it does not work.Just a few more things I've noticed being here in Ghana - obroni means 'stranger', but collectively means any non-Ghanaian person, so when I walk by a primary school I hear choral chants of "Obroni! Obroni!" and my very own posse escorts me as far as they can go during their recess. Changing topics, when I got here I thought that people carrying stuff on their heads was weird, but I have become accustomed to it by now - my host sister carries a cooler on her head every morning to work. I've seen someone balancing chairs, boxes with bags of water, bowls of corn ears, and any tuber-like vegetable you can think of. All the head carrying gives locals excellent posture, so I'm going to sketch what people here look like:
o o
| |
| (|
(| |
|) |)))
| |
_| _|
Male Female
BONUS TIDBITS: My mosquito net isn't large enough so I have to cover my feet with a sheet and stick them out of the bottom.
Average guess on my age here - 35
My filtered water comes from a well and tastes like a fish swam around in it for a couple days.
I have never seen a Ghanaian drink water.

1 comment:

  1. Great post Mike! I am savoring these entries by reading them over the course of the week. Keep up the excellent (and witty!) observations. :)

    Ghana vs USA on Saturday - who will you cheer for?

    ReplyDelete