Saviefe Gbogame

After being in my new village for about a week, there are a few things I can describe in great detail.
Time has minimal meaning to people in my village. Its a running joke among all Ghanaians (and Ewes, the people that speak Ewe and live in Volta Region) that if someone says "Etso", meaning tomorrow, said event will definitely not occur tomorrow. Example: I asked my landlord to have a carpenter come over to help refinish some chairs. "etso". Even after asking several times, tomorrow has not come yet.
My house has grown on me. My two rooms have been transformed into home after much purchasing in Ho, the regional capital of Volta Region and various additions like a mosquito net. I live with a retired gentleman who is around 75 years old, a mother around 35, and her three kids ranging from 2 to 10. I couldn't ask for a better first week. Except the money for our move in allowance still has not come through. Its only two weeks late, and 400 cedis that I could sure use now to buy essentials such as a stove or a phone (my last one got wet and was KIA).
So I think that I have been acclimatizing well with my fellow 400 villagers; I have been making a big effort to learn more Ewe so I can communicate with people, and can now generally buy items without speaking English. My day is usually as follows:
6 - wake up
8 - take a bus to Ho and buy stuff
1 - take a bus back from Ho to my town
3 - putter around and reflect on shopping goodies for the day
6 - eat
9 - sleep
repeat

Ive also decided that after two years here in Ghana, going back to the US will be weird. My mannerisms and way of speaking is already changing, but so is my appreciation for just sitting outside for hours on end.

If you want to see exactly where I live, I am trying to do it on Google Maps, but for now I can roughly describe it as between Anfoeta and Dzolokpuita in Volta Region Northwest of Ho about 12 miles. Here are my exact Earth Coordinates
6.767665, 0.40761

Mia do go!

Goings On

Aha! I leave for my site in two days! Also, tomorrow is swearing-in where I will officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). I killed a chicken this morning while my host brother killed another one right beside me. There are for my going away dinner tomorrow night. As my homestay comes to an end, I've definitely learned a lot about being in Ghana and living as Ghanaians do. After managing to fit everything into one bag to take back to my site, I just have to travel by myself via tro-tros to Saviefe Gbogame. I'm glad training is about to end, I'm ready to get into my community, make new friends, and start off two years Peace Corps.

The Goat

So yesterday was Sunday, and as I was sitting on my porch in the morning around 8am my host brother came up and told me I would be helping to slaughter a goat. I was astounded. Now, I have nothing against this poor little goat (a dwarf goat, as all goats here are), but I leaped at the opportunity to help out. We took the goat around back of the house, and while I was holding the legs down my host brother slit the goat's throat. It was a little weird feeling the legs slowly stopping to fight, but even more weird was the blood splatter that comes from slashing its throat: similar to a coke and mentos experiment with red dye, blood traveled a good 10 feet horizontally.
Next, after killing the goat, it is put over a fire to help burn some of the fur off and to make the animal really stiff and easy to handle (pick up). After Nana cut off the rest of the head, I held the soon-to-be-stewed goat still while he went to work butchering it. Its quite a process, but in the end we had some nice sections and, since we killed the goat ourselves, made a nice little stew with spices and pieces of select meat. Wow, this was actually one of the best tasting stews with bread I've ever had. However, some of the pieces (cartilage, bones, fat, skin) one is expected to eat in a stew - with your hands. I had some liver, some skin, an area around the spinal cord all in a nice little lunch on a Sunday morning.