I don't miss snow but I miss my friends

It feels weird to be going to the beach in December but I’m going to Busua, Butre, and Akwidaa for several days. Tomorrow (Tuesday) we are leaving at 5 am to hop on a tro-tro and go to Madina. From Madina we have to find someone who is going to Kaneshie. From Kaneshie we have to take a bus to Takoradi. From Takoradi we have to take a tro-tro to Agona Junction. From Agona Junction we take a tro-tro to Busua. From Busua, we have to walk along this footpath with our big backpacks, along these cliffs that look out over the ocean, about a mile to Butre. You can’t get to Butre, this tiny beachside village, by car so you have to do it by foot.

I’m trying to get us to this place called that is a grouping of tree houses that are built around several ancient trees and you can sleep in one of them for like 5 cedi’s a night (like $3.50). These girls I met about a month ago told me about it. Each tree house is connected by rope bridges. We’re going to stay there for a couple nights and then we might try and go on to Akwidaa for a few days because there’s this place called Green Turtle Lodge and its on this gorgeous beach and you sleep in straw huts and can see the mama turtles nesting at night.

We had a really fun party for the kids yesterday. It was Corrie’s last day so we had a going away party and we decided to teach them all these games that we grew up playing. We formed teams and I was the captain of the blue team. Despite being naturally unathletic, I’m surprisingly competitive. Sometimes at night we sit on our porch and play Bullshit and I can’t help but cheat. Crystal is always calling Bullshit on me so I don’t have a choice but to cheat. I’m always pulling hidden cards out of my pant leg or bra at the end of the game but I still don’t win. Anyway, I’ve been here longer than the other volunteers so I know which kids are fastest and I purposely chose Kwame Adu and Abom and Abigail. We found these big flour sacks and had a sack race which was hilarious. We played a bunch of other games and we stopped keeping score but I’m pretty confident my team won if you added it all up. Then, just to satisfy my obsession which watching little children waddle, I lined up all the little 3 and 4 year olds and made them have a race. It was the cutest thing ever. Prince was just wearing these gold sneakers, pajama bottoms, and a girls knitted sweater that was open down the front. He was getting so serious about the race and it just funny to see him in all girls clothes and trying to look tough.

It was the most fun I’ve seen all the kids have so far. At the end of it, each kid got a coca-cola bottle and a lollipop and the little ones didn’t know how to drink out of the bottle. Prince, the one who was dressed in girls clothing and the one who is in the video below, was just walking around clinking drinks with everybody.

It ended up being one of those days in which I forget about the flies that are landing on my open cuts and biting the healing flesh and about the fact that everyone here cooks with a red oil that makes me really sick so I’m always a little sick, or the fact that men just come up and tug on my hair because its yellow, or the fact that there are termites eating my bed and everyday I wake up with a new pile of sawdust under it. Instead, I was just really happy to be sitting there watching these two hawks (or vultures maybe... I hope they were vultures) and there was this really cool orange sunset and I was drinking coke with some of the cutest little kids ever.

Side note: I hate that you guys are also having fun without me. Sometimes when I’m in a bad mood and I’m feeling sick and my bites are itching really bad I lay awake and make a mental list of things I miss. Some examples of things I miss are:
- cheese in all its forms (cream cheese, nacho cheese, grilled cheese, etc)
- laying on the couch on Sundays eating buffalo chicken dip and drinking White Russians and pretending to care about football with the boys
- Christine in her bathrobe watching Two and a Half Men and I also fantasize about her homemade salads
- seeing Danielle with her glasses on and also when she makes me french onion soup
- sitting in parks with Liz and eating bread and cheese together
- having blondie cigars with Chloe at the cigar bar (PS Chloe I have some Nigerian music I think you’d like!)
- late night a capella sessions with Shea
- falling asleep to the sound of Mike talking to his XBOX Live friends on his headset
- smashing bottles in the “Smashzone” with Joel and Brad
- going to breakfast at PF Changs with the Paperboy
- sitting on Anne’s back porch and holding her dogs tightly in my lap
- drinking Bud heavy’s at Kim’s little red house
- I miss my mom and dad and my brother and last but not least, my grandma, Trouble.

I've uploaded pictures to facebook so hopefully you can see them. I don't really have the time to upload many to this blog so just check my facebook. I think anyone can see them.

Right now I'm at the Accra mall which is WIERD. We went to a Chinese restaurant and Christmas music was playing and its like 100 degrees out. Feels wierd.

So this week I was pretty busy. I've been trying to get Kwame and William back into their schools. I met with the headmistress at Kwames school who insisted that I write her a formal apology letter before she'll forgive me. I'm not really sure what I'm apologizing for but I wrote a letter to her anyway saying that I'm sorry. Then, I got dressed up and went over to Word of Faith to ask them to let William back into school. They explained their side of the story which actually makes some sense. William was boarding there and since he was being bullied, he kept running away. This was a liability for the school so they brought him back to the orphanage. I explained that he was being bullied and they said "Yes, kids will be kids." So I'm not really sure what to say to that. Anyway, I have another meeting with Pastor John on Friday to discuss it so hopefully they'll take him back as long as he promises to stop running away.

Since I've been doing this thing for William I think he started to get a crush on me which has been slightly awkward. He shows up at our house at all hours and sits on the porch and waits for me to come out. He's 18 and now that I'm getting to know him some more, I think he might have other issues. The other day I told him he was going to have to leave the porch because he was just staring at me while I was trying to get work done and he stared for awhile longer and then left. A little while later he gave me all these torn up pieces of paper and on each one he'd drawn a heart with blood dripping out of it into some sort of goblet and on the heart he wrote "Pierced Heart." So I'm taking it that he's pissed at me. Lastnight the other volunteers went ot the bar and I stayed home since I was sick from the food I ate at lunch. When they came out the gate he was standing in the bushes and when they called his name he turned around and faced a wall and wouldn't turn back around. They told him he'd have to go home and when they went to close the gate he stuck his foot in the way so it wouldn't close all the way. I think that when I talk to Word of Faith I'm going to have to talk to them about some kind of counseling because he definitely needs some more help.

I have bug bites and spider bites that got infected on my legs and they are disgusting! This random lady came up to Crystal, Azar, and I the other day and opened up this little glass bottle of white powder and started dabbing the powder on all our sores. Amazingly, it healed after like one day. I had spent weeks pouring Neosporin on them and nothing was happening. I'm definitely finding this white powder and putting it on from now on.

The past few weeks have been sort of frustrating with the schools here and the hospitals here and the way things work here in general. Its hard to hold a little 3 year old that is boiling with a fever and wait 6 hours at the clinic for her to be seen and then they diagnose her wrong anyway. I was really starting to feel like nothing works and I'm useless. I keep just trying to remind myself that if everything here worked, I wouldn't need to be here.

I really want to say THANK YOU to everyone who threw extra cash into my bank account recently. The extra money will buy meat for the Christmas meal at the orphanage. If I have money left over I'd like to use it to buy treats for the Christmas party too. So now I'll tell you about the meat. I have to buy a goat and have it killed. This has been eating at me for weeks. At least its your dime and not mine that is killing this goat.

The next project that we're going to work on is trying to put a toilet in at the orphanage. This should be interesting since I barely ever remember to flush toilets nevermind ever install one. This should take me..ehh, 6 months. I'm learning as I go.

We have two new kids. Moses and Ezekiel. I'm really psyched about Moses since that's my dads name too. He's 13 and has never been to school. His brother, Ezekiel is probably 8 or 9 and he's cute except that he picked a scab off my knee when I wasn't looking and it really hurt. They were brought in a few days ago because their mother is mentally ill and was planning to poison all her kids and the older sister found out and took them away and brought them to the orphanage. Neither boy has been to school so I'm going to be spending a lot of time with them over the next month to get them ready for school since they start right after the new year.

I miss miss miss everyone and hope everyone is having fun getting ready for christmas. I think of everyone a lot and I am really hating that I'm missing out on stuff. When I get back I don't want to know about all the fun stuff everyone is doing so don't even tell me.

I love and miss you all. Thanks for all the birthday wishes, too.
xoxoxo

Thanks for all the birthday emails and wall posts, guys. I was so excited to get to the internet cafe today to read them! For my birthday, me and the other volunteers (the 5 others at my house and then 2 from Kasua) went to Cape Coast and stayed at Oasis again. I didn't go swimming this time because I am so terrified of the ocean here and plus I may or may not have seen a sting ray in one of the waves that was crashing. Its likely. Instead, I spent my birthday laying on the beach and signing with my newest friend Julius who is a deaf fisherman and who was so sweet. He knows american sign language and I know some too so we sort of had a conversation for like 2 hours but to be honest I didn't know everything he was saying.

The next morning we rolled out of bed and walked down the beach til we found this hut where this guy that looks just like Bob Marley makes chocolate pancakes for you and you sit there and watch the waves and eat pancakes. I had two banana milkshakes and chocolate pancakes and it was heaven. He kept running out of bananas because we kept ordering banana milkshakes so he would just get on his little blue bike and ride into town to buy more and then he'd come back and make more.

I HAVE TWO PUPPIES. I'm not sure why this wasn't the first sentence of my post. The lady down the street has a dog who gave birth to 2 puppies and they are only a few weeks old so i cant have them completely but I babysit them all the time. She tried to charge me to babysit them but then she decided not to when she saw I gave them baths and gave them flea medicine which was very hard to find around here. I made Azar and Crystal hold the puppies in different poses around the yard while I took pictures. Facebook album coming. They are named Bear (Bear looks like a bear) and White Heat (he's white) but Crystal calls him Jackson. I also have a cat that also belongs to our guard, Abu, but the cat won't let me near it. I'm working on getting a goat but I have to make arrangements for someone to watch it when I leave Africa and I don't trust anyone because they'll just eat it.

Hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving!

A checkpoint. you aren't allowed to take a picture of these guys but I couldn't help it. Oooooh snap!


my front porch

on the tro-tro ride to cape coast


Fishermen bringing in their nets. The one in back goes to the front after a few pulls and they keep working that way and they sing a song as they bring it out.


Scratches from the nails of slaves being dragged from Cape Coast Castle to the slave ships.


Cape Coast and Cape Coast Castle. I'm going here again for my birthday.

This is a video of Prince getting his nose blown by Ma Margaret, the house mother. I love his face afterwards.

Things that have been going on:

One of the boys, Kwame, got kicked out of school because he ditches school and goes begging in the village. Azar got him dressed all nice and ironed his clothes and then we brought him to the headmistress who said that the boy is a "truant" and she will not take him back. Then she turned her chair all the way around and closed her eyes and wouldn't look at us so I took that to mean the meeting was over. Now we have to spend next week trying to find a school somewhere that will let Kwame in. Kwame was found wandering out in the bush by himself for god knows how long. He also was begging in the village because hes always hungry as a result of his worms. We made him lunch the other day and gave him dewormers so hopefully he'll get rid of the parasites.

The Mama Bear came out in me this week. The other day I noticed that William hadn't gone to school and when I asked why he stuttered and said that he'd been expelled. After talking to him for awhile I found out that he had been being bullied at school because he doesn't do well. He finally stood up to the boy who bullies him by writing a letter to the boy. In the letter he said that he just wished he could go home. The little shit that was bullying him gave the letter to their headmaster and the headmaster said to William "You wanna go home? Then go home." And he expelled him. Well I FREAKED out. I'm going to try and go to the school on Monday and use some sugar to try and get William back into school. William wasn't able to explain what happened to the headmaster and why he'd written the letter because he is so painfully shy. He said to me, "Lindsay, it is because I do not perform well that these boys mock me" and I just burst into tears and he was like comforting ME. It breaks my heart because there is no one to protect these kids from so many unfair things. If they don't let him in I don't know what I'm going to do because Word of Faith is a really good school and I don't want him to have to go to the Methodist school.

I discovered a treat here thats sold on the streets and its called Blowfu and its like a donut. I call them blowies and I walk around saying "I'm going out to get a blowie" and then I have myself a good little laugh and go get my blowie.

We have a mango tree in our yard and the other day we sat around and made our own mango juice. Wowie kazowie it was goooooood. (this wowie kazowie reference was for shea coakley and noah)

Chicobaby pissed on me! We threw a party for the orphanage the other day in honor of World Childrens Day (how did I never know this existed?) and Chicobaby fell asleep in my arms and then soaked the front of my dress. Also, I was on the radio!!!!!!!! This guy from the Ghana TV station came and filmed all of us giving speeches and stuff but I don't know if I was on TV or not. BUT, I do know that I was on the radio. I kind of sound like a ditz because I wasn't prepared. I answered some questions about the orphanage and then the guy said, "What are you doing in Ghana" and I said "I love Ghana!!!!" into the microphone and then he just kind of moved away and asked other people questions. Whatevs. I was on the radio at 6 am on Sunday here so I didn't even hear it.

Abu was NOT the one that was trying to get into our house that night. When we checked in the morning, the screen was torn and the chunk of wood we use to barricade the door was punched up on one side so someone did stick their hand through and try and punch the wood off the door. SO I WAS RIGHT. We bought some more locks and put them on the door so I feel much safer now.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I'm eating fufu tonight while you guys feast on turkey. Im missing a lot of things. I miss: stuffing, cold drinks, hot showers, pedicures, cheese (all kinds), the way Mike sings Battlefield, lettuce wraps from PF Changs, and a proper toilet that flushes on the first try.


Also, happy birthday to me.

Braveheart

People are always telling me that I remind them of Mel Gibson in Braveheart. It’s because I’m so brave. If you know me, you also know that I am not prone to exaggeration, I’m never dramatic, imaginative, or afraid of anything. I’m being sarcastic. However, the following events described REALLY happened and if you don’t believe me you can email crystal at crystal.beauchemin@gmail.com.

So there I was. It was 1 am and I was in my party dress holding a saw. I was wearing a party dress because had I just ran out of clean clothes and I’ve only known my roommates for a month and so I’m not ready for them to see me sleeping naked, yet. So I was sleeping in my party dress.

Let me start from the beginning. I was laying in my bunk bed, wide awake because I had just been up to use the bathroom, when I heard a loud clanging at the back door. It was the sound of someone trying very hard to get in. After about 8 to 10 seconds it stopped. I lay there not moving and not breathing. About 20 seconds later I heard what can only be described as the sound of someone being strangled. In my mind, I was picturing the attackers strangling our poor old guard, Abu. Abu is a solid 90 lbs. and could never defend us against what I was estimating to be 4 to 6 attackers. I’m pretty sure if it came to it, I could even defeat Abu in a physical challenge.

Anyway, moments after the gurgling sound, came the sound of footsteps walking around the house. As someone who was raised on countless episodes of Murder She Wrote as a toddler, I was very aware that this was not the time to just roll over and go to sleep. For about 1 minute I thought about whether to wake someone up and tell them what I’d heard. I decided to say something. “Is anyone else awake?” I whispered. “Yes” said Corrie. I told her what I’d heard and she said she’d heard it too. At that point Crystal heard us talking and got scared and wanted to know what we should do. When I realized everyone else was scared, I started thinking, “Wow this is really happening. This is how it’s going to go down.” I reached for my swiss army knife which I keep under one of the slats of the bed above me. I was shaking so hard and fumbling that I could only get the 2 inch saw out. Corrie said we should get the boys but none of us wanted to leave the room. I couldn’t find my cell phone to call them and instead, I ended up accidentally dumping a ton of coins out onto the floor, which made us all jump. Corrie got up and went and woke the boys. They went out to the front door to check on Abu who was sleeping all cozy on his mat.

Now is about the time I started to feel like an asshole and I began to pray that someone would attack us just so that I wouldn’t look like the jerk who had turned on all the lights and woken up 5 people I barely know. I assured everyone that I was the one that probably frightened the attackers away when I dropped all the coins on the floor. Azar and Matt think that it was Abu just trying to get into the house to turn on the porch lights and that the gurgling sound was probably him just spitting or coughing. About now you’re probably wondering where my machete was in all of this. Ironically, earlier in the day, I had lent Abu my machete because he was going to the field. He thought I was giving it to him and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was only lending it so I just let him keep it. I don’t even use it that much anyway because it makes my arm tired to cut grass at a 45 degree angle like that. I also find it ironic that the man that is supposed to be protecting us is the one that actually scared us by trying to get into the house. Abu, or should I say JUDAS, is not going to be getting any more machete gifts from me.