a thanksgiving to remember

i know you all probably feel pretty sorry for me, being so far removed from america and family and all the things that typically make thanksgiving a day to be thankful.

but do not worry: i just had the most amazing thanksgiving of all time.

the american ambassador invited us to his house for thanksgiving. and you just cannot pass up an opportunity like that. it took us 12.5 hours to get from wa to accra on wednesday.

embassy workers housed us. it was like entering an entirely different world. i didn't even know this world existed in ghana. hot showers, freezing air conditioning, ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, bacon, internet, fluffy towels, washer and dryer...and this is all before we even got to the ambassador's house!

dinner today was amazing, everything that thanksgiving should be. friends, food, oh good times.

so, i feel sorry for all of you, not the other way around!

braids and aftermath

i mentioned in my last post that i got braids. here is a picture of them.


they lasted about a week before i decided to take them out. and i think the part after the braids might have been even more wonderful than the braids themselves.

what do you think?

friends

last week a girl asked me to be her friend. i said sure, i'll be your friend. she told me where she works, a hair salon.

one day, i passed by the salon without realizing it was hers. she wasn't there, but she had told her sister about her new white friend. so her sister called me over.

so this week, i returned to the salon. they were busy braiding each other's hair, but i sat and visited for the afternoon. the other sisters and their father and all their children were there. they watched and alternately came over to stroke my arm or pat my head, to see if i feel the same way they do.

the next day i went back for my turn at hair braiding. they gave me cornrows ending in a bun. it's very nice. i stayed the whole afternoon, and in the process met the entire family.

when she finished, agnes refused to let me pay her for the braiding. she said it was a gift from the heart.

then my original friend, eva, walked with me. they took me to their house, where they showed me how to make tz and jojo. we ate supper together. the children stroked my arm and patted my head and held my hand. the little girl, blessing, barely left my side the entire evening.

then, when we were all finished eating, they gave me a ride home.

now, seriously, that's some real ghanaian hospitality.

caning

in ghana, a perfectly acceptable punishment in school is caning. this is something we talked about over and over in training, something we were warned about, something we were advised on how to handle appropriately.
as much as we had talked about it and learned about it, i only just saw my first caning last week. two old boys, both probably in their 20's, had gotten into a fight the night before. in front of assembly, each received three lashes on their back from a green stick from a tree. the sticks broke with each lash. it was intense, but the boys barely flinched, keeping up a tough exterior in front of all their classmates.
the second caning i witnessed, this week, was so much worse though. two little p1 boys had gotten into a fight. one had a big cut above his eye. the teachers considered his cut to be adequate punishment, so they spared him, but the other boy... oh, the poor little guy.
first, he was made to kneel in the gravel in front of assembly. a teacher gave him two huge stones, one in each hand. he was made to hold them with his arms extended straight out. they were so heavy he couldn't do it, and each time his arms dropped, he was scolded again.
when that was finally enough, the caning happened. i don't even know how many lashes this little guy got, but it was way too many. he was wailing and sobbing so much the teacher had to hold him by his shirt to keep him from running away or falling down.
when it was finally over, he ran off and screamed and cried in the corner for a long time. it was horrible.

a girl called "it"

i'm still learning sign language. it's a long process, and i am trying to be patient with myself. when i actually understand a conversation in sign language, i get really excited. the other day, the conversation was a funny one. the only deaf teacher at my school is the sign language teacher. after class, we were standing around talking to a few students, and this teacher told a student she needed to change her sign name.
sign names are usually the initial of the person's name, signed at a particular place on your body. for me, it is a "j" signed on the inside of my left elbow. each person, ideally, has a different name.
anyway, this girl is in p6, so for at least six years, her sign name has been the letter "i" signed on the palm of the left hand.
which, the sign language teacher explained, is also the sign for "IT."
so for six years, she has been called "it."

three grapes

last weekend, my friend elyse and i were waiting for our bus to leave. we were hungry, so we were eagerly scanning the crowd for something yummy on someone's head. and out of nowhere, we saw GRAPES. grapes! i have never seen these in ghana. i don't think ghanaians even know what they are.
so elyse ran over to the woman to buy some. the woman had only one bunch on her head, the rest of her bowl was apples. she told elyse the price.
three grapes for five thousand. that's three grapes for about 40 cents. the bunch would cost 8 ghana cedis. that's a day and a half's wages. for a bunch of grapes.
so. let's do a price comparison. for the price of three grapes, you could choose to get any of these instead:
a backpack full of potatoes
50 minutes of internet
5 packages of biscuits (cookies)
2.5 eggs
10 pencils
4 text messages to america
12 boxes of matches
4-6 medium tomatoes
10 pure water sachets
1 roll of toilet paper
1 bar of soap
1 jar of peanut butter (well, the equivalent of one jar, sold in a poly bag)
1/3 bottle of beer
1/3 postage for a letter to america
1/2 loaf of bread
needless to say, we did buy a few grapes. they were AMAZING. and we saved the seeds. we will try to grow our own grapes so we can avoid this problem in the future. anyone out there have experience with vineyards?