this is the way i live.

Unlike many other volunteers who live in Ghana, I had a very westernized home to live in. Running water. Shower. Air conditioning. Oh wait, scratch that last one. Just a nice little ceiling fan.

 Here are a few pics of my humble Ghanaian abode:

looking away from, and looking up to my house. i walked this way each day.

...and walked past this each day.

outside of the house

the living room

my bathroom

Somehow I didn't take any pictures of my bedroom. Oh well.

So there it is folks! Pretty nice, huh? And I only had to bucket shower a few times when my actual shower broke! I was so blessed. [And no, that is not sarcasm. I have friends who had to bucket shower everyday and did not have the luxury of a nice home.]

My Second Family

I was so blessed to be able to live with a wonderful Ghanaian family during my stay in Ghana. They were amazing people, and I miss them so much! They took a place in my heart, and I will forever think of them as my second family.

My host Mom is Lizzy. She owns a “chop bar” (later post), waking up long before I got up each morning to go to the market, and going to bed each night later than I went to bed. She worked hard for her family, and to have a nice place for volunteers to stay. Her husband, Prince, was away with his family in London while I was there. 

The oldest of Lizzy’s children living at home was Eunice. She was around my age and worked an hour tro-tro ride away in Accra. I spent some of my evenings in her room watching movies with her. Somehow, I did not get any pictures with her!  :( But I did steal one from her Facebook to post on here!

The next child was 16 year old Sam. He was away at high school (all high schools in Ghana are boarding schools), but I did spend some time with him on a couple of his visits home. He was even kind enough to show me another internet café when the one I usually went to broke down.

Then we have my dear Emmanuel. We called him Emman (pronounced ee-muh). Emman is 15 and such a great kid. He helped me out a lot in my first few days especially, showing me around town, and helping me get tro-tros when I still was unsure how to. And even sometimes even when I knew how he still went with me in the mornings as I waiting sometimes close to a half hour for a tro-tro. Much of our conversations were filled with my girl advice for him. So basically, they were great conversations. :)

Cobbie was the next in age living in the house, but actually not one of Lizzy’s kids. He was her 10-year-old nephew. His parents were divorced, and his mother could no longer financially take care of him. In the goodness of her heart, Lizzy took this adorable boy in, but sadly could not pay for him to attend school. School in Ghana is incredibly expensive as it is not government funded and instead run as a business. A previous volunteer that stayed with Lizzy extended her charity to Cobbie and has been paying for his school for about 5 years now.

Now we’ve got 8-year-old Calvin. This kid is a stud and could do a killer Michael Jackson dance! Better than anyone I know in America for sure. He got really shy when I tried to get him to perform it for my brother and mom, but we got him to do it! So maybe I can get that video on here one of these days. The below picture is when we were playing around with Princess's fake yarn-hair. He's such a goof. 

And finally we’ve got the adorable Princess. I absolutely adore this 6-year-old girl. She is just about the sweetest, cutest, funniest thing ever. She really loved me too, and would tell everyone that I was her mother, or, as she would say it with her accent, “muddah.” And when she wasn’t calling me “caa-trin” (Katherine) she was calling me “Mom.” Lizzy thought it was hilarious too and said I had better tell my family I have a Ghanaian daughter. If I could have taken this girl back with me, I would have in a heartbeat.

I love my second family.

I will never forget them. 

the tro-tro

imagine a 15 passenger van. now imagine that van has gone through years and years of driving on rough dirt roads, it doors being throw open and slammed closed with hardly any thought at all, the interior never worked on, the exterior never worked on, and possibly even the engine never worked on. Also now imagine that the owner of this van wants to fit more than 15 people in it, so he has added seats that fold down into the aisle. This is what a tro-tro looks like. They have no a/c, so if you get a seat by the window with the breeze blowing in, its your lucky day. Here a few pics:

The tro-tro system is somewhat like a bus system. People pile on and off whenever they please. The rate they pay corresponds with the how far they are going on the tro-tro. There is a driver and a “mate.” The mate sits on one of the fold down seats in the aisle, opening and closing the door for the passengers (which actually is somewhat difficult considering the state of the van. usually they slide it shut, then reach out the window and snap the back of the door into place. my brother tried to close it one time and practically knocked the whole thing off. luckily, they just laughed at the silly “obruni” that didn’t know how to close doors).

As the tro-tro drives down the road the mate leans out the window and shouts the destination extremely fast. If you don’t know what to listen for, you will have no idea what he is saying. For example when you hear, “Crah, Crah, Crah! Sirk, Sirk, Sirk!” He is actually saying “Accra, Accra, Accra! Circle, Circle, Circle.” I love it.

If you are getting on the tro-tro from a station, you wander around asking different mates where the “Accra” or “Kwabenya” tro-tro is and they point in a [very] general direction. When you finally find the correct tro-tro you have to sit in it and wait until it fills up. Then it leaves. 

Here is a picture from a 3 hours tro-tro ride to Cape Coast. This was by far the nicest tro-tro I ever rode in.  [This guy taught my friend, Lindsie, and I common phrases in 4 different African languages.]

In some weird way, I loved my daily tro-tro rides. I even enjoyed riding an hour on them into Accra central. Yes, they were dirty. Yes, they broke down all the time (I almost had to help push one once, but instead I just hopped on anther tro-tro because I was late). Yes, they need a paint job. But how can you beat this experience of being crammed into a van with a bunch of Africans? Conversations were always fun, the children (usually at least 3 to a space an adult would take up) would always stare, and the rides were almost like riding on a roller coaster. A very uncomfortable roller coaster that is. 

The Knowledge the Gospel Brings

I flipped on the TV this morning as I was eating breakfast, and there was some sort of religious show on. The host was answering questions that people had emailed in. Listening to this made me so very grateful to be a member of Christ’s church and have the true knowledge of His Gospel. Here is the question that was posed:

Did we pre-exist with God in Heaven before we came here to live on Earth?

The Host’s Answer: “Before you formed me in the womb you knew me.” The host explained that this Bible verse just means that God knew who we would be, He did not literally know us. We did not exist until we were formed in the womb.

The True Answer From the Restored Gospel: We existed with God before we came to Earth. Abraham 3:22, “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was…and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.” The Lord literally knew us, as beings, before we were formed in the womb. We existed in a pre-mortal life with our Heavenly Father.

Why this knowledge matters: It means there was a plan. There was a reason we came to Earth. God simply didn’t just make the world and decide on the spot to throw people into it as well. We each existed before we came here, and CHOSE to come here so that we could prove to the Lord that we can live with Him for all Eternity.

Learn more about where we came from, why we are here, and God's plan here. 

a few thoughts

1. My mom and brother come to join me in Ghana. TOMORROW. I am SO excited!
2. I leave my host family tomorrow. I am so NOT excited.
3. I stop “living” in Ghana tomorrow and become a tourist.
4. While living here in Ghana, I have slowly noticed I am becoming Ghanaian. Note these points:
1. I have a tailored dress made from traditional African cloth
2. Ghanaians commented to the seamstress as she was making it that they want one- same fabric, same cut
3. I have my hair braided, complete with fake hair, the African way
4. I stare at Obrunies in amazement when I see them
5. The first word that comes to my mind when I see an Obruni is Obruni, not white person
6. I can say a few important phrases in Twi
7. I know what Twi is, and the correct way to pronounce it (ch-w-ee)
8. I ride the tro-tro like I’ve been doing it my whole life
9. No, I will not pay 4 Cedi to go from Circle to Accra Ridge in a taxi. (My white skin sometimes deceives drivers into thinking they can cheat me)
10. My host mother says to me more and more each day, “You are typical Ghanaian.” and “African Woman!”
5. This experience in Ghana has been amazing. I only wish I had more time. 

Translation

Words

Duh = The

Dat = That

Biscuit = Cookie

Tender = Thunder

Pawpaw = Papaya

Clean = Erase

Phrases

You are welcome = Not a reply to “thank you,” it means that you are literally welcome to Ghana.

You are invited = Not to a party, as I first thought. It means you are invited/welcome to eat their food.

It’s finished = They don’t have anymore [bread/biscuits/pineapple/etc] at the market.

The down one = The bottom one

I'm coming = Hold on/Wait just a minute

Sentences I’ve heard that a month ago would have sounded ridiculous or not understood:

“You are welcome. How do you find Ghana?”

Everyone wants to know if you like Ghana, and that’s how they phrase it

“Don’t clean the down one! I haven’t finished copying it.”

Heard all the time at the school referring to work on the board

“So I grabbed an orange off her head...”

            People here carry and sell everything from off their heads.

“Can I have a satchel of water?”

            Yeah, I drink water from a bag.

Its really funny when the translation needs to be going the other way as well. If I ask a child if they are done, or tell them they need to erase something, I am met with blank stares and sometimes a “…what?” When I first got here I was helping Princess, my 6-year-old host sister, with her homework and was trying to tell her to add “the” to one of her sentences. She looked at me confused, so I tried to enunciate the “th” sound thinking that was the problem. Only I realized that was making it worse when she said “I don’t understand.” Finally I wrote out the word and she goes, “Ohhh! Duh!” Haha. Gotta love the accent barrier. 

Cape Coast Weekend

This trip actually occurred a few weekends ago. Remember the American friend I met at the Accra mall? Well the day after we met she called me up and invited me to go to Cape Coast with her that weekend. She was in touch with the missionary couple that lives down there and they invited to her stay with them.

Background: Cape Coast is a city about 3-4 hours west of Accra. It was the first capital of Britain’s Gold Coast colony, and is now the capital of Ghana’s central region.

Lindsie, that’s my American friend, had to work Saturday morning, so mid-afternoon I took the hour tro-tro ride to Achimota, the area of Accra that she works in. From Achimota we were going to catch a bus to Cape Coast. Our ticket said that the bus left at 3:30 pm. Note that time.

We were driven to the bus station by a guy Lindsie works with (his name is Emmanuel, yes that is also the name of my host brother and a ton of other guys here in Ghana), and arrived at exactly 3:30…only to realize we were at the WRONG station. We jumped back into the car, along with some random guy at the station that was going to tell us where to go, and sped off to the correct station. When we got there, no one could give us a straight answer as to where our bus was, if it even was there. Finally, we find out it left at 2:30 pm. Cool guys, thanks for putting 3:30 on our tickets…

But have no fear! Cape Coast was  to be gone to that weekend! Emmanuel drove us somewhere to pick up a tro-tro. Luckily, this tro-tro we ended up getting was much nicer that the typical tro-tros that commute within the city. We actually were not jam-packed against the people sitting around us, and the seats were big enough for us to sit [somewhat] comfortably on!

We met a couple friends in the tro-tro that taught us some common phrases in a few different Ghanaian languages. (There are 78 languages in Ghana).

After about 3 hours in the tro-tro, Lindsie and I were dropped off in Cape Coast. We were the only two alighting there, the rest were going another hour. It seemed that we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere, but apparently it was the taxi station.

Elder and Sister Saunders, the missionary couple we were staying with, was soon there to pick us up. They took us back to their apartment, which was like a dream come true to me. Air conditioning. Filtered water. Hot water. American food. What more could I want?

Sister Saunders made us a delicious American [Mexican] meal of chicken enchiladas. I don’t think I can describe to you how incredibly happy I was. I’ve never understood how hard it is to eat foreign food, until now. No McDonalds even exists here. So to see and smell and taste American food for the first time in two weeks was absolutely heavenly. Lindsie also made pudding. aka CHOCOLATE. At this point I was pretty sure my life was complete.

We arrived late on Saturday, so we didn’t do anything else that night. Sunday we went to church with the Saunders in a village called Abucrumpa (the first few times they said this town name I could have sworn they were saying Abercrombie). We first stopped at the mission home to exchange their car into basically a tro-tro so that we could pick up about 10 people.

So Ghana’s national language is English, right? Right. Does that mean everyone here speaks English? Absolutely not. The Abucrumpa branch was entirely in Fanti, one of the four main Ghanaian languages. Ok I lied. It was fast Sunday, so the children that bore their testimonies bore them in English. Think about how the children in the states normally bear their testimonies. Its completely different here. These Ghanaian children instead recite verses. “I take my testimony from Matthew 12:25…” And then they would say the verse from memorization. It was really adorable and amazing.

After church we piled back into the tro-tro mission van, dropped everyone off at various stops, then went back to the Saunders. They had invited over a recent convert family for lunch. The man’s story is pretty neat. Here is the summary:

Paul was a minister of another faith in his small village. But he always knew that the actual true church of Christ would have a prophet and 12 apostles. He searched, came in contact with the church through a friend, but never though much of it. One night as he was praying, the phrase “Latter-Day Saint” came into his mind. He immediately sought out the church. He was baptized in March. Ordained in April. And baptized the rest of his family in May.

Paul and his family were very sweet and kind. Paul was hilarious too. We had an American meal and kept saying that if they didn’t like it then they didn’t have to eat it and Paul over and over said, “I go to America. I need to learn.”

The sister missionaries came over after lunch and I was able to participate in a lesson about Temples to this convert family. It was a neat experience. The family was so very humble and eager to learn.

Lindsie and I then accompanied Elder Saunders to take Paul and his family back to their village. The drive was an hour down an extremely hilly and bumpy dirt road in the middle of what seemed like a forest. It was quite the drive. The village was incredible. It was the type of village you think of when you think “Africa.” The people lived basically in mud houses with aluminum roofs. The houses were the size of my living room in my apartment at BYU. It amazes me that people actually live that way. They must be a very special people the Lord knew could not only handle it, but be happy as well. I respect them very much.

That was basically the extent of my weekend in Cape Coast. I did meet another sister missionary companionship later that night. I also enjoyed an ice cream cone, popcorn, and more pudding.

P.S. I know that I have not described what a tro-tro is yet. But I will. I just really want to show pictures, and my inability to put pictures on my comp right now is making that impossible. Just be patient. :)