Answering questions

Sometimes I travel by tro-tro, but luckily there have been no goats on top. Tro-tros are like mini buses that travel from town to town that get stuffed to double what their capacity should be. When the tro-tro is starting to get full, people will come in through the windows to try to find that empty spot. The luggage on the top of the tro-tro can be piled as high as the tro-tro itself, and can also be strapped to anywhere they can tie rope.

I had to buy a large drum to hold my water in, and I had to take it from Tamale to Savelugu. They strapped it to the back of the tro-tro, and had a boy (maybe 12) stand on the bumper in the back and watch that it (among other things) didn't fall off. On most of the tro-tros the door is the same as on a minivan. On this particularly packed ride, they didn't close the door, and there were an additional five people that were standing out of the door, holding onto the roof rack. When I finally got to my destination, I was told my another passenger that I should pay the boy watching my stuff. I didn't ask him to watch it and risk his life... but I took the direction of by fellow passenger and gave him enough to buy a snack in the market.

As for language and communication... it happens. Ghana was colonized by England, so English in the national language. Anyone who has had any kind of formal education I can communicate with, so that pretty much means children of school age, most men, and some young females. The trick to talking to Ghanaians, though, is to SLOW DOWN, which has been quite the challenge for me. Other ways to enhance the communication is to adopt Ghanaian English... for example, when you're leaving a room that you'll eventually come back to, you say, "I'm coming," which is quite counter-intuitive to me, and when you're doing something a little bit at a time the phrase is, "small small."

Otherwise, I am learning Dagbani, the local language here, but I'm only learning "small small." I have someone at work that is now helping me with the phrases that I need to know the most, but unless I write it down I tend to forget fairly quickly. I know all the greetings and can make some very small talk, but I really want to learn more. I need to kick it up a notch! The other thing is that I'm going to some more rural communities in the next few weeks where the education is less available and the English is less frequent. I'm really going to spend some time on it this week.

The temperature? It's hot most days, but I'm finding myself getting more and more used to the heat. I've always been good with extreme heat anyway, so it's not too hard for me. I don't have a fan in my room, but there's a nice breeze that flows through my windows. There's a fan in my office. When it rains, it's often cool after... and by cool I mean maybe 20 degrees.

The people here have no concept of cold. They keep asking me what people wear outside in winter, and I have only one picture. I should have thought ahead better on that one.

My internet access is... sketchy. In Tamale there's internet, but it's dial-up and extremely slow. There's no internet at all in Savelugu, and I usually come into Tamale about once a week to download my emails and post a new blog entry. I try to answer my emails during the week on my laptop, and then do the send-download-upload dance all over again the following week. There's only a few places in Tamale as well, so they're usually pretty busy. The computers are also old, and so some webpages don't load. Again, my saving grace is my laptop; yet, I hate walking into the internet place and pulling it out of my bag. Western privilege again, and the people just see the white lady that has a shiny computer that she can bring with her everywhere. At the same time, I can do three times the amount of things that I want to do when I bring my laptop, so it's just a matter of managing what I need to do with the image of myself that I want to show. Most of the time I'm in a hurry to go back to my community, so I take the laptop.

I'm the only volunteer from my organization in Savelugu, and I only get to see the other volunteers every 3 weeks or so. This was one of those weekends, and it feels AMAZING to reconnect to the people that are going through the same things as me, and we can give each other amazing support. It's always so nice to see them again.

I'm going to leave some of the work that I am doing to another day and for another post, and hope that these answers are satisfying you. I love hearing from all of you and really love the comments. I'll talk to everyone again soon.

Next post I'll have more pictures, and I'm getting a second dress made. I can't wait!