Monday, December 10, 2012

Is it really the holidays? It feels more like hamatan


I do not have time to tell you all about thanksgiving, school, exams, research, farm, or our education reconnect, or basically 99.9% of my life right now. But, I will tell you something. That is why I have a blog right? Yesterday elections took place in Ghana. I am not allowed to leave my village for a 5 day or so period around elections to ensure safety. On Election Day I did not leave my house because there was a polling station in my village. I woke up sweating with chef curled up next to me. FYI the sweating was due to my fan being off=”lights off”. This happened the past few mornings by the afternoon or even earlier “lights on” so no worries. Just don’t open the fridge and use my solar speakers for music and the lights will be back on eventually. So since I could not leave my house my goal was to have a relaxing day (no gardening or heavy cleaning) finish some paperwork, get a chunk of my quarterly report transferred from my field notes, and then play with my puppy and watch Downton Abbey or human planet for hours. I never watched movies at site but after thanksgiving/reconnect I collected a lot of new things to watch. This is not a bad thing because most movies bore me so I wont get stuck doing nothing all day….but human planet….pretty sure I could waste a day watching it, which I can only do with a few choice series. Excited for my lazy day I prepared my normal coffee finished grading the final set of a zillion exams (I do not exaggerate I am an American not a Ghanaian) I cleaned the house and kitchen before preparing to be extremely lazy for as long as I possibly could. “light off” still….computer battery 12%....ugh. It is kind of sad that I have to plan out being lazy….but I was very excited to watch human planet for hours and not feel any regret or remorse for unproductiveness. I vowed not to garden, not to do any intense cleaning, or finish my quarterly report yet….this was my day. I sat angrily amusing my pup with his new favorite toy I found him in Accra waiting for the lights to come on. I texted my teachers. They announced in Asamankese (the large nearby town) that “light on” would be at 4 pm…..alright no worries….. and guess what the lights came on at 5 pm ( 4 pm Ghanaian time). The speakers started blasting from the town I could here all the election craziness just get even crazier with the addition of electricity. So I went to turn on my fan…nada….my voltage regulator…asaaaa….. ummm why does my house not have electricity? I checked the fuse box and decided….it will come eventually. Yeah I sat in my home reading books by candlelight (almost out of candles fyi) watching water drip from my fridge as all my food begins to rot…luckily most food here doesn’t require refrigeration so my veggies and things are all good but chefs food and sausages that I prepare in big batches to last him all week was probably getting pretty rank.  Now it was too late to garden because I would get eaten alive and my new painting would be hard to start without proper lighting, and so I gave my self a mani-pedi  (life is so rough in peace corps *sigh*) crossing my fingers that my solar speakers and ipod would not die (the speakers in town were extra loud) luckily it was a sunny day so they were charged proper. Chef and I took a nice bath which he is actually really good about even now that he is bigger he is not hard the bath and I clipped his nails which he hates. We went to bed and listened to the blaring speakers from the town and did not cuddle due to body heat and lack of fan purposes. The next day I still couldn’t leave town but at least I could go beg to charge my things somewhere and pick up some new food for chef in town.


I awoke to the sound of whirling….yes my fan whirles loudly… yay. Maybe all food (especially recently received care package gifts) have not been too spoiled from 24 hours of heat. So I made my coffee and went to garden…..yeah don’t leave your garden for 2 weeks. My plants are fine except my pumpkins got some fungi thing going on I gotta treat but the weeds …..my lordy…they done grow might tall. My machete has grown very dull…. Due to the amount of coconuts I eat and leaving it out to rust on accident (multiple times). I really just didn’t feel like a machete type of mood I slaved hours with the weeds before I left making sure it would be manageable when I returned…and to come home to this….jungle of weeds….I cannot believe it….. it made my heart hurt. Can’t deal with the garden the plants (the most important) are fine and weeded I’ll worry about it later. New plan! Guest bedroom. So I am the 8th volunteer to live in this bungalow, meaning 8 other people have left a lot of things behind. Some extremely useful (I am so thankful!) but just…boxes…and boxes…..


So I had confined chef to the main living room, hallway and my bedroom. I was getting sick of stepping over the blockade I created and decided to puppy proof the kitchen, bathroom, guest bedroom, and other hallway.  The past week I bought a bunch of bleach, anticeptic, soap,  and other cleaning supplies I was running low on so I went to town with my bathroom area and am very proud of the results. All chemicals are contained and out of puppy reach as well as it is nice to have everything orderly and immaculate…then….dun dun dun….(dramatic tone drop) the guest bedroom. Very nice until you look under the bed……8 years of volunteers s*** I had been through briefly sorting out the useful getting rid of the nasty and saving the unsure. Now it was time for the purge. I started organizing boxes….tools…bike stuff…education..screening…..papers…papers….papers….sheets….millions of condoms (still haven’t checked dates yet but I can add them to my own personal condom collection peace corps provided me with)…..hopefully this whole celibacy thing won’t last forever but right now I am not sexually active with an obscene amount of condoms around my house. So I went through box by box organizing, cleaning, and to my great luck discover a family of rodents! I had already disposed of a dead rodent a month ago that probably got ahold of the poison in the kitchen left out to eradicate them (one reason chef was confined to only half the house). So I found a dead rodent and some surviving family members. Now I feel like I should not go into what happened next/I don’t want to think about it. Luckily I skipped lunch and had nothing to vomit otherwise that may have been an issue.

There were no survivors.

Moving on…So I focused on the sorting of the boxes, checking exp dates on things, and washing tool containers of the things in them that were not tools. Pretty soon I had two Ghana Gucci’s fully organized and no more cardboard boxes. Totally puppy proof, mouse proof, mouse free, and awesome. I re-cleaned the guest bedroom….anticeptisized (yes I am making up a word) everything and started thinking about what painting/organization will go best.

So the disposal part was the hardest….luckily thanks to the weeds capable of growing a metre a day my garbage area is impossible to see now. My neighbors like to go through my trash. It is okay until I find all my trash strewn around my house because they found it interesting for 5 seconds then threw it back on the ground. I wasn’t sure how to go about it….I know some things I threw out were just disgusting or not useful. I am sure there are a few things someone might have used though…. I am just not sure how to say in Twi “would you like this 10 year old pair of pliers that have a broken handles and are warped and a ripped blanket that smells like rotton fish and probably had rodents living in it?” So I just got rid of it all….I just hope tomorrow it is not all scattered around my house……


Ahhh….my house is so clean (African standards fyi) and chef is free to roam the whole house now. Although even with his new freedom he doesn’t leave the living room much. And now my guest bedroom is ready for decoration and I don’t have to worry about chef getting into the millions of things shoved under it because they are gone.

It just started down pouring ( “lights off” possibly) so I put all my buckets out to collect from my gutters yay free water! Sadly though I don’t mind fetching water because I enjoy the work out and I get to hang out and practice Twi with my neighbors who don’t speak a word of English as far as I can tell, if the lights stay on I am starting a new mural tonight….or watching human planet…..or basically whatever I feel like doing. The great thing about being a Peace Corps Volunteer is the freedom to choose what to do with my time.

I am sad I missed the Ghostland concert

I am sad I cannot see my friends or call them whenever I want

I am glad I have some of the best friends in the world though who write me (even though I am horribly slow at writing back) and will always be able to pick up our relationship where we left off.

I love and miss everyone. I also love it here and cannot imagine leaving Ghana right now.

You know that month of thanks thing people were doing on thanksgiving…well I will sum my 20-whatever days of thanks into one “I am thankful for my life. I am positive  it is the best life ever. Seriously. I cannot wait to see where my life continues to take me because I am loving every minute of it.”

Except certain minutes…I DO NOT LIKE KILLING ANIMALS OR LIVING THINGS…it just has to happen sometimes….sorry……but every other minute I really do love.


Cheers

Em


Update: I wrote this a few days ago. So I have a little dis’ting to add. They have giant gutters all over Ghana for those of you who don’t know. I have a goal to not fall in one during my stay here…. which seems inevitable….if you see them you will understand. One morning I woke up to a moat around my house (AKA the beginning of the building of a gutter) so now I have to cross this moat every morning with my bike. I have fallen twice….I don’t count it as a sewer fall because it is more of a ditch/moat fall. Anyway this morning on my way to school my bike decided to break and as I tried to recover without falling. I managed to not recover, fall, and roll down into the moat. My injuries were minor just some pretty nice scrapes and big bruises and some small bleeding. An entire tro tro stopped to watch they all said “ooooh…..sorry oh” then starred at me for awhile…then drove off. It is not everyday you get to see an Obruni eat in and roll into a ditch….I made a lot of peoples day.