Farewell... Ghana

Sunday, June 20th, 2010
Accra International Airport Restaurant

We woke up around 8 PM and went to a nice restaurant overlooking the shoreline. A nice meal of toast and a vegetable omelet, we then went to the Cape Coast Castle for a tour. Most interesting were the descriptions and sights of the slavery-related areas.

After, we took a short walk down the beach and relaxed a little while watching the waves, and then headed to Accra. A nice lunch for about 2 USD in Camil’s favorite restaurant in Accra, we spent some time in the Accra mall, where we marveled on how Americanized it was. Three of us, including Camil, bought shirts at pretty ridiculous prices, and Camil dropped us at the airport around 5 PM. The rest of the night was spent waiting around until my flight at around 1 AM.

Farewell Tamale

Saturday, June 19th, 2010
Cape Coast University Hostel

I woke up to the sound of a motorcycle pulling in… most definitely Ali, who was probably here to say goodbye to us. Waking up a bit early, I had the opportunity to finally teach Ali some basic kung fu exercises, which he seemed to enjoy, since he had been hyping up to me about how earnestly he wanted to learn some martial arts.

By the time I finished, the water had finally come on and I took my last cold shower in the wash area, which was now kind of covered in dirt and other unclean particles. Dr. Wanye came over around 7:45 AM to send us off and thank us for our service to the various Ghanaian communities’ eye health. We left around 8:30 AM for Cape Coast, our mini vacation town before we headed off to the airport tomorrow night.
We arrived at the Cape Coast University Hostel at about 6 PM, and got a room for $5 cedis a night, which was very excellent financial-wise compared to the $25-30 dollars a night at the Accra Telecentre. The accommodations for the hostel weren’t great, but it was still survivable. A mattress, showers heads (but no curtains so I had to develop a little confidence in my “figure”), and toilets. That night, the other three guys Marti, Christina, and John shared a room while Camil and I shared the other room.

For dinner, we went to ANOTHER Goil gas station restaurant. And… it was absolutely packed. I guess there’s just something nationally about Ghana Goil stations being extremely popular locations to hang out. Being the day that Ghana played their second match, the restaurant had set up some outdoor tables with a nice projector showing the World Cup games on the side. After chilling out a bit there and watching a pretty exciting game between Cameroon and Denmark, we headed back to the hostel for bedtime.

Outreach Surgery

Friday, June 18th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer House

Today is outreach surgery day for Dr. Wanye, meaning we had to take about a 30 minute drive over to a university medical research building and observe surgeries. There were quite a bit more individuals with bilateral mature cataracts (aka totally blind), so it was nice to see Dr. Wanye essentially restore sight to about 15 individuals. The room was extremely hot though, and I have no idea how the Dr. could survive in those conditions. My sweat was running down my face (which was covered by the surgical face mask) 10 minutes after entering the operating theater. One especially interesting case was an individual who had a HUGE mass growing on her throat. Dr. Wanye said that this condition can arise when one doesn’t have enough iodine intake, resulting in increased inflammation of the throat area.

We also finished typing the last of the ID cards into Microsoft Excel for record keeping by the Unite for Organization. Thus, everyone brought their laptops, including me. The nurses provided both the staff and us volunteers with both a snack (alvaro pear and a biscuit) as well as a late lunch of fried plantains and red red (Ghana-style beans) and of course… chicken. If I didn’t emphasize this before, I guess now’s the time: I have had chicken for essentially every dinner here in my stay at Tamale. It’s the cheapest meat of course, but sometimes, it just gets over the top. We ended at around 7 PM, so it was already pitch black.

I went to Mariam Hotel one last time to check up on any last minute emails before I leave. The internet wasn’t working after about 30 minutes. So I just gave up and headed home.

Tarikpaa

Thursday, June 17th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer House

Today’s outreach was to the village of Tarikpaa. But due to the rain, one of the roads got washed out right as we were about to get to the town, so we had to essentially backtrack the entire way and go in the opposite loop through town to get to the village. So by the time we got there, it was probably around 11 AM already. Most of the adults had stopped waiting for us and went to work (usually the farms). So only the individuals with very serious eye problems stayed behind, making our work essentially quite fast. We probably finished screening and examming the bulk of the individuals around 1 AM. But Ali had other plans for us: going to the Tarikpaa school to screen all the students. Five of us (including me) went off to the school to screen these students. There was definitely a difference between the elementary school students’ behavior and the junior high students’ behavior. The elementary students, although they started off in a nice five lines, they eventually crowded into a mob and were quite loud with each other. But the junior high people kept form the entire time, and were absolutely silent. I think all of us appreciated their silence, as the screening went blazing fast with that group.

After finishing screening the students, we headed back to the village to prepare to leave. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, this would be my last village that I would serve here in Ghana. So maybe subconsciously I knew, because I started playing with the little kids that always crowd around us, throwing them in the air as they screamed in joy. After a couple pictures with the kids, we headed off. As I looked back at the kids, I still couldn’t quite comprehend the idea that this 5-year old boy had to take care of his 1.5 year old boy, both which had no shoes, ripped clothing, and sad-looking expressions on their face (until you smile at them).

Only one more day here…

Dingoni

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer House

Since Dr. Wanye took a rest today because he had been in the upper west doing surgeries (about 40 in one day!), he took a rest today, so we didn’t get to go the clinic and observe surgeries. Instead, we did yet another outreach, this time to the town of Dingoni. We did both the town and the school individuals, but separated the two groups as to avoid any chaos.

Even though we essentially did two groups in one day, it was still a surprisingly slow day, as we essentially finished up around 1 PM.

The rest of the day was just as slow… I did want to go somewhere, but it seemed like everyone else wanted to slouch around after they went to the internet café.
I went to Mariam Hotel again, and waited for the internet to come on, but didn’t until pretty late at night. Then… it started raining, really hard. So I waited until about 9 PM when it started drizzling, and walked quite fast back home. Thankfully it didn’t rain much harder, but it was interesting navigating through the now muddy roads, especially towards the end of the day.

Rodriguez

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- Mariam Hotel Restaurant

Today’s community outreach was in the town of Ziong. Most of the stuff was pretty similar in terms of pacing, but we had a nurse this time, named Vagina. Yes, yes, seems funny at first (even I sort of smirked) but she really is a nice and hardworking woman. It’s just her parents’ fault she got such a name. Today, I got to aid the nurse in tallying diagnosis numbers and writing in information for potential cataract surgeries for certain individuals. In the process, she showed me in detail almost every case that came. I saw many mature and immature cataracts, pterygiums, allergic conjunctivitis (where the eye is red due to excessive itching and eye tear excretions), and some other special cases.

One very interesting child that came into the outreach center had burns protruding out of his chest in sort of a square shape with designs inside it. I wanted to take a picture of the boy, but the mother swiftly took him away.
Finally, a couple of the team members found a lizard (they call him Rodriguez) who was extremely friendly with everybody. It was almost as if he had been pre-tamed and then released into the wild.

Due to internet terribleness, I stayed in Mariam till past dark. One thing that the route from Mariam to the UFS volunteer house definitely lacks is lights. So there I was, using my puny cell phone flashlight to navigate my way back home. The random sights of bats flying above me and extreme number of bug/animal noises made for an interesting solo safari experience, with the occasional human popping into my vision every once in a while, which makes my heart skip quite a bit. I don’t really plan to repeat such an experience, but it definitely got my heart pumping.

Nanton and Russian Bear

Monday, June 14th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer House

Today we did a village outreach to Nanton. Ali told us that this village is very very big… even bigger compared to Nantonkurugu. So, us volunteers were embracing for quite a hard day. However, the slow start my Ali in the morning meant that most of the adults decided to go out to the farms instead of wait on us to get their eyes checked. Only people that had noticeable or serious eye problems stayed behind for us to screen. With no nurse this time around, we felt like we were quite short-staffed this round in the beginning as Ali then had to step in as the diagnoser… which seems odd but we kind of just accept it now, as there seems to be no other choice (But really, is it right to have anyone besides a certified nurse or doctor do diagnosis in a town where there could potential be very serious eye problems?). But we had a member of the town step up and offer to help with writing down ID cards and translating… he turned out to be a great help. I was in charge of the refraction station today, and there were quite a number of people that required glasses, despite really not having much of a population to screen. Everything went quite smoothly with the help of the town volunteer, and we finished at a decent time. The only real problems we had were running out of duck tape to screen the patients, so the folks doing eye acuity had some trouble. We even tried nails in the wall, but that didn’t really work. Plus, there was that added fear that if we banged into the wall too much, the whole house would kind of just fall apart. But in the end, with the small number of patients, it turned out ok.

After, we went to the market to get some odds and ends finished, while I struggled furiously to get some more cedi. The bank that I had originally traded money with refused to trade me, which I found totally absurd. They said something like “we only serve people with accounts here”, they then redirected me to the foreign exchange bureau, which was closed. John/Christian were with me, and Christian made a good point by saying, “haha, I bet they intentionally screwed you over.” And maybe… just maybe… he’s right. When I was walking through town by myself that one day, not a single person approached me for money or made a serious effort to become my “friend” (although there were some that came up to me to chat about the Ghana world cup game), however just walking with Christian/John allowed for multiple kids and beggars to approach us for money. It was quite interesting… to see that I’m really not on par with the “samingas” (people that come from the white man’s land). Anyway, maybe I’ll try the foreign exchange bureau tomorrow.

Today also happens to be Claire’s 21st birthday. Way to spend a milestone in Africa huh… haha All of us volunteers knew that the conditions for a great party were hardly met in this type of environment, but we tried to make the most of it by buying a banana bread “cake” (it ended up tasting like marshmallows) with matches as candles and some Russian Bear (from South Africa!) Vodka with Coke to have some casual drinks during dinner. She seemed to enjoy it. Camil, our driver, made a surprise visit as well to wish Claire happy birthday and shared a couple drinks with her. He would later take most of the group to Sparkles to chill, while Christian and I stayed behind.