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.

Goaaaal

Sunday, June 13th, 2010
Mole National Park- Mole Motel Room N8

We started our day at 7 AM with our 2.5-hr safari. We saw loads of deer, chimps, boars and got lucky to see a pack of elephants taking a nice path. Apparently, elephants are actually black, but get their brown color that we usually see from all the dirt they kick up when they walk. So when they were in the lake bathing, they indeed were black. At the end of the safari back at the information center, we saw a chimp with her baby. Thus ended our short trip to Mole National Park. The ride back seemed less bumpy, but it always seems faster on the way back that to the destination right?

After a little recovery at home, the Ghana vs. Slavonia World cup game began. We watched the first game at the volunteer house, and then John, Marti and I went to Sparkles Restaurant (and met up with David who was already there) to watch the game on an overhead projector… but the screen was kind of hilarious because it was essentially a large white piece of cloth hanging on the ceiling and held down by two Gulder beer bottles in each of the lower corners. The room was PACKED, with about 1:1 ratio of Ghanaians to non-Ghanaians. When a Slavonia player was ejected due to being awarding two yellow cards, the Ghanaians in the room went absolutely insane. When another Slavonian committed a foul in the box (aka the Black Stars are awarded a goal kick), they again went insane. And when the goal was scored, it was just berserk. Guys jumping up and down, girls dancing around, while all the non-Ghanaians clapped, smiled, but stayed in their seats. It was quite a contrast worth seeing in person.

I needed an Alvaro after seeing all that action once the game finally ended with Ghana: 1, Slavonia, 0. John/David went to find Ali to see some health community service, while Marti stayed in Sparkles to party a little bit more, and I went off to the little shops to look for items. Then, I spent about three hours just browsing through town and taking in the environment of a Ghana marketplace after a Ghanaian fútbol win. People lined the streets screaming in joy while vehicle after vehicle showed off Ghanaian colors/flags, with some even equipped with huge speakers to blast dance music and/or Ghanaian/African songs. It was truly an incredible sight. I even had some individuals approach me and ask how I liked the game.

I also tried from a random food stand something called fried cheese, Wagashi, and the taste was very similar to cheese curds that you would get at the state fair. However, I actually learned the most when I got into a taxi for 1.5 cedis to go home. Since the driver had to take some people to the Tamale Teaching Hospital first (drivers often take more than one passenger to go multiple destinations if they are in relatively the same area), he told me some of the average finances that a driver would get per day. For him, he would earn a minimum of $20 cedis per day after taking into account gas. After paying for food for both his immediate family and his father/mother, he would end the day with about $5 cedis. If this is truly what a Ghanaian taxi driver has to deal with, that is a very hard life indeed… =(

Mole National Park

Saturday, June 12th, 2010
Mole National Park- Mole Motel Room N8

Today is the start of our two day excursion to Mole National Park. With Camil as our driver for a roundtrip fee of $25 cedis, we headed out. Although the roads were at first nice and smooth worthy of sleeping, the volunteer corps soon learned that 4/5ths of the trip would be dirt roads that were… VERY bumpy all the way through. Sitting in the middle row of the 4x4 Toyota with my butt extremely sweaty and sore from the road workout, I couldn’t imagine how much suffering that the two girls in the trunk area had to undertake. Besides the road discomfort, the sights along the way were quite entertaining. Mini huts made of straw, people crowding over fire pits cooking the next meal, Camil honking furiously to get the donkeys/oxen herds out of the road, and the occasional “healing Jesus crusade” banners flown across some of the poles in the small towns we passed through. Although there seems to be a strong Christian presence throughout the small towns, I’m slightly puzzled by why there doesn’t seem to be a large push for evangelism in the Islamic-dominated city of Tamale.

We arrived at the Mole National Park Gates, where the officer asked us for our student cards so we could get a $5 dollar discount to enter the park (originally $10 for non-nationals). However, all of us cried out (on the inside) in disbelief when he said, “this card doesn’t have an expiration date, so I’ll have to deem in invalid.” When the rest of my teammates looked down at the ground in disbelief/ready to accept defeat, I had to stand up for it and argue (mostly because I knew if I paid $5 more, my budget for the trip would be completely thrown off). So, with a bunch of “sirs”, I made my argument, using things like “everything is electronic now”, “it’s not our fault that the university doesn’t print expiration dates”, “if you would like to confirm that we are current students at our Universities, please call our Universities in person. Do you want their numbers?” I think the best argument would probably have to be the last one, as he looked at me with his eyebrows down. In the end, we did get our discount. Arguing techniques can be attributed to my father. Thank you. =)

We arrived at the hotel around 4:15 PM just as it started to drizzle. Max number of people in a room was four, so we split two/two/three; two girls/two guys in one room, and the other two guys plus Camil in the other. The motel rooms were… ok I guess. First impressions though were very bad as the bedsheets for the double bed was blood-stained, and there was no running water at all. But when we experienced the enhanced coolness of the environment and the great national park view we had when exiting the room from the back door, the experienced evened out well. The last safari started at 3:30 PM, so we decided to go swimming in the pool. Very chlorinated, it still was extremely satisfying to take a dip for 45 minutes or so.

After a failed attempt at Marco-Polo, I practiced some butterfly techniques, but it was still quite hard since I had no goggles. Next was dinner and watching the USA vs England World Cup match. The Mole special MEGA portion fried rice wasn’t really mega at all, but with the addition of a large amount of spicy tomato sauce and good eating tempo, I was quite satisfied. I ended the meal with an Alvaro, a carbonated Pineapple drink that is very sweet and tasty. They really should have it in the US.
It was a tie. USA 1, England 1, and the USA goal looked quite cheap as the ball literally just slipped out of the goalie’s hands and rolled past the goal-line. But Camil for some reason insisted that it was a good goal. Anyway, mildly satisfied with the fútbol results, we went to bed.

School Screenings pt 2

Friday, June 11th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer House

This morning, we went to the same school to screen the primary students there. We also switched locations, where we posted six charts on a wall sort of near the bathrooms, which was a little annoying due to the smell. So it was just six of us, lined up side by side, ready for battle. Indeed, it was a battle, much worse than yesterday. At one point, I had three lines of kids just waiting on me that were slowly just turning into a chaotic mob where kids were shoving each other to be first with others literally crying in frustration. At the same time, my chart kept falling off, and since there wasn’t any more duck tape, I had to undergo extra effort to hold the chart up. But oddly enough, I was able to continue by thinking about happy thoughts and then also laughing a little bit on the inside seeing Marti struggle and at one point say, “I give up,” and leave for a little while.

We ended at around the same time though, but all of us were quite a bit more tired compared to yesterday. But relaxing in the primary’s principle’s office drinking more maltas and eating crackers while watching the first fútbol world cup game of Mexico vs. South Africa. It was very good fútbol, at least compared to the later game of France vs. Uruguay. After yet another internet session at Mariam, we ended the night drinking some Star beers and watching the second World Cup game. Marti (my roomie) went out with some of the Ghanaian guys… by himself. Although scared at first for his safety, I settled on the fact that he would all right. And indeed, at around 1 AM, he came back.

The First School Screening

Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- Mariam Hotel Restaurant

Today was our first outreach to a school instead of the village, Dahin Sheli School. With all the students dressed smartly in a uniform of brown and yellow, there were TONS of them in a single classroom. Separating ourselves into two sections of a large classroom, we had three charts on each side. Even with six people doing charts, the lines of kids seemed to never stop, and at one point, I’m sure all of us wanted to give up. Most of the kids were quite good with reading the charts after a quick explanation. So, I suppose that helped to keep us going to the end, which was around 2:30 PM.

The trouble came when we handed out our first pair of sunglasses. Seeing how “cool” people looked with sunglasses, students started being very clever of making it known that their eyes “really hurt” when they were in the sun. Thus, we had to be pretty cautious to find the frauds.

After some rest time eating some Ghana crackers and drinking Guiness Malta, which is a bottled beverage that almost tastes like Frosted Flakes, we headed back to the house to relax after a long day. Most of the team went to a bar to have a couple drinks, while I spent some time in Mariam Hotel for internet. I came back to seeing Marti and Dr. Wanye chatting in the living room. Good thing Marti was there or the Dr. would have come to an empty house. We talked about various things, including how he got his car from Virginia (off a really rich guy that wanted to get rid of his Jeep. Apparently, it’s only about $2k to ship a car from the US to Ghana by boat), some interesting Russian cuisine (since he has a Russian wife), some more tidbits about Unite for Sight and how we’re essential to the organization, etc. The rest of the team came back 30 minutes after the doctor took his leave. Dinner was white rice with a rich Ghanaian tomato sauce (which everyone has developed quite a great liking to), Fried Chicken, and some veggies. That ends today.

Surgery Day

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer House

Wednesdays are surgery day. Around 9:00 AM, we headed over to the eye clinic for what we had all been preparing for ever since the start of the trip: Tons and tons… of surgeries done by the famed Dr. Seth Wanye. Half of the volunteer corps went first to observe while the rest of us filled in some more ID cards on the computers. Finally, after about 3 hours of typing in “Abdulai”’s and “Mohammed”s, the first team came back, very smiley from what they saw.
Putting on a used pair of scrubs, a hankerchief-like bandana, but still keeping on the shoes I wore, we entered the very nicely air-conditioned “operating theater”. As most of the cases we saw were cataract cases, I’ll explain some of the details regarding those surgeries first. A cataract, usually developed due to old age or else is congenital, causes the lens to cloud up to a pearly white, thus giving the patient the effect of going essentially blind. To fix this condition, the lens must be taken out of the eye via various techniques depending on the available technology, and replaced with an artificial lens that will usually last them for the rest of their lives. Here in Tamale, Dr. Wanye uses Small Incision Cataract Surgery. Phacoemulsification (where the dysfunctional lens is broken up by waves of ultrasound and then sucked up) is the preferred method in the states, but Dr. Wanye does not yet have all the parts necessary for a functional Phaco machine. SICS involves making quite a large cut across the top of the eye, where Dr. Wanye then manipulates the lens a bit to allow it to essentially come out from that incision and inserts the new lens through that same cut. Probably the most interesting thing was that they would use a hot point (made through a flame) to stop the blood from flowing out of the eye due to the various cuts that the Doctor had to make to allow him to operate without a bunch of blood flowing everywhere. One particularly scary surgery involved a girl probably in her teens who had bilateral congenital cataracts. Essentially, she had been blind for years, thus greatly impairing her ability to go to school and do regular teenager tasks. When the surgery started as Dr. Wanye make the small incision on her cornea, she began to breathe very quickly. At a couple points during the surgery, she actually moved her head!!! Everyone screamed in shock and yelled to tell her to remain still… for obviously the sake of her eye. Of course, she was just scared… so Katie offered to hold her hand… which helped quite a bit. But it makes me wonder as to why the staff wouldn’t have restraining materials to hold the bodies in place. All in all, the end result was two successful SICS cataract surgeries: from being totally blind to fully seeing everything. I’m sure it was a great blessing to her.

Other surgeries that have been done are to get rid of pterygiums and corneal repair. Ptyerygiums are when eye membranes invade the cornea, which interferes greatly with vision. So the Doctor essentially just cuts the invading tissue with a scissors. Corneal repair involves suturing with a thread is extremely TINY. I don’t know how they are able to handle such small thread like that.

Back at home around 5:00 PM, we had banku and fufu for dinner. Both banku and fufu involve a sort of rich dough dipped into a sauce. Banku is made with corn, while fufu is made with yams. David made a good point in questioning why Ghanaians are so insistent on distinguishing the two since the doughs look almost exactly the same and they taste relatively similar too. I’m still decided whether I like them or not…

I joined the 30-day shred workout halfway through after debating whether I wanted to kill myself physically again, but it ended up being ok in the end. Instead of sweating for three hours after the workout was over, it was only about an hour. We ended the night playing some Poker and Egyptian Rat Screw.

Zugu

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
UFS Volunteer House

Today’s town was called Zugu. A little bit farther than Gumo but not as far Nantonkurugu, it was probably the most easy-going town yet. This time, we had two interpreters (but lost Ali since he had to visit his father in the hospital), but most of the townspeople were away at the farms by the time we got there in the afternoon around 10 AM. We started out with only maybe 8 elderly people, and others trickled in literally one by one. Compared to the chaotic first day in Nantonkurugu where there were literally people everywhere, it certainly was a change all of us volunteers were very much willing to accept. I did learn a bit more about certain eye diseases. For example, Allergic Conjunctivitus is a condition where the area around the cornea is red, an indication that the individual has itchy eyes and has been rubbing them extensively, which could also lead to corneal scratching and other mechanical eye problems. As us volunteers got more and more impatient as the day progressed slowly, some of us decided to have some fun with the kids. Some things that the kids enjoy are looking at pictures that we’ve taken of them from our cameras, running around and chasing us, imitating what we say, and just even seeing us smile seems to make them jump up and down in joy. One particularly hilarious situation was when John gave a little bit of hand sanitizer to three of the kids behind the transport vehicle. Within 10 seconds time, he suddenly got a mass of kids with their hands cupped ready for some of this cooling sensational liquid that they have never seen before. Another was Christian, who being quite the tall “white man” was at the center of attention for most of the time. He would allow them to chase him around the volunteer area and do imitations. One time, he got so tired that he just stood there with his arms crossed and his sunglasses on, towering over the surrounding kids in monarchy fashion.

On a heavier note however, the state of some of these kids were certainly very sad.
Four year olds were taking care of one year olds… some had absolutely not clothing save for a small piece of cloth to cover their lower private part. One two-year old children, absolutely stark naked, was sitting on the ground with his head down, trying to sleep while other children ran past him, as to establish that his behavior was quite normal. The fact that they were there in the first place was also a little questioning as some of the kids there were definitely of age to go to school. Some even had school workbooks in their hands, but it was curious as to why they weren’t doing their assigned homework or simply at school. These children deserve more… more than that droplet of water that they desperately try to drink when us volunteers are done with a water packet, more than sitting around while flies constantly inspected them, more than standing around with seemingly nothing to do to let them learn the ways of life. But what can a measily group of 7 volunteers do for them? Not much I suppose… except bring a smile to their face, which unfortunately is just temporary.

The rest of the day after the village outreach was pretty normal. After getting back around 5ish, we had chicken fried rice for dinner made by Tina (the hired cook for the house). We then had some chatting and typing in ID cards from the village outreaches, and playing some poker for the first time with some of the guys that visit every night (Osman/Salim).

With last night seemingly getting zero sleep, I took a risk and abandoned the mosquito tent. It felt so wrong doing that… but then the fan was quite amazing… I’m not sure what to make of it. @__@

Gumo

Monday, June 7th, 2010 3:20 PM
Tamale, Ghana – Mariam Hotel Restaurant

Today is day two of work via village outreaches. Originally set at 7:30 AM as a start time, we actually didn’t go until 10:00 AM because the driver Azees was essentially a no-show. Though the volunteers were ok with lounging around the UFS volunteer house napping or reading a book, I’m sure the other UFS staff were extremely frustrated that Azees didn’t notify them ahead of time that he would be busy with other matters. Camil, the staff member that took us from Accra to Tamale, ended up taking us to the village after getting a call from Dr. Wanye. The village of Gumo is only about a 20 minute drive from our house and located relatively within town still. As such, the town seemed a bit more affluent compared to the previous town that we had visited. We again started by visiting the chief and getting his blessing before going to work. This chief offered the team a colio nut, apparently used as a symbol of welcome and we’re happy that you are going to serve us.

According to Ali, Christian, and John, the nut tastes horrendous and required a couple cherry fruit snacks to ease the pain. But David said that after eating a couple of these nuts, you sort of get a nice caffeine high from it.
You could view it as unfortunately or fortunate, but since we had gotten to the village so late, most of the people had returned to the farms after waiting hours for us. So the day was very slow as people trickled in literally one-by-one throughout the four hours we were there. However, despite the low amount of people, there were actually more cataract cases this time as compared to before. I got to see a couple of them, as well as learn how to use a simple ophthalmoscope.

I was also able to do refraction today. Since we only have glasses that account for positive refraction (aka reading glasses), we only took in patients that were diagnosed with presbyopia. Although most were done with little difficulty, there were some patients that couldn’t even pick out a chart to read when we offered them either English or Arabic, which made for either a hilarious predicament or frustrating situation, depending on the mood I suppose. The process of refraction involved putting on these funky glasses with slots on them, and inserting lens with various powers until the person can successfully read the smallest text. It’s usually a one-person job, but having help from a second person who gives you and puts back the lens into the huge box-briefcase made it easier. But all in all, it was a joy when the patient cries out in surprise that they could read the smallest text when we finally narrowed it down to the correct lens. After issuing a pair of glasses with the same power and offering them the chance to pay 1 cedi for the service/glasses, they we on their way. One particularly interesting case was a man who claimed he could read the smallest font size after trying out all sorts of powers. After essentially blinding issuing him a pair of glasses, he later traded the glasses for a pair of sunglasses!, and left the area. David, “Oh my God guys, we should like, totally start this organization called Unite for Fashion! So what if everybody’s blind, at least they’ll look totally hot. (in his fake American sassy tone)”

We ended the day around 3 PM. It was certainly a great balance of hard work, dinking around, and enjoyment from the smiley children in the village. The rest of the day was spent making a visit to Mariam Hotel for some internet, and then doing a surprisingly hard workout as a group using Claire’s “30-day shred” video. It’s not appealing to be sweating about three hours AFTER the workout has been completed, but at least we got some physical activity as a group.

Laundry Done hand-style

Sunday, June 6th, 2010 11:00 AM
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer House

For the first time since I’ve arrived here in Ghana, I slept in until 10:00 AM, and would have slept longer if David had not shouted that “Dr. Wanye is here!” We talked about various things, ranging from volunteer details to interesting details about how certain aspects of community culture can affect eye health. Some examples are:

One guy was going through surgery and was in the pre-surgery state. Docs had to go to lunch, but when the doctors left, the guy also got up and demanded lunch. When told that the lunch was for doctors only, he proceeded to say, “well, then I won’t do the surgery if I don’t eat. I haven’t eaten all day…”

Village children have eyeliner- have a cosmetic (called chilo) that apparently is able to treat all eye diseases and for beauty purposes. It’s harmful to them usually due to allergies and can even become foreign bodies when the cosmetic dries up and falls into their eye. When rubbing happens, then the particle may infect the eye. A proposed solution that was said was to have the health department make up their OWN eyeliner/mascara that they can put on (possibly with antibiotic inside their eye) that has therapeutic effects instead of negative effects. Thus, without disturbing their culture, we could still make a positive impact on their eye health. However, the cost of such a program may be too much when weighing out the benefits.

After Dr. Wanye left to go and get us some lunch, I started my first experience doing my laundry by hand. Basically going outside to the water source and combining it with some laundry detergent that I had brought from back home, scrubbing and rubbing seemed to do an ok job. It took surprisingly long to finish one bucket of clothing, thus I probably won’t complain as much about paying a dollar back at my apartment in the USA for it to wash my clothes for me.

After a boxed lunch courtesy of Dr. Wanye of chicken, some salad veggies, and a HUGE load of jollof rice, Claire, Marti, Christian, and I went with Osman and Salim to go to a store where they sell sportswear and a little area where they sell touristy items along with getting some drinks at the Sparkle Restaurant. Unfortunately, the items sold there seemed to be of lower quality compared to what my dad and I saw at the Accra beach vendors and Arts center stores. Even the shirts that Marti and Christian got seemed a bit flimsy in terms of their material.

Going back to the house, Salim went back home to get his PET MONKEY named… Boogie! Yes, a pet monkey. I couldn’t believe it either at first. But there it was, on a leash, eating a banana that we had just given to it while the volunteers flashed picture by picture.

We ended the day by talking about strategies for the village outreach to Gumo the next day as well as filling out some ID cards in advance.

Dancing the night away?

Saturday, June 5th 2010 5:39 PM
Tamale, Ghana- Mariam Hotel Restaurant

Today is a semi-rest day. After a little bit of helping to sort out boxes and reorganize the surgery room at the eye clinic, Dr. Wanye let us go for the rest of the day. We went to explore the market, which was similar to Accra’s market in its chaotic nature. The combination of bad smells and extreme heat made most of us retreat to a gas station restaurant for lunch.
After a little bit of talking at the station, most of the volunteers went to the internet café to catch up on email while I parted ways and spent some time at the Mariam Hotel relaxing with a coke, a second lunch, wireless internet, and most importantly, air-conditioning.

We ended the night be having a couple of drinks at the Jungle Bar, and then going to watch a live band play on the roof of one of the local popular hubs in the center of town in Tamale. With the reggae -based music blaring heavily and the night so clear you could easily get lost in the stars above, most everyone went loose and started dancing the night away. I very much appreciated the escalating tempo of the songs that the band played as they neared the time where they were to end. The two girls, Katie and Claire, were especially at the center of attention of the dancefloor, with Marti being a close second with his extremely obscure but entertaining style of dancing. But one thing is for sure, Ghanaians sure know how to dance. Although extremely heavily peer-pressured, I decided against dancing. haha We arrived back at the UFS volunteer house around 1 AM.

First Day of Work

Friday, June 4th, 2010 6:19 PM
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer Guest House

Today was the first day of official volunteer work. After about a forty-five minute drive with a quick stop for snacks in the middle of the drive, we arrived at the village of Nankonkurugu. Originally feeling very ill-prepared as we had no planning whatsoever before going to the village, many of us were slightly worried as to how we were going to organize the multitude of people that desired to get their eyes checked. But once we got there, things seemed to be all right. My first impression of the villagers was nothing like I thought it would be. Especially noticeable were some of the children, which had shirts that were ripped halfway down the middle and some without shirts had the part of the belly button area stick very way out. When asked if it just something of a traditional measure, it was not so. Originally very wary of us, both kids and adults alike stayed quite a distance away from us. However, just because they were at a distance didn’t mean that there weren’t A LOT of them standing at a distance. At first, with all these eyes staring at you with sometimes blank faces, some of us got a little bit scared, but after a while… we tried to shrug it off and continued with our work.

Before we could start any work, we had to go talk to the chief in his hut to get his approval and his blessing. We were instructed to just say “Naaa” to anything that he said, so it made for a pretty hilarious two-way conversation. He individually talked to each of us for about 15 seconds, but probably took a minute on Claire. His frequent smiling and tone of voice indicated that he especially liked her. And later on, would say that in his younger years, he would have liked to have a nice, pretty white girl such as her. But now that “his penis doesn’t wake”, there’s no point now.

We then left the hut, with my final impressions of the hut as a small, fly-infested, area with some random drums and items above us held with a sort of straw material.
We started the day by filling out templates for identification cards, something we should have done yesterday so we wouldn’t be wasting time doing that, but we had no prior preparation or notification from Ali, so we made due. After, we set up five stations. Three were devoted to taking eye acuity via the E-charts, one was the eye refraction station, and the other was a diagnosis “dark room” station in one of the huts. I was in one of the E-chart stations, and helped take eye acuity measurements of kids as small as six years old (a couple were wearing Barack Obama shirts… haha) to as old as sixty or seventy years old. Some things I learned about the culture just doing eye acuity checks was that you had to be very careful around the old women, even if they don’t quite understand what they’re supposed to do. One time, I tried touching the hand of one of the elderly woman and bring it to her face to cover one of her eyes, and she immediately moved away from me. Another thing was that everyone appreciates a smile and an effort to try to speak their language, Dagbani. Whenever I tried to say “change your eye” (tama nimbla), I got a roar of laughter from everyone who could hear it. But it was always followed by smiles, so I guess I’ll take a little bit of embarrassment as a compliment there.

Some odd events that I didn’t expect was a herd of DONKEYS that suddenly entered the eye station premise and ran around for 10 seconds or so and then stampeded off again. John gave an excellent metaphor of a motorcycle gang coming in to make an appearance in front of a small town. And thus the donkey stampede was coined “the donkey motorcycle gang.” Speaking of donkeys, two of them stampeded a little bit later after the initial herd and trampled a boy of probably 4 years old. Literally, trampled the little guy. I’m surprised that he survived. Sorry I don’t have a picture as proof. It happened so fast.

We ended the very exhausting day around 3 PM, and after a light dinner of chicken fried rice and veggies, I crashed from 7:30 PM to 8:00 AM the next day.

Day of Rest

Friday, June 4th, 2010 6:34 AM
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Volunteer Guest House

Yesterday was tour the town/rest up a bit day. Most all the volunteers either slept or snoozed until around 8:30 AM and didn’t really get start doing things until about 10:30. We started the day by sorting out our glasses and sunglasses by putting ones with similar powers in one pile. All but one of us had glasses that had already been presorted by 25 pairs, so it took very little time to put them all in their respective locations. Claire’s, however, were just singles. So we had a bit of bonding time going through each pair and trying out some and self-proclaiming new styles. The highlight was finding two pairs of Rayban sunglasses. Christian thought of buying sunglasses by the bulk from the company that we purchased them from just so he could sell the ones that came from legitimate companies, but quickly repealed his idea since he wasn’t a bad man.

We continued the day by doing a little bit of touring. We started by visiting the Mariam Hotel, the only place with legitimate air conditioning and wireless internet with purchase of a meal and/or drink. It is very tempting to spend some or a lot of time there. Next was the eye clinic that we would be working at sometimes. There, we again met with Dr. Seth Wanye and also the rest of his ophthalmologic staff. As they were all very busy, a quick “you’re welcome” was proclaimed and we moved on to going to the bank for me and Claire to exchange some money. I had no problem exchanging USD to Cedis, but Claire was denied access to taking out money from her ATM card, so it made for a very frustrating and tear-filled scene. But we went to another bank to try her card there and it worked so everything was all right.

We then had lunch at a gas station restaurant. There, I learned how to somewhat eat a fish head from A-lee, as well as understand that Ghanaians also enjoy eating their food to the last grain of rice. When I explained how many Americans eat their food halfway or not at all at some restaurants, he burned with anger. Finally, a man that understands me.

After a stop at an internet café for 80 pesuas an hour, we returned home just in time for our friends Oswan and ?? to walk down to visit us. Apparently, there are a few Ghanaians, not affiliated with Unite for Sight that like to visit us and play some fútbol or cards or just talk. Last night, we taught them poker. Since they also play a card game that requires a lot of knowledge and wit, they were quick to learn the basics of the game. We ended the night with a meeting with Dr. Wanye, where we planned out a little bit about what was to come for tomorrow and Monday. If the weather permits and A-lee gets it arranged, we might actually start doing eye checks for a nearby village tomorrow.

I also learned a little bit about Ghanaian mannerisms. As (guy that wants to be Jamacian) said to me, Claire, and Katie, the variation of inviting someone out to eat, aka “are you hungry?” can be extremely insulting to the receiver of the question/invitation. I guess I can understand why that might be, since a full belly may be attributed to how much wealth you have in this country, the question of are you hungry? could be related to “are you poor?” type of mentality.

It rained hard last night… but now the weather’s cool. Very… nice.

Terms I’ve learned so far:
Ka-ooo-lah? – How are you?
Des-Pah – Good morning
An-te-ray – Good Afternoon
Ah-no-la – Good evening
Naaaaaaaaa – response to a “good …” greeting

Tamale UFS Guest House first impressions

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
Tamale, Ghana- UFS Guest House

On the road from 7 AM to 6 PM with only a one hour rest in the middle for lunch (Joloff rice… spicy rice with a hint of tomato and excellent herbs. Very excellent) My dad purposely placed my backpack in the shotgun seat… to which I frowned thinking I’d be missing a lot of conversation with the rest of the crew. But in the end, he was right. It was just a lot of sleeping... and that extra leg room made all the difference. With all our luggage stacked on top of the car with a covering on top, pushing a car with a heap of “stuff” on top in the middle of road in hope that it would start again made for an excellent scene. No worries though, we got there nice and easy. The spell where the dust was kicking up so bad we closed the windows and had AC was very satisfying, as that will probably be the last time I would have extended AC for a while.

While the house is very spacious and homey, there is no air-conditioning in the bedroom… thus entitling the two cold showers I’ll take each day as the best part of life at the moment for my Minnesota physic. The house is fully furnished, with a nice sofas, refrigerator, stove, and two bathrooms. One however, is locked away in David’s room (who is the senior volunteer here as he has already been here for 16 days). Thus, six people essentially use one bathroom, which is separated into a shower with nowhere to hang a towel alone store shampoo/soap and a toilet.
There are total of six new volunteers that arrived here including myself: John, Christina, Marti, Caroline, and Katie plus David. All of them are very nice and have high aspirations for what is to come and far in their futures.

From Relaxing Wind to Harsh Reality- Two Short Stories

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
Accra, Ghana- Telecentre Bed and Breakfast

Note: as the internet here is quite bad, pictures are currently unavailable for posting. :(

From Relaxing Wind to Harsh Reality- Two Short Stories

1. Walking down to the coast of Accra for the first time after getting out of the taxi and paying a whooping one cedi for entry, the setting was quite different from what we had previously experienced: Open space. Open space. But before we actually got to the coastline, we were greeted by friendly vendors who of course wanted to sell items to us “tourists”. Declining for now, we proceeded down the coastline where the sound of the waves hitting the shore reminded me a little bit of Hawaii, eh… but not really. The sand was comparably more dug in, a lane of garbage could be seen for as long as the eye could see. Still, my father and I walked back and forth along, picking up sand dollars and nice rocks for collecting. After a spell, we went to sit and had a drink. This is where we were almost immediately flooding by sellers, all offering items that definitely suited tourist tastes as compared to the Market we had been to previously. One particular person, (insert name), made an extreme effort to be friendly, so much that dad allowed him to sit with us and have a drink. There, he told us of how he wanted to attend college in three years and currently was finishing up secondary school. However, when we asked about why he wasn’t there at school on a Tuesday, his response that he had to work to feed his family was a bit… unconvincing. All in all, the three of us, with occasional interruptions by vendors, sat and enjoyed the waves and wind… I must say, it was probably the most relaxing time I had there in Accra. As we got up to leave however, we encountered a slight problem. The guy sitting with us wanted to come with us. Not exactly sure as to how to proceed, my father ended up just allowing him to ride with us. Once we got to the Museum, we got out and proceeded to say goodbye to which he responded, “Oh sir. I thought you wanted me to accompany you. Now I need taxi money to get back to the beach. I need about three to four cedi.” Shocked, I simply left to let my dad deal with it. When my dad put up and gave him two cedi, he quickly said thanks and ran off.

2. Walking down the area called the “arts center”, we were flooded with people wanting us to show them their items that they had for sale. One particular person, who was playing an interesting percussion instrument, caught my attention. Two sphere shaped balls with some material inside where connected by a strong string. By using a combination of shaking and hitting the two eggs against each other, one could effectively create a Hi-Hat and Snare drum combination. Wanting to buy this interesting instrument, he did something that no other person has done before, he told me to offer a price first. “I am your friend,” he said to me. “That’s why you offer me first, so there is no pressure. No pressure. I want you to have this from Moses (his name).” Testing his sincerity, I said one cedi for one set. Of course, he laughed and proceeded to say two for fifteen cedi, followed by a small speech about the quality of the material and how he needed more “support”. Using my bargaining techniques and his continued effort to be extremely friendly with me, I eventually paid him five cedi for two sets. What I didn’t understand however, is that as soon as I put the money in his hand, he disappeared, never to talk to me again.

Why is it… that whenever a deal is struck, the friendliness goes away? When money is put into one’s hand, why is the desire to know a person disappear? My father had talked to another man while I was doing business with the instrument guy, and when we got into the taxi to leave, he said, “See that guy that waved to us? He was with us the entire time, but never tried to force his products on us, but rather just stood back and watched as we attempted to fend off the flood of sellers at every point. He was with us to the end, but ended up getting nothing from us. The kid that’s next to him, that’s his child and they sleep over there. Yeah, next to that hut on the ground…”

And that… I suppose… is the harsh reality that I have to try to understand. It probably is extremely difficult and somewhat humbling to approach a total stranger and attempt to get them to buy your stuff, but that’s what they have to do… to survive. Not thrive, survive. And so maybe, once that money is put into their hands, the emotion and effort stops… so that they can save up that energy for the next customer… or for the child that they sleep with at night.

Day 2- There's Rainbow Foods, then there's this:

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 1:49 AM CST
Accra, Ghana, Telecentre Bed and Breakfast

Someone was snoring a little loud, so instead of just laying in bed helpless. I decided to come here instead. :)

1 USD = 1.4 Ghana Cedis

Yesterday was market day for me and my father. After bargaining for a seven-cedi taxi ride (always ask how much before getting in a cab) to the Makola Market about 30 minutes away, we entered an arena of chaos... similar to a Taiwanese day market... but somewhat more dysfunctional. Garbage was everywhere. Flies were everywhere. But in the end, the main attraction was the sheer flood of people... both young and old, either walking with items on top of their head, or selling various items ranging from raw meat bits to dishwasher soap. The whole scene was quite astonishing... so much that it took us awhile before we actually started to legitimately look for gifts.

It's hard for me to imagine that this multitude of people have the ability to survive in such selling and buying conditions. With so many vendors essentially selling the same items, how does one make itself stand out? Some things that people may do is call out to potential buyers... like us. "Shii fuu! Ni hao!! (MASTER! Hello!)" was probably the most entertaining while others were a little off with "ko ni chi wa", but I suppose it's understandable. Others would "purposely?" place a small group of "young women" in their stall to draw attention of male onlookers. But in the end, it's all just the same old items left and right... all mostly made in China. Chinese-Americans... flying thousands of miles, to go to a market to buy things made in China (even the toilet paper sold has Chinese writing on it!).

But maybe the most interesting part of the whole ordeal was when we saw people with little books in their hand fervently speaking to vendors in a narrow alley in a language we could not understand. With a closer look, we saw that the book in their hand was indeed a Bible, flipped to the chapter of St. Luke. The scene moved me quite a bit... here in the chaos of selling, flies and people bumping into each other while fragile items resting on their heads, and sweat running down everyone's faces, missionaries STILL go out and proclaim the gospel to this unique Ghanaian population subset. When's the last time I saw someone talk about God at Rainbow Foods back in the USA?

Bringing the church to where it's needed, regardless of the conditions. Indeed.

Day 1- Dirt, Bystanders, with a Shot of Rain

Monday, May 31st, 2010 2:57 AM CST
Accra, Ghana, Telecentre Bed and Breakfast Hotel

After a home-like breakfast of eggs, toast, and porridge compliments of the hotel staff, this thus is the beginning of my logs here in Ghana. :)

As a recap, I'm here as a Global Impact Volunteer for Tamale, Ghana to help out an ophthalmologist (eye doctor) with his work in helping to serve the eye needs of over 2 million people in the northern region of Ghana. Most of my work, so I have heard, is centered around outreach events where volunteers and opthalmologic staff go out in the villages and conduct eye acuity checks and distribute glasses as well as prepare patients for surgery in the Tamale Teaching Hospital. I'll be here until June 21st, 2010.. so roughly a three-week stay here. Flying standby compliments of my father, we are able to essentially fly here and back to the U.S. for a minimal charge.

My father and I arrived in Accra yesterday morning. Two Unite for Sight Staff met us in the lobby area of the airport, and helped us carry our five suitcase load to their car. Even so, at least five people approached our "caravan" and attempted to help us push the carts to the car. Pretty sure that four grown men with decent musculature can manage pushing two carts of suitcases, so it might just be them trying to get a dollar or two for their services. We managed to push away all of them except one: The one that ended up helping my dad, who put up the least resistance in stopping him from helping us. In the end though when we reached the car, my dad just gave a dollar, in which the man ecstatically took as well as our now empty carts.

In our about 15 minute car ride, the first thing I noticed was the dirt... and the bystanders (hence the title). Although I had seen this image a couple of times in say the History Channel, getting an actual glimpse of the real thing seems to be so much more striking. At stop signs, teen-age individuals with trays of goodies on their heads would attempt to sell us items to which the driver swiftly declined.

But what was really interesting to me personally was the abundance of signs that advertised... instant noodles. Yes, like... those noodles that you take out of the package and put in boiling water for a couple minutes. HUGE billboards could be seen advertising these tasty and "very" healthy foods. And then... there's the sign I saw in the beginning of this post. very... very interesting.

After eating dinner at the only Chinese restaurant for miles (yes, we had Chinese food at our first day in Ghana), it began to rain. Really hard. So, we tried to wait it out by just sitting the restaurant and chatting a bit, and then began our 30 minute trek back to the hotel. We considered taking a taxi, but being the Chinese part of our blood took over, and we declined that money-requiring option. All the dirt on the ground now had effectively turned into a nice mud, making walking a very interesting experience, good thing I am wearing these five-year old K-Swiss shoes. But while thinking about the status of my clothing, we walked by a woman with a piece of cloth wrapped around her chest. And looking back, there was a baby strewn on her back as she sloshed down the muddy road to wherever her destination was. With a rain drizzle running down my face and watered down dirt kicking up behind me, I started to understand that some of these people here, these "bystanders"... they have to deal with the rain, the dirt, the hardship... every single day of their lives.