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.