Hey!
It’s hard to imagine that you’re at school and doing the ivy league thing while we’re roughing it in the back of tro tros and eating egg sandwiches and paw paw and, of course, still drinking those good old Stars.
I can’t believe that it’s been almost two months since you left -- we still comment when we pass your old hotel room or that smoothie place, and keep mentally jotting down election-related news and conversations for you. Speaking of, here’s a summary:
Basically, no one knows what will happen still, but everyone’s personal predictions are pretty interesting. Here are some of the extremes:
- We celebrated Eid ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, in Nima, a mainly Muslim urban slum community in Accra. After the main procession of chiefs and dancers passed, a throng of NDC supporters filled the street, decked out in red and green and white and sporting their umbrella-like logos.
[for everyone else, here's a summary of Ghanaian politics right now. The presidential elections are being held on December 7th, and there are two main parties competing for power. The first is the NPP, New Patriotic Party. They're the incumbent party and were the first democratially elected party to peacefully gain power in 2000. Since then, there's only been one other democratic election, in 2004, so this year is pretty historic. The other party, the NDC, or National Democratic Congress, began as a military party under the leadership of J. Rawlings. They were the party in control before the NPP was voted in. ]
Then one of the Parliamentary candidates and Vice Presidential candidate Alhaji Aliu Mahama drove by, waving at the impassioned crowds. It was the first time I’ve felt the power of a crowd like this… more than just being a political rally, this group of people were unified by another common identity – their religion. Maybe because of the stories I’ve heard about religion and politics from Mumbai, or for whatever other reason, I felt that there was a lot of latent power in this group because they were united by more than just politics. Or, politics had become about and a part of a larger identity. Which, I guess, can be true everywhere. It was just so tangible in this moment.
- Over dinner that night with my friend, we slipped into a conversation about the election. He said “if the NDC doesn’t win, then the NPP will have used tricks and there will be a civil war.” We asked him more about it, but he was adamant that the NPP couldn’t win legitimately (the registrar of voters is NPP, he claimed). He was equally confident in the succession of events, repeating that if the NPP won, there would be civil war. Just one perspective, but I do respect this man a lot, so it was interesting to hear this position from him.
- Another night, becks and I got a taxi ride home and had the back and forth Obama-McCain, Akufo-Addo Mills conversation. He said he was definitely for the NPP, and when we asked why, his answer was also suprising. “Because the NDC killed my family. I will never vote for them and they will never be good. They killed my uncle.”
- Last night, the boy our roommate has been talking to was chatting politics, and his opinion is that neither government is good, so he’s trying to make his vote strategic. He’s considering voting for the CPP (Convention People’s Party) and when I asked him why, wasn’t that like voting against the NPP (which he really doesn’t want) he responded “Yes, maybe. But I want to contribute to building up the CPP for future elections.”
- We have a friend who was coordinating a walk for peaceful elections event, and who helped make “Survive Elections 08” shirts. What a different frame of reference – in the US our shirts are about how ‘cool’ it is to vote, and here at least a few people are worried about making it through them as a peaceful country.
- On the radio today, I heard an announcement about the voter registration verification program that is going to help in the first week of October at all police stations. The announcer said that it was set up in an effort to correct the voter registration inaccuracies from August’s registration, and encouraged everyone to confirm that their name and photo were there correctly. Also, he warned that all minors and illegible voters could use this a grace period to cross their names off and avoid facing fines and punishment later. Finally, he instructed all families to remove their dead relatives from the registry.
Anyway, let us know if you have any specific on the ground questions about how things are going.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
To all my family, friends, and anyone interested
I am beginning a photography project in Ghana!
There are so many reasons why photographs can be important: sometimes they can communicate stories, even across language and cultural barriers; sometimes they can be used to express daily realities, both hard and beautiful; sometimes they are valuable simply because they provide a record of a loved one that otherwise would not exist.
This is the idea:
Give students from an impoverished area access to cameras and basic photography skills, and challenge them to see and create and record their life and experiences. Take the time to get to know these students, to hear their stories and learn about there passions and dreams and what’s important to them. Create a venue for them to share their images and stories with people in their community, and people around the world.
Often, the images that we see in America that supposedly represent ‘Africa’ are either exotic or shocking. So it’s important for us to see images that come from one specific community in one specific city in one specific region in one specific country in Africa – images that have been taken by the very kids who are so often photographed themselves.
As much as the students that we work with stand to gain in terms of fun, experience and expression, we have to learn from them in terms of opening our eyes and breaking down our stereotypes.
These are the numbers:
2 teachers
4 cameras
8 students
10 weeks
5 rolls of film each
3 exhibitions (Ghana, California and North Carolina)
350 dollars to make it happen
The past few days have been busy with set up and planning work – I’ve visited the school I’m going to work in, met some of the kids, researched all the costs, baked cookies and sold them door to door on campus, and met up with a fellow student who’s just as excited as I am about this project.
We start on October 8th. But we need to raise at least $200 more.
If you’re interested and want to help, here’s what you can do:
1.Make a donation to our project through PayPal to miriam_alvarado@berkeley.edu
2.Mail a check to my family in California, who will credit my account (email me at miriam_alvarado@berkeley.edu for my address)
3.Keep checking this blog for more updates on the project.
4.Tell people!
Thanks for reading this,
with peace,
There are so many reasons why photographs can be important: sometimes they can communicate stories, even across language and cultural barriers; sometimes they can be used to express daily realities, both hard and beautiful; sometimes they are valuable simply because they provide a record of a loved one that otherwise would not exist.
This is the idea:
Give students from an impoverished area access to cameras and basic photography skills, and challenge them to see and create and record their life and experiences. Take the time to get to know these students, to hear their stories and learn about there passions and dreams and what’s important to them. Create a venue for them to share their images and stories with people in their community, and people around the world.
Often, the images that we see in America that supposedly represent ‘Africa’ are either exotic or shocking. So it’s important for us to see images that come from one specific community in one specific city in one specific region in one specific country in Africa – images that have been taken by the very kids who are so often photographed themselves.
As much as the students that we work with stand to gain in terms of fun, experience and expression, we have to learn from them in terms of opening our eyes and breaking down our stereotypes.
These are the numbers:
2 teachers
4 cameras
8 students
10 weeks
5 rolls of film each
3 exhibitions (Ghana, California and North Carolina)
350 dollars to make it happen
The past few days have been busy with set up and planning work – I’ve visited the school I’m going to work in, met some of the kids, researched all the costs, baked cookies and sold them door to door on campus, and met up with a fellow student who’s just as excited as I am about this project.
We start on October 8th. But we need to raise at least $200 more.
If you’re interested and want to help, here’s what you can do:
1.Make a donation to our project through PayPal to miriam_alvarado@berkeley.edu
2.Mail a check to my family in California, who will credit my account (email me at miriam_alvarado@berkeley.edu for my address)
3.Keep checking this blog for more updates on the project.
4.Tell people!
Thanks for reading this,
with peace,
A Mixed Up, Disjointed Late Night Reflection on the Great Authentic
Today I ate breakfast at a beachfront hotel, and sat at a shaded table on an elevated patio, from which I could look out and down and see the chaos of color that was fishermen hauling in their catch and women selling fruit and kenkey on the beach a few feet away, in what metaphorically felt like a whole different world. Except that it wasn’t. The cliché contrast was apparent enough – hot chocolate on one side of the wall, a water sachet on the other; 2.30 for an egg omelet and toast on one, 0.45 for an egg sanwhich on the other; mainly white skin, mainly dark skin. But what didn’t seem cliché was how interconnected we all were – I wouldn’t be there without them, they wouldn’t be there without me, and although there definitely was a ‘them’ and a ‘me,’ I’m pretty sure the fear of feeling superior from where I sat, gazing out from on high, was only in my head.
I want to be the person who could just as easily see the beauty in someone next to me at that restaurant as in someone beneath me on the beach.
I don’t want to feel guilty for who I am, or for enjoying the things that I can afford to enjoy, like breakfast on a hotel verranda and two cups of Milo. I don’t want to be so driven by the pursuit for the Great Authentic African Experience that I can’t appreciate those luxuries, especially because they are authentic too.
“Authenticity” is such a bizarre concept, when you think about it. Anything that is, anything that is happening is authentic. I tend to think of it as a static ideal, something to be reached, but really, it’s a flowing, constant reality to be lived rather than attained.
There’s this mall here, most people call it ‘Shoprite’ after the big WalMart/Safeway-esque store that dominates the side of it facing the highway. A lot people see it as a bizarre space, a little piece of America transplanted on African soil, either an oasis of luxury or a sad symbol of globalization. But it’s in Africa, so in some ways it is authentically African, it is an authentic space, an authentic African experience. Which would you say is more authentic – the mall that sells Puma bathing suits and cell phones and Nutella, or the drums and koras and tantabens that most Ghanaians don’t know how to play?
Going back to the beach this morning -- as I enjoyed our tourist haven, I also loved seeing the things that not everyone sees: the dirt path that leads through school kids and halfway built hotels and laundry lines and brick thatched huts and a beach with only one man from Kineshie in the surf with his arms spread wide and rain clouds in the distance. When I sat down to write this, I wondered if it made my hypocritical, to write about not pursuing the Authentic, and then write about how wonderful that ‘real’ experience was. But it’s all real and I want to take it all in equally.
I was thinking (the rather obvious thought) that I’d never be a local here. But then I realized that I’d like to free myself from this local vs. global dichotomy … maybe this seems a little academic to apply to breakfast at the beach, but in one of my classes last semester, Professor Hart kept circling back to the same theme, the idea that there are these false dichotomies set up, layered upon one another to mutually reinforce each other. On the one hand, you have the passive, traditional, local; one the other, the active, modern, global. These words map onto the lens I’ve sometimes looked at Ghana through – with the people I see and meet as being helpless and stuck where they are, while I am empowered and able to move through their space. But it’s not true at all – this divide really isn’t there, or at least, excuse my hippie, tripped out image, but I imagine a row of dots and lines, except that now the dots are becoming lines too, we’re all lines, and the only difference is that some of us have resources to be moving faster or farther, but we’re all in motion, and it’s not all the same but it’s not all one-sided either.
I want to be the person who could just as easily see the beauty in someone next to me at that restaurant as in someone beneath me on the beach.
I don’t want to feel guilty for who I am, or for enjoying the things that I can afford to enjoy, like breakfast on a hotel verranda and two cups of Milo. I don’t want to be so driven by the pursuit for the Great Authentic African Experience that I can’t appreciate those luxuries, especially because they are authentic too.
“Authenticity” is such a bizarre concept, when you think about it. Anything that is, anything that is happening is authentic. I tend to think of it as a static ideal, something to be reached, but really, it’s a flowing, constant reality to be lived rather than attained.
There’s this mall here, most people call it ‘Shoprite’ after the big WalMart/Safeway-esque store that dominates the side of it facing the highway. A lot people see it as a bizarre space, a little piece of America transplanted on African soil, either an oasis of luxury or a sad symbol of globalization. But it’s in Africa, so in some ways it is authentically African, it is an authentic space, an authentic African experience. Which would you say is more authentic – the mall that sells Puma bathing suits and cell phones and Nutella, or the drums and koras and tantabens that most Ghanaians don’t know how to play?
Going back to the beach this morning -- as I enjoyed our tourist haven, I also loved seeing the things that not everyone sees: the dirt path that leads through school kids and halfway built hotels and laundry lines and brick thatched huts and a beach with only one man from Kineshie in the surf with his arms spread wide and rain clouds in the distance. When I sat down to write this, I wondered if it made my hypocritical, to write about not pursuing the Authentic, and then write about how wonderful that ‘real’ experience was. But it’s all real and I want to take it all in equally.
I was thinking (the rather obvious thought) that I’d never be a local here. But then I realized that I’d like to free myself from this local vs. global dichotomy … maybe this seems a little academic to apply to breakfast at the beach, but in one of my classes last semester, Professor Hart kept circling back to the same theme, the idea that there are these false dichotomies set up, layered upon one another to mutually reinforce each other. On the one hand, you have the passive, traditional, local; one the other, the active, modern, global. These words map onto the lens I’ve sometimes looked at Ghana through – with the people I see and meet as being helpless and stuck where they are, while I am empowered and able to move through their space. But it’s not true at all – this divide really isn’t there, or at least, excuse my hippie, tripped out image, but I imagine a row of dots and lines, except that now the dots are becoming lines too, we’re all lines, and the only difference is that some of us have resources to be moving faster or farther, but we’re all in motion, and it’s not all the same but it’s not all one-sided either.
Letter to Allie
hey girl! How’re you?? thinking about you makes me miss our lunches at La Val’s… good greasy cheap pizza and our talks about boys and life and all of the crazy things that you take on. How was your run, if it’s happened already? And how’s your semester going? You’re still going to italy next semester, right?
My roommate is in chi O too, but from UCSD. she’s crazy/spunky/spiritual and great to live with ..although it’s still hilarious to hear her describe greek life to Ghanaians, who are for the most part pretty socially conservative and don’t really drink.
Anyway, I wanted to write to you because I met this woman last week who reminded me a lot of something you mentioned awhile back. I’ll call her Mrs. P, she’s a professor of nursing at my university. I’m doing this project with community health nurses in an urban slum, and so she took a whole morning off to drive me there and introduce me to everyone I had to know. Along the way I read her most recent research, on AIDS and stigma and income production in women (which was really really hard to read… it’s one thing to know that these things happen to people, but to actually read their own voices describing how they’ve been shunned and abused and prevented from making money… it’s tough when it’s not abstract.) She told me about her career – 30 years as a nurse in rural regions of Ghana, and in poor communities in the capital. Then we started talking about her travels (Canada, South Africa, and the US).
I asked her where in the US she’d been, and that’s when she told me that she had gone to Wisconsin in 1994 to visit Martha Higgins, the woman who had sponsored her as a child and paid for her schooling all the way through nursing school.
“Without her, I couldn’t have gone to school. We were really poor.”
“How did she find you? Did she know you or meet you or every come to Africa?”
“No, 1994 was the first time we met. We wrote letters to each other through an organization that worked in my village. All of her kids had grown up, so she began to sponsor me. All of the work that I do now, serving others, I do because of her.”
Isn’t that amazing? I’ve always been vaguely aware of these “sponsor a kid in Africa” programs, but just like the AIDS stories, they were always abstract in my mind and didn’t affect real people. Or else I wrote them off as scams. Which many of them might still be. But the fact that this powerhouse of a woman was driving me through Accra, telling me about the NGO she’s started and the research she’s doing to get her PhD, is proof that sometimes they really can make a huge difference, a difference which ripples out to affect everyone that person touches.
I remember you saying that you and Brian were going to sponsor a kid – I don’t know if you ever ended up doing it, but either way I wanted to share this story with you.
I miss you and would love to hear about your summer and semester and all of the incredible things that I know you’ve been up to.
With love,
My roommate is in chi O too, but from UCSD. she’s crazy/spunky/spiritual and great to live with ..although it’s still hilarious to hear her describe greek life to Ghanaians, who are for the most part pretty socially conservative and don’t really drink.
Anyway, I wanted to write to you because I met this woman last week who reminded me a lot of something you mentioned awhile back. I’ll call her Mrs. P, she’s a professor of nursing at my university. I’m doing this project with community health nurses in an urban slum, and so she took a whole morning off to drive me there and introduce me to everyone I had to know. Along the way I read her most recent research, on AIDS and stigma and income production in women (which was really really hard to read… it’s one thing to know that these things happen to people, but to actually read their own voices describing how they’ve been shunned and abused and prevented from making money… it’s tough when it’s not abstract.) She told me about her career – 30 years as a nurse in rural regions of Ghana, and in poor communities in the capital. Then we started talking about her travels (Canada, South Africa, and the US).
I asked her where in the US she’d been, and that’s when she told me that she had gone to Wisconsin in 1994 to visit Martha Higgins, the woman who had sponsored her as a child and paid for her schooling all the way through nursing school.
“Without her, I couldn’t have gone to school. We were really poor.”
“How did she find you? Did she know you or meet you or every come to Africa?”
“No, 1994 was the first time we met. We wrote letters to each other through an organization that worked in my village. All of her kids had grown up, so she began to sponsor me. All of the work that I do now, serving others, I do because of her.”
Isn’t that amazing? I’ve always been vaguely aware of these “sponsor a kid in Africa” programs, but just like the AIDS stories, they were always abstract in my mind and didn’t affect real people. Or else I wrote them off as scams. Which many of them might still be. But the fact that this powerhouse of a woman was driving me through Accra, telling me about the NGO she’s started and the research she’s doing to get her PhD, is proof that sometimes they really can make a huge difference, a difference which ripples out to affect everyone that person touches.
I remember you saying that you and Brian were going to sponsor a kid – I don’t know if you ever ended up doing it, but either way I wanted to share this story with you.
I miss you and would love to hear about your summer and semester and all of the incredible things that I know you’ve been up to.
With love,
Monday, September 22, 2008
Letter to Andrew H
Hello!
how’re you doing? It’s really hard to imagine that you’re in the full swing of Berkeley life again… how’re classes and roommates and singing and life?
it’s so crazy to be here with annemieke – I’m definitely getting to see a whole different side to our former prez and it’s really nice having someone here who knows some of the same friends and places and has some of the same memories.
we’re both taking bamboo flute lessons, and I’m really excited to get better and be able to bust out a haunting flute song kind of like you and your harmonica.
and, like always, there’ve been a lot of hilarious moments when I feel like Ghana has gotten the best of me. at the beginning of our semester here, our friend Kevin was invited out to dinner with this girl, and then ended up having to pay for the whole expensive dinner – Ghana: 1, Kevin (and the more universal Us): 0. Since then the score’s probably something like Ghana: 87547, Us: 3. lol. I tried to order tea for two friend and myself, but 15 minutes later only got one tea cup. only to discover that I did, in fact, get three teas – or rather, three tea bags all in the same cup! what a failure, lol.
or my friend and I were taking a tro tro (minivan converted into a public transport bus type thing) into the city and needed to get off. I yelled up from the very back, “ Mate! Mate!” in a pathetically pleading voice, trying to get the attention of the guy who controls the stops. “We need to get off here, please!” a pretty common request, but he leaned forward and turned off the radio in complete incomprehension. “We want to get off!” still nothing, and the entire tro tro full of passengers were now involved in our sad attempt to get down. Finally one of our fellow Ghanaian travelers turned and translated “The need to get off” in a more Ghanaian-esque accent. He nodded, put on the radio, and proceeded to drive five long blocks more before letting us out. Ghana scores again.
anyway, despite, and probably partly because of all of the humbling moments, it’s definitely starting to feel like this is exactly where I need to be right now. The learning curve about our/my place in the world is really steep here… still have a lot more to mull over and share...
with peace and love
how’re you doing? It’s really hard to imagine that you’re in the full swing of Berkeley life again… how’re classes and roommates and singing and life?
it’s so crazy to be here with annemieke – I’m definitely getting to see a whole different side to our former prez and it’s really nice having someone here who knows some of the same friends and places and has some of the same memories.
we’re both taking bamboo flute lessons, and I’m really excited to get better and be able to bust out a haunting flute song kind of like you and your harmonica.
and, like always, there’ve been a lot of hilarious moments when I feel like Ghana has gotten the best of me. at the beginning of our semester here, our friend Kevin was invited out to dinner with this girl, and then ended up having to pay for the whole expensive dinner – Ghana: 1, Kevin (and the more universal Us): 0. Since then the score’s probably something like Ghana: 87547, Us: 3. lol. I tried to order tea for two friend and myself, but 15 minutes later only got one tea cup. only to discover that I did, in fact, get three teas – or rather, three tea bags all in the same cup! what a failure, lol.
or my friend and I were taking a tro tro (minivan converted into a public transport bus type thing) into the city and needed to get off. I yelled up from the very back, “ Mate! Mate!” in a pathetically pleading voice, trying to get the attention of the guy who controls the stops. “We need to get off here, please!” a pretty common request, but he leaned forward and turned off the radio in complete incomprehension. “We want to get off!” still nothing, and the entire tro tro full of passengers were now involved in our sad attempt to get down. Finally one of our fellow Ghanaian travelers turned and translated “The need to get off” in a more Ghanaian-esque accent. He nodded, put on the radio, and proceeded to drive five long blocks more before letting us out. Ghana scores again.
anyway, despite, and probably partly because of all of the humbling moments, it’s definitely starting to feel like this is exactly where I need to be right now. The learning curve about our/my place in the world is really steep here… still have a lot more to mull over and share...
with peace and love
Letter to all of my cross country and track girls,
I am running again! It brings back so many memories of you all to be on a cross country team… even one that’s in West Africa. lol
This morning we ran the full course again, all five miles and two hills of it. It’s getting easier, and it’s always beautiful because we run up this hill that overlooks the whole suburb of Medina and there’re these trees up there that look perfect for picnicking underneath. and then there are the sunrises (because this five mile routine gets started at 5:30 every morning!).
the girl who is our pseudo coach is such a badass… her name’s Gloria and you can tell she’s a really strong athlete just by the way she walks and interacts with all of the other teams at the field. last friday we had a practice meet for all of the first year students (and internationals) and right before the last event, the 4 by 100, Gloria pulled on a pair of shorts over her dressy black Bermudas and donned a bright Volta jersey over her satiny blouse, kicked off her strappy sandals and took her place on the starting line. Then she took off and in just 100 meters gained so much on everyone -- by the time the last leg of the race started, their team was basically 100 meters ahead. it was like the continuing students were showing off – “Freshmen – you can run on our track, but you better know that we own it.” it was amazing.
my own race was not nearly so dramatic. I came in an exhausted last in the 400 m, but somehow losing that much was kind of liberating. So the next day I gamely started in the 5000 m (that’s three miles! 12 laps!) with my roomie and one other girl who’s rumored to be incredible. We’ve been reading African American literature for one of my classes and there’s this Zora Neal Hurston essay, “How It feels to be colored me” that described how I felt as the obruni facing the African girl in this epic race.
"No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to think, to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep."
Everyone knew that she was going to win (and she did) but it was still a giddy feeling to make them all hold their breaths about it for awhile. anyway, I was happy with my run and got so much love and support from my team – it reminded me of the best part of track and cross country meets, cheering each other on and then exhaustingly being done and free to cheer for everyone else.
and volta got 2nd out of all the girl teams!!!
this is to all of you that I’ve shared the sweat and the pain of running with -- the intimidation of Jones and his dark sunglasses and the dust of crystal springs and the beauty of rancho and the slurpee 7 11 runs behind Mitty and the Mrs. Fields melted chocolate chip cookies and the bleachers and don’t-touch-my-shoes abs and the runs through the park and past that “never give up!” church and those classic bus rides with our rowdy boys… thanks girls! I miss you and all of those goods times.
hope you’re all well and let me know what you’re up to.
with love,
This morning we ran the full course again, all five miles and two hills of it. It’s getting easier, and it’s always beautiful because we run up this hill that overlooks the whole suburb of Medina and there’re these trees up there that look perfect for picnicking underneath. and then there are the sunrises (because this five mile routine gets started at 5:30 every morning!).
the girl who is our pseudo coach is such a badass… her name’s Gloria and you can tell she’s a really strong athlete just by the way she walks and interacts with all of the other teams at the field. last friday we had a practice meet for all of the first year students (and internationals) and right before the last event, the 4 by 100, Gloria pulled on a pair of shorts over her dressy black Bermudas and donned a bright Volta jersey over her satiny blouse, kicked off her strappy sandals and took her place on the starting line. Then she took off and in just 100 meters gained so much on everyone -- by the time the last leg of the race started, their team was basically 100 meters ahead. it was like the continuing students were showing off – “Freshmen – you can run on our track, but you better know that we own it.” it was amazing.
my own race was not nearly so dramatic. I came in an exhausted last in the 400 m, but somehow losing that much was kind of liberating. So the next day I gamely started in the 5000 m (that’s three miles! 12 laps!) with my roomie and one other girl who’s rumored to be incredible. We’ve been reading African American literature for one of my classes and there’s this Zora Neal Hurston essay, “How It feels to be colored me” that described how I felt as the obruni facing the African girl in this epic race.
"No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to think, to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep."
Everyone knew that she was going to win (and she did) but it was still a giddy feeling to make them all hold their breaths about it for awhile. anyway, I was happy with my run and got so much love and support from my team – it reminded me of the best part of track and cross country meets, cheering each other on and then exhaustingly being done and free to cheer for everyone else.
and volta got 2nd out of all the girl teams!!!
this is to all of you that I’ve shared the sweat and the pain of running with -- the intimidation of Jones and his dark sunglasses and the dust of crystal springs and the beauty of rancho and the slurpee 7 11 runs behind Mitty and the Mrs. Fields melted chocolate chip cookies and the bleachers and don’t-touch-my-shoes abs and the runs through the park and past that “never give up!” church and those classic bus rides with our rowdy boys… thanks girls! I miss you and all of those goods times.
hope you’re all well and let me know what you’re up to.
with love,
Saturday, September 13, 2008
A Typical Day
5:10 am: I woke up to see if I my knee was feeling well enough for me to run on it. After hobbling down the hall to the bathroom and back, I decided it wasn’t and settled back within the canopy of my mosquito-netted bed. My roommate and I have been running with the Volta Hall team (our sorority-esque dorm), and what began as our quest for exercise has ended up with us getting roped into competitions and an 8k run in three weeks! The knee injury that spared me from running this morning happened last night. I was walking with Rebecca and texting my friend Andi in Accra, when all of a sudden I plummeted three feet down and my forward momentum jammed my leg into the wall of the gutter I had just stepped into. Luckily the gutter was dry, and my injury wasn’t bad at all, and the man who came to give me a hand turned out to be a nursing student and walked us all the way back to Volta.
5:30 am: Frustratingly unable to go back to sleep, I got up to read some papers on my computer about water and sanitation – I’m doing an independent research project on how to create behavior change in urban slums, how to get people to wash their hands with soap, etc. Behavior change is so hard but also interesting, especially because we can all relate to knowing we should do something one way because it’s better for us, but then do it another way because.. it’s easier, or habit, or makes us feel good, or whatever.
6:30 am: The battery on my computer’s about to die and our electric outlets haven’t been working, so I’m back to bed.
8:30 am: On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would have class, but today I’m free! After grabbing the last clean shirt that’s dry (the rest are drying outside my room on a drying rack after I handwashed them in a bucket with a detergent bar and lots of splashing and mostly futile rubbing,) I head down to the international students computer lab. I wonder why we have this lab – it’s really nice and has free internet, but what do all of the Ghanaian students do for computers/internet? For breakfast along the way, I tried corn porridge for the first time. It’s the gray brown milky looking stuff that is poured into a clear plastic bag and tied up, so that to eat it you have to tear a hole in one of the bag’s corners and drink it up. It’s definitely not my favorite, but it’s filling and cheap.
9:00 am: I wait for bout 30 minutes at the photocopy stand that copies all of the Geography department readings. The stand is outside, just under the awning of a building. I’ve been trying to get these readings for about ten days now, but everytime I come and ask for them, “They are finished. Come back tomorrow.” But today, gloriously, I get my stack of readings. I’ve never been so excited to be able to do my homework! They’re for one of my best classes too, Geography of Urbanization: The City.
10:00 am: I get free internet on my computer and read and write and check emails! An email from Christina, yay! I always am so excited to get emails from home, but feel like I end everyone reply with “ahh, I’ll write more later!” I guess I finally am.
12:30 pm: Andrew called! We didn’t talk for long but it always makes me so happy. While waiting for my egg sandwich (an egg omelet in a roll), I call the number I had saved into my phone earlier, and feel like such a development badass when I see “WorldBank” dialing on my cell phone screen. The WB Accra office secretary is finally able to connect me with the Water Sanitation specialist I’ve been trying to talk to (because he’s been out until just now). He tells me that the internship I’m trying to create, working on an Urban Water Project, is highly sensitive and because it involves the government, I might not be able to be involved. But I should still email him about it just in case.
1:30 pm: “Let there be light, baby!” – a text I send to my two roommates after having successfully hunted down the electrician, ‘Bernard’ who was hanging out in the back of our annex. Apparently all we had to do was flip a switch to turn our electricity back on, but unfortunately one of our light bulbs burned out at the exact time, so we never realized how easy fixing it would’ve been. When the electrician came in I had to quickly hide the mattress Irene, our Ghanaian percher roommate sleeps on because no one can know that there’re three of us because there’s not enough housing on campus for everyone so people squeeze in extra mattresses for their friends while the hall supervisor tries to hunt them down. Irene texted back: “N There was light!”
1:50 pm: Ran into two friends at the tro-tro station. Tro-tros are minivans converted into buses, except that they keep no schedule and are flexible about where they’re going and how they’ll get there. So you show up at a station and wait until you hear one of the mates calling “Circ circircirc” if you want to go to Circle, a big station in Accra. Or “kinesh kineshkinesh,” or “acrra cra cra.”
3:00 pm: Finally made it to Korle Bu, and found the man I was supposed to meet and interview for my independent research. He didn’t mind that I was late and told me about his research at UCLA and his daughter in Ann Arbor. He reminded me of a grandfather – he was so kind and patient with me, and left several times to go hunt down so and so’s phone number or the name of this or that organization.
4:00 pm: Bought a small mango at a street vendor and ate it out of the plastic bags they cut them in… one of the best mangoes I’ve ever had, especially because I ate it in the shade of a tree-lined street. I followed it up with a FanChoco, which is a genius invention – frozen chocolate milk in a bag. You tear off a corner with your teeth and suck it out, which is perfect for the hot weather almost every day. Interestingly, FanIce is always only sold by men. This particular guy was riding a bike, and when he cycled away I saw that he had written “Love” on the back of his bike.
5:00pm: After passing a beautiful mare and colt nibbling along the road, contrasting in a surreal way with the bright blue wall behind them and the chaos of the gritty urban setting, I spotted a bunch of bicycles and stopped to find out how much ($70 for a beach cruiser, but I should bargain more if I end up buying it) from a guy who calls himself Daddy. I also spotted an urban garden – rows of vegetables on a piece of land sandwiched between the road and a slummish settlement. Supposedly urban gardens produce 90 % of Accra’s produce!
6:00pm: Walked into an ArcBright meeting late with Rebecca – the nursing student who helped me with my leg yesterday is the president and invited us to this meeting. Apparently they do health education activities and might be really cool to work with. Everyone seemed really friendly and laughed when we both introduced ourselves in Twi: “Yefre me Adwoa.” Which means, my name is Adwoa, or Monday-born. In Ghana, you are given a name that corresponds to the day of the week that you are born on. Since we’re both Monday-borns, I’m Adwoa Kakra, or little, while Becks is Adwoa Peni, or big.
7:00pm: Got dinner from a guy near our dorm – rice and ketchup and mayonnaise and salad and a sliced up hard boiled egg all wrapped up in a bag again. Exhausted at this point, we settled in to watch the pilot of Arrested Development and catch up on work. Rebecca and I traded stories about our friends back home… I love and miss them all!
1:00am: Turned off the lights and closed up the mosquito net.
5:30 am: Frustratingly unable to go back to sleep, I got up to read some papers on my computer about water and sanitation – I’m doing an independent research project on how to create behavior change in urban slums, how to get people to wash their hands with soap, etc. Behavior change is so hard but also interesting, especially because we can all relate to knowing we should do something one way because it’s better for us, but then do it another way because.. it’s easier, or habit, or makes us feel good, or whatever.
6:30 am: The battery on my computer’s about to die and our electric outlets haven’t been working, so I’m back to bed.
8:30 am: On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would have class, but today I’m free! After grabbing the last clean shirt that’s dry (the rest are drying outside my room on a drying rack after I handwashed them in a bucket with a detergent bar and lots of splashing and mostly futile rubbing,) I head down to the international students computer lab. I wonder why we have this lab – it’s really nice and has free internet, but what do all of the Ghanaian students do for computers/internet? For breakfast along the way, I tried corn porridge for the first time. It’s the gray brown milky looking stuff that is poured into a clear plastic bag and tied up, so that to eat it you have to tear a hole in one of the bag’s corners and drink it up. It’s definitely not my favorite, but it’s filling and cheap.
9:00 am: I wait for bout 30 minutes at the photocopy stand that copies all of the Geography department readings. The stand is outside, just under the awning of a building. I’ve been trying to get these readings for about ten days now, but everytime I come and ask for them, “They are finished. Come back tomorrow.” But today, gloriously, I get my stack of readings. I’ve never been so excited to be able to do my homework! They’re for one of my best classes too, Geography of Urbanization: The City.
10:00 am: I get free internet on my computer and read and write and check emails! An email from Christina, yay! I always am so excited to get emails from home, but feel like I end everyone reply with “ahh, I’ll write more later!” I guess I finally am.
12:30 pm: Andrew called! We didn’t talk for long but it always makes me so happy. While waiting for my egg sandwich (an egg omelet in a roll), I call the number I had saved into my phone earlier, and feel like such a development badass when I see “WorldBank” dialing on my cell phone screen. The WB Accra office secretary is finally able to connect me with the Water Sanitation specialist I’ve been trying to talk to (because he’s been out until just now). He tells me that the internship I’m trying to create, working on an Urban Water Project, is highly sensitive and because it involves the government, I might not be able to be involved. But I should still email him about it just in case.
1:30 pm: “Let there be light, baby!” – a text I send to my two roommates after having successfully hunted down the electrician, ‘Bernard’ who was hanging out in the back of our annex. Apparently all we had to do was flip a switch to turn our electricity back on, but unfortunately one of our light bulbs burned out at the exact time, so we never realized how easy fixing it would’ve been. When the electrician came in I had to quickly hide the mattress Irene, our Ghanaian percher roommate sleeps on because no one can know that there’re three of us because there’s not enough housing on campus for everyone so people squeeze in extra mattresses for their friends while the hall supervisor tries to hunt them down. Irene texted back: “N There was light!”
1:50 pm: Ran into two friends at the tro-tro station. Tro-tros are minivans converted into buses, except that they keep no schedule and are flexible about where they’re going and how they’ll get there. So you show up at a station and wait until you hear one of the mates calling “Circ circircirc” if you want to go to Circle, a big station in Accra. Or “kinesh kineshkinesh,” or “acrra cra cra.”
3:00 pm: Finally made it to Korle Bu, and found the man I was supposed to meet and interview for my independent research. He didn’t mind that I was late and told me about his research at UCLA and his daughter in Ann Arbor. He reminded me of a grandfather – he was so kind and patient with me, and left several times to go hunt down so and so’s phone number or the name of this or that organization.
4:00 pm: Bought a small mango at a street vendor and ate it out of the plastic bags they cut them in… one of the best mangoes I’ve ever had, especially because I ate it in the shade of a tree-lined street. I followed it up with a FanChoco, which is a genius invention – frozen chocolate milk in a bag. You tear off a corner with your teeth and suck it out, which is perfect for the hot weather almost every day. Interestingly, FanIce is always only sold by men. This particular guy was riding a bike, and when he cycled away I saw that he had written “Love” on the back of his bike.
5:00pm: After passing a beautiful mare and colt nibbling along the road, contrasting in a surreal way with the bright blue wall behind them and the chaos of the gritty urban setting, I spotted a bunch of bicycles and stopped to find out how much ($70 for a beach cruiser, but I should bargain more if I end up buying it) from a guy who calls himself Daddy. I also spotted an urban garden – rows of vegetables on a piece of land sandwiched between the road and a slummish settlement. Supposedly urban gardens produce 90 % of Accra’s produce!
6:00pm: Walked into an ArcBright meeting late with Rebecca – the nursing student who helped me with my leg yesterday is the president and invited us to this meeting. Apparently they do health education activities and might be really cool to work with. Everyone seemed really friendly and laughed when we both introduced ourselves in Twi: “Yefre me Adwoa.” Which means, my name is Adwoa, or Monday-born. In Ghana, you are given a name that corresponds to the day of the week that you are born on. Since we’re both Monday-borns, I’m Adwoa Kakra, or little, while Becks is Adwoa Peni, or big.
7:00pm: Got dinner from a guy near our dorm – rice and ketchup and mayonnaise and salad and a sliced up hard boiled egg all wrapped up in a bag again. Exhausted at this point, we settled in to watch the pilot of Arrested Development and catch up on work. Rebecca and I traded stories about our friends back home… I love and miss them all!
1:00am: Turned off the lights and closed up the mosquito net.
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