Huge Update

Hello all!

I've hit the two month marker, which means that my time here is half-way over, which is weird. It's been a while since I sent an update, so naturally there's a lot that's happened.

Paragliding, Kwahu Mountain, Obo

I went to the Eastern Region on Easter weekend. We stayed in a town called Obo on Kwahu mountain, it was pretty, lots of goats, a view of the mountain, and faded old concrete colonial buildings in different colors. We stayed in this run down boarding house type thing. We went out dancing with a cousin (Brenda) of one of the members (Abena) of the CIEE staff, and Brenda's friends. We sat in the back of a pick-up truck on the way to the place, and a taxi full of dudes pulls up behind us and they start saying something about "oburoni" (white person/foreigner) and Brenda and her friends start laughing at them, shouting, throwing up their middle fingers at them and I just sat there feeling amused and awe-struck about this encounter. I ask Brenda what they're saying back (this exchange being in Twi) and she tells me, "They are saying that they're good", which convincing Brenda and her friends of kinda seemed like a lost cause by that point. The next day we went further up the mountain to go paragliding (there was paragliding festival on the mt. for Easter weekend), none of us brought enough money, so we went back the next day, and paraglided. It was actually not scary like I thought it would be, it was really beautiful and peaceful. Also, the tro tro, which I just learned is also called a trosky--- I assume whoever came up with that one is a Trotskyist, on the way up to Nkawkaw (pronounced Nkoko, the main town on the mt.), featured a mint oil traveling salesman who asserted, for no less than an hour and a half, that this mint oil would solve all our various woes and ailments, all for 50 pesewas (equivalent to 50 cents).

Food: So I realized that I haven't really mentioned what I've been eating.
waakye: beans and rice cooked together
red red: beans in red sauce
plaintains: usually fried, sometimes roasted, also made into chips
rice: fried, white, or jollof (made with red pepper sauce) --- rice is everywhere
kelewele: spicy, gingery fried plaintains -- so good
lots of fruit: oranges, apples, bananas, mangoes, pineapple
egg sandwichs: I have no idea why these are everywhere. Called simply "egg and bread".
and I recently started cooking for myself, which has been great because now I actually eat vegetables.

Week of March 24th-28th
I got a little homesick, hung out with other CIEE-ers and the Nigerian kids in Pentagon, my dorm (who are awesome) and met some sociology/anthropology majors from Burkina Faso who were at the U of Ghana playing some West African games, which brought students from Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, other schools in Ghana, etc.

Volta Region trip
This is one of the weekend trips organized by CIEE, we went to a waterfall (called Wli) and a monkey sactuary, then we just hung around the ridiculously nice hotel and swam in the pool and took my first hot shower since being here. I kind of wanted to do more, but the waterfall was really cool and the drive up was super pretty.

The week of 31st-4th:
My roommate, Ohomi's birthday dinner, the start of the rainy season, and the last week of my twi class, more hanging out with my Pentagon crew.

More Accra exploration: James Town and Osu

So with an absence of weekend travel plans, I decided to explore some areas of Accra that I had been meaning to. The first was James Town, which is a poor but historical beach town a little SW of the city center. There's a lighthouse, James Fort (currently being used as a prison and so not accessible to the public), and Ussher Fort in the way of historical things to see. I'll put the pictures up from that stuff soon hopefully. There was also a Ghanaian version of the Special Olympics going on so I hung out and watched football and table tennis. Then I went to Osu, which is an area that is usually visited by oburonis (myself included up to this point) by night, for mostly clubs or restaurants. It's cool by day, there's bookstores, an actual neighborhood, and a vegetarian supermarket.

Finally started internship!

I know I mentioned getting an internship probably a month ago, but it just started this Monday. It's at a place called the Ark Foundation and it's this NGO concerned with feminism, the empowerment of women and children, domestic violence, etc. Here's the website: http://www.arkfoundationgh.org/ So far I've done some data entry, some reading, and attended some meetings--- it's been pretty low key. But I may get to do some trainings, maybe in facilitation or campaign strategy, and some research. They have a battered women's and children's shelter in the Eastern Region, so it'd be cool to volunteer there when/if I'm able to go (the location is secret to protect the people at the shelter, so I may not be allowed to go). I'm still not sure exactly what I want to work on. I lost my wallet on the way to work on Wednesday, which sucked, but other than that everything's been great. My coworkers are nice and I just borrowed "Feminism is for Everybody" by bell hooks from their library.