Day 51

Today was such a great day despite so many unforeseen setbacks. I woke up early to do my washing and thankfully it didn’t take very long. It has rained every single afternoon for the past few days so my washing was a little overdue. I cleaned most everything I own (all 15 items) and hung them on the line to dry. I quickly got ready so we could leave for Agona. Here when I get ready quickly it literally takes me about 5 minutes to put clothes on, wash my face, and brush my teeth. We started to walk up to the taxi station and ran into Madam Esther’s youngest daughter Grace and walked up with her. On the way we saw the aftermath of a car accident. These water trucks about the size of a small semi carry hundreds of bags of water go through the town all day long. This one had run off the road over the gutter and into a building. There was water and pieces of the building everywhere. Thankfully no one was hurt. We drove to Agona for the Internet Café. I opened up my email and read another hilarious email from my mom. I was just about to finish posting my blog posts and the response to my mom’s email before the Internet cut out. The electricity wasn’t out but the network was. We prayed that it would come on soon and waited around just in case, but to no avail. It was around noon so we walked into the main market to get some fried rice. Our favorite lady who makes the best fried rice ever was back! We had her for the first couple of times and haven’t had her since. We are disappointed every single time we get it somewhere else. We walked back to Mama Doris’ family’s bar and got Alvaro Pineapple drinks with our fried rice. We waited around for King to text us about the Internet but it still wasn’t working so we did a bit of market shopping. At the market we spent about 2 minutes getting all the vegetables we needed as the stands were all right next to each other. Then we went fabric shopping. My favorite kind of shopping here. I got one yard of a fabric I’ve been eyeing for a while and another for a friend’s skirt. I bought them from the sweetest fabric lady that sells her fabric super cheap. Everytime we see her she wears the coolest hipster sweaters, yes sweaters even in the 100-degree heat. I’ll never understand why she does that. We needed to kill some more time so we went to get pictures for our Visa renewal. The pictures were HILARIOUS. They look like mug shots, actually worse than mug shots. King had just texted and said the Internet was back up again. We quickly walked back to the café but the Internet had just cut out again. We waited around some more and then the Internet came back for the next 2 hours very spotty. Audrey was on the Internet at the same time, which always makes my day that much better. I seriously think talking to her makes Tuesdays the best day ever. She helped me figure out where I’m going to live in the Fall! At this point I wasn’t able to do anything else on the Internet so I kept chatting with Audrey until the other girls were through. I don’t think I’ve ever had this many good days in such a short time. I got a fan-choco and got into a taxi home. The ride was going on smoothly until we saw a big crowd of people in the street. The taxi in front of us was stopped and the crowd wasn’t letting him get through. It looked like a riot and made me really nervous. They were hitting the car and harassing the driver in front of us. We asked one of the passengers what was going on and she told us that a taxi driver had died that morning in a head on collision. He was muslim so they were already going to bury the body. The group of people started to descend on the car and started harassing our driver. The majority of the crowd was very drunk and Ghanaians do not handle their liquor very well during funerals. Then they started yelling at him that he shouldn’t be out driving a taxi but he should be with the rest of them mourning the loss of their friend. They ripped off his side mirror and started opening the door on the other side of the car. Dorcus was the lady on the other side and she just said ‘hey’ and closed the door. I was freaking out that they would want to come to my side of the car and harass me so I held onto that door for dear life. Finally most of the funeral procession had passed so the driver peeled out of there. I guess he was distracted with everything around him because as we were driving we hit a goat head on. When a family of goats is crossing, drivers will usually slow down a bit and honk but we hit this one head one and it got dragged under the car for a while. We felt it under our feet bump and then disappear behind us. Both Cassie and I felt so sick about it, we were quiet for the rest of the time. Our taxi ride from hell was over about 10 minutes later. I got home and wasn’t all that hungry so I got my workout on to do some exercising. After my shower I warmed up some of the groundnut rice from last night for dinner and drank chocolate milk. I was very satisfied with the way the day turned out today despite all the other crazy events. Something about family really does make my days so much better. I know there is no way I would be able to stand this time on earth without my family. Both of my parents have made sacrifices I won’t know about until I am a parent one day but as I realize some of them I am in awe of both of them. I swear they are superheroes or something. I don’t know how they raised 4 kids as strong members of the church and all very independent individuals. I can’t thank them enough for the love and support they gave me even when I didn’t realize how much they were supporting me.

XOXO

Ama