Day 67

I walked up the hill to the clinic in a great mood because I had a lot planned for today. I stopped by the seamstress’ shop to drop off some fabric to make into a skirt but she wasn’t there so I would have to come by after work. I started at the O.P.D. for about an hour helping out taking vitals. Whenever I come to the O.P.D. the other nurses like to sit back and allow me to do all of the vitals. Today there was a constant flow of patients which is expected on Thursdays; Market day. Once there was a small break of patients I went to the dispensary. Edmund, Gideon, Gina, and Elvis were all working. It was a little crowded in the dispensary so I was about to leave until the Captain came in and told them to put me to work and not let me waste away. I talked to the captain for a few minutes about Esther and her family. I started to help out with the dispensary but with so many people already I felt like more of a nuisance than help. I was about to close until Rita walked in. I wanted to ask her when she was going to Kumasi so I could go with her soon and she told me she was going tonight. I figured I didn’t have much to do so I told her I could go with her tonight if she wanted. She got so excited and said she would pick me around 7. I had to leave right at 2 because I made an appointment with Serwaa to interview her. Once I got there I asked her where she wanted to have our interview. She said it was fine to do it right where we were… right in the middle of the street. So I pulled out my computer, had her consent to the interview, opened up garage band and started recording. She was very shy about answering the questions at first but she began to loosen up as the interview continued. My computer caused quite the scene because before I knew it there were at least 40 little pairs of eyes staring at Serwaa and me. There were horns honking, roosters crowing, goats bleating, and kids screaming so I hope it picked up on every word she said. Once the interview was over I left to meet my seamstress friend Elizabeth. She quickly took my measurements and told me to pick up my skirt in a couple days. I went into the market afterwards to pick up some groundnut paste, bread, rice, and green pepper. This was the first time I had gone to the market alone. It was nice to not have to worry about someone else’s schedule and greet whomever I wanted for however long I wanted. I ran into the lady I buy bread from who calls me Obama Biscuit Girl. As embarrassing as that nickname is it’s very accurate. Cassie and I buy a pack of Obama Biscuit Crackers from her every 5 or 6 days. They taste just like graham crackers and once you top them off with nutella they taste like E.L.Fudge cookies. As I was walking back to the house I ran into Kofi and Kobi. They came over to play for a little bit. I watched them do cartwheels and dance around for half an hour of so before Cassie came home. I had to do notes and get things done before I left for Rita’s so I sent them home and started to write my notes. I didn’t get too many notes before we started cooking dinner. We made our famous groundnut trying to add as much water as possible to stretch it as far as it would go. While we were eating Rita called me and said she would be leaving soon to pick me up. I packed in literally 2 minutes and finished my dinner. Rita picked me up in her car and we left for Kumasi. She had a friend in the car that was pretty friendly. We talked about Ghana and Rita told him I was going to be a Physician Assistant, which naturally led him into him giving me symptoms of his latest health issue. There was a lot of traffic so we didn’t get into Kumasi until around 8:30. We dropped off her friend and drove to her mansion of a house. Their housemaid opened the gate and revealed a big beautiful two story with a fleet of cars lining the driveway. Rita and her family live on the second floor. Rita’s sister, who goes by Sister, met us in the driveway and grabbed all of Rita’s bags. I was instantly escorted to the living room where E News was on. I haven’t watched any American TV in the last 10 weeks so it was pretty exciting to see what was going on. I don’t like celebrity news but that is the closest I have felt to being in America I have ever felt since being here. Their housemaid Akwia came in with a bottle of Fanta and told me dinner was almost ready. I told her I had already eaten but that didn’t matter to them, they still fed me an absolute feast. They set a huge plate of rice, noodles, and sausage topped off with spicy red sauce. I only ate about ½ of the food because I was still full from my first dinner. After dinner we went back into the living room and watched Big Brother Africa. It’s a group of Africans living in house with cameras on them constantly. Unlike our reality TV shows, this one is on 24/7 with one channel for the boys and another showing the girls room. We watched the boys sit in the hottub for an hour talking in hushed tones and the girls were falling asleep in their room. We were all pretty bored of the show so once Rita’s mom came into the room she asked to change it to the Africa Movie Network. Sister hates that show but Ghanaian children are told to obey their parents their whole life in everything so she changed the channel with out any groaning. I bet every parent wishes their kids were that obedient even at 23 like Sister. I sat and talked to Sister about her life in Accra, news from Twitter, and looked at all 1650 of her photos on her phone. I didn’t even mind looking at the seemingly endless amount of pictures on her phone. I felt like I was chatting with a girlfriend in America. She was so friendly and knew a lot of phrases and slang that goes over the head of most people here. I went to bed in Rita’s bed where she was already asleep. Sister put a mattress in the room so we could have a sleep over. I read a few chapters of scriptures before falling asleep.

XOXO