Akwaaba!  Hope all is well with everyone!  This has been a particularly eventful week here in Ghana.  Easter is the biggest holiday in Ghana, and lasted Thursday through Monday, with big events every day.  It was a lot of fun, and quite interesting, to be sure.  Wednesday of this week also marked my official half way point of the trip.  Wild to think about, really.  We're going on a week long trip, leaving tomorrow (sat) at 4 am... should be quite an adventure!  Then by the time we get back it'll be just over six weeks til I leave.  Crazy.  I know it'll fly by, and in no time I'll be at the airport!  Well, once again, all I've got is a bunch of pics, and some explanations.... if I can explain some of them at all!  

This is from the back porch at the music school, which is in the middle of town.  There was some sort of parade for something or another, which happens fairly regularly.  There seem to be an abundance of brass bands, though none of the players seem to be taking lessons with us.... (and it's rather evident at that!)   

This is a shot of Market Circle in Takoradi.  We sat for a while at a second floor restaurant, drank a Coke, and watched the world go by.   The market is huge, very busy, and full of anything you could imagine.  From tooth brushes to giant snails (which apparently they cook and eat).

This is how a lot of people make their living, selling things from baskets on their heads.  Hard work in the heat, and a lot of women do it with babies on their backs too!  You'd be surprised at how many "western" goods there are.  This lady has a lot of designer purses, though I could imagine many of them are imposters.  It's crazy to watch people balance so much stuff, and I can honestly say I have yet to see anyone drop anything!  Even children carry stuff like this very well.  Pretty awesome.

Produce section    :)

It's kind of hard to see, but the lady with the backpacks has a baby on her back too....

This is how everyone carries babies around here.  Pretty neat, leaves your hands free.  Older sisters carry babies too, and you never see them crying!  Must be hot all shmushed up on mom, but I guess they can't complain that they aren't being held!  

We see this girl often at the tro tro station to go home.  She sells candy from that strip she's holding.  A lot of products are packaged like that, designed to be carried and sold, so you can just tear off on package from the strip.

We went to Secundi, which is a sister city to Takoradi, on Good Friday.  Apparently they have one of the biggest Easter celebrations in Ghana.  This is their fish market.

The Secundi fish market from a distance.... you can't smell it from this far away!

Cute kids in Secundi... we played for a while waiting for the parade.

These guys had a parade of their own!

Tried to be his friend, but he just wasn't having it....

Statue of a cultural dancer in Secundi.  There is a little square around this, and most of the "happenings" were around this.

Good Friday Parade!

Jon, Katie and I grabbing a drink while we were waiting for the second part of the parade.  To the left is the ocean... quite lovely.  We even caught spray from the waves crashing on the rocks... we've got it so tough here....

Waiting for the parade to start... once kids see you have a camera, they all want their pictures taken, and then they all want to see.   :)

Brass band in the parade.

This is an effigy of Judas.  This, apparently, was the whole point of the parade.  They took him all around town, then hung him from a pole and stoned him. (Pics to follow)

This is another park area in Secundi.  The fish statue is in the middle of a roundabout and the parade circled around it.

This is the stoning of Judas!  Crazy... apparently his head is stuffed with cash, pinata style, and so people chuck rocks at him, hoping to knock him down so they can get the cash!

The stoning of Judas... every once in a while they called a truce, and everyone ran out to gather the stones from the ground.  Then it was back on again.  Must have lasted at least 30 minutes!

Our school is associated with an orphanage outside of town, and over the Easter break we took the kids to the beach.  The beach is only like a mile from their house as the crow flies but it's through a swamp, so we took a cab.  There were 20 people in this taxi (this really doesn't do it justice...) six adults and 14 children.  Ridiculous really, but hey, we got it done!

Kids at the beach playing football.

We had this little boat thing, which was a total blast!

More football.

Couldn't figure out how to turn this, sorry.  This is a 7 year old kid climbing a 50 ft palm tree to throw down coconuts! And, yes, that's a machete in his teeth!  We were totally freaked out, but apparently he does it all the time.  He just shimmied up, spent about 15 minutes throwing down coconuts, then slid down.  Crazy.

This is him sliding down.

This is us waiting and watching that guy climbing up.  The guy in the black is Peter, our guide.  The other boys are kids from the orphanage.

This is Katie and Abba from the orphanage.  She is about 6 years old and has some sort of cognitive disability.  She is non verbal, but very affectionate.  She wants to be held all of the time, and poor Katie's arms nearly dropped off by the end of the day!

For some unknown reason there's this giant cargo ship hanging out near the swim spot.  It looks rather decrepit, to say the least.  Kind of neat though!

This is the boys chopping up coconuts for everyone.  They are different from what we call coconuts at home, but I think they are essentially the same.  The hack off the top, cut a small hole and drink the water.  Then you chop it open and eat the meat.  Hard work, but worth it for a drink!  And, yes, once again that's a child with a machete, which does not seem to be such an ordeal here.....

This is another picture of market circle with a storm rolling in.  It's interesting to compare the "old" with the "new."  

Well, next week we'll be traveling from Takoradi, to Kumasi, to Tamale, to Mole National Park, back to Kumasi, Lake Bosumtwi, and then back home to Takoradi.  Should be quite the adventure, and I'll be sure to post a million pics and tell a million stories when I get back!  Sending my love!

Ecua

Akwaaba!  Posting more pics!  I got a lot of wonderful ones today, but I haven't been able to put them on my hard drive yet... next week!  Plus Easter is apparently the biggest holiday in Ghana, so I'll have lots of pics from that too.
As far as news goes, things are going along as usual here.  Last week we had a little excitement, though.  It was lights out, and a tenant living in one of the apartments downstairs knocked a candle over onto the mattress and it went up.  We heard shouting, and thought everyone was going to watch a fight or something outside, then we were told the house was on fire!  My first thought was to get my passport, but it wasn't bad.  We brought in buckets and put it out, and spent an hour or so helping them clean up the mess.  It really turned out pretty well, all things considered.  There is no such thing as 911 or a fire dept, and the homes are so close together it could have easily taken over the whole neighborhood in a heartbeat.
We are planning a trip up north for next weekend.  It'll take a week, and we'll be going north to visit Kumasi and Tamale (major cities) and go to Mole National Park for a mini safari, Lake Bosumtwi which was created by a meteor and sacred since there are no water sources or outlets, and a couple of waterfalls.  Should be really fun, and interesting, to say the least.  Traveling is very time consuming here, since the roads are quite poor in most places, so we'll spend a lot of time on tro tros (15 passenger vans which hold 17+ people!)  Should be quite the adventure to say the least!
Hope all is well with everyone, and please, if you have any questions or requests let  me know. I'm getting to the point where things are normal now, so I may not remember to take pictures or write about them!  :)

This is the private Anglican school right outside the music school.  We hear them yelling obruni at us everyday during their lunch break!

This is Abba, my favorite student.  She is 7 years old and learning violin.  We go to their house to teach her and her brother, Kwesi, twice a week.

This is our house.  We live on the second floor.  The porch faces front, and there is another porch that faces out back too.  The van in front belongs to the school but hasn't run in years.  It's going to be my job to find a new mini van when I get home to send one to Ghana.  Which reminds me... anyone have one for sale?  :)

Sledding in Ghana!  Yes, that's into the sewage river thing... luckily it's the dry season and not too messy!  These guys are out here every day doing this!  One day one of them even had a motorcycle helmet... smart!

This is the living room in our house.  Pretty western, eh?

This is the piano room at school, the main room really.  There is one other room with a dilapidated drumset, and two office rooms.  The place itself is pretty nice, but the building is a dump.  That's part of the problem in getting students... no one wants to come.  Our space was newly painted right before I came, so it's pretty snazzy.  We have a variety of instruments, (violins, keyboards, a few brass, guitars, bass, drums) but most people come to learn keyboard.  Most of them want to learn to play in their church bands.

This is some construction outside of the school.  Basically, the guys mix the concrete, and hand it up to the guy in a bowl, which he dumps into the mold for the support beams.  It's a little shoddy looking, but apparently the method works... I haven't seen a crumpled building yet!

This is the site for the new school.  Construction has come to a grinding halt, though.  There's no water to mix the concrete.  We are in the process of trying to raise money to dig a bore hole.  This was we can continue building, as well as have well water for the school's toilets/sinks/ etc.  It's going to cost around $6,000 for the system, so unfortunatly it'll be a while until construction can continue.  We've been going around to big companies in town seeking sponsorship, but no takers yet.  I suspect lots of people come to ask for money, and a music school would seem rather frivolous in comparison to an orphanage, or whatever.   Understandable, really.  In a country where many people don't have drinkable water, violin lessons are not a priority... still I hope it gets going soon!  The building will have a kindergarten and accommodations for the volunteers as well.  Plus it's right outside of the middle of town. 

An incoming storm at sunset... this was taken from the front porch.  It looked like a major storm on the way, but no rain came!  Apparently it's raining all over Ghana and excluding Takoradi!  But Jessie (house mom) says it always rains on Good Friday, so we'll have to see about that!  

This is the walk we take to school everyday.  

The walk we take above cuts through the grounds of a Methodist Elementary School.  These are their toilets... sand pits really.

We got invited to a very fancy dinner (still don't understand what it was about) that was incredibly Ghanaian. It took hours to start, and then hours to finish.  Katie was asked, as an honored guest (ie white) to pop the champagne!  

Have a happy Easter, and keep in touch!

Love, Ecua

Week 6/ Photos!

Awkwaaba!
So I've finally figured out how to do photos!  I'm officially 1/3 of the way through my 4 month stay here in Ghana as of Wednesday.  So I think that this post is going to be mainly explanations of photos!  Also, feel free to email me if you have any questions about Ghanaian life...  I'm starting to run out of things to talk about, since I'm getting used to things and (almost) forget what's novel!  :)

This is a view from the back of our house.  We live in Effia-Kuma, which is a neighborhood outside of Takoradi.  You can see next to the laundry line where the water pump is for most people.  We have running water in our house, but many people don't. The water from this pump is clean and drinkable.  In the mornings there are lots of people filling up buckets to bring home.  Those are banana and plantain trees.  We could reach off the back porch and pick bananas if we wanted to!  

This is the view from the front of the house.  The section of the street right next to us is where the little kids often gather to play.  To the left of this picture is a bigger area where the "big kids" and young men come to play football.  Almost everyone here has goats, sheep, cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, etc.  They all run around during the day, and at night they come home to their coops.  You wouldn't think a goat would be smart enough to run around town all day and then return home, but apparently they do.  Many of the animal have strings on their ankles to show what family they belong to.

This is the view from the school.  We are on the third floor of our building which is in the middle of Takoradi.    The streets are even crazier then they appear!  There are little to no traffic laws, as far as I can tell.  Except, if you honk first, you have the right of way!  Also, the streets are lined with shops and stalls selling everything you could possibly imagine.  Quite interesting!

This is the house directly across from us.  No one has washers and dryers, so everyone washes in buckets then hangs the clothes out to dry.  It's a lot harder than you'd think, especially since everything is SO DUSTY!  You scrub something, then it's dusty again just from hanging outside... alas. 

Kids playing outside the house.  I was trying to be sneaky photographing them, but this guy busted me!   

These girls live across the street.  The little one is my friend.  Every morning we'd wave and jump and do a variety of mirroring actions.  But, when ever I was near her, she'd burst into tears and run away.  Scary obruni!  Unfortunately, she was hit by a car and killed last week at the junction.  Terribly sad.

This is the bridge that we cross every day going to and from school.  It's sketchier then it looks!  All the sewage lines from the area drain into this creek thing... it's pretty disgusting.  Plus just to the right of the bridge is the local trash deposit.  The dumpster probably hasn't been emptied in years, so it just overflows, covering about half an acre in solid trash, which of course blows into this creek.  The solution?  Light a series of small fires in the trash to burn up what you can.  The smell? Exactly what you can imagine...

Wednesday March 6 was Ghana's Independence Day!  Pretty cool.  We came a little late to Jubilee Park where they had the parade.  Got there just in time for the eternal speech, though!  The schools are selected to choose a group of students to march, and there were soldiers from the army, air force, navy and police forces, too.  

Market lady carrying things on her head.  You wouldn't believe how skilled they are with this!  It's unbelievable how  much they can carry and still walk around!  This is how a lot of people make their living, selling oranges, pastries, etc from their head.  Hard work in the heat, that's for sure!

These guys were far more interested in the obrunis (and having their picture taken) than playing football!  They followed us home for a bit, until we got boring too!

These are some kids from a near by school.  We've been doing instrument demonstrations at schools in order to try and start after school music programs.  This school has open air classrooms, which shoddy roofs over them.  I can't imagine what they do in the rainy season!  It's amazing the things teachers can do with 40 kids in a class, little to no materials, and children who don't really speak English that well!

This is at Agyiba International School, one of the fancier private schools in town.  We go twice a week for an hour and teach lessons to kids.  It's pure chaos, really.  There are 12 kids, each learning a different instrument in the same room.  We're trying to figure out a better way of doing it, but that's where we're at now.  

This is us (me, John, and Katie) learning to some African dances!  A man named Edwin has a group of street kids and orphans and such and gathers them every weekday in this abandoned colonial outdoor cinema.  He teaches them traditional drumming and dance, and he's brilliant.  He's slightly out of his gourd, but it so much the "crazy artist" type... he reminds me a lot of Beethoven!  The kids are so talented.  The thing with African dance is there is no "vocabulary" like we know.  You learn a series of steps for each dance, and the lead drummer plays a call, and you change steps.  Each step has a different call, and each dance has different calls/steps.  It's a lot to learn, but these kids know tons of them!  It's amazing!

I've now figured out how to post pictures, so from now on I'll be posting like this!  This is way more fun to SEE Ghana then it is to hear about it!  More to come eventually!

Mi do paa!

(fante for I love you very much!)

Briana