The End

I'm home!  Erin, Hannah, and I arrived in JFK at 4 AM Saturday morning, and I was on a plane to Pittsburgh by 8:15, where my parents were waiting for me (with a bouquet of yellow roses-so sweet!).  As I froze in the 50ish degree weather, my breath caught in my throat as we emerged from the Fort Pitt tunnels and the entire city came into view.  I've been enjoying everything about being home: sleeping, cooking, taking hot showers, Christmas decorating, catching up on Real Housewives and Happy Endings, and just enjoying being around my family and friends again.  The final blog post below was written last week before I left Dodowa for our academic blog site, for which we have to write a post every week we are abroad, bringing the total to 14 posts.  I meant to post it on this site too, but as you can imagine, the general excitement and business of traveling home has preempted that until this point.  It's been a pleasure getting to share this experience with everyone who has been reading, and I truly appreciate all of the love and support that has been sent my way since August.

All semester, I’ve been looking forward to writing this, the fourteenth blog post.  Not only would it mean that I’ve fulfilled the blog requirement and would shortly be heading home, but it would also mean that I’d be done in a more general sense-I’d be able to offer insight and perspective on my time here as a whole, and would be able to sum up this experience with my final thoughts for the rest of the I-Health community.  Well, the moment has arrived; I’m writing that magical fourteenth post, and words are failing me.  Every description, every story, every picture seems painfully inadequate to convey the rich experience that this semester has been.  I can’t decide how to feel, let alone what to write. 

I thought that I would be overwhelmingly excited at this point, counting down the hours until I board the flight back to New York.  I thought that after 15 weeks of bucket showers, running water that has a 50% success rate of being on, and electricity that goes off for 12 hours at a time, I’d be practically running into the airport on Friday night, not looking back at the hardships or challenges I was leaving behind.  Rest assured, I am not so enamored with bucket showers that I will go home and forego the nice shower with hot, high-pressure water that is waiting for me.  However, getting back to the comforts and conveniences of home is the last thing on my mind.  What’s on my mind is that I am not completely ready to leave, to say goodbye, and to end the experience that has changed me in so many ways.  It’s as if a slow-motion video of our time here is playing in my head: the sound of games being played on the dark patio outside Auntie Esther’s house, the faces of friends laughing during Thanksgiving dinner, the calls of “blafono!” and “obruni!” that echo across the road as we walk by, the million tro-tro rides we have taken on that long road into Madina, the yards and yards of fabric bought for African dresses and skirts, the sight of five kids running to greet us at the road when we arrive for dinner, the look of pride and satisfaction upon Dr. Gyapong and Sheila’s faces after we successfully presented our research projects, the spicy, delicious taste of Irene’s okra stew with banku, the smile on Lovelyn’s face when we visited her at school, the cry of sheer terror on a baby’s face when we weigh him on an outreach visit, the hours of conversations had in the evenings with Oti, the walk along the long red dirt road up the hill to the research center, the look of delight on Charity’s face when we finish all of our food, and the hugs from Ema and Elvis that never fail to make me smile.  I’m going to miss it all.      

I can only hope that the hundreds of pictures, videos, and blog posts will help keep those memories as fresh as they are now, but I know that nothing will be able to concretely sum up this experience fully.  I can’t remember the person I was when I landed in Accra.  I know that I was nervous, excited, anxious, and eager for the experience to begin.  I can’t remember what my expectations were, because the reality of my life here has completely erased them and surpassed them.  I knew that I would eat dinner with a family every night.  I didn’t know that I would leave feeling like a member of their family.  I knew I would come with two other girls from the department.  I didn’t know that I would leave with two lifelong friends.  I knew that I would go to work at the research center every day and conduct a research project.  I didn’t know that I would leave with a project that I am immensely proud of and excited about, as well as countless new friends and colleagues that I will surely stay in touch with.  I knew it would be a challenge living here, both emotionally and practically.  I didn’t know that the best parts of living here would outnumber the worst parts by a million to one. 

So,

To Dr. Gyapong, Sheila, and Irene,

To Millicent, Comfort, and Henry,

To Favor, Derek, Gina, JoJo, Bernhard, Kwaku, and Kojo,

To Gifty, Mary, Solo, Gloria, BD, EL, Dr. Adjei, Dr. Gyakobo, Christian, SR, Ayisha, Jonas, Jerry, and Ema,

To Oti,

To Charity, Auntie Esther, Valentina, Lovelyn, Ema, and Elvis,

Thank you.

Group picture on our last day

Kojo! My favorite little guy to have on my lap

"I love youuuuu snake!"

Being extra conspicuous on the streets of Dodowa on our last day

Erin and I with Elvis and Kojo

Dinner with Sheila and Irene!

Dinner with Dr. Gyapong and Oti before going to the airport

Sitting with Elvis and our Dodowa mom, Charity 

Kojo, Najulee, and Elvis getting a lift

Andrews, Elvis, Lovelyn, Kojo, Ema, and Bernhard

DHRC staff goodbye

Thanksgiving with the kids-note Elvis passed out on the floor

Gloria, one of our first DHRC friends!

Millicent, our seamstress, wearing the shirt we got her from Barcelona!

Gifty and Mary

+12 puppies, -1 chicken

I wrote this post on Friday, but waited to post it until I had good enough internet at our hotel in Kumasi to be able to post the accompanying pictures!  Mammy, I know you've been eagerly awaiting these pictures-as promised, I didn't post any super gross ones.

Not to go for the clichéd, Lion King African stereotype, but we had kind of a “circle of life” experience here in Dodowa yesterday-witnessing, and having a hand in, both birth and death. Our neighbor, Henry, breeds dogs, and one of them gave birth to a litter of 12 puppies! As we went about our daily business, we stopped by Henry’s porch to keep a tally of the ever-growing number of puppies, until late last night it was determined that 12 was the maximum. We also had our Thanksgiving meal, round II, with Charity’s family. A little backstory: every year, when Thanksgiving comes around, the girls here in Dodowa kill a chicken to make for the dinner and have the family over to eat. We had research center friends and our neighbor over for dinner last week on actual Thanksgiving, but planned a second dinner for this Thursday. So, all semester we’ve been hearing about this mysterious chicken-killing, and finally this week it came to the forefront. Charity brought it up at dinner on Monday, and asked which one of us would cut the neck. She first pointed at Hannah, whose face must have registered some amount of hesitation, because the next thing I knew she looked at me and said “Ally, you will do it, you want to be a doctor.” Well, she had me there. On Wednesday, we were leaving dinner when the issue of actually procuring said chicken was raised-we see chickens every day, everywhere, but aren’t clear on how one actually buys a chicken to kill to eat. Can you just grab one off the road if it walks by you? How do you know which chicken belongs to which person or household? Such are the enigmas we face as obrunis in Dodowa. Thankfully, Vale offered to buy the chicken for us during the day on Thursday, and sure enough, when we showed up for the execution after work yesterday, a giant white rooster was strutting around their patio. Hello, new friend. While I wasn’t super excited to be getting chummy with a bird that I would be eating in a few short hours, I was also eager to see how this process was done, and no way was I about to chicken out (pun intended) of a certainly unique opportunity. Ema had done his best to describe to us how to kill it the night before, as we perused pictures of girls in previous years doing the deed. However, since Ema’s main piece of advice was to spin the chicken around in circles quickly to make it “sleep”, we weren’t super confident in his guidance. Luckily, Vale proved extremely helpful. She grabbed the chicken by the wings and motioned for me to come over and hold it. So I spent the next twenty minutes holding the chicken in one hand and sneaking up on Elvis to scare him with it. Then came the moment of truth. I followed Vale out into the yard, where she dug a hole about five inches deep “to catch the blood”. I then proceeded to put the chicken on the ground, put one foot on its legs, the other on its wings, and grab its head to expose the neck. The surgery began-I sawed away at its neck, and soon deep red blood spurted out into our blood-catching hole. Vale had to help a little bit, as the neck proved to be quite tough, but soon the chicken stopped struggling and we brought our dinner back to the patio to clean and cut. 

Oddly enough, I was very proud of my chicken-killing ability, as I never thought I’d ever be able to do that, or ever even want to do that. Literally, I never again want to kill an animal that will become my dinner. However, I was proud to now be added to the succession of Dodowa girls who have killed the chicken for Thanksgiving. It’s clearly become a tradition and rite of passage, and Charity’s look of pride when we did it and cooked them a large dinner later that night said it all. As chaos reigned in our living room last night-kids hunting mangoes from the trees outside, drawing pictures for us, playing with the puppies, spilling Fanta, flatly refusing to eat the tomato sauce on top of their pasta, and finally passing out right on the floor from all the excitement, I thought of the twelve people we spent our Thanksgivings with this week and last. Research center friends, neighbors, families, roommates, and kids-twelve people that have welcomed us into their homes, helped and guided us as friends, and embraced us as their own daughters and sisters. We are unbelievably blessed in our lives here, and it took killing a chicken to remind me of that.

Food For Thought

One of the things I was most uncertain about when coming to Ghana this semester was the food.  What would it taste like?  How spicy would it be?  Would I like it at all?  My friends and family would agree that I am not the most adventurous person when it comes to eating new things.  At least, that’s what I used to be like.  Now, here I am, three weeks away from leaving and deep in data analysis centered almost completely around food; food I wasn’t even sure I’d like.  We’re lucky to be able to have good, authentically Ghanaian meals every night of the week, instead of having them be a once-in-a-while treat.  When Charity turned to me one night earlier this week and asked what my favorite meal was, I was stumped.  In the rice category, there’s the always-reliable steamed rice with egg stew (tomato-based stew with vegetables and egg in it), or the increasingly spicy jollof rice with chicken that is nearly impossible to finish because it is so filling and often leaves me thinking a fire has started in my mouth.  Boiled yams were frequently present for the first few months here-heaping egg stew on top of the dry, starchy root pieces makes for a very heavy but satisfying meal.  The one meal we are actually allowed to “help” cook is fried yams, as we take turns sitting by the pot of oil outside and stir the yams.  Besides yams, plantains have also showed up in our dinners more often in recent weeks-we can tell that they have come into season more than they were initially.  Basic boiled plantains offer a sweeter alternative to yams as a partner to egg stew, and fried plantains for kele wele or red-red are delicious!  Kele wele is plantains with groundnuts (peanuts) and red-red is plantains with beans.  We also took red-red with gari yesterday, which is powdered cassava.  Cassava is very similar to yams, and tastes very much like a potato.  Gari can be mixed with a variety of foods-many of the kindergarten students participating in my study eat it mixed with sugar and water.  Then there’s kenke, banku, and fufu.  I can only imagine how much kenke Charity sells at her food stand at the hospital, because every night she sits with her daughter Vale and a variety of other women around huge bowls of kenke dough, wrapping individual portions in corn husks.  This is another task we are invited to participate in from time to time, but the sheer volume of work to be done every night still stretches over many hours, and even our clumsy help does contribute to finishing.  Kenke is fermented corn dough, and is probably the food item that has been the hardest for me to become acclimated to-the rough, gritty texture and sour taste may have something to do with that-but even kenke is growing on me.  Banku is another one that didn’t appeal to me the first time around, but now is one of my favorite meals.  Banku is corn and cassava dough mixed together into a smooth consistency and eaten with okra stew.  Okra stew is very slimy, and you eat this whole combination with your hands, grabbing off a piece of the banku and scooping the soup up with it into your mouth before the whole thing falls back into the bowl.  It’s also not chewed, just swallowed whole.  Lastly, there’s fufu, which is plantain and cassava pounded together to form a sticky doughy ball that is eaten like banku, but usually with a spicy tomato soup, not okra stew.  We have taken our turns pounding fufu, but it is really difficult and requires a lot of muscle!  I’m much better at eating it-it is so delicious!  I wish we could have it more often, but fufu is usually only eaten for lunch, not dinner, because it is so heavy.  I find this to be incredibly ironic, since all of the foods we eat are very heavy, but for some reason a distinction is made about fufu and red-red (because it has beans in it); they shouldn’t be taken for dinner. 

The fact that these foods are part of my everyday life here in Dodowa lends a valuable context to my research.  Since I’m familiar with and regularly eat many of the same foods that the study subjects discuss, I can understand what people are saying on a much deeper level.  Whether I observed students coming into their classroom with lunches of rice and beans, or heard from a mother how she knows she needs to provide more fruits and vegetables instead of solely yams and banku, I could relate what they said to what I knew about the food too.  When school cooks and food sellers described their 3 AM wake-up to start preparing all of the food they serve, I know I could picture all of the work that goes into it accurately after seeing Charity and Vale labor with kenke, banku, and fufu every night.  I’m lucky enough to be able to buy apples and oranges from local street sellers, but as nearly every parent cited in their interview, the 1 cedi (50 cent) cost of an apple or 20 peswa (10 cent) cost of an orange is too expensive to be able to regularly provide, especially when there are 3 or more children in the family.  The stories that can be told through qualitative research are a large part of why I have loved doing this kind of research so much, and being able to put these stories into context with even more background knowledge and mental images and experiences of my own is something I value greatly.    

Halloween Scares and Surprises

Many exciting events happened this past week.  Of course, Wednesday was Halloween, so of course we pulled off a little celebration with masks and candy, courtesy of Hannah's mom, who is visiting this week.  More importantly, it's also now November, so I can listen to Christmas music without being judged.  So although lyrics like "Jack Frost nipping at your nose" don't exactly go with the blistering heat we've been having, I'm having no trouble getting into the spirit as usual.  And to answer the question I know all three of my sisters are asking, yes, I am listening to "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and fully appreciating the irony that I'm in Africa where there won't be snow this Christmastime.  Ok, Christmas tangent over.

As I mentioned, Hannah's mom is visiting us for the week, and has gotten the chance to see what our day-to-day lives are.  Charity has been spoiling us with our favorite foods for dinner all week because of this (plantains, fried yams, fufu, banku, okra), and Hannah's mom herself has been spoiling us with delicious lunches and special treats brought from home (Halloween candy in all its glory: Snickers, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, Butterfinger, and REESE'S-oh mon dieu).  It works out perfectly because Erin and I are doing our data collection this week, so Hannah has free time to spend with her mom while we've been out in the field.  Hannah will do her data collection next week, once we are done, since she needs to use my translator and Erin's driver for her work.  So I've been doing a lot of running around, since I'm collecting data both at the local school and at students' homes.  I finished all of the interviews yesterday for my qualitative data collection, and will finish translating the last of them today when SR, my translator, arrives in the office.  The last five weeks here will then be filled with analyzing data and developing my thesis paper.  I can't believe how fast the time has flown! Here are some pictures of kids eating waatse (rice and beans) and fish stew at school for lunch, as well as a couple of our recent dinners this week: 

Jollof Rice with chicken

Fufu, yummm

I also mentioned Halloween.  We had masks and candy to take to the family on Wednesday night, and weren't sure how the "scary" masks would go over.  Elvis started sobbing when he saw Hannah wearing the Frankenstein mask, but Ema and the rest of the family loved them.  They took great pleasure in scaring Elvis with them-even Charity donned one and chased Elvis out into the yard:

Charity chasing Elvis with the mask

Notice the red speck that is Elvis all the way across the yard, where he stood sobbing for half an hour

Also, we had a Halloween surprise as well-Lovelyn came home from school on break!  We were so glad to have our "little sister" home for a few days, and she picked right up where she left off, admonishing us for not finishing food and telling Elvis the most outrageous lies to keep him in line.  I know it probably sounds like the entire family is really mean to Elvis, who is only three, but he is a handful and very stubborn.  He also just loves any kind of attention on him, so even when his mother is scaring him with a candy snake or Lovelyn is telling him that a man with a cutlass will come and take him away at night if he's bad, he is simultaneously terrified and gleeful at being the center of attention.  He marches around like a little man and bosses everyone around, so when they get the chance to knock him down a peg or two, they seize the opportunity.

Attitude, as usual

Lovelyn back home with her nephews!

I don't even know with this kid

Unintentional Mountain Climbing

Remember the description of our harrowing journey up and down from Wli Falls?  That four hour long hike that included slips, falls, scrapes, bruises, blood, sweat, and tears?  Well, we did it again!  And not only did we do it again, we made that crazy experience from last month pale in comparison to our most recent one.  This time, our guide, Sebastian, suggested an alternative route back down from the upper falls.  He said it would "take us through the mountains", and he sure wasn't kidding.  After a similar hike up to the falls as last time, we started our journey back, and soon came to the point that we veered off of the original path.  The original path, as I described last time, is treacherous, slippery, steep, and arguably completely unsafe to be hiking on without considerable hiking experience and/or medical emergency services nearby.  Well, that path looked positively pristine in comparison to our new "path".  The new one wasn't a path.  It was a vertical climb.  The kind that you would do with harnesses and ropes and real mountain climbing equipment.  Ever game for a new adventure, especially since this was our second time at Wli (we came back because Hannah's mother is visiting for the week), we followed Sebastian up and up and up, and soon emerged into tall grasses at the top.  We were standing at the top of the mountain, looking DOWN on the falls.  We could see clear over the top of them into Togo, while last time we had strained our necks looking up to the top of the falls saying that Togo was on the other side.  Talk about a whole new perspective!  The picture below gives a great reference as to where we were last time (circled on the left) and where we were this time (circled on the right)

Here's our view from the top:

As usual, we returned from the hike looking pretty beat-up, but it was an amazing experience!  More pictures to come, including those of us riding on the back of "motos" to the monkey sanctuary on Saturday.  There's always a new adventure waiting to happen here!

Dwindling Time

A nearly sleepless night on an airplane had me feeling pretty groggy as we rolled out of the Accra airport at 6:30 AM this past Monday.  We had just returned from our fall break in Barcelona, and though I was already wishing for a scoop of gelato to stave off the African heat, I also had a feeling of tranquility.  “I’m home.”  It’s the same feeling I get every time I catch my first glimpse of the Healy clock tower as I drive south on the George Washington Parkway every fall to move back to campus.  We turned the corner to the waiting area in the airport, where, two months ago, we found Calvin and Emmanuel waiting to take us to Dodowa.  We proudly shook our heads when one person after the other asked if we were coming to Ghana for the first time-“No, we’re coming back.”  We got the familiar chuckle from the cab driver when I demanded a lower price than the one he gave-for some reason they always find it amusing when I firmly bargain with them, since they never expect us to know if we are getting ripped off by a high price!  The rising sun pored through our cab windows as we sleepily rolled through our now-familiar sites, which looked so foreign the first time we arrived-the Accra mall, Legon, Medina, and Adenta.  The confusing maze of roads that change from two-way to one-way and from dirt to concrete in an instant were clogged with tro-tros that were themselves clogged with morning commuters, and the cries of “pure water!”, “plantain chips!”, and, our favorite, “MTN!!!” echoed through the dusty air.  As Hannah texted Oti (our roommate), Henry (our neighbor), and Dr. Gyapong that we were back, I thought about how lucky we are to have people waiting for us here and anticipating our safe return.  Charity even wore the “Georgetown Mom” shirt from Gaelen and Courtney for dinner that night, and our return was celebrated with one of our favorite dinners, fried yams and egg stew.  Tonight we were almost knocked over with the sheer force of the welcome that the other neighborhood kids gave us: Bernhard, Quaku, Kojo, and Prof all ran screaming to give us hugs when we arrived.  A game of soccer soon sprung up between the girls and the boys: Erin and I versus Ema, Bernhard, and Quaku.  We certainly held our own, but suffice to say that 7-9 year old energy lasts quite a bit longer than 21-year-old energy.  Skirts and sandals didn’t make for the best playing uniform, either, so I’m sure we looked pretty beat-up as we sat down for a dinner of jollof rice and chicken.   Finally, we also brought some goodies with us for an after-dinner treat: gummy snakes, worms, and bugs that we found in a market in Spain.  We had thought they would be a hit, especially with Elvis, since one of his favorite games is to hiss at you and slink his clasped hands into your face to be the “snake”.  Well, we were wrong.  All of the candy was treated with some confusion by everyone, but Ema and Vale and Charity eventually examined and ate the candy with interest.  Elvis tried one of the bugs, took a worm, decided it looked too much like a snake to eat, looked into the bag and saw the actual candy snake we had brought, and immediately ran away in fear.  We were unable to coax him into trying anymore candy, which his mother and grandmother found hilarious as they kept showing him the bag, and promised to bring tamer gummy animals tomorrow: frogs and butterflies. 

These two days have reminded me of how lucky I am.  Maybe we lose electricity from day to day, maybe we have no water for a week, and maybe we still struggle to get any internet connection on our MTN!!! modems, but we have something so much more important, something that can’t be guaranteed in any abroad experience-a whole new family.  I have at least ten new little brothers and sisters, at least five new older brothers and sisters, and three new moms.  Our names will soon be added to the litany of past visitors: Michael, Sonnet, Catherine, Gaelen, Courtney, Isabelle, Laurel, Szena,…and now Ally, Erin, and Hannah.  We’ve been here for two months exactly-closer now to the end than the beginning.  While exciting prospects lie ahead-data collection, visiting parents, and more weekend trips-I don’t want the time to fly by too fast.  Before I know it, I’ll be saying goodbye to my family and a life I have come to love, despite all of its challenges and frustrations.  Our week away reminded me of how long ago it was that we arrived, and how far we’ve come since then!  It also gave me a renewed sense of awareness that the next time we leave, it will be for good.