Komenda

KOMENDA!
We spent the past week (and my Bday) in Komenda, a small village 40 minutes from Cape Coast. It was kind of a ridiculous week.

MY FAMILY
I stayed with a new family with two of my friends. The family comprised of a mother, a father, and about 20 other people who may or may not have actually lived in the house (family situations are very unclear here). There was a baby named Angel who is the CUTEST baby in the world. Unfortunately she was terrified of cameras and burst into tears when she saw one so I dont have a picture of her. Then there was another very cute baby but unfortunately he was terrified of white people and burst into tears when he saw me. Our house had a strong light on the porch and so every evening kids from the neighborhood gathered at our house to do their homework. After homework, we broke out some music and we had dance parties. My brothers really liked PSquare (a Nigerian rap artist), Destiny's Child, and The Beatles. One of my brothers, Ebo, recently learned the word 'fantabulous' and enjoyed integrating it into his fante.
My family owned multiple animals including chickens, roosters and Peace, the pig. Peace is 7 years old and is HUGE. Wednesday afternoon, four people lifted Peace by his hind legs and dragged him downtown to get preggers. My sister, Madua, said Peace will have 20 babies!

THE VILLAGERS
Since we were the only white people in town, we were the subjects of fascination for the school children. When they saw us they would start yelling and running to jump on us. I've never been more afraid of children. Once they attacked us, they began with the typical english questions that they learned in school:
"HI-OBRUNYI(white person)-HOW-ARE-YOU?
before you can answer they make sure to tell you how you are:
"I-AM-FINE-THANK-YOU"

I worked a lot on my fantse greetings but the villagers had a tendency to laugh whenever I spoke fantse...

Other villagers inculded donkeys and sheep which I think outnumbered the people.

MARRAIGE
I got my first marraige proposal! A 45 year old man said, 'good afternoon, what is your name? I am looking for someone to marry my son'
he then asked me if I go to church and when I replied no he said 'oh...nevermind.'
sighhhhh guess I'll just have to wait. he didnt offer me enough donkeys anyways. this girl is worth atleast 12.

THE TOWN:
The town was small and harbored a health clinic for the region, a couple schools, and a teacher training college. But being in the middle of nowhere/Ghana apparently has its advantages because Komenda has a cave that was used during WWII as a hiding place for Queen Elizabeth!
The town itself is on the ocean which was great except for the town's HUGE sanitation problem. Since there is no running water, citizens often do not have toilets in their homes. Public restrooms are disgusting and cost a small fee for each use. Therefore, most people either go in the gutters, on the streets, or (a favorite) on the beach. Thankfully our home had a non-flushing toilet and a section for bucket showers. In addition, there is a cultural trend to throw trash on the ground/burn it. This not only creates large amounts of air pollution, but also masses of trash around town. I had to climb what we called "Mt. Trashmore" to get to my teacher's house every day. There was a trashcan right next to our house but no one used it and so I spent a large portion of my week doing research on how the town handles trash and I might look into studying sanitation for my independent research project.
There wasn't much to do in the town after we finished our research. It's amazing the games you can come up with in extreme states of boredom. I'll teach everyone 'hocheckin' when I get home.

AIM
We met a couple people in Komenda who were part of an NGO. They were originally there to teach Komendans about computers, but their mission changed dramatically when they realized that computers were the least of their problems. AIM invited me to an HIV/AIDS education lecture by a visiting educator for kids ages 9-15 on Saturday. The talk was very interesting because it was blatanly abstinence-only education. The educator explained that if someone had to choose whether or not to have sex, the right choice was to abstain because if one did have sex they would get AIDS and never succeed in life. I enjoy being obnoxious, so I raised my hand and asked 'what if this person decides to have sex and uses a condom, is that a good choice?' He replied that one in a million condoms are defective and you should never take that risk.
I spoke with the NGO leaders afterward and they had big issues with his presentation so I felt better.

MY BIRTHDAY!
My friend Alanna also had her birthday in Komenda, so to celebrate, our group went to a local (cleaner) beach 'resort' on Thursday night and camped out. The evening was really fun and we bought some Star (Ghana's beer) and danced to cheesy african music coming from the bar and swam in the ocean. Also, our program director made us banana cake and it was awesome. I have lots of pictures dont' worry.

This one time, I realized that I am not as rustic as I thought I was. Sleeping on the beach is NO easy feat due to the following factors:
It was uncomfortable
it was cold
there were goats.
sand was actually rock at one point. this is a fact no one tells you until its too late.
the mosquitonet/tents we brought were too close to the beach and half our group got hit by a huge wave around 4am.
Since I was up all night, I noticed two sketchy men walking around the area with flashlights. I assured my friend Ariel that they were just patrolling and she said, "....yeah, I bet they're just here to protect the white people...."
that was a joke in case you didnt get it. if you had gotten it, you would have laughed.
To add insult of injury, they made us pay in the morning for camping out. Oh Ghana.


I'm stilling having a wonderful time and I want to thank everyone for their Birthday wishes be it through facebook or e-mail or cards. It's really hard to stay on the internet long enough to reply to everyone, but I am getting the messages so thank you!