Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Ghana Part 1

   The first few days I told myself it was extended extreme summer camp. After my first night in Ghana and driving through the crazy and crowded streets to stay at the volunteer house it shook me up a little bit. I had 28 hours of traveling down and was on a completely different continent than everyone I know, with no one that I knew. But I had made some pretty cool friends and had a good time at orientation and such the next morning and next thing I knew I was put into the silver program of IVHQ working in Adom Nana at the West African Children Foundation here. It's dusty, not too pretty when you are looking just up the road. But in the distance are mountains and the beach is just 40 minutes away. You don't really go to Ghana for the neat Safari or the beautiful rainforest. You go to Ghana for the people - and man, the people are amazing. Everyone is beyond friendly and so willing to help you out.
    After the second day of getting into the routine, it's not summer camp. It's a life changing experience where time means nothing and what you have is great, but who you are is better. It's knowing the God gave you everything and loves you. It's giving all your love to these sweet children who are begging for just a bit of it.
     I guess most of you wonder what it's like here. Well it's not glamorous! I have a layer of sweat and dirt that is stained on me to look like a tan, despite the fact that we have showers here. Don't worry, I shower. But the water doesn't work half the time so we use buckets for showering instead. And we have a toilet! Awesome! And electricity! But sometimes it just randomly goes out. Our orphanage has 40-50 beautiful kids! A regular day will go like this:
  • Around 5:30 some of us will go bathe and feed the kids before school
  • We come home for breakfast of toast, eggs, or a combo of both!
  • Some volunteers go back to the school to teach, while others get chores done around the volunteer house or go into the market place. We read and relax and nap (it's time to gear up energy cause the kids suck it out of you!)
  • Around 11:30 we go back to the school to help get ready for lunch. Despite only 50 kids being at the orphanage, 200 come for school. Lunch is crazy and hectic and you better hope it's not something that requires the use of spoons (they only have about 40 ish spoons to go around). We need at least 7 volunteers to make lunch time run smoothly.
  • Then we come home and eat our lunch. It's a lot of carbs, so we will get ramen-type spiced up noodles, chicken and rice, or noodles in general with lots of fruit. It's pretty delicious most of the time. 
  • After lunch we have about an hour and a half before their school gets out so we talk and play games or read books and journal. 
  • We go back to the orphanage after their school and play with the kids for the next 3 hours before dinner. And those three hours are amazing, exhausting, and happy!
  • Then we come back for dinner and then hang out the rest of the night with our host family! Pretty great!

     So it looks like we have lots of down time, and I guess we do, but I've been pretty busy going to the grocery store(when you need a snickers, you need a snickers) and getting fabric, visiting the tailor, going into Accra or Kasoa, etc. It's so amazing here though. The kids are fantastic. They need so much love that you have to be willing to give your all to them the three hours you are with them in the afternoon. It's amazing and beautiful. Today it hit me though how hard it is for these kids to accomplish their dreams and feel the love and belonging we all need. I wish I could give them more than what I can and have to offer, but it's just not possible. It hurts, but it's such a blessing to be able to be with them for this short amount of time anyways!
     It's getting late here and I have to be up at 5 to bathe the kids, goodnight blogging world!

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