Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Graduation & Goodbyes

Friday was graduation from UCC for my 2 sisters! The have their undergraduate degrees in geography and history & french. They both want to continue on with school to get their masters degrees, but want to attend university in the USA for it!

The graduation here is a lot more chaotic than it is back home, although I guess I should have expected that. The students are all seated and graduate in order by discipline, but once they have their degrees they just disperse. They don't go back to their seats or throw their hats at any point...

There were way to many people to see much of anything since I was in the standing room section. But here is some idea of the graduation proceedings:
And here are my sisters and mom, and friends after graduation:
My mom is on the far left in the purple and yellow kente.  My sisters are the ones standing in their robes!

It was also our last outreach with the youth today as well... I had to run over there from graduation. The majority of the youth are boarders and therefore will be leaving on monday for the rest of the school semester at their boarding schools. It was actually a really good program. One of the youth (Silvester) taught and Danielle and I merely augmented the information. He did an awesome job and all the other youth were incredibly supportive. There were of course the obligatory giggles at points, but he managed to cover puberty in both boys and girls and then also explain both male and female reproductive systems.
(Danielle and I provided the diagrams)

Image from: homebusinessandfamilylife.com

Image from: hayatcenter.com

Image from: faculty.southwest.tn.edu

The two of us also did a short section on sexual rights.We highlighted the claims made in international rights treaties:
The right to receive and impart information related to sexuality.
The right to consensual sexual relations.
The right to decide whether or not and when to have children.
The right to bodily integrity.
The right to choose your sexual partner(s).
The right to pursue a satisfying, safe and pleasurable sexual life.

In the point "The right to choose your sexual partner(s)" we highlighted the risks of multiple partners and also suggested that this included the right to homosexuality. This comment caused a strong response. It turns out that homosexuality is illegal in Ghana. (Or so they told us...) At that point I made a point of explain the great qualities of my homosexual friends and how they are exactly the same as everyone else. The youth were then shocked that I am friends with and willing hang out with "these people". Danielle and I suggested that even if they felt it was wrong, it still is not our role in life to force our opinions on people and dictate how they live their lives, and they seemed to accept that. This promptly lead into the question of how gays have sex. (There was an earlier long term discussion about how girls have 3 passages out of the body and which one the boys were suposed to enter. They had apparently never been shown a diagram before and had no concept of the size of the Urethra, Vagina, and Anus and their respective positioning...)

So it was explained that males can have anal and oral sex with one another and females can stimulate one another without penatration, or through use of sexual aids. (I am currently amused that i could explain this to 20 people without cracking a smile, but as i write it down, I am grinning from ear to ear...)

The whole discussion seemed to go well, although they still are all very oposed to homosexuality, but they were engaged and asked a lot of questions! They took one last group shot with us before we said goodbye:
The guy in the white shirt between Danielle and I is Silvester, the teacher for the day!

Monday, September 27, 2010

Cape Coast Castle


Sunday was spent at Cape Coast Castle. The big deal of the day is that Obama and Michelle visited here and took the tour. They even left a wreath in the men's dungeon leading to the door of no return and have a plaque on the wall in their honor:

With the political endorsement over, the castle was an interesting but unremarkable place to visit. While the holocaust museum in DC and the Hiroshima museum in Hiroshima are meant to tell the tale of the people and individuals in both facts and emotions, the Cape Coast Castle is very sterile. The museum tells of the history of the castle from a fort to a slaving castle and then presents information about the middle passage and slave auctions, using all the same pictures as in our elementary and high school text books. The end of the museum highlights the black diaspora and those who are major historical black figures. It never takes the time to tell the story of who was lost, where they came from and where they ended up. The museum and tour are very factual in the knowledge that is presented to everyone about the slave trade but neither express the statistics of how many passed through the castle, where they came from and were sent to and who tried to fight back. The book I read before leaving was more informative than the tour guide and museum, which i found questionable. I was expecting to feel a greater sense of understanding and rage toward the failures of the past, but the whole experience was very unremarkable and was not enough to evoke any new conclusions.

Regardless of my lack of response here are some pictures:



And here is a statistic that I felt should have been included:
An estimated 1,035,600 were taken from the Gold Coast (Ghana) from the years 1650-1900.

I would also recommend reading "The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade" by William St. Clair since it is what i read before coming and covered a lot of different aspects of the castle.

Brick Making

Proworld performs mini-projects that last for a day as a short term commitment to a community. This last Saturday was spent out in the middle of nowhere to make bricks for a school so that they could build a new classroom for their students.

To get there we all took a trotro which stopped to let us buy cement. We followed the main road back toward Accra till we were about 3 towns out from Cape Coast. We then made a left and traveled up a huge hill along a village in a valley on a really awful road. It was full of holes, filled with water and debris. Our driver simply took it as a challenge and roared along...

We made it in one piece and in good time, about 1 hour. Danielle and I were with Kofi and a team of 3 guys (the people who actually knew what they were doing).

The recipe for cement blocks is different here than from back home and a lot more manual labor is required. You mix 3 parts wet sand with 1 part cement. This is measured as three heaping wheelbarrows (with a flat tire) and one bag of cement. This is spread all over the floor and mixed with shovels. Danielle and I were good at filling the wheelbarrow but not as good at mixing uniformly.

The mixture is then shoveled into a pile and distributed into molds. The mold is a metal form with the bottom like a spring-form cake pan. It is filled with the mixture then tamped down and this is repeated until nothing more can fit. It is then carried to the cleared surface of semi-level floor and inverted. You have to pull the mold off in one smooth motion or the brick will break. We had 2 molds but only one was working properly so we had to take turns with it. The guys in charge filled while Danielle, me and Kofi turned out all the bricks (Kofi filled and mixed too!). All in all we made 75 bricks, which is awesome!



The down side is that by the time we were finished we were dehydrated, had blisters all over our hands, and our shoulders and lower back are going to be sore for a while. The up side is that the school can now build on its additional classroom, which is defiantly worth it! Especially since the rural areas receive a lot less attention, when they are the ones that need more of it.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Outreach in the schools and community

Pictures will be posted when possible!


Outreach to the communities and schools has been gaining steam recently. The youth have started to trust us and are much more open and also willing to share during our discussions. They were even so bold as to ask that we teach on reproductive/sexual health and human rights for our last talk this Friday. It will be sad to see them off, but most of the group are borders and therefore must go back to school.

Youth pic

The school outreach is something that Danielle and I have decided to format a little on our own. The current structure is based on going into the school teaching one day and then leaving. We felt that this excludes a large portion of the school since only so many classes can be combined. Additionally this leads to a large variety of topics that are taught to a variety of levels, leading to confusion in what to teach when the next group of volunteers arrive.

DanielleTeaching

Our plan is to spend one week at each school teaching 2 levels a day. Therefore all the classes from Primary 1 to JSS 3 can be taught. The primary schools will be taught hand washing, tooth brushing, and the upper levels will be taught nutrition. The JSS students will be taught nutrition and environmental sanitation. Danielle and I will also be keeping formal records (since we are both ODC about organization) and will make sure that both Proworld and HEPENS maintains a copy for future volunteers. We hope this will bring some clarity and also establish a standard for the school outreach programs for HEPENS.

With that said, here are some pictures of the kids, us, and the teachers at the Tuwohofo-Holly International School where we have been teaching for the past week!


Birthday Parties/Vacation

It was a birthday weekend!
Both Michaela and Danielle had their birthdays, the 17th and the 18th respectively.

We therefore had a birthday weekend!

Friday:

Danielle and I went into town and bought Michaela earrings from Francesca, the jewelry lady. Then we went to my house to pick up Michaela's surprise cake! My brother Anthony is a baker, and a good one at that. It smells great whenever he is baking since his shop is in our house across from my room. :) The cake was a currant/ rum/ vanilla cake with pink and white frosting. It was pretty and very tasty!!!!! The two of us then walked it to the castle restaurant (its at Cape Coast Castle) taking turns carrying it. We all then met: Kirsty, Michaela, Yasuko, Lauren, McKell, Danielle, and me. We all had dinner although we ate cake first and dinner second! And we all had rum and Fanta which were recommended to us, so we opted for a birthday experimental drink. They were actually really good, so we were amused. (Its approximately a shot of rum to 1/2 bottle of Fanta.)

Post dinner the Korye drumming and dancing group performed for us. They are the group that teaches us volunteers so it was fun since we knew people! They were all amazing. We were sitting outside facing the castle with the moon and the stars and the drummers and dancers. I cannot describe it justly, but it was awe inspiring.

We were all told to get on stage at one point which had to be funny for all the Ghanaians that were watching the white kids dance...

The whole performance was awesome and it was 2 hours long! None of us were sure how they were still able to move after that!

Saturday:

The group of us decided to spend the weekend at Abanze beach. (There is a resort there that is run by a Scottish women Kirsty knows.)

We took a Trotro to get there. Its a bus like van that fits about 19 people (3 on each bench with 1 more on a fold out seat and then 3 in the front. One guy drives and another takes the money, directs people where to sit, and where to get out. The trotro also stops randomly and you can buy food and drink from roadside venders that come to the car so that you have stuff on your ride. Its rather cool, a drive in with faster service and more random choices! It also only costs 60 peswas (45 cents US) for a 45 minute ride from Cape Coast to Abanze. Taking a taxi would be between 6 and 10 cedis (4 and 8 dollars US). So it saves money and you get to meet a bunch of people. It also helps the environment since you carpool with 18 other people!

The beach was gorgeous:


We went swimming as well since the area is safe (the sewage is not draining into the ocean like it is in Cape Coast).And this is my surrogate dog, Rajah:


We took some fun pics as well:


The following morning we all woke up at 5am and went beach combing. I found some awesome shells, and got soaked but it was great. We then spent the day reading and soaking up the sun!

We took another trotro home which was also fun since the money guy decided to fit extra people in and simply kept the door open and hung onto the outside while we drove. So dangerous but unlike the US traffic laws do not apply and the lines in the road a merely suggestions, which are normally not taken into consideration. However, all the driver have been at it for around 20 years and therefore know what they are doing. Driving is a fraternity and they simply throw hand signals out or honk a certain way and magically everything works without any accidents. I have yet to see one at all...

Women's Outreach Program: Meeting 1

I apologize for the delay in communication. The internet in Ghana is mostly provided by Vodafone (~95%). They were having technical difficulties since saturday (9/11) and while we had a brief window of 4 hours to work on monday, we have been without the internet since. However, it has been restored and i can now read the 50 some emails in my etown mailbox... And post once again!

More importantly our first women's program was a resounding success! 30 women attended, all ages from girls in our youth group to older women nearing menopause. We decided to start with menstruation, since i women face the issue. Danielle and I briefly covered the reproductive system and went into where in the cycle the egg is and how if the egg is not fertilized, mensus occurs. We made sure to give the general statistics:2-8 days of menstruation, ~28 day cycle... We then covered a laundry  list of issues associated with one's period such as PMS, TSS, PCOS, and anemia. We went into the symptoms that could indicate serious problems, suggesting gynecological visits at that point. (They do have them here, they are just few and far between. They are mainly in Accra, but so me do come to Cape Coast to staff a clinic once a week or so...)
To end we then covered some lifestyle changes to make one's period easier:
Keeping hydrated
Reducing Caffeine
Making sure to eat more dark green vegetables and red meat to fight the anemia
Taking in extra calcium to help with PMS
Exercising
Sleeping
Reducing stress

The women were receptive to all of this and it was interesting to learn that they did not know that these simple things can help, yet it is something they cover for us in health class as teens, and we all took those classes for wastes of our time...

We opened the floor to questions and got quite a few. One woman complained of painful cramps that she had been to a clinic for, but could find nothing medically wrong. Danielle suggested heating water and pouring it into a zip-top bag and laying with it. These women had never thought of it before and thought it was a good idea to try.

The next question was more challenging. An older women asked how she could get a girl. (She has 4 boys). Our translator, Maggie, (One of the local teachers I met at the school in Kakumdo who is incredibly nice and very talented. She make us repeat things and translated precisely instead of altering or embellishing which was wonderful!) informed us there are beliefs that certain positions during sex will determine the gender of the child, and the woman wanted to know if this was true. We informed her that it was not and we then had to give an impromptu genetics lesson. We had the egg with XX and the sperm with XY and explained that each parent can only give one. So the mother must always give an X and the father can give an X or a Y. Then the outcomes are XX (girl) or XY (boy). We also flipped a coin a few times to explain how the one woman has 4 boys and no girls even though it was a 50/50 chance. They all seemed to get a kick out of that one since there was a lot of rapid discussion after we finished and asked if it made sense.

Finally one woman was there with her little child. She ask why she did not have her period. We told her that she since she had recently had a child, it will be delayed and more irregular. She still seemed concerned and so when we found out she was breastfeeding that was the easy explanation. So long as you breast feed your fertility is lower (your body naturally trying to not have to much strain on it) and it is possible to not have your period for the duration of the time you breastfeed. That was news to them, although the other older women seemed to be able to confirm it so that was really neat.

The whole experience was great. The women also really enjoyed the popcorn we made for them! Danielle and her mom made it and we got water for everyone on the way. I carried it on my head!!! It was rather funny since we bought the water at a shop and a man went and got it for us. He then asked who was going to carry it and I volunteered. He then lifts it up and sticks it on my head, which i was not expecting! He asked if i was okay, and i said sure and we went from there. The walk is uphill to get to the church and water was leaking out so by the time we were there I was wet but it was fun!

We did have to cut the question and answer session short, which was upsetting but it was time for choir practice. However, we adjusted to an earlier time for this coming thursday so we should have more time then!

Monday, September 13, 2010

Kakum National Park!


My second Saturday in Ghana was spent in Kakum National Park. The Kakum river runs through the park, hence the name. The river was named Kakum due to the call of the monkeys when they go down to the river to wash and play!

Kakum is outfitted with a canopy walk that is divided into 7 sections. Each is a suspension bridge tethered to one of the large trees that make up the  emergent layer of the rainforest. Kofi, Yasuko, and I were the ones to do the walk. I still have good balance- the only point in time I can be happy I took ballet for all those years... :) Good story: I was walking along the one section without using the guide ropes and a mother (on the next section) with a child who was frighted, pointed at me and said "See, she isn't even using her hands!" I have no idea if this helped the child or not, but i blushed and Yasuko and Kofi both looked at me funny...

We were high up but as you can see in the picture, there is no way to fall out. You would have needed to climb up and jump, which then makes it entirely your own dumb fault. It was a great experience!!!

We also went on a nature tour after we were back on the ground. We learned about 8 different trees and meet a snake! He was very pretty and clearly would camouflage well in the trees. Our ranger told us he was poisonous so we had to wait while he chased it away with a stick before we carried on. We also got to see some of the other termite mounds that are created. This one looks like a mushroom:

Finally we stopped at the animal sanctuary. It is run by two dutch ex-pats and they take in orphaned animals. They have quite a few monkeys. This one is Spock (see his ears!):

They also have civet cats which we were told would bite us... They are related to foxes and will bark when agitated. They have a raccoon-like, cat-like look though:

They also have a little black deer that will come when called:

And these are the genet. They will eat snakes- taking care of keeping the monkeys safe.

Most of these animals are endangered and the sanctuary has a license for each. They have a breeding program for the civet cats and the genet in order to breed and release the offspring back into the wild. They have managed to already do this successfully with the Mongoose that is native to the area.

I also saw some crocodiles in the ponds around the area...

The day was great. It was all nature stuff and everyone could answer the questions I have been posing for a week, but no one could answer! As always I love learning about the world around me so this has been great!!!

A few of us (Lauren, Mckell, Danielle, Michaela, and I) want to go back to Kakum to do the overnight. You take a tour in the dark to see the nocturnal animals and then sleep in the trees in hopes of seeing the forest elephants! It will be great. :)

We also hope to go to Mole National Park. Its up north near the corner by the Ivory Coast and Burkino Faso. It is the sahel region so it is full of hippos, crocodiles, Africa elephants, gazelle, water buffalo, and the other stereotypical animals... It will be  a trip and probably a little more costly than some things, but when am i coming back to Africa again?!

Food Adventure

Red-Red
The food has been great so far!
I have eaten Jollof rice, which is a spicy rice with chicken or whatever else you want to serve with it.

I have had peanut stew which is very tasty. It is spicy and has beef/goat/chicken in a broth of peanutbutter, oil, and the spice paste. You serve it with riceballs or yam. Personally I prefer the yam, although the rice balls are really tasty.

Another dish is Red-Red. This one is one of my favorites! It is simply fried plantain serves with beans that are in the red spicy oil and have the dried, fried, ground cassava sprinkled on top. This makes the whole thing more solid and easier to spoon up. It is a little sweet and a little spicy and very hearty.

For another dinner we had spicy beef sausage in red sauce and white rice. Plain but better than anything i have tasted back in the states!

Another of my favorites is Do kon-na chi-num (spelled incorrectly but pronounced this way). These are little fried herrings which i ate with a spicy red sauce and a corn product. It is corn that is ground then soaked and fermented and then cooked and formed into a square and rapped in plantain leaves. Its good in small quantities or else it is very overpowering.

My latest taste was of Fufu. To describe it is difficult. It is prepared by cleaning and boiling cassava and plantain. They are drained well and then pounded together in a mortar with a huge pestle. (For some science knowledge the pestle is made from the Esa tree, as it is locally known. Scientific name celtis milabraedii.) The final consistency is the same as toothpaste, smooth and thick.
My mother, Matilda, pounding Fufu

I ate it with fish stew which was tasty and spicy! There were little herrings, perch and catfish in it.It is a tomato base thickened with little eggplant like peppers and really spiced up. It stews for a while and is bright red.
The fufu is used like bread/a spoon. You take a silver dollar sized chunk and mush it onto your index and middle finger forming an indentation. You then use this to scoop up the soup and try to get everything into your mouth. Then you swallow. NO CHEWING! The toothpaste consistency seems more like mucus if you chew and that makes it nasty. My mother thankfully corrected me before i repeated that process a second time...

The food adventure has been a lot of fun so far. There is always bananas, pineapple, and papaya available on the street as well. The bread is also very tasty here. I have toast and and egg with shallot and black tea for breakfast each morning. Pretty good for me!

Tropical Paradise

Here is the tropical paradise side of Ghana!

So at this point in the journey I am still in the honeymoon stage of my culture shock. Everything is wonderful. (I personally have found a lot to critique, but I figure since I have done this before my culture shock is a little less shocking...)







Of course the rainy season is drawing to a close. The flowers will wither and die and the dust is going to be everywhere. However with less water, there will be fewer areas of standing water and malaria risk will drop some.

It will also be getting hotter... But at this point I feel prepared, I hope.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Outreach

My first two outreach programs have been wonderful. Danielle decided to start a women's group in Kakumdo. I happened to have good timing and therefore was here for the first week. We met in the old church and had a group of girls and women from 13-50ish. We have a list of topics and will be meeting on Thursday evenings. However, after our success with last night, we are starting tomorrow morning (everyone is off since it is the end of Ramadan). Our topics for tomorrow are peer pressure, stress management, and healthy lifestyles. We are starting with this in order to invite all of the school girls allowing for them to use this information in school!

The women seemed very receptive so it should go well! We are even kicking Nicholas out and bringing in a female nurse so that it really is all girls in a safe environment.

Teaching dental hygiene in the school today was blast! The kids were absolutely wonderful. I  taught them about the issues that can arise by not taking care of your oral hygiene. (Oral cancer, increased respiratory infections, eventual tooth loss, and even stroke or heart attack from the oral bacteria entering the blood stream. We also had to discuss what bacteria are which was fun.)

We also demonstrated the proper way to brush you teeth and handed out tooth brushes to the kids who asked good questions and answered our questions well.

They were all very glad to have us and the school administrators asked us to come back again. It was really great!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Inital Evaluation of Health

Some initial observations on what issues there are in the health of the people and the health care they can receive.

They do have pharmacies, not that I know what they sell yet.

There are sporadic clinics, some religiously funded, others for specifics, like childbirth. These buildings are all very open air which is distressing since so many of Ghana's major illnesses can be spread by insect vectors (yellow fever, malaria, sleeping sickness...).

What strikes me the most is the sanitation. The streets are lined with open air gutters running in front of the homes. These are filled with trash and liquid. People will openly urinate into the gutters and also dump refuse. To fall in one with any open wound would certainly suggest impending illness. They can also serve as a breeding ground for insects. Posing multiple large scale health risks.

The fact that trash is simply discarded where one stands does not improve the situation. The litter builds up in the gutters, stopping whatever flow there was, and also providing a home for other issue vectors, like mice and rats.  The smell of it all is off-putting, and suggests that there is an issue at hand.

The cars, taxis, trucks, and motorcycles also create large scale air pollution. They are all older models and therefore have no emission regulations or buffers. Driving behind a truck means breathing in black clouds of diesel smoke, which cannot be good for one's health. Additionally this is all going into the atmosphere, and us Americans can already suggest some after effects of that.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I met with my project partner today, Nicholas. He is a very driven individual who believes in making a better world for future generations. He was/is a nurse and founded HEPENS in 2008. Today it is finally being recognized formally as an NGO (the last piece of paperwork is going through now!). We have a website built, curtisy of Lucus- a former volunteer, but can only upload the site once our NGO status comes through. Once that is accomplished all of you can check out the site and learn a little bit more about HEPENS! (And donate through PAYPAL since we also just opened a bank account for the project instead of using Nicholas's private account...)

For now, here is our logo:

And the motto is: Think positive, speak positive.

Since it is a fledgling NGO the resources are limited but as a proworld volunteer some of my internship fees are diverted into to project.
Here is what we are looking to do in my three months.
1. Have weekly community outreach programs. My first one is this Wednesday in Kakumdo.
2. Have as many outreach programs into the schools as possible. Children are the future! So if we can teach them, they can teach others, and in an ideal world everything will be better in the end.
3. Offer clinical care to diagnose patients for common, but typically undiagnosed issues: Hypertension and diabetes especially.

So here is what my budget is going to:

Medically/Environmentally Relevant Stuff

-Stethoscopes
-Blood Glucose meters
-Blood Glucose meter strips
-Blood pressure cuffs
-Toothbrushes
-Disposable gloves
-Condoms
-Water buckets
-Waste baskets
-Patient record books
-Expert fees

Other Stuff
-Printing
-Transport fees
-Phone credits

Future Desired Stuff not within the budget
-Computer
-Printer
-Ink
-Camera
-Projector

My initial projects are a lot to take on when thinking about all of the aspects of them. However, the short list is:
-Finding and applying for grants
-Community outreach
-School outreach

While Danielle and I are teaching our topics for outreach are:
-Cervical cancer
-Menopause
-Tuberculosis
-Diabetes Melitus
-Hepatitis B
-HIV/AIDS
-Stress & Mental health
-Flu
-Tetanus
-Rabies

Possible future goals for the organization are:
-Applying for and acquiring grant funds for development of a formal office, a community center, and a clinical compound.
-Affiliation with a medical school or hospital in the states allowing for shared medical learn, acquiring new techniques, and ability to exchange (read "send to Africa") medical supplies- like gauze, wraps, syringes, glucose meter strips, and all other disposable items that are readily needed but not readily available.
-Acquiring DVDs and documentaries to aid in outreach and teaching.
-Acquiring books and other written materials to aid in creating an accessible database for community members to use within the community center.

With all this said, the project is going to be multi-faceted and all encompassing. We will be to as many schools and communities as possible. Nicholas really wants to make the biggest impact possible, and hopefully Danielle and I will be able to aid in that quest.
To say that Africa is how I expected it to be is both a lie and a truth.

Truth:
Everyone carries everything on their heads. My host brother, Daniel, merely lifted my 42 pound suitcase an placed it on his head to carry it up 3 flights of stairs.

In addition you see lots of people in very colorful and beautiful dresses and tunics.

The children are all adorable and cannot understand why your skin is the wrong color. Each little kid yells "obruni" and reaches out to touch you. To smile at the child and say "hello" makes them grin right back.

There are goats and dogs everywhere.

There are red dirt roads and termite mounds and huge trees.

There are also bananas, coconuts, and pineapple available everywhere.


Lies

Everyone is not destitute living in huts. However there is a large divide between the have and have not. My host family is a have, with a 3 story house and the children able to attend school. My two sisters just finished university. Our neighbors have 1 floor stone skeleton, rusty tin roof homes- have nots.

The western world has invaded. Everyone carries a cell phone. There are 3 providers. I was even given one so i can cheaply stay in contact with the program and other volunteers.

Everyone travels by taxi. Personally I was expecting bicycles but this is not the case. It it either motorcycles or taxis to get around. They do drive on the US side of the road, which I was not expecting from a British colony.

The food is good! I am not eating a meager portion of gruel. I had jollof rice my first night and the street food is fun! You cannot eat the meat, (but i didn't want to to begin with) but the bread, corn cakes, popcorn, and peel-able fruit (bananas and oranges) are okay.

Did you know that oranges in Ghana are green with whitish-orange insides? Its weird to think lime, but taste orange, especially since its not orange!