One of the most awesome parts of my experience in Ghana is eating! I've been able to try a variety of Ghanaian dishes, especially those of Southern Ghana, through my homestay and by going to chop bars and restaurants. Dinner, which I usually eat at home, typically consists of carbs, meat, and sauce. The carbs alternate between spaghetti, white rice, boiled yams (which are white, fluffy, and a little bit sweet - my friend here says "it's like eating a cloud" - I agree), and cooked or fried plantains (which have the texture of a potato, look like dark yellow bananas, and taste kind of like bananas, too). Georgina will also make a sauce from blended boiled tomatoes, onions, and hot peppers. The sauce isn't usually very hot, but sometimes it's hot enough to leave my nose running and me sweating. Only once was it so hot that I resorted to cooling my mouth off with the condensed milk that we use here. Sometimes, Georgina cooks fish or chicken right into the sauce and sometimes, she fries it separately.
Once in a while, Georgina makes groundnut soup, which is my favorite of the soups here. It's made from pepper, tomatoes, and pure peanut butter (which is called "nyamee" in Fante, not to be confused with "Nyame," the word for god). The most comparable taste I can think of that I had before groundnut soup is hot peanut sauce in Thai and Japanese food. Groundnut soup usually has chicken in it - either cooked separately and dropped in the pot at the last minute or cooked entirely in the soup, so it's really tender, which is the best in my opinion. At home, I usually eat groundnut soup with rice. But if I'm out, I usually get it with fufu.
Fufu is a doughy, slightly sweet food made from cassava and plantains that have been boiled and then pounded with a huge stick until it turns into a substance the texture of pizza dough. It can also be made from yams, but I haven't tried that kind. A typical serving is about the size of three fists and usually costs two cedis (less than $1.50) in Cape Coast. After the fufu is in the bowl, soup gets poured on top, along with some meat. You eat it by reaching into the soup with your right hand (to eat, shake hands, or point with your left is unacceptable here), pull off a bite-sized piece of fufu, make sure it's covered in soup, and then put it in your mouth and swallow without chewing. It took me a few weeks to get used to not chewing and not licking off my fingers after every bite, and I still don't eat it very gracefully (as you will see in the pictures I'm going to post soon), but fufu with groundnut soup is so delicious it doesn't matter. Fufu is a staple food for a lot of Southern Ghanaians I've met - they eat it every day, as long as it's before 4 o'clock because it takes a while to digest. But I could eat it any time! I'm definitely going to miss it when I come back to the US.
Groundnut soup is great, but it takes a lot of time to make it. So fufu is usually served with light soup or palm nut soup. Light soup is spicy and vegetable-based. It's simple to make and really yummy. Palm nut soup is made from the oily insides of a palm nut's flesh. It tastes great with fufu but I've noticed that after all the fufu is gone, the soup alone isn't so good. Soup here always has meat in it. The meat I've encountered includes fish, crab, chicken, goat, and bush meat. Sometimes the goat meat still has the skin on it, which makes me think of how some goat skin becomes drum heads, so I don't feel too enthusiastic about eating it. I still haven't tried bush meat but am looking forward to it.
Some of the soups also get served with banku, instead of fufu. Banku is a corn-based dough that tastes sort of fermented and is stickier than fufu. It also gets served with stew, which is what I would call sauce - it's like the tomato-based sauce that Georgina makes or it's okra stew. The one time I had okra stew, the unbreakable strings of sticky slimy stew really got to me and it's hard for me to remember much else about it except that it was also spicy. You can also get banku with fish or meat and pepper.
In addition to banku and fufu, there is one more dough-like food that's really common, called kenkey, which is made from corn. There are several types, including Fante kenkey, which is cooked in plantain leaves, and Accra kenkey, which is cooked in corn husks and is typically salty, depending on who makes it. Accra kenkey is usually served with fish and pepper sauce. The way to eat it is by taking some kenkey in your fingers, kneading it using your fingers or the inside of your palm, then dipping it in the pepper and putting it in your mouth and chewing because there's probably fish in the bite, too. This is one of the most satisfying foods I've had - it's my other favorite besides fufu. Fante kenkey is smoother-tasting and I think it can also be served with fish and pepper. But it can also be made into mashed kenkey by mashing it with your hands or blending it and adding water. Then you add milk and sugar to make a nice snack. Another snack that I like here is gare, a coarse white grain that you mix with water, sugar, and peanuts and eat with a spoon.
Finally, a very common dish, especially among tourists here, is red red, which is fried plantains and blackeyed peas, a great combination of flavors.
Aside from enjoying food so much here, I've been noticing some differences in social norms and expectations around eating. For example, I have noticed that Ghanaians don't consider eating to be a social activity. It's very normal to eat alone. When I do eat with a Ghanaian friend, we don't usually talk much during the meal - at least they don't. I've also been scolded for talking while eating palm nut soup. One of my Ghanaian friends who scolded me for this couldn't give me the reason why I shouldn't talk, but someone else told me it's because palm nut soup is wickedly painful if it goes down the wrong pipe. I have yet to find out. Also, the biggest meal is usually in the afternoon - any time from noon until five o'clock. Many people won't eat again after that meal, which I find shocking since I like to eat several big meals a day plus snacks. My Ghanaian friends are super generous and always offer to make something for me to eat when I visit in the evening, even when they aren't hungry. I'm very lucky.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Accra
Yesterday, I returned with my group from a four-day trip to Accra, the capital of Ghana. Located a little over 100 miles east of Cape Coast, Accra is much larger, with a population about 20 times that of Cape Coast. I feel like I only saw a few tiny fractions of the city - the mall, Oxford Street, University of Ghana, and a few tourist attractions - the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, the National Museum of Ghana, and the W.E.B. DuBois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture - and left without a strong sense of life in Accra. It seems like the city is really spread out, and it was difficult to know where to explore, (whereas Cape Coast is small enough that you can walk most places and become familiar with the city fairly quickly). The traffic is terrible, too, so it's an intimidating task to set off exploring.
Our group stayed in a hostel neighboring the University of Ghana, where we had our lectures, in an area called Legon. Also close by is the mall, where I spent a lot of time, to my own surprise. I ate a sundae and pizza in the food court and walked through air conditioned department stores for the first time since I arrived here, activities that were oddly comforting. Even though I grew up hating the mall and spending time there, I felt quite at home at the one in Accra.
The lectures at the University of Ghana were part of our African Diaspora Seminar, and included topics such as Slavery and Migration in Ghana, Ewe Culture and Migration, and Archaeology in Ghana. After a string of disappointingly uncritical tours at the slave castles in Cape Coast and Elmina and lectures that frequently seem to lack complexity, it was refreshing to finally hear one of our lecturers in Accra telling what seemed like a more complete account of Ghanaian-European contact.
During the lecture on the Ewe people, who live in an area that spans from the Volta Region of Ghana across Togo, Ghana's eastern neighbor, to Benin, we learned about traditional Ewe time measurements. I was excited to find out that the smallest unit of measurement is the time between two blinks. Now I am wondering about the origin of the expression "in the blink of an eye". I also learned a new expression from one of the lecturers - "cool running" and "cool runners". Apparently, on a boring winter day in Indiana, our lecturer was captivated by Cool Runnings, a 1993 comedy about a bobsled team from Jamaica. Consequently, she latched on and began fitting these phrases to every possible person and situation.
The University campus is beautiful. One of our lecturers explained that it was modeled after Oxford and that, when he attended in the 1960s, each student has his own room and balcony, to be cleaned daily by housekeeping attendants. He went on to describe the current state of affairs at the University - "You're lucky if you can find a piece of balcony to sleep on." Although our classroom, a common room for zoology seniors, was air conditioned and furnished with comfortable leather furniture, small but noticeable signs of deterioration throughout the campus left me wondering. I am curious to know how current University of Ghana students view the situation. Would they agree that the much of their campus has fallen into disrepair? Is the situation as bad as the lecturer made it seem?
The day before we came back to Cape Coast, we went on an excursion to Shai Hills Resource Reserve, which is located only 10 miles outside of Accra (but over an hour-long drive!), to visit an area where the Shai people lived before the British colonial government relocated them to the plains in order to keep a close watch on and thus deter their alleged practice of human sacrifice. Before we arrived, I knew that we would be ascending one of the eight hills to see an archeological site excavated by one of our lecturers, but was pleasantly surprised that the trip also included seeing some neat animals.
There were fat millipedes and fuzzy little red bugs all over the path up the hill. But best of all, I saw baboons! We saw them up close to our bus, but I don't have those pictures right now.
These are their footprints. Below, you can see them hanging out way off in a distant tree. 
After a short, steep hike, we had a great view of the Accra Plains
and a rock quarry.
Our group stayed in a hostel neighboring the University of Ghana, where we had our lectures, in an area called Legon. Also close by is the mall, where I spent a lot of time, to my own surprise. I ate a sundae and pizza in the food court and walked through air conditioned department stores for the first time since I arrived here, activities that were oddly comforting. Even though I grew up hating the mall and spending time there, I felt quite at home at the one in Accra.
The lectures at the University of Ghana were part of our African Diaspora Seminar, and included topics such as Slavery and Migration in Ghana, Ewe Culture and Migration, and Archaeology in Ghana. After a string of disappointingly uncritical tours at the slave castles in Cape Coast and Elmina and lectures that frequently seem to lack complexity, it was refreshing to finally hear one of our lecturers in Accra telling what seemed like a more complete account of Ghanaian-European contact.
During the lecture on the Ewe people, who live in an area that spans from the Volta Region of Ghana across Togo, Ghana's eastern neighbor, to Benin, we learned about traditional Ewe time measurements. I was excited to find out that the smallest unit of measurement is the time between two blinks. Now I am wondering about the origin of the expression "in the blink of an eye". I also learned a new expression from one of the lecturers - "cool running" and "cool runners". Apparently, on a boring winter day in Indiana, our lecturer was captivated by Cool Runnings, a 1993 comedy about a bobsled team from Jamaica. Consequently, she latched on and began fitting these phrases to every possible person and situation.
The University campus is beautiful. One of our lecturers explained that it was modeled after Oxford and that, when he attended in the 1960s, each student has his own room and balcony, to be cleaned daily by housekeeping attendants. He went on to describe the current state of affairs at the University - "You're lucky if you can find a piece of balcony to sleep on." Although our classroom, a common room for zoology seniors, was air conditioned and furnished with comfortable leather furniture, small but noticeable signs of deterioration throughout the campus left me wondering. I am curious to know how current University of Ghana students view the situation. Would they agree that the much of their campus has fallen into disrepair? Is the situation as bad as the lecturer made it seem?
The day before we came back to Cape Coast, we went on an excursion to Shai Hills Resource Reserve, which is located only 10 miles outside of Accra (but over an hour-long drive!), to visit an area where the Shai people lived before the British colonial government relocated them to the plains in order to keep a close watch on and thus deter their alleged practice of human sacrifice. Before we arrived, I knew that we would be ascending one of the eight hills to see an archeological site excavated by one of our lecturers, but was pleasantly surprised that the trip also included seeing some neat animals.
There were fat millipedes and fuzzy little red bugs all over the path up the hill. But best of all, I saw baboons! We saw them up close to our bus, but I don't have those pictures right now. 
These are their footprints. Below, you can see them hanging out way off in a distant tree. 
After a short, steep hike, we had a great view of the Accra Plains
and a rock quarry.
A Day in Cape Coast
For the past six weeks, with the exception of the time I've spent in Accra and Komenda, this is my day every day...
I wake up at
4am if I hear the dawn prayers at the mosque near the house where I stay
6:15am if I hear Georgina sweeping the hall outside my room before she goes to school (she also sets out the breakfast accoutrements on the table for Auntie Hettie and me before she leaves)
7:20am if I'm lucky and sleep in, but usually I get uncomfortably hot by this point
Then, I get ready for school by eating my white bread and tea breakfast, doing some reading and writing, maybe a little stretching session, and lastly, by taking my bath, which is what my host mom refers to what I call a shower. I also usually chat with Auntie Hettie, who will be working at her sewing machine or on the balcony. It's very easy for us to communicate in English, and since I haven't learned enough Fante to have a conversation of any substance, this is a good thing for me.
At 8:15, I go to school, a 10-15 minute walk from my house, part on a dusty road and part on pavement. This guy is still sleeping when I leave.
I pass by some animal friends, including the dogs who live next door (in the shade under the tree in the photo below)
and some chickens or goats scavenging for food in the open sewer on the side of the road, where there is a lot of trash, dirt, and some blackish water to root around in. In the photos below, you can see the goat in back leaning over to get a nice scratch on its side and then the one in front hopping out to find a better selection of eats.
Once I get to the paved road, I see lots of people. Most people I walk by greet with "good morning." Some people greet using Fante or Twi - two of the commonly used languages in Cape Coast, and I enjoy practicing the little Fante that I know with them. I say "Mema wo akye" and they say "Yaa enua", then we ask about each other's well being - "Wo ho tse den?" (How are you?) or "Wa po me?" (How is your life?) or "Mo ho ya?" (Are you fine?) and the other will respond "Mo ho ye" (I am fine) or "Bokoo" (It's cool) or "Nyame n'adom" (By God's grace), depending on the question. I have learned a lot of useful phrases through these interactions and the people I have met are so friendly and patient with me.
I also might run into one of the men who works near my house. My interactions with a lot of men in Cape Coast, including this one, typically go like this: one of us greets the other, then he stops me for a conversation - what is your name? where are you from? what are you doing in Ghana? where do you live? - and then tells me "I want to take you as a friend" (which sounds creepy but just means "I want to be friends with you"). Then he wants to know how he will see me again, and asks for my phone number. If I say I don't give my phone number out, (which I originally thought was a great way to deflect the question), he offers to give me his, which I subsequently refuse, explaining that I won't call him. Then he asks "Why? Don't you want to have friends?" and I try to explain that I don't usually want to be friends with someone after a two-minute conversation, but I have learned that Ghanaians believe it takes just a day to know someone, so my explanation is hard to convey. It can be frustrating to interact across these differences because I certainly do want friends, but I don't usually want to become friends in the way that these interactions offer. I am still working out the best way for me to handle these conversations.
Class starts at 8:30 and continues until 12:30, but we have two 30-minute breaks, which is nice. We usually get a mid-morning snack of peanut butter and jelly with tea. We meet on the top floor of a business building in an air-conditioned classroom that is connected to a library/work space and the office for our program staff. When we were doing our intensive Fante unit, we would spend the whole morning on Fante. Now that we are in the midst of the African Diaspora Seminar, though, we have two lectures every morning.
When we get out of class, I usually get lunch. I might go to a chop bar, which is a very cheap and quick way to get some great Ghanaian food, like fufu with groundnut soup or light soup or some red red (explanations coming soon!). If I want something like an omelette or spaghetti, I might go to a beachside restaurant called Oasis. But it usually takes about an hour to get the food at this and many other restaurants, so I try to avoid it. This is a photo looking out at the beach from the Oasis patio.
If we don't have an afternoon lecture or field trip, I sometimes spend time in downtown Cape Coast, near a big market called Kotokraba (which means den of crabs because there are lots of crabs in Cape Coast).
There aren't many places to just hang out and not be asked to buy something. Even hanging out at the beach usually means being approached by a lot of kids who work as porters - they carry water, plantain chips, oranges, and other things on their heads to sell. They can be very persistent, so it's not exactly relaxing to go lay out on the sand. The strip of beach that I have spent the most time on is between Cape Coast Castle and some fishing boats. 
After I'm done hanging out in town, I take a taxi to the junction closest to my house and walk home. In the evening, Georgina typically makes dinner for Auntie Hettie and me. Usually Auntie Hettie watches TV after she is finished working, so sometimes I join her to watch the news, or Who Wants to Be Rich?, or Zain Touching Lives, a program where a mobile phone company called Zain selects Ghanaians who have it bad and bring them on the show to tell their story and give them lots of stuff. Or I play UNO with Georgina. Since I wake up so early and spend the day feeling hot, I usually am really tired by 10pm and go to sleep to the sounds of dogs howling outside.
I wake up at
4am if I hear the dawn prayers at the mosque near the house where I stay
6:15am if I hear Georgina sweeping the hall outside my room before she goes to school (she also sets out the breakfast accoutrements on the table for Auntie Hettie and me before she leaves)
7:20am if I'm lucky and sleep in, but usually I get uncomfortably hot by this point
Then, I get ready for school by eating my white bread and tea breakfast, doing some reading and writing, maybe a little stretching session, and lastly, by taking my bath, which is what my host mom refers to what I call a shower. I also usually chat with Auntie Hettie, who will be working at her sewing machine or on the balcony. It's very easy for us to communicate in English, and since I haven't learned enough Fante to have a conversation of any substance, this is a good thing for me.
At 8:15, I go to school, a 10-15 minute walk from my house, part on a dusty road and part on pavement. This guy is still sleeping when I leave.
I pass by some animal friends, including the dogs who live next door (in the shade under the tree in the photo below) 
and some chickens or goats scavenging for food in the open sewer on the side of the road, where there is a lot of trash, dirt, and some blackish water to root around in. In the photos below, you can see the goat in back leaning over to get a nice scratch on its side and then the one in front hopping out to find a better selection of eats.
Once I get to the paved road, I see lots of people. Most people I walk by greet with "good morning." Some people greet using Fante or Twi - two of the commonly used languages in Cape Coast, and I enjoy practicing the little Fante that I know with them. I say "Mema wo akye" and they say "Yaa enua", then we ask about each other's well being - "Wo ho tse den?" (How are you?) or "Wa po me?" (How is your life?) or "Mo ho ya?" (Are you fine?) and the other will respond "Mo ho ye" (I am fine) or "Bokoo" (It's cool) or "Nyame n'adom" (By God's grace), depending on the question. I have learned a lot of useful phrases through these interactions and the people I have met are so friendly and patient with me.I also might run into one of the men who works near my house. My interactions with a lot of men in Cape Coast, including this one, typically go like this: one of us greets the other, then he stops me for a conversation - what is your name? where are you from? what are you doing in Ghana? where do you live? - and then tells me "I want to take you as a friend" (which sounds creepy but just means "I want to be friends with you"). Then he wants to know how he will see me again, and asks for my phone number. If I say I don't give my phone number out, (which I originally thought was a great way to deflect the question), he offers to give me his, which I subsequently refuse, explaining that I won't call him. Then he asks "Why? Don't you want to have friends?" and I try to explain that I don't usually want to be friends with someone after a two-minute conversation, but I have learned that Ghanaians believe it takes just a day to know someone, so my explanation is hard to convey. It can be frustrating to interact across these differences because I certainly do want friends, but I don't usually want to become friends in the way that these interactions offer. I am still working out the best way for me to handle these conversations.
Class starts at 8:30 and continues until 12:30, but we have two 30-minute breaks, which is nice. We usually get a mid-morning snack of peanut butter and jelly with tea. We meet on the top floor of a business building in an air-conditioned classroom that is connected to a library/work space and the office for our program staff. When we were doing our intensive Fante unit, we would spend the whole morning on Fante. Now that we are in the midst of the African Diaspora Seminar, though, we have two lectures every morning.
When we get out of class, I usually get lunch. I might go to a chop bar, which is a very cheap and quick way to get some great Ghanaian food, like fufu with groundnut soup or light soup or some red red (explanations coming soon!). If I want something like an omelette or spaghetti, I might go to a beachside restaurant called Oasis. But it usually takes about an hour to get the food at this and many other restaurants, so I try to avoid it. This is a photo looking out at the beach from the Oasis patio.
If we don't have an afternoon lecture or field trip, I sometimes spend time in downtown Cape Coast, near a big market called Kotokraba (which means den of crabs because there are lots of crabs in Cape Coast).
There aren't many places to just hang out and not be asked to buy something. Even hanging out at the beach usually means being approached by a lot of kids who work as porters - they carry water, plantain chips, oranges, and other things on their heads to sell. They can be very persistent, so it's not exactly relaxing to go lay out on the sand. The strip of beach that I have spent the most time on is between Cape Coast Castle and some fishing boats. 
After I'm done hanging out in town, I take a taxi to the junction closest to my house and walk home. In the evening, Georgina typically makes dinner for Auntie Hettie and me. Usually Auntie Hettie watches TV after she is finished working, so sometimes I join her to watch the news, or Who Wants to Be Rich?, or Zain Touching Lives, a program where a mobile phone company called Zain selects Ghanaians who have it bad and bring them on the show to tell their story and give them lots of stuff. Or I play UNO with Georgina. Since I wake up so early and spend the day feeling hot, I usually am really tired by 10pm and go to sleep to the sounds of dogs howling outside.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Hello!
Hello friends and family! I am beginning this post five weeks after my arrival in Accra, which followed a 17-hour journey from Boston through Amsterdam. I am on a study abroad program with six other Americans, focusing on issues of forced migration in the formation of the African Diaspora. We have already had some lectures on this subject, but the primary focus of our studies so far has been Fante, which is one of the main languages in this part of Ghana. Beginning next week, the program shifts focus to the African Diaspora Seminar. Since this program emphasizes field study and experiential learning, we will be traveling a lot for about the next month, with Cape Coast as our home base.
With the exception of a one-week stay in a small town called Komenda, I have been in Cape Coast since the day after I arrived. I live with a host family in an area called North Ola, a quiet residential area that is within a 50 pesewas taxi ride of almost anywhere I'd want to go. [50 pesewas is equal to about 35 cents.]
I live on the second floor of a two-story house that's surrounded by a cement wall and a black metal gate. My host mother is Auntie Hettie, a self-employed dress maker. Her dress shop is in the house, so the hum of sewing machines is almost constant throughout the day and there are piles of cloth waiting to be sewn into custom-made dresses in all the rooms and hallways.
My host sister is Georgina, a 12 year old who, in addition to attending school, cooks great meals for the three of us, cleans the house, and runs errands every day. Usually, I wake up to the sound of her sweeping the floor outside my room at about 6:15am. She teases me a lot - one of her favorite jokes is to tell me that she has seen one of my family members: "I saw your dad." "Oh yeah, where?" "He was over there [pointing to the street corner], sweeping." I don't get it, but maybe I will by the time I leave Ghana. She also enjoyed dressing up in the clothes that I wore on the plane ride here, even though it's sweltering hot here, and posing as if she were me.
My favorite place in the house is out on the balcony, which looks southward on the neighborhood.
When I sit out there in the afternoon, it's a little shady and I can usually catch a breeze, always a welcome cool-down to my constant sweating.
I also enjoy sitting in the room where two of Auntie Hettie's employees work. Dodowa and Beatrice talk to me mostly in Fante. Gradually, I am understanding more and more, but usually, I need a translation. When in doubt, I say "nyo" or "oho" [yes or no].
Not surprisingly, eating is one of my favorite activities here. This is the hallway outside of my room, which is the first door on the right (barely visible).
I eat breakfast at the table in the foreground - usually white bread and tea. In the states, I eat white bread rarely, if ever. But here, it's fresh, dense, soft, and delicious all the time! I sometimes eat it with pure peanut butter on top. It's great. The other day, I was a little sick, so I stuck to a white bread diet all day - not a bad predicament! I plan to write more about my favorite foods here in a future post (I promise it will be more exciting sounding than white bread!), but for now suffice it to say that I'm happy when I eat and I enjoy eating almost everything I've tried.
My friend took some great pictures when we walked to a cave in Komenda. The first is our steep descent to the beach and the second is me, trying to see what it feels like to be a bat.
With the exception of a one-week stay in a small town called Komenda, I have been in Cape Coast since the day after I arrived. I live with a host family in an area called North Ola, a quiet residential area that is within a 50 pesewas taxi ride of almost anywhere I'd want to go. [50 pesewas is equal to about 35 cents.]
I live on the second floor of a two-story house that's surrounded by a cement wall and a black metal gate. My host mother is Auntie Hettie, a self-employed dress maker. Her dress shop is in the house, so the hum of sewing machines is almost constant throughout the day and there are piles of cloth waiting to be sewn into custom-made dresses in all the rooms and hallways. 
My host sister is Georgina, a 12 year old who, in addition to attending school, cooks great meals for the three of us, cleans the house, and runs errands every day. Usually, I wake up to the sound of her sweeping the floor outside my room at about 6:15am. She teases me a lot - one of her favorite jokes is to tell me that she has seen one of my family members: "I saw your dad." "Oh yeah, where?" "He was over there [pointing to the street corner], sweeping." I don't get it, but maybe I will by the time I leave Ghana. She also enjoyed dressing up in the clothes that I wore on the plane ride here, even though it's sweltering hot here, and posing as if she were me. My favorite place in the house is out on the balcony, which looks southward on the neighborhood.
When I sit out there in the afternoon, it's a little shady and I can usually catch a breeze, always a welcome cool-down to my constant sweating. I also enjoy sitting in the room where two of Auntie Hettie's employees work. Dodowa and Beatrice talk to me mostly in Fante. Gradually, I am understanding more and more, but usually, I need a translation. When in doubt, I say "nyo" or "oho" [yes or no].
Not surprisingly, eating is one of my favorite activities here. This is the hallway outside of my room, which is the first door on the right (barely visible).
I eat breakfast at the table in the foreground - usually white bread and tea. In the states, I eat white bread rarely, if ever. But here, it's fresh, dense, soft, and delicious all the time! I sometimes eat it with pure peanut butter on top. It's great. The other day, I was a little sick, so I stuck to a white bread diet all day - not a bad predicament! I plan to write more about my favorite foods here in a future post (I promise it will be more exciting sounding than white bread!), but for now suffice it to say that I'm happy when I eat and I enjoy eating almost everything I've tried.My friend took some great pictures when we walked to a cave in Komenda. The first is our steep descent to the beach and the second is me, trying to see what it feels like to be a bat.
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