Hello, Maybe it’s time to let you concerned readers know that I did indeed arrive safely back in the U.S. so you can all breathe that sigh of relief. I would also like to say, if it wasn’t apparent in my other posts, that I had such a blast in Ghana. It was an experience Read More …
For the last eight weeks I feel like I have been suspended. Half of Dana has sat somewhere watching the other half blunder wide eyed through this adventure in Ghana. I woke early this morning filled with a strange loneliness. I walked down the road towards our old house. Street hawkers wove in and out Read More …
Preface: This post is about the robbery that my family experienced in Ghana. I have marinated on this for weeks after the fact. This is not journalism. This is my interpretation of the situation: A palpable quagmire of tension sits waist high throughout our house. It smells of the gutters that line the Read More …
This weekend I said goodbye (for now) to some of the most adventurous, loving, and supportive people I have ever had the privilege of calling my friends. It sank in more and more as each group headed off to the airport that I will never again be in a house filled with my strange 15-member Read More …
Does long hair and a beard make me Jesus? No. Does getting awarded the Jesus Award in our group’s #GhanaAwards make me Jesus? Not quite. (But I did beat Him for the win.) What makes me question my holiness is the constant name-calling I get walking the streets of Accra. “Are you Jesus?” “Hey Jesus!” Read More …
During my first week in Ghana Same Love by Macklemore came onto my iPhone shuffle. I listened, staring out the bus at the beauty that is Ghana. I reflected on being in a country where gay rights are at a completely different place than back in the U.S. and felt more impacted by the song Read More …
I am riding home from the tro tro after a slow day at work. The commute is long and tedious, as it often is, but I am used to it. The mate goes around to collect the fare and I stretch my arm to give him the one cedi. After about a minute of going Read More …
“We are more alike than we are different.” This was the topic of my senior year English essay. Of course being an idealistic eighteen year old, I wrote what I thought was a profound essay about the unity of mankind and the ways in which we are much more alike than different. I still believe Read More …
This morning I sat in the middle front seat of a tro tro and contemplated life and death…in a very literal way. You see, Ghanaian public transportation vehicles rarely have seat belts for anyone but the driver, so I sat there thinking that only a thin expanse of glass separated me from the pavement. Since Read More …
On the day we moved into our sprawling, barbed-wire fenced East Legon home, Kelly Vigil unpacked his Canon 60D camera and wandered from room to room, filming and interviewing a handful of students. “It’s like Real World: Ghana!” someone said. The moniker stuck. And why wouldn’t it? Not only was our living situation reminiscent of Read More …
When I first heard of the robbery, I didn’t believe it. Nonetheless I jumped out bed and went into the kitchen; I didn’t even put on a shirt or pants (sorry roommates). It wasn’t until I saw my backpack outside of the house, emptied of valuables that I believed what happened. I think we were all Read More …
It’s easy to believe our lives reside within our electronic devices, and especially if we fail to back them up to the cloud (that one is on me). They hold our memories; pictures of the ones we love and the moments we want to immortalize. They have the documents and files that hold everything we Read More …
Living in Ghana is an adventure to say the least. I can honestly say that many of the stories I’ll tell when I’m back home revolve around public transportation. On my first day of work I decided to take a taxi home. I hadn’t learned the ropes of the tro tro yet and every coworker Read More …
Before I came to Ghana, I was told Ghanaians were very religious. Previous students warned us that our coworkers will probably ask us about our religion at some point during our internship. This was definitely not a conversation I wanted to have and I planned on avoiding it at all costs. Even at home, I Read More …
“Mesdames will see you now.” I sit on a hard wooden chair in a long narrow hallway waiting for this moment. The walls are painted institutional gray and lit by harshly flickering fluorescent bulbs. At least a dozen others sit in similar chairs along both sides of the wall waiting their turn to disappear behind Read More …