Wednesday, September 22, 2010

FIRST DAY IN GHANA 9/22/10

I woke up early this morning to watch the sunrise as we pulled into Ghana, however when I made it outside at 6:00am the sun was up. At 7:00am the pilot boats guided us in. While we were anchoring we watched dolphins and whales swimming on the sides of the ship. There were Ghanaian's in canoes, they were waving at us as we pulled in. It was really cool, this stop is new for Semester at Sea and it is not a tourist spot. My malaria medication does not agree with me and it has been making me feel sick. So I went back to my room, ate some crackers, and went back to sleep while the ship cleared customs. Once we were cleared to get off the ship, we headed out for our city orientation tour. They took us to a flour factory, it was interesting, but I am not sure exactly why it was on the tour.

LOL  A guy that works in the factory gave me his number and wants me to call him when I get back to the United States. (Now that's what I would call a long distance relationship...hahah)

They drove us through all different parts of Ghana, we saw kids bathing with buckets of water on the sides of the roads and guys going to the bathroom wherever. There were people with fires going and laying next to them where slaughtered animals, ready to cook. Little girls and women walk around carrying heavy baskets on their heads. They do not even hold them and one lady was carrying one on her head, walking and texting on a cell phone. Crazy!

When the tour got to the market, we asked to get off there. We wanted to find a sim card to call home and see what else was for sale. Emma and I each bought a sim card with 50 minutes of talk time for 5 cedi, thats $3.45 in American money. I am sure we will be buying more before we leave. Oh ya, I have been taught by the best ;) I made sure I was not getting ripped off by having him wait there while I called my mom, once I was connected, I paid him. After that we decided to get some postcards, then we realized this was not a tourist area and therefore, there were not any postcards. Then we were pulled into a building by a mother & father of a two year old. They were trying to give us their daughter to bring back to the United States. They were telling us she would have a better life with us in the U.S. and to please just take her with us. The mother was explaining to the child that she was going to go with us. We explained to the parents that this was not possible and if we could get her on the ship then we would have taken her. It was breaking my heart! I in no way am interested in having a child in my life and I wanted to bring this beautiful little girl home! Urgh..it killed me, I was getting all choked up when I called my mom to tell her.

As we went through the market, we found a bag of suckers to buy. We handed a sucker to three children and in a matter of seconds over thirty people were swarming us, children and adults. Some wanted the suckers and some were yelling at us to give them money. Luckily, the police were not far behind us and they told everyone to get away from us. Emma and I learned our lesson and will never do that again. Also, people would just approach us in the market and ask for a drink of our water. It is a very different lifestyle here. Picture taking is not acceptable unless you have made friends with the people and they say it is OK.

A little later we ran into a little girl selling toothbrushes for .20 cedi, .14 U.S, and she had ten for sale. We bought all of them. Her eyes lit up, she was so excited. We did not tell her they were for the orphanage, we just said we like toothbrushes. She followed us for 45 minutes and kept laughing. When we asked her what was so funny, she said "You just bought 10 toothbrushes!" It was so cute! We were in amazement at the lifestyle and just tried to take in as much as we could. We took some pictures with local kids. Guys would approach us, ask us our names, and ask for our numbers. We would tell them we left our phones in the U.S and we don't have numbers. They wanted to take us out, but we would just thank them and tell them that our school will not allow us to go out at night.

We headed back to the ship to have some dinner and rest for tomorrow. It is our big shopping day. We will be buying everything we need for the orphanage.
         I will have more Ghana updates soon! I am so excited to be here and doing these things. Today has been the most exciting and memorable day in my life!                                                                                      
                                                    

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