Ahh the village...!

So, I visited my American friend, Amy, and her host family for the past couple of days in her village. Village life is very different than cosmopolitan Accra life. In the village, the days are longer, the food is spicier, and the activities are limited. But the weather is cooler, at a mere 95-100 degrees F., and is relatively cheaper than Accra. I even pounded fufu for the first time in Ghana! The “pounder” is made out of a bamboo branch and you just pound the cassava and plantain mixture. I didn’t do it for very long because my arms got tired very quickly haha. Fish is also eaten with almost every meal. Chicken and meats are very rare. If you want a chicken you have to buy a chicken and kill it. This is the case in Accra as well, but it is just rare to physically see. On my bus home, the lady sitting next to me was holding a live chicken in her lap…I always just laugh to myself because half the things I see in Ghana are so random haha I love it. In the village, waking up at 7 or 8am is considered sleeping in. Most people wake up early to do laundry and other chores to avoid the heat, even though it is still hot. By 6am or so, music is playing, people are talking, and the roosters are screaming. I always get worried when I hear the sound of people pounding fufu…It’s kinda really difficult to eat it for breakfast. Also, as we are approaching the rainy season, it rains pretty much every day. It is good because it cools Ghana off a bit, but bad because people don’t like the rain here; therefore everything closes. I even brought my rain jacket from Seattle! But…no one goes outside…haha. In the village, the surroundings turn into mud! Amy and I really wanted to go mud sledding! But…ya…that would be weird…people just don’t understand!!
Every night before I go to bed I always think about Ghana and all the crazy and amazing stuff that happens here. I go to bed saying to myself, “I love Ghana.” And I’m not just saying that to pretend that I actually like it here, I honestly love it here! At this point I have been here for 105 days and I only have 60 left…I feel like any day now I could be on that plane back home!! I don’t even know if I’m ready to leave!! It will be weird to wake up in my bed, to eat bagels, to drive, to go to Starbucks, to get French fries at McDonalds, to drink water from the faucet, to take a hot shower, to just hang out with friends and make stupid music videos…I don’t know if I will remember how most of this works!! I guess part of this journey is how I react to the modern world when I come back, and appreciate modern marvels. But even though I’m in Ghana and I don’t really have any of the things that I listed (except maybe the hot shower, but only when the water has been sitting in the pipes all day, very rare) life is still pretty good!