I know it's been an incredibly long time since my last post and I can only semi blame it upon being busy. Mostly it can be credited to my laziness. But I suppose it is time to check in with my writing just so you know that I'm all good. I've recently moved to the city, Accra- Dzwoulu (perhaps that is the wrong spelling-I'm not entirely sure). I've lived my first couple of weeks there relatively easily. The transfer was so smooth because it's almost western living. There is running water, constant electricity and get this- a flushing toilet. After living in Ghana two months living in my new host family is almost like not living in Ghana. There are, however, some bizarre rules to live by which kind of make me feel like a child. We, the other volunteers and I, have a curfew of 12 which we rarely make, and we have a housemaid who cooks and cleans for us. It's so disparate from the way we were living before. Another difference is that we go out to do something every night whether it be drinking, dancing or even going to see a ridiculously overpriced movie. I think I've been perpetually tired the whole time I've been here because my body got so accustomed to going to bed at 9pm when I was living in the village. That's right ladies and gentlemen, me the homebody has actually gone out drinking and dancing. Salsa dancing no less! But I'm really quite awful at it. It must be the white and Asian in me that is inhibiting my sense of rhythm. I'm slowly getting used to the constant barrage of hip hop, reggae and rhythm and blues. I'm sooo missing my music though because I lost my ipod a month ago and have since been left to listen to the Ghanaian music. It kind of sucks. But I'm finally at the newspaper. It isn't quite as expected because it is an independent and its really relaxed. I barely write that much at all, and I always expected the practise of journalism to be faster paced. Hopefully it picks up. But I'm currently working on a story about Ghana's national amputee football team the Black Challenge and I'm really loving it. It's funny because I'm the last person anybody would expect to enjoy writing about sports. But the team is really inspiring and the coaches are really friendly and open. Sometime next week my editor is attempting to arrange a meeting with the ministry so that we can put forth a proposal to start a special fund for disability and sports that will support the Black Challenge. I miss home though. The people, the comfort, the ease. I was a bit sick yesterday and felt fairly awful and there is nothing like your own bed when you don't feel well. I'm even missing my older irritating brothers, especially the one that I find the most annoying :) And everyone except Jon in my family has been sick while i've been away and i've hated not beinng there for them. Mum and nanna you had twenty effing years to get sick while I was there but you both get hospitalised in the only four months i've ever been away from home, rude!
Now that I'm away from all of my old volunteer friends I feel like I'm in that trasitional phase again after finding my feet in the village. I'm so grateful for my first couple of months in akropong because of the people i met. I like the people I'm with now but it really isn't the same. It's a bit shit really. And i'm a bit over the beach now, i think I need a few quiet weekends of sleep because the travelling and going out is so exhausting. I might even be missing uni, not just the people who I of course miss, but the work. I never thought I'd say that. I also miss coles. Of course the people but I miss doing proper work for a proper period of time. Ghana is a nation of lethargy and laziness. The concept of work really isnt understood- on the upside i'm certain there is less stress, heart attacks and burnouts but on the downside they'll always be stuck in the momentum of underdevelopment until they get their act together and start working for it. The sad thing is that they think they are working when they sit in shops, eat or sleeping in these same shops that have no customers and they make 1 cedi a day. Its ridiculous. Yet, they seem ok with it which again forces me to uestion whether they are underdeveloped or whether they are just leading a different lifestyle that we cant understand. I think the world might be a better place if we could just find a balance between the accelerated western life and the monotonous less devloped lifestyle.
I guess that's all I have to say for now.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures too. I didn't post them all because i have about 800 and I didn't want to bore you.
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