Turkey Day Recap

I started feeling pretty restless my last week or so before leaving to travel to Accra for Thanksgiving. I got ahead ahead with my lesson planning and pretty much finished for the rest of the term. So because of that I found myself with a lot of free time and was ancy to hit the road. My friend Rakia who lives in Fumbisi came last Saturday for a computer lesson so I help her setup a gmail account and then a facebook account. Last Monday after teaching my form 3 students, giving a class test to the form 1 students and then marking & returning the test last Monday I was ready to go! Travel is always long and tiring here and I usually prepare myself by expecting to be miserable. It can only get better from there!

I feel like my entire time away from Gbedema revolved around food. I had pizza, lots of fruit (watermelon, pineapple, banana, papaya or pawpaw as it’s called here), spaghetti, ice cream! (Breyers vanilla and chocolate swirl), and cereal. Staying at a host was the best idea ever. I enjoyed hearing stories about my host’s time as a PCV in Tanzania and how she is adjusting to her new life now as an ex-pat living in Ghana working for USAID. I also slept in a super comfy bed with blankets on me in the air con. Plus took a hot shower, shaved my legs (made it 2/3 of the way through No-Shave November), and painted my toes and fingernails. Besides all the wonderful food, I enjoyed seeing my friends I hadn’t seen in a long time.

Thanksgiving was amazing. I actually wore my hair down for once and wore my cute purple J Crew skirt to the ambassador’s house. The dinner was from 12-5 on Thursday. We enjoyed drinks and mingling before the feast was served at 2. It was great to see everyone I trained with that I hadn’t seen since swearing in and also meet other Volunteers and Americans living in Ghana (study abroad students, workers, airline employees). Part of the reason the Ambassador puts on this nice meal is because it’s his favorite holiday. You could tell who the PCVs were because as soon as they set up the buffet table we started lining up. At least we were classier than when we rushed the servers at swearing in. I missed my traditional Carey family appetizer of olives and salad of the purple variety but other than that they had it all. The spread included turkey, stuffing (or dressing if you’re Southern like me), cranberries, mashed potatoes and gravy, carrots, salad, cornbread, curried cauliflower, ham, and green beans with dijonaise sauce. I ate one very full plate but could not go back for seconds. I had a really hard time deciding whether I should eat more meat or veggies. I don’t get much of either at site so I just ate a lot of both. The mashed potatoes and ham were the highlights, which is strange for me because usually I prefer turkey. We had some time to chat and let the food settle before the pies came out. Pumpkin pie is my normal favorite and it was delicious but the pecan pie was to die for. And the coffee was wonderful too. We stayed until the end and then we went to different places to continue hanging out. My host had a thanksgiving dinner to attend at 5:30 so I stayed out to hang out with people for a while in Osu, the nicest part of Accra. I even did some black Friday shopping at a fair trade store called Global Mamas on Friday.

Besides stuffing myself silly, it was nice to get some distance for my community and gain perspective on my life here. I was genuinely excited to come back ‘home’ to site and I feel a sense of accomplishment in having already spent three months in my village. It was great talking to other PCVs about their experience and get ideas to use in my community. I felt re-energized coming back and set some new goals for myself for December. On Saturday in Tamale we heard the sad news that a Metro Mass bus crashed with a Benz lorry and killed 30 people on the way from Bolga. Travel here is one of the biggest safety risks and it was definitely reminder of that and of just how fragile life is. On the way to Bolga Sunday we saw the remnants of the bus on the side of the road which was quite sobering.

Monday was a great day. I was glad to be back and when I went for my evening walk to the dam I happily discovered I didn’t forget all the Buli I know in one week and was able to adequately greet people. Plus there were several darn cute kids who jumped up and down when the saw me, followed me, and came to the path to greet me  how can you not be joyful after a reception like that? I also did a successful (I think) lesson on computer viruses and then HIV/AIDS with my form 3 students since December 1 is World AIDS Day (see newer post for more info). I repeated the lesson for the form 1 kids Tuesday and will repeat it for the form 2 kids tomorrow. I brought back some beaded ribbon pins a fellow Volunteer made for the teachers to wear to raise awareness about AIDS. Tomorrow the nurses from the clinic are supposed to come in the morning to talk about Cerebral Spinal Meningitis (CSM) and HIV/AIDS with the students. Then Friday is the Farmer’s Day holiday so we’ll be after school. December 2 is also a very important because (shout out starting now) it is the day my lovely and sweet niece Carey was born 17 years ago. Happy (early) Birthday Care! I love you more than I can say and am crazy-proud of you.