Kwame and Regina's Wedding, Part 1

This post should serve as companion piece to the photo album I posted last week of Kwame and Regina's wedding. 

Before I begin I want to discuss my blogging style. There are many words that could be used to describe it, most of which suggest unreliability, my parents favorite being filial ingratitude. Despite these vicious attacks I refuse to apologize. Being in Ghana and having no electricity and cell reception 90 percent of the time is too good of an excuse to ever admit fault. While I'm in Bormase I do begin writing blog posts in my note book from time to time, but the fleeting nature of my concentration and lifestyle means these typically go unfinished. In this case, I knew I wanted to write one about the wedding as I was watching it. I began writing a post in my notebook, but I began to get lost in trying to describe the mire that is gender roles in Ghana. This was discouraging and caused me to put aside the pen and pad until picking it up in digital form now. In writing this post I've decided to forgo my goal of proposing a grand unified theory of gender/race relations and just focus on my experiences surrounding the wedding. This decision was cemented after I left my notebook at home. 

Alright, here we go. 

Kwame is my best friend Ghanaian friend in Ghana. Every evening I eat delicious Ghanaian meals with him, that his wife, Regina (rhymes with Carolina), prepares for us. These meals are typically bookended by drinking sizable quantities of akpeteshi (If it's not correct, it almost is,) which is the Ghanaian moonshine. It is distilled from palm wine, which comes from the variety of palm tree that grows here and in most of West Africa. It can be taken many ways and mixed with many things. My favorite is with bitters in it, which are roots that they'll put in the bottle and make the drink much more palatable. Krobos are big drinkers, especially of the "local," or the homemade akpeteshi. 

Kwame is much more than just my eating and drinking buddy. He is a fantastically hard worker, allowing him to marry which I'll get into, and he helps with anything I need, from weeding my farm to accompanying me to the various funerals and celebrations that occur, which can be very overwhelming for a white person without a Ghanaian friend as an escort. He is also one of the most genuine, fun-loving, respectful Ghanaians I've met. He stopped going to school after the equivalent of fifth grade and is not totally fluent in English but this seems to only amplify the qualities I just listed. He is also a window into the community for me. An excellent example of all these things is that he was just selected to be the new youth leader in Bormase. This is a prestigious position for younger men and allows him to use the title of chief. The reason why there was a vacancy in the position was because the previous youth leader had an annoying knack of "cutlassing," or chopping with a machete, any miscreants that fell under his purview. I'm not sure how literal I can take this explanation as I haven't seen anyone walking around with missing limbs or over sized gashes but he stands by it.

As you can imagine, when he told me a few months ago that he will be getting married, I was ecstatic. After my initial outpouring of joy and congratulations, I did a double take and asked him, "Wait, you aren't already married?" Cue revelation. Wife is a word used very liberally in Ghana. Ghanaian men regular refer to total strangers (women exclusively, homosexuality does not exist in Ghana, at least if you ask the vast majority of Ghanaians) as their wives. I thought I understood the word's myriad contexts but apparently I was mistaken. Many of the couples I've come to know, especially the younger and poorer ones, aren't actually married. They are husband and wife in many ways but not officially, be it by law or by custom. It is a sign that a man is a becoming a "big" man when he has become successful enough to get married. A certain amount of affluence is necessary as weddings are very expensive, particularly the dowry, and on top of that everyone in the community is invited and must be provided for . 

Fast forward two months. For the last couple of weeks Kwame and Regina have been working like crazy frying gari and selling their maize. Kwame's mother and sister have both come to help out around the house and with the wedding preparations. One of these is the selection and purchase of the wedding fabric. In the pictures you'll see many of us wearing matching outfits. The bride will select a fabric to be the wedding fabric and then everyone that is part of the wedding party will buy it and get it made into an outfit. This is especially fun because Ghanaian, and most West African, fabrics are bright and very colorful. This one was no exception. Me and a couple PCVs got this made into outfits for the big day.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances far beyond my control, I am unable to complete this post in one shot. Part 2 will be coming next week. Stay tuned!

Man vs. Bush Fowl

It's been some time since my last blog post as many of my faithful readers have reminded me an absolutely unannoying amount of times. My excuses for this are that I have been travelling about quite a bit, my charger for my lap top fried, and there's been a whole bunch of goings on recently. These are all copouts, but I'm going to stand by them. As you can imagine, due to the amount of time that has passed since my last blog post there is a copious of amount of things for me to tell you about that have happened in my life in the time since. So much in fact that it is a bit overwhelming and I'm not going to discuss any of it. I'll instead, at the suggestion of an admirably disinterested colleague of mine, pick a random trivial experience I had in the last couple weeks and dramatise it to the point that it satisfactorily fills my blog length requirements.

First let's set the scene: Early morning, I am on my way to the nearby city to embark on a routine trip. This one happens to be a largely pointless one to Kumasi that is only happening because the Peace Corps Food Security Committee meeting was rescheduled for the 5th time. This shouldn't be a major issue for most PCVs as we rarely have enough to do to actually experience scheduling conflicts but I have the privelege of being one of the few PCVs who has no cell phone service, thus making it essentially impossible to reach me with any important time sensitive information. Thus, I did not find out about the scheduling change until the evening before I was about to leave on my trip across Ghana. Because I had already told my landlady that some of her relatives who are visiting for a funeral could stay in my house I was basically homeless for the weekend. That brings us to where our story begins.

On my way to Koforidua (Kof) to catch a car to Kumasi to pass this homeless period in my life. I catch a car from the junction near my house. Anywhere in Ghana, the only form of transportation is by hailing a taxi or a lorry (a van with a bunch of seats in it.) The road to Kof that passes my junction is rather terrifying. Windy, barely wide enough for two cars to pass abreast and that doesn't take into account the massive potholes that cars and lorries are constantly swerving around. Ghanaian drivers handle these challenges by maintaining a speed never dropping below 60mph. We are about 15 minutes away from Kof, I'm maintaining my zen-like state of terror that I like to assume when driving on the road to Kof, when JACKPOT! Standing in the road are not one, but TWO, bush fowl. To understand the situation you must first understand that in Ghana bushmeat is a delicacy. Bushmeat is essentially anything that is not chicken, goat, sheep, or beef and is typically something that is caught in the bush (forest.) Some people are hunters, some use traps, some like the fish in a barrel method of setting a forest fire and then shooting everything that comes out. Either way, bush meat is their (and now my) jam.

So these two bush fowl (basically wild chickens, pheasantish in appearance) are chilling in the road directly in the trajectory of our taxi. Now any self-respecting taxi or lorry driver will immediately put his life and the lives of his passengers in danger to hit the birds at all costs. This is universally supported by all Ghanaians. So the driver does just that. He guns it at them and as they take flight in a direction perpindicular to the car he swerves and clips one of them. SUCCESS! But wait. The bird isn't dead. It is hopping along in the road behind the car, nursing what looks like a broken wing. So the passenger in the front seat sees this, and before the car has even slowed down, dives out, and takes off down the road after the bird. The bird sees this and is understandably terrified, as I would be. It hops away from this crazed bipedal predator chasing after it and actually manages to get airborne. However, its bum wing is preventing it from gaining altitude and is struggling along about four feet off the ground.

Now the stretch of road where this is all going down is the 50 yard long straightaway in the middle of an S-bend. As you can assume, a series of 90 degree bends in no way precludes the 60mph minimum speed requirement on these roads. So this guy is chasing this bird that is flying across both lanes of this road. Somehow the cars that come around the bends from both directions manage to stop in time and join us in watching the scene unfold. The guy is gaining on the bird who is flying along the edge of the road. As he runs he picks up a cassava branch laying in a bundle on the side of the road. Whoever collected those branches would gladly give it up for its new purpose. The man has the branch and just as the bird is about to veer off and head into the woods, gets into range and with a mighty two handed cut hits the bird out of the air like a tennis ball. The crowd goes wild. The man walks back triumphant holding his prize high over his head, surrounded by an aura of victory that I don't think has been seen in this world since the days of the samurai. The driver greeted the man with the eyes of a Roman wife greeting her husband upon his glorious return from a years long conquest of the barbarians. We congratulated him upon his graduation from man to god and we continued on harrowing journey. However, we all felt, or I imagine so, that if this fateful trip was to be our last, it was worth it.

This is Ghana. Now, I will return to my work here, the amount of which prevents me from providing you lovely people with a more consistent supply reading material on everyone's favorite topic, me.

Survived Site Restriction

As of last Wednesday, me and the other twenty PCVs in my training group made it through our first three months at site. I cannot say unscathed as that is definitely not the case but at least we are all, as far as I know, alive and mostly well. Next week begins our Reconnect training and we all come back together and celebrate our survival. Volunteers with a more competitive nature than my own might belittle the integrity and selfless of the Peace Corps and compare their respective first months at site to other peoples. I will, of course, not be partaking in this and condemn those who do.

During training, already established PCVs described these first three  months as a test of a volunteer's mettle and if you get through it without going crazy than you survived the first test of endurance as a volunteer. My first three months was mostly painless. I did have a couple bouts of Nkrumah's revenge or whatever its called and what's been diagnosed by Adam (My friend/PCV neighbor) as heat rash. He has an economics degree. Seriously. Besides these hiccups my spirits have stayed rather high and I'm going into Reconnect training with a satisfied impression of my time so far in Bormase.

Before I continue rambling I think its necessary to clarify a point. When I say I am satisfied with my service so far I do NOT, I repeat, do NOT, want to imply that I've actually accomplished anything thus far. From what I've gathered so far no one in the Peace Corps actually does ever accomplish anything and those who say they do are either lying or are over-achieving assholes who are making the rest of us look bad.

That said, no one really expects us to do much, which is appreciated, especially during our first three months where we are, in fact, prohibited from beginning any projects and aren't allowed to write grants yet. Thus far I have spent considerable time wandering around Bormase with and without my counterpart. When he's not there conversations tend to lead to dead ends rather quickly. On the other hand when he is conversations soar over my head. By the way I am working on the language but its tricky. We have so far met with several communities in my area and formed project groups in them. These are formed around a common interest in an area that I cannot work with the group members on. So far these consist of water groups, poultry groups, and beekeeping groups.

Water groups are formed in communities that are in need of drinking water via a borehole. Members of some of these communities are forced to walk twenty minutes each way several times a day just to supply enough water for their family. In the dry season, which just finished, it is especially difficult as the water table goes down. Stupid ecology nomenclature. But I'll be facilitating the process to get a borehole, which basically means I bug people until they follow through. I truly feel this is what I'm meant to do. My whole life has been preparation for this. Limits that I believed constrained me are as nothing now. But I am really rather psyched that this seems to actually be happening and everyone necessary for the next step has committed to meeting at the local Water and Health Officer's office tomorrow. So optimism all around please. Keep things crossed!

On Thursday, I will be hosting the first Krobodan-run chicken training that we're doing. Again, I will be primarily filling the role of spectator (on my trimester report its read: facilitator) but I am equally psyched that it will be a good start and from here I'm hoping to spread the good word of Krobodan to the masses. My supervisor, Emmanuel Nartey, the farming guru (doesn't come close to doing him justice,) will be running a demonstration of pen construction for layers. For those poor souls not in the poultry business, layers are chickens that lay eggs to be sold. Thus they most be kept isolated from any of those nasty male chickens. Doing there nasty male things. My hope is that this will be a launch pad for these layers in the communities I work with as no one from them sells their own eggs. And also it would make my life significantly easier as I have lost about half the eggs I buy trying to transport them in a plastic bag hung from the handle bar of my bike. Not the ideal mode of transporting eggs.

As far as beekeeping goes, I have discussed with my communities the idea and their seems to be some very positive response. However, at this time we don't have the necessary equipment to get it off the ground, but we're on a grant to change that so I'll be hitting you lovely folks up for money again before too long. (Thats a subtle hint to give money to the GLOW Camp through the link on my facebook page. If you haven't already or are feeling particularly financially frivolous.)

All that said, I'm at the point in this post where I lose interest in writing and have forgotten anything else I planned to write about. If those forgotten things are actually interesting lets hope I remember for the next post (probably 3-12 months from now) or, more likely, in ten years I'm having a conversation with someone and that memory gets randomly jogged.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post do not represent the views of the Peace Corps.  They only represent those of the author.

Valentine's Day

I was blissfully unaware that today was Valentine’s Day until I logged on to Facebook today. Now, I am blissfully aware as I always hated this stupid, over-commercialized consumer holiday. To say the least, VD Day is one of the American traditions I will not be telling Ghanaians about.

On to the important stuff: Me and my well-being. As of today, I am approximately two months into my official service and over half way through my site restriction. For those of my readers who have not previously been in the Peace Corps, site restriction is a three month probationary period at the beginning of every volunteers service in which we are not allowed to overnight away from our sites unless it is on administrative business. At the end of these three months we “reconnect” with our training group at “Reconnect,” which is traditionally viewed as the light at the end of the tunnel. During training, many of the PCVs who came to help train us depicted site-restriction as a torturous three months, by the end of which every volunteer is sleeping outside, without their mosquito net, and without their anti-malaria medication, in the hope that they get malaria and are allowed to go to Accra for a medical vacation.

While I have seriously considered sleeping outside without my mosquito net to have just one night where I do not startle myself awake because I had a dream where I was drowning in my own sweat, to say I am not suffering too badly during site restriction is an understatement. Besides travel restriction, the other administratively imposed reason for the stigma attached to site restriction, is that we are not supposed do any serious work. They want us to participate in our communities passively and learn about their lifestyle and find ways we hope we can make a positive impact. I have found this to be more difficult as at times I do feel a sense of impotence. However, these occasions are definitely in the minority and typically occur when I am sleep deprived or am sweating to unusually high degree and have no way of controlling it. The rest of the time I have been happy as a clam, becoming a member of Bormase and doing my utmost to avoid any semblance of real work. Because the Peace Corps says so obviously.

So as I’m sure most of you might wonder, or will wonder once I finish this sentence, what do I do all day if I can’t do any real work? First, I will clarify: Real work is my lazy way of saying “Peace Corps project work.” Basically they don’t want us showing up at site and trying to build a school a week later. We are encouraged to develop an understanding of our communities and their most critical needs, or at least significant needs that we, as Peace Corps volunteer have the capacity to address. Then we are supposed to “facilitate” a solution. The emphasis is on “facilitate,” because our projects should be sustainable, meaning they will continue to be beneficial after we leave Ghana. We are encouraged to work with our neighbors at their jobs every day and learn everything we can about the day to day work that goes on in our communities.

Anyway, my daily schedule is highly varied. I have nothing even remotely resembling an actual job. Despite this I inevitably wake up at around 6am. My counterpart and neighbors have a knack for knowing when I have not slept well and coming over the next morning at 5:45am and waking me up during the first real hour of sleep I have gotten all night. Even if they don’t come a combination of a deluge of sweat, the neighbors radio, and those lovely screaming baby humans and goats more than suffice to shock me awake at the same time every morning. Besides this uniformity nothing else in my day to day life is particularly regular. I usually will read for a couple hours in the morning, take a nap in the afternoon, and then eat dinner and play cards in the evening at my neighbors house.* How I survive this drudgery is beyond me. I often go to farm with one of my neighbors and just recently cleared my own plot for a garden! They all love to feel the softness of my palms and laugh at how easily I bleed. Just because they have hands made of leather and use them as cutting boards (literally) they think they’re tougher than me. Assholes.

Wednesday is market day so I ride my bike the twenty minutes down the road to market. People I pass on the road have a nasty habit of trying to have a conversation with me while I am speeding down a hill right at one of the four million massive potholes on the road. If I make it through site restriction without flying over my handle bars at least once I’ll have dodged a bullet.

Besides that, I spend a lot of my time visiting people in the surrounding communities, playing football, or going to the local Junior High School (more on this in a later post.) It has been difficult for me to become accustomed to the lack of structure but I becoming used to it and expect to increase my work load through various I plan to start in coming months. None of which I will jinx before they get off the ground by advertising them here.

About six more weeks until site restriction is over but I can’t say I particularly care. It will be nice to see the rest of my training group but I plan to have a very happy two years in Bormase.

*Me and my neighbor play cards most evenings. He doesn’t speak much English, but it was sufficient to learn Egyptian Ratscrew. For those who don’t know Egyptian Ratscrew is a fast-paced game filled with slapping and heightened emotions. Ghanaians are big fans of any game that encourages yelling and fast-paced action for which Ghana is perfect. While I consider myself a rather proficient Egyptian Ratscrewer, having played for over ten years (many lovely memories playing in airports,) my neighbor learned the game and was beating me within three weeks. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post do not represent the views of the Peace Corps.  They only represent those of the author.

The White Man/Blofono/Obruni Effect

I am a white man. Have been as long as I remember. Up until four months ago it hasn't been anything to get excited over. Of course I knew that I possessed the skin tone that had routinely subjugated  all other skin tones throughout the course of history. This had left me with a sense of...guilty entitlement? I'm not sure exactly what to call it. Louis CK does a poignant bit on it. His modus operandi is revealing embarrassing truths about being a white, middle aged, socially awkward, egocentric man. I can safely say that I will be able to relate to all of that at some point in life. I'm also compelled to agree with most of what he says in the link above. White people have had a monopoly on being the dominant race for most of history and despite what Louis CK says about the future, I'm inclined to believe that will continue or that it will all at least balance out. Maybe there will be an apocalypse and the Nepalese will be the only race whose home was not completely flooded and they will by reason of being the only ones left become the dominant race for the brief and lonely remaining history. But probably not.

I have always thought it would be cool to be black. When I think about it, though, I realize I can't really come up with many substantial reasons. It would be kind of sweet to be a "brother." And I assume I would be better at basketball than I am now. Not that's saying much. Affirmative action is still a thing. But besides that I can't imagine many ways I would necessarily enjoy it when compared to being white.  I also come from a rather racially homogenous town. I lived next to the perhaps the only black man in Bethlehem and never gave much thought to his experience surrounded by conservative white people.

Being white in Africa, though, is a totally different animal. As you can imagine, I am in the minority. That was the extent of the information I could safely rely on concerning race relations in Africa before coming here. My perception of race relations has changed rather drastically. In the last fifty years a big push among the progressives, or whatever they're called, has been to claim that they do not see "skin color." Or some such bullshit. For most of my life I spent as little time as possible concerning myself with that type of thing and was content to superficially agree with it and be on my way. 

In Ghana, everyone sees skin color. As a white man, I stand out like the sun. I cannot go anywhere, do anything, or be present in any sense without everyone I'm attempting, or not, to interact with see my skin color and adjust their response to me accordingly. 

Typical Scenario: I walk into a neighbors house to say hi, not expecting to stay long. The father, or eldest male, or mother, or whoever is senior will yell at a small boy and he will come running up for a chair for me. If the chair is, in their eyes, less than satisfactory, they will go to great lengths, to give me the best chair they have to offer. Including waking up and kick a pregnant woman off a bench. (I still feel bad about that one.) Any objections I have are routinely ignored. Once they have gone to that trouble I sit down. And typically we will have a 15-20 second conversation before my knowledge of Krobo is exhausted. We will then sit for a couple of minutes in silence, make awkward facial expressions whenever we, god forbid, make eye contact. At this point I will have worked up the courage to leave and I will parse together a few words in Krobo which I hope gives me a polite excuse for leaving. 

This is standard. A quick aside: Any implication of it being awkward is from my perspective only. I have had no indication that Ghanaians find the type of interaction related above to be awkward. They are very content sitting and not talking. In fact a popular recreational past time here is sitting. I've tried it but never can catch my second wind and usually fold and end up walking around aimlessly. Or hiding in my room.

As a blofono (white man in Krobo; In Twi, the predominant language in Ghana, I am called obruni) I am apparently entitled to preferential treatment in all things, not just seating. Whenever we chop (eat) together, I always given the choicest cuts of meat. Whenever I get in a tro (van, used for public transportation) they will often kick someone out of the front seat for me. When I go to the bank, rather than waiting in the hour long line a security guard will escort me to the main desk, bypassing the thirty Ghanaians waiting. This is typical apparently, as no one I have just cut makes a sound and smiles broadly at me if I glance at them apologetically. 

I do not mean at all to attribute the generosity and pampering I receive solely to my skin color. Ghanaians are an incredibly generous and kind people to begin with. Anywhere I go I see people going out of their way for complete strangers. One of the biggest cultural faux pas, besides using your left hand to eat or your right hand to wipe, is being a less than adequate host. Anytime you are eating in home and anyone walks by, and I mean anyone, the standard greeting is come and eat. It is understood that unless you are both of equal standing (eg both adult men) and close friends or family the offer is declined but I still find it fascinating the level to which they will go out of their way to play the gracious host. 

My skin color merely causes these cultural traits to be exacerbated. The other apparent effect that my pallor has is as a magnet for children. I think it might have something to do with an ingrained ability to smell the sweat of a blofono, but regardless, all children under the age of fifteen can sense my presence as I walk by at a distance of a kilometer. Does not matter if I am in a tro or they are in their house. I hear their shrill cry: "Blo-FO-nooo," and I know all is lost. They will not stop yelling at me until I have turned and waved to each of them in turn. This requires extraordinary effort as there are typically upwards of four thousand of them trailing me at any one time. Until recently I believed my only sanctuary was in my house but the little girl who lives next door just found out that if she repeatedly knocks on the door while the blofono is napping he will come out angrily and yell something that sounds like, "GOWAY!" This is possibly the most enjoyable thing in the history of past times and she conveniently comes home from school at 1pm, just when the blofono is trying to take a nap.

There is really nothing that can accurately convey the experience of being a white man in Ghana. It is the closest thing to being a celebrity or sports star that I have experienced so far. The one sad fact is that my distaste for the attention has forced me to put a close on my dreams of being a soccer star. I'll find my next calling hopefully while in Ghana. It is the least they could do after crushing my last one. 

I hope this blogpost was relatively coherent. I've realized that the design scheme for this blog has been rather monotone and that it could use some freshening up. Suggestions would be welcome.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post do not represent the views of the Peace Corps.  They only represent those of the author.

Eating, and its fallout

Life in the Peace Corps, in Ghana, is about as different as can be from life in the states. I can say that from experience now, but that is also all I have heard as I was applying and in training. However, none of that, not even homestay, prepared me for what is to come. Nothing could have effectively prepared me for this. In this post I will gloss over all aspects of food, eating, and the culinary arts in Ghana. 

Eating (and its fallout): Fallout is the appropriate descriptive word if I’m having a good day. For the not so good days, there are many other more appropriate words, which I’m going to allow the reader to imagine on their own.

            Outside of that I enjoy the food and the meals here. Most days for lunch, and everyday for supper, I eat with my neighbor, whose wife cooks for us. Once we finish eating she will then clean up after us. I’m sure all the females reading this are rolling their eyes and all the males are green with envy. However, despite how much I enjoy a little bit of light sexism, I want to ensure everyone that I have done my utmost to remedy this. But whatever do or say, not that she understand any of it, she is adamant that her husband and I eat, while she sits 10 feet away.

            In order to create some hint of self-reliance, I have been trying to get her to teach me how to cook Ghanaian food. This consists of me watching he cook until she gives me something to do, or I butt in. I’m allowed to do my menial task for maybe about 45 seconds, or until she finishes laughing at me. Then she takes the onion I was attempting to peel (in my opinion, very satisfactorily) and I wander off shamed.* Honestly, watching Ghanaians cook is rather intimidating. I have tried to pound fufu on several occasions and it always ends the same way: With the women laughing at me as I try to pound it, with two hands, as hard as possible, missing my target on most hits, and then one of them taking it from me and with one hand putting me to shame. This is consistent everyone from twelve year old girls to one hundred and twenty year old women (ages are usually ballparked here.)

            The meals consist of little actual conversation. Partly because Ghanaians don’t screw around while they eat. It’s all business. Also partly he speaks almost no English and I speak almost no Krobo. The conversations we do manage to have consist of him taunting me for eating like a little girl. I respond in kind and we laugh, finish our meal, and then play cards or ludu (Ghanaian version of Sorry.) Not a bad life on the whole. I'm trying to eat bones but that usually ends with me spitting them out on the floor when no one is looking.

            For Ghanaians, meals are communal affairs. Anywhere I go I am offered food. I will often have supper three times in one day. It has taken me some time to develop the foresight and confidence to be able to tell Ghanaians that I am full or that I will be eating later. Meals are shared, between men, with everyone eating out of a communal bowl and sharing our fufu or banku or whatever other starch is present.

            Most of these aspects of eating and cooking I have mentioned are daunting at first. But I can say, without reservation, that I enjoy fufu almost as much as Ghanaians (almost to a man they have said they would have it three meals a day if possible) and I am pretty damn fond of banku, boiled plantains, yams, and most of the other soups and stews they eat. I want to warn everyone that when I return to America I will be eating everything with my hands so please don't be more alarmed than normal by my eating habits.

*This is easier to cope with because I presciently left my dignity in my room at homestay, back during my third week in Ghana. No use for it here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post do not represent the views of the Peace Corps.  They only represent those of the author.