Ghana Day 18; 8/20/14

I woke up this morning not as sore as I anticipated in my arms because I quickly discovered that I have about a hundred muscles in my back that I didn’t know I had. I was really sore and feeling kind of unpleasant, but it wasn’t that bad.

It was much of the same work today as it was yesterday. We left off yesterday having finished the sewage tank but not yet started the actual part where the toilet would sit. We worked a lot with that and mixed cement (called “mortar” by the mason), moved bricks, put cement between the layers of bricks that we had, and again interacted with the kids. There were a couple of them who remembered my name and kept repeating “Alice! Alice!” which was cute for a little bit. The 12-year old kids who had helped us out found us again and continued to help. It was awesome to play with them again.

 During lunch, we were able to climb to the top of the little hill we were working on to sit on the bench there and look over the view of the whole community. Some of the kids told me that it was called “Ekumfi Akwakrom.”

The other group that was working told us that Nick, the primary in-country coordinator for the public health brigade projects, is a jokester that likes to talk about pregnant women. He tells terrible jokes and riddles, including one that asks, “There are three people who walk up to a river. The first sees the river and puts their feet in. The second sees the river but doesn’t put their feet in. The third doesn’t see the river and doesn’t put their feet in. Who are they?”

Apparently, it’s a pregnant woman with a baby strapped to her back, which is the primary way that women carry small children in these parts of Ghana. They put them on their back, cover most of their body with the cloth, and tie it to make a small pocket for the infant to rest in. When the interns tried to explain to Nick that it’s hard for us to understand that riddle because we carry small children in strollers and don’t necessarily think fetuses are people, he had an extremely difficult time understanding that. He had them repeat themselves several times over and eventually gave up on trying to understand, but I thought it was really interesting that humor can vary widely because of the cultural context.

By the time we got back to the lodge, we were all exhausted, so my group of interns only did a tiny bit of work for our presentation on Friday. We’ll have to catch up a lot tomorrow.