We woke up ridiculously early today to get to community to
paint our latrines and make sure that the families we were building for
understood how to take the best care of it. We were told to wake up at 6am to
eat breakfast and be ready to leave by 7am, but when that is said, we all know
that it’s not actually going to be the case. At the earliest, we might leave by
7:20, but 7:30 or so is much more likely. The interns and Deanna call it
“Ekumfi time” as a joke.
When we got to the community before 8am, there were a good
number of kids running around already. One of the first things that we saw was
this adorable concrete block on the ground that one of the kids from the house
had made:
We then mixed the paint that we needed to make the design
that we agreed upon, which was white on top and blue on the bottom, blue polka
dots on the white background. It turned out to be really great, and the kids
that we’d gotten to know came around and helped us paint, which was really
cute.
It turns out that I have a really memorable name or
something because a lot of the kids remembered it and came to play as the
morning went on, and it was a little crazy to think that there were so many
children that we interacted with over just the past three days. I had some time
to play with them, and one of the (the same one from yesterday) braided my hair
again. Interacting with the kids was really cute today especially because one
of the interns was really sloppy with paint and got it all over the rest of us,
but the kids started trying to get it out of our hair and off our skin.
Right before we left, the girl who braided my hair asked me
to bring her “biscuits” (I think she means cookies) if I come back. Aww.
When we finished the latrine, this was our final product:
We made sure at the end that we could talk to the family we
had built for about maintenance of the latrine. It was surprising to see that
everyone else wanted to jump straight into the instructions and forgo formalities
like thanking the mother for letting us work with her family. After we’d done
that, we started explaining to her how to make the most of her latrine (families
pay 250 GHC). That included not throwing toilet paper or excess water into the
latrine to help the sewage pit last longer, the fact that the waste from the
pit can be taken out after 15-20 years when it is full to use as fertilizer,
and that Global Brigades will fix anything that has gone wrong for only the
first three months after construction. She ended up giving us some watermelon
and other fruits as a thank you as we drove away for the last time.
After lunch, we headed to the Global Brigades Ghana office
to give our final presentations for the internship in front of some of the key
staff of GB Ghana. It was a little intimidating because the economic
development interns (Ed, Noah, and Megan) gave a really great presentation
about their proposal to create cooperatives in different communities to
increase the impact and sustainability of latrine building and the construction
of a soap factory in Ekumfi Egyankwaa. I hadn’t ever heard a business proposal
presentation before, but it was awesome to hear the business students present
because they have skills that I’ve never learned about, can draw on facts and
figures, and explain to help a layperson understand. Those are acquired skills,
but it was obvious that there was a difference between their presentation and
the global health ones.
The nine global health interns decided that we would present
in three groups, each of us talking about a different aspect of our internship
and our suggestions for it. I think that all the groups, mine included,
probably should have spent more time preparing for the presentation overall,
but I didn’t think that anyone did a poor job of portraying the general
consensus about our stances on different issues.
The thing that made the presentation difficult and stuck
with me for a while was the fact that there was one GB professional who was new
to the organization and had not yet been briefed about how everything works.
Our presentations assumed a basic understanding of what we did and our
subsequent recommendations, and he seemed to be very interested in everything
and wanted to grill my team especially about our suggestions for the medical
brigade portion of our internship. I’d forgotten what it was like to have to
think on my feet like that about a topic other than myself (for a personal
interview, for example), and it was hard for me to keep on my feet. Though I
was complimented on my handling of the questions and the other GB staff members
that were directors and other people like that helped answer questions, I felt
like I’d left a lot on the presentation stage. It’s not a good feeling, but I
guess it reminds me of how important it is to keep up my skills. One of the
coordinators asked my group for our presentation via email afterwards, which
was really awesome.
Another group that presented made a joke about their
coordinator for the public health brigade not helping them, which did not go
over well with the GB higher ups. They immediately wanted to know who it was
and what exactly it was that he didn’t do, but the group was just joking
because he helped more with directing the ladies in his group rather than the
manual labor itself. The cultural differences between the presentation group
and the audience created the gap awkward situation in which a joke was
misunderstood, but I’m intrigued to learn more about humor and how it varies
according to culture.
Throughout the program, we were given Coke in a bottle (!)
and meat pies, which was a surprising combination. I didn’t particularly like
either one, but when in Ghana, you take what you can get.
Afterwards, we had a little bit of a photo shoot:
At night, we split everyone (including the 6-people German
brigade that was constructing latrines) into 3 groups to decide what we were
going to buy from the market tomorrow to cook for everyone (us and the staff).
My group of 6 decided to make banana splits and a fruit salad with an alcoholic
refresher, and then I had some time to talk to Kristoff, one of the German
medical school students. When we were trying to think of how much of each
ingredient we would need, he kept checking if we knew how much a kilogram or
liter was, which was simultaneously funny and adorable. It was so fun to talk
to him because the Germans in general are so classy. They eat everything with a
fork and knife, all know more than one language, are polite, quiet, respectful,
adventurous (they’re staying in Ghana for 4 weeks after their brigade!), and
are eager to ask and answer questions as they come. It’s refreshing to meet
them and be able to see a little bit into their world without the pressure of
having to be the expert on America or seeing them as the experts on Germany
because we’re meeting in Ghana.
He was saying that he took a year off after high school to
work in Italy so he speaks fluent Italian before going to medical school. He’s
going to his 4th year out of the 6 that are required for a degree
(they don’t have undergraduate/graduate distinctions). He likes to snowboard,
and he did tae kwon do and skied before that, but he’s never tried yoga. He
lived in the States for a year when he was 4 or 5, and has traveled to both the
East and West coasts a lot just to visit. His favorite city out of all the ones
he’s visited (it sounded like a whole lot) is San Francisco, which makes sense
because it’s not as busy as a NYC or LA and has a certain classiness to it, and
he said that it’s probably the closest to Europe that you’ll get in the US.
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