My oh my does time fly! As I sit here I have only 16 days left in Ghana.... and only 2 more days of work placement. And now the time that is the hardest for me... The Goodbyes.
I love Cape Coast so much and all the wonderful people I've met here, so it will be very hard to leave them on Thursday. I had my work party yesterday and my lovely boss, Auntie Baaba, made me my three favourites... Wakye, Fried Plantain and Ground nut soup with rice balls. As well as octopus, fish, salad and rice. I ate like a king. They then gave me some very sweet and amazing gifts! I will truly miss them all.
On Thursday I head to Kumasi to meet up with my group, whom I miss very much! It will be great to catch up with them after having this solo experience for the last 2 months. Together we will rest and reflect for the weekend in Kumasi, then hopefully a visit to Kuapa Koko (a fair trae cocoa co-op). Then it's back to Nkawkaw and Tweapease to see the fathers and my village family, which entails equally hard goodbyes.
I guess everywhere you go in the world, you're bound to miss somebody. (I miss everyone from home so much!)
This may be my last blog entry before arriving home in Canada!! Hard to believe that 5 months have gone by so fast. As much as I'm dreading leaving, I am equally looking forward to being home and catching the tail end of Winter. Then I've got bigs plans afterwards, that will see me continue to work with Ghanaian youth in BC!
I have to keep this short because there was a huge electrical problem yesterday and they are shutting the power of from 10-5 today, and it's 9:42, and I've still got a few things I need to get done!
See you VERY SOON!!!! Love ya all!
Matty
PS You may be wondering what a furlong is... well it's an old english unit of measure that equals just over 200 metres. The 55, 749 furlongs refers to our flight to amsterdam, then toronto... Peace!
Monday, March 14, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
The Oxymoronic Shrimp...
Happy March!
Time is flying by (I think I write that in every blog), and with only one month left, I'm living my life here to the max, and trying to accomplishment everything I wanted months ago! Things have been going really well! I've only got 2 more weeks left here in Cape Coast then I head back to Nkawkaw and my village for one last visit before coming home.
I had to the opportunity this weekend to hang out with my friend Steve Day (who is here working for Canada World Youth) and living in Salt Pond, which is about 30 mins from Cape Coast. We had a great weekend and spent time it in both Cape Coast and Salt Pond. Steve is staying with a wonderful family in Salt Pond, and we hung out, played guitar (which I haven't done in 4 months!), watched movies (not in a few months!), played ludo (kinda like the game sorry) and had a gymnastic competition (complete with human pyramid... see photos on facebook.) I can't explain how funny (and amazing) it is to see a bunch of kids dancing to Steve playing Rod Stewart on the guitar, and 5-year old Prince basically learning the lyrics to the chorus (now you need to imagine a small boy, with little english, forming the sounds of I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger)! I equally can't explain how fun it is to have a pur water satchet fight.
The highlight of the weekend though was travelling to the beach and encountering a group of fisherman beginning to haul in their nets. Steve and I jumped at the opportunity to lend a hand (it was on my goals list!). It was tough work and I'm still feeling in my arms as I type this. Imagine over a kilometre of net having to be hauled in painstakingly slow by a group of 30-40 people... one step at a time. Singing along the way, to what I could only make out to be a repetition of 'mosquito, mosquito'. This entire expereince took over an hour and it was incredible to see slowly, one by one, how a few fish would be yanked in caught in the net, until the eventual end, when a pile of fish (and other sea creatures; crabs, jellyfish, lobster, shrimp, etc) were finally brought in. The fish are left to die, then the net owner takes the fish, while giving everyone their fair share for helping. Steve and I got 3 fish, 1 flounder and a giant jumbo (epidemy of oxymoron) shrimp. It was awesome to see such a strong sense of comraderie and community among the workers.
We took another quick swim in the ocean before returning home with our catch, where Mercy (Steve's village mom) made us an incredible light soup and fufu. Yummy.
I am sure that I'm inadvertently omitting some things from the weekend, so be sure to check out the facebook pics!
See you in a Month!
Peace and Love,
Matty
Time is flying by (I think I write that in every blog), and with only one month left, I'm living my life here to the max, and trying to accomplishment everything I wanted months ago! Things have been going really well! I've only got 2 more weeks left here in Cape Coast then I head back to Nkawkaw and my village for one last visit before coming home.
I had to the opportunity this weekend to hang out with my friend Steve Day (who is here working for Canada World Youth) and living in Salt Pond, which is about 30 mins from Cape Coast. We had a great weekend and spent time it in both Cape Coast and Salt Pond. Steve is staying with a wonderful family in Salt Pond, and we hung out, played guitar (which I haven't done in 4 months!), watched movies (not in a few months!), played ludo (kinda like the game sorry) and had a gymnastic competition (complete with human pyramid... see photos on facebook.) I can't explain how funny (and amazing) it is to see a bunch of kids dancing to Steve playing Rod Stewart on the guitar, and 5-year old Prince basically learning the lyrics to the chorus (now you need to imagine a small boy, with little english, forming the sounds of I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger)! I equally can't explain how fun it is to have a pur water satchet fight.
The highlight of the weekend though was travelling to the beach and encountering a group of fisherman beginning to haul in their nets. Steve and I jumped at the opportunity to lend a hand (it was on my goals list!). It was tough work and I'm still feeling in my arms as I type this. Imagine over a kilometre of net having to be hauled in painstakingly slow by a group of 30-40 people... one step at a time. Singing along the way, to what I could only make out to be a repetition of 'mosquito, mosquito'. This entire expereince took over an hour and it was incredible to see slowly, one by one, how a few fish would be yanked in caught in the net, until the eventual end, when a pile of fish (and other sea creatures; crabs, jellyfish, lobster, shrimp, etc) were finally brought in. The fish are left to die, then the net owner takes the fish, while giving everyone their fair share for helping. Steve and I got 3 fish, 1 flounder and a giant jumbo (epidemy of oxymoron) shrimp. It was awesome to see such a strong sense of comraderie and community among the workers.
We took another quick swim in the ocean before returning home with our catch, where Mercy (Steve's village mom) made us an incredible light soup and fufu. Yummy.
I am sure that I'm inadvertently omitting some things from the weekend, so be sure to check out the facebook pics!
See you in a Month!
Peace and Love,
Matty
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