Hello Everyone,
I sincerely apologize for the lack of new posts over the past week. I have received several facebook comments/e-mails concerning my absence. Everything OK and I am doing just fine!
I am going to see wild elephants/on safari this Wednesday. Just another normal week in Africa.:) I will try and update my blog b4 I leave. I AM SOOOO STOKED ABOUT MY SAFARI TRIP!!
I only have about 30 seconds of internet left so I will let the suspense and anticipation of my next post build until next time. I have been ridiculously busy with school and traveling... but it is all worth it. My theory is that I will be able to rest when I get back to the States. I have SOOOOO much to talk about - including volunteering at an orphanage of former child slaves- - amazing experience!!! I will do my best to post a blog with up-to-date experiences by Wednesday. Thank you everyone for your concerns and e-mails. Love you all.
Best,
J
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Africa Cup, School, Volta Trip, and Wedding.
I apologize for not updating my blog for a little over a week now. My life has been jam-packed with adding/dropping classes, traveling, and awesome/annoying new experiences - I hope to touch on in this entry.
__________________________________________________________--
Africa Cup.
Soccer in Ghana is not just a sport, it is a lifestyle. Many of the citizens here seem to be in and around the poverty line so they don’t have much to look forward to. For example, in the States we might go see a movie, travel to Hawaii, or play golf to take our mind off of things. But most citizens in Ghana do not seem to have this disposable income to spend on personal entertainment. What they do have is the Ghana Black Star National Soccer Team. Soccer seems to be the one escape, the one thing that the nation universally invests so much personal emotion that everything rides on winning or losing. National pride and personal pride rests in the hands of the Black Stars. Seriously, professors cancel classes on game day and shops close…. the country stops. Every time a goal is scored the entire nation goes absolutely crazy as I described in a previous entry. The best way to describe the atmosphere is its similarity to the recent film "Invictis." Literally, the entire nation (the rich and the poor, haves and have nots, come together and celebrate their team together. It really is quite amazing to watch an obviously expensive Mercedes pulled over on the side of the road with about 30 young and poor school children huddled around the car listening to the game on the radio. At least for a short time, the social economic statuses don’t seem to matter.
Now with that background on the importance of soccer here, a little over a week ago was the Africa Cup. Ghana had made it to the final game. This is similar to the world cup but only for African teams. The Blacks Stars went nearly undefeated the entire season, so you can only imagine the hype. EVERYBODY was overwhelmed with angst about the Africa Cup game against Egypt (who have won the three previous years in a row) A group from our study abroad group went to a street named Osu where an entire road was blocked off and a huge projection screen was erected. There were literally 100's of people congregated to watch the game. Everybody was decked out in yellow, green, red and black (the national colors). The score was tied at zero until the last 5 minutes of the game. Egypt scored. Ghana was unable to answer back and once again the Africa Cup slipped away. What was most amazing to me was the reaction to the loss. Even after only being here for a month I was extremely depressed, an entire nation whose heart and soul was in soccer had lost. Surprisingly, one Ghanaian walked by and he said "What’s the matter?" I replied, “I wish Ghana would have won.” The Ghanaian answered back, “Yea, but second place in all of Africa is not that bad for a small little country.” as he winked and walked away. To my amazement, instead of acting somber, angry, or despondent (common American reactions to major losses) the crowd of over 400 Ghanaians cheered at the end of the game. Music was billowed over the street and the Ghanaians danced, sang and celebrated. While disappointed that they had lost, they were still so proud in their nation. This entire experience oddly had a profound impact on me. I learned that we all make personal decisions on how we perceive certain events and consequently on how we react. You can choose to be happy and thankful for what you do have, or angry about the things you don’t. I know when the Sacramento Kings lost to the Lakers in game 7 of the semifinals playoffs - Sacramento was pretty devastated. We definitely did not celebrate. The Ghanaians have a different outlook on life than I have experienced in California. They celebrate and respect what they do have. I am sure this greatly contributes to them being such a happy and colorful culture even though many live around the poverty line. I am starting to realize that money really doesn’t make people happier. In fact, I have noticed the children here cry less and always say thank you to their parents even for simple things like water. Is is the satisfaction and appreciation for what they do have that makes the Ghanaian culture so impressive. Celebrating in the streets even after the biggest loss Ghana had ever experienced, is highly reminiscent of the mentality of the culture.
___________________________________________________________________________________
I suppose that’s enough about soccer.
SCHOOL
On a less exciting note is school. School and education here over the past few weeks is not only boring but it is absolutely painful. The professors literally read from a script word for word. With no focus on analyzing and 100% emphasis on memorization – I feel like nothing is actually learned. The professors make a maximum of three points in two hours. Just to rant a little - nobody in the entire university knows how things administratively work. Every department goes by different rules, we have to register at four different departments, in addition to registering at the EAP building, at the IPO (International Programs Office) building on the EAP website and on the University of Ghana website. Mind you every department is about 25 minutes walking distance away. In order to drop a class you have to go to the original department who then tells you to get a paper from the Dean’s office located 30 minutes away and then return for a signature at the initial department . After I get the signature I have to go all the way back to the Dean’s office and submit my drop form, wait 3 days, and return to get the form and then walk it all the way back to the individual departments. Long story short, I had to do this for two departments and it literally took me 6 hours of walking around in the 105 degree heat. This is just a small taste of the pure autocratic confusion at the University. It is so so so unnecessarily inefficient and literally every person you talk to will give you a different answer on what to do. This is VERY stressful for me because I need all my courses to transfer for credit so I will be able and complete my law school application in September and continue on my road to graduating next June. The academic aspect of my journey in Ghana is by far the most unfavorable. Nothing makes sense and nobody ever knows what is going on. Inside (I only understand about 50% of what is said in class, much of the time I am not quite sure if the professors are speaking English)and outside around the university I am in a constant state of confusion. We are now in week 4 of school and 3 out of my four political science courses don’t even have the readings available so the professors have been talking about the same thing for three weeks. I still don’t even know if I am correctly enrolled and likely won’t know until my grades come through. Apparently, the finals schedule doesn’t come out until a couple weeks before finals so if the finals conflict you are forced to drop a class. So that means you can go an entire semester, doing all reading assignments, etc. and be forced to drop a class at the end because you find out right before the finals conflict. Something is very wrong with that system. On the positive side – I am oh soooooooo more appreciative of UCSB and the order to things. At UCSB it takes me at most 10 minutes to register for classes – here it has taken be 3 and a half weeks and I still don’t know if I am registered. Anyway enough about school – lets move on to something much happier and more exciting.
_____________________________________________________________-
Volta Trip - Monkey Sanctuary/Waterfall
The next major even of the past week was our Volta Monkey Sanctuary and waterfall trip. We left at 7am and took a 4 hour bus ride to the Volta region to a monkey sanctuary. This is a small and remote village where the monkeys literally live amongst the people. The monkeys walk out from the forest, go in people’s houses and then return back out into the forest. It was the most amazing thing, when our group first arrived we didn’t see any monkeys then all of a sudden they came toward us from all directions (probably because they knew we had food). I got to hand feed a wild monkey a banana!! So so cool. Apparently the monkeys consisted of two rival tribes with over 150 monkeys in each. Each tribe was lead by one chief monkey who was the biggest male. While the tour guy could have been making this entirely up and nobody would have known, I still thought the story was interesting.
After the monkey sanctuary we then drove to the most amazing place, the Volta Waterfall. This is the single largest waterfall in all of West Africa. After about an hour hike in the rain forest we finally reached the waterfall. Seriously, I think I found the source of most of the stunning computer wallpapers we have on our computers. It was simply amazing. The sheer roar and power of the massive waterfall and cloud of water particles it sprayed into the air was breathtaking. I stripped down to my bathing suit and jumped in with the rest of our EAP group. Standing under the waterfall seriously felt like acupuncture because the water fell from over 900 feet.
For the first time in my life even after coaching water polo for 3 years and swimming for most of my life, I actually had to save someone from drowning. Our Ghanaian student leader apparently didn’t know how to swim and he started going under. People were screaming, "Jason!" because they knew I played polo and were extremely frantic, so I swam over as fast as I could to see if I could help. Another girl from UCSB and I grabbed him and treaded him back to shore. Luckily, he was ok, aside from hyperventilating the entire swim back to shore. But everything worked out. And we continued to swim around the waterfall for another two hours. Quite an eventful day. I honestly don’t know why every day in Ghana is packed full of more experiences I would have in a month back home, but I am so thankful.
________________________________________________________________________________-
Ghanaian Wedding
One of my favorite experiences yet took place yesterday. I somehow got invited to the Ghanaian wedding of a random seamstress’s uncle. Yes, random I know. So I went with three other Ubronis (white people) from our group and headed out. We took 2 tro-tros and one taxi and finally reached the seamstress's house where her family prepared for us the traditional Ghanaian dish red (beans and friend plantains – a staple of my diet here). She lived in an adobe house with a thin wooden and porous roof. It is simply amazing how little so much of Ghana gets by on. We stayed at the house for about two hours while the girls styled their hair. In the mean time I played soccer with a bunch of little kids on the dirt street. When all the Ghanaian girls were ready they came out of the home/hut and I was amazed how beautiful their entire was. Even though the family was obviously pretty poor they all looked like royalty in their beautiful, ornate and colorful attire (as you will see when I am able to upload pics.) Then we finally left to go to the wedding. Unfortunately, we arrived late at the end of the ceremony so we then went to the reception. Since no busses were around we all rode in the back of a cattle truck, yes another interesting experience. On the ride from the ceremony to the reception, I completely fell in love with this one kid and want to adopt him and bring him home. (You will see pictures of him wearing my sunglasses.) The reception was the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed. There were literally about 300 Ghanaian people and 4 white people. As we walked in the DJ made an announcement on the loud speaker to welcome the Ubronis (white people) and everybody cheered. The entire ceremony was literally focused on us instead of the bride and groom. We had no idea how to react it was so awkward but at the same time, an amazing experience. The seamstress who invited us to her uncle’s wedding explained that everybody was so happy to see us. About half way through the ceremony the DJ stopped the music and asked if the blonde white boy was from the US or UK. After 300 heads turned in my direction, I replied “US” and everybody applauded. It was so so strange. Then the DJ asked if the Ubronis knew how to dance. After emphatically saying, "No, no, no." the DJ then stopped the music came and grabbed my hand from the middle of the crowd and pulled me to the front. At which point, he started the music and said, "Follow my lead." Yes, I had to show off my lacking white boy dance skills in front of an entire Ghanian wedding reception. The reaction to my dancing was similar to the reaction of my dance professors at the University, pure laughter. After I danced on front of everybody for about 2 minutes everybody cheered and clapped. I have never been more embarrassed in my life but what an experience. I felt so bad that a majority of attention was on the white wedding crashers, but the seamstress assured us that the party was very excited we attended. They fed us a great lunch and we stayed for about 2 hours.
The beautiful color and cultural brilliance of the reception was breathtaking. As you will see in the photos, this was one of my greatest cultural experiences yet. For the first time I partook in an experience that wasn’t a scripted tour or with a large California group. For the first time I felt truly submerged in Ghanaian culture. It was so so amazing.
Until text time.
Best,
Jason
PS PLEASE continue e-mailing me/facebooking me etc. I still am very homesick and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. One again my e-mail is jmanholley@msn.com. I am going to try and find a way to upload about 90 pictures I think many of you will enjoy so please check facebook and this blog for updates. Oh any happy Super Bowl Sunday. Its 7pm Sunday here which means most of my friends are just waking up in the states. 8 hour time difference.
__________________________________________________________--
Africa Cup.
Soccer in Ghana is not just a sport, it is a lifestyle. Many of the citizens here seem to be in and around the poverty line so they don’t have much to look forward to. For example, in the States we might go see a movie, travel to Hawaii, or play golf to take our mind off of things. But most citizens in Ghana do not seem to have this disposable income to spend on personal entertainment. What they do have is the Ghana Black Star National Soccer Team. Soccer seems to be the one escape, the one thing that the nation universally invests so much personal emotion that everything rides on winning or losing. National pride and personal pride rests in the hands of the Black Stars. Seriously, professors cancel classes on game day and shops close…. the country stops. Every time a goal is scored the entire nation goes absolutely crazy as I described in a previous entry. The best way to describe the atmosphere is its similarity to the recent film "Invictis." Literally, the entire nation (the rich and the poor, haves and have nots, come together and celebrate their team together. It really is quite amazing to watch an obviously expensive Mercedes pulled over on the side of the road with about 30 young and poor school children huddled around the car listening to the game on the radio. At least for a short time, the social economic statuses don’t seem to matter.
Now with that background on the importance of soccer here, a little over a week ago was the Africa Cup. Ghana had made it to the final game. This is similar to the world cup but only for African teams. The Blacks Stars went nearly undefeated the entire season, so you can only imagine the hype. EVERYBODY was overwhelmed with angst about the Africa Cup game against Egypt (who have won the three previous years in a row) A group from our study abroad group went to a street named Osu where an entire road was blocked off and a huge projection screen was erected. There were literally 100's of people congregated to watch the game. Everybody was decked out in yellow, green, red and black (the national colors). The score was tied at zero until the last 5 minutes of the game. Egypt scored. Ghana was unable to answer back and once again the Africa Cup slipped away. What was most amazing to me was the reaction to the loss. Even after only being here for a month I was extremely depressed, an entire nation whose heart and soul was in soccer had lost. Surprisingly, one Ghanaian walked by and he said "What’s the matter?" I replied, “I wish Ghana would have won.” The Ghanaian answered back, “Yea, but second place in all of Africa is not that bad for a small little country.” as he winked and walked away. To my amazement, instead of acting somber, angry, or despondent (common American reactions to major losses) the crowd of over 400 Ghanaians cheered at the end of the game. Music was billowed over the street and the Ghanaians danced, sang and celebrated. While disappointed that they had lost, they were still so proud in their nation. This entire experience oddly had a profound impact on me. I learned that we all make personal decisions on how we perceive certain events and consequently on how we react. You can choose to be happy and thankful for what you do have, or angry about the things you don’t. I know when the Sacramento Kings lost to the Lakers in game 7 of the semifinals playoffs - Sacramento was pretty devastated. We definitely did not celebrate. The Ghanaians have a different outlook on life than I have experienced in California. They celebrate and respect what they do have. I am sure this greatly contributes to them being such a happy and colorful culture even though many live around the poverty line. I am starting to realize that money really doesn’t make people happier. In fact, I have noticed the children here cry less and always say thank you to their parents even for simple things like water. Is is the satisfaction and appreciation for what they do have that makes the Ghanaian culture so impressive. Celebrating in the streets even after the biggest loss Ghana had ever experienced, is highly reminiscent of the mentality of the culture.
___________________________________________________________________________________
I suppose that’s enough about soccer.
SCHOOL
On a less exciting note is school. School and education here over the past few weeks is not only boring but it is absolutely painful. The professors literally read from a script word for word. With no focus on analyzing and 100% emphasis on memorization – I feel like nothing is actually learned. The professors make a maximum of three points in two hours. Just to rant a little - nobody in the entire university knows how things administratively work. Every department goes by different rules, we have to register at four different departments, in addition to registering at the EAP building, at the IPO (International Programs Office) building on the EAP website and on the University of Ghana website. Mind you every department is about 25 minutes walking distance away. In order to drop a class you have to go to the original department who then tells you to get a paper from the Dean’s office located 30 minutes away and then return for a signature at the initial department . After I get the signature I have to go all the way back to the Dean’s office and submit my drop form, wait 3 days, and return to get the form and then walk it all the way back to the individual departments. Long story short, I had to do this for two departments and it literally took me 6 hours of walking around in the 105 degree heat. This is just a small taste of the pure autocratic confusion at the University. It is so so so unnecessarily inefficient and literally every person you talk to will give you a different answer on what to do. This is VERY stressful for me because I need all my courses to transfer for credit so I will be able and complete my law school application in September and continue on my road to graduating next June. The academic aspect of my journey in Ghana is by far the most unfavorable. Nothing makes sense and nobody ever knows what is going on. Inside (I only understand about 50% of what is said in class, much of the time I am not quite sure if the professors are speaking English)and outside around the university I am in a constant state of confusion. We are now in week 4 of school and 3 out of my four political science courses don’t even have the readings available so the professors have been talking about the same thing for three weeks. I still don’t even know if I am correctly enrolled and likely won’t know until my grades come through. Apparently, the finals schedule doesn’t come out until a couple weeks before finals so if the finals conflict you are forced to drop a class. So that means you can go an entire semester, doing all reading assignments, etc. and be forced to drop a class at the end because you find out right before the finals conflict. Something is very wrong with that system. On the positive side – I am oh soooooooo more appreciative of UCSB and the order to things. At UCSB it takes me at most 10 minutes to register for classes – here it has taken be 3 and a half weeks and I still don’t know if I am registered. Anyway enough about school – lets move on to something much happier and more exciting.
_____________________________________________________________-
Volta Trip - Monkey Sanctuary/Waterfall
The next major even of the past week was our Volta Monkey Sanctuary and waterfall trip. We left at 7am and took a 4 hour bus ride to the Volta region to a monkey sanctuary. This is a small and remote village where the monkeys literally live amongst the people. The monkeys walk out from the forest, go in people’s houses and then return back out into the forest. It was the most amazing thing, when our group first arrived we didn’t see any monkeys then all of a sudden they came toward us from all directions (probably because they knew we had food). I got to hand feed a wild monkey a banana!! So so cool. Apparently the monkeys consisted of two rival tribes with over 150 monkeys in each. Each tribe was lead by one chief monkey who was the biggest male. While the tour guy could have been making this entirely up and nobody would have known, I still thought the story was interesting.
After the monkey sanctuary we then drove to the most amazing place, the Volta Waterfall. This is the single largest waterfall in all of West Africa. After about an hour hike in the rain forest we finally reached the waterfall. Seriously, I think I found the source of most of the stunning computer wallpapers we have on our computers. It was simply amazing. The sheer roar and power of the massive waterfall and cloud of water particles it sprayed into the air was breathtaking. I stripped down to my bathing suit and jumped in with the rest of our EAP group. Standing under the waterfall seriously felt like acupuncture because the water fell from over 900 feet.
For the first time in my life even after coaching water polo for 3 years and swimming for most of my life, I actually had to save someone from drowning. Our Ghanaian student leader apparently didn’t know how to swim and he started going under. People were screaming, "Jason!" because they knew I played polo and were extremely frantic, so I swam over as fast as I could to see if I could help. Another girl from UCSB and I grabbed him and treaded him back to shore. Luckily, he was ok, aside from hyperventilating the entire swim back to shore. But everything worked out. And we continued to swim around the waterfall for another two hours. Quite an eventful day. I honestly don’t know why every day in Ghana is packed full of more experiences I would have in a month back home, but I am so thankful.
________________________________________________________________________________-
Ghanaian Wedding
One of my favorite experiences yet took place yesterday. I somehow got invited to the Ghanaian wedding of a random seamstress’s uncle. Yes, random I know. So I went with three other Ubronis (white people) from our group and headed out. We took 2 tro-tros and one taxi and finally reached the seamstress's house where her family prepared for us the traditional Ghanaian dish red (beans and friend plantains – a staple of my diet here). She lived in an adobe house with a thin wooden and porous roof. It is simply amazing how little so much of Ghana gets by on. We stayed at the house for about two hours while the girls styled their hair. In the mean time I played soccer with a bunch of little kids on the dirt street. When all the Ghanaian girls were ready they came out of the home/hut and I was amazed how beautiful their entire was. Even though the family was obviously pretty poor they all looked like royalty in their beautiful, ornate and colorful attire (as you will see when I am able to upload pics.) Then we finally left to go to the wedding. Unfortunately, we arrived late at the end of the ceremony so we then went to the reception. Since no busses were around we all rode in the back of a cattle truck, yes another interesting experience. On the ride from the ceremony to the reception, I completely fell in love with this one kid and want to adopt him and bring him home. (You will see pictures of him wearing my sunglasses.) The reception was the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed. There were literally about 300 Ghanaian people and 4 white people. As we walked in the DJ made an announcement on the loud speaker to welcome the Ubronis (white people) and everybody cheered. The entire ceremony was literally focused on us instead of the bride and groom. We had no idea how to react it was so awkward but at the same time, an amazing experience. The seamstress who invited us to her uncle’s wedding explained that everybody was so happy to see us. About half way through the ceremony the DJ stopped the music and asked if the blonde white boy was from the US or UK. After 300 heads turned in my direction, I replied “US” and everybody applauded. It was so so strange. Then the DJ asked if the Ubronis knew how to dance. After emphatically saying, "No, no, no." the DJ then stopped the music came and grabbed my hand from the middle of the crowd and pulled me to the front. At which point, he started the music and said, "Follow my lead." Yes, I had to show off my lacking white boy dance skills in front of an entire Ghanian wedding reception. The reaction to my dancing was similar to the reaction of my dance professors at the University, pure laughter. After I danced on front of everybody for about 2 minutes everybody cheered and clapped. I have never been more embarrassed in my life but what an experience. I felt so bad that a majority of attention was on the white wedding crashers, but the seamstress assured us that the party was very excited we attended. They fed us a great lunch and we stayed for about 2 hours.
The beautiful color and cultural brilliance of the reception was breathtaking. As you will see in the photos, this was one of my greatest cultural experiences yet. For the first time I partook in an experience that wasn’t a scripted tour or with a large California group. For the first time I felt truly submerged in Ghanaian culture. It was so so amazing.
Until text time.
Best,
Jason
PS PLEASE continue e-mailing me/facebooking me etc. I still am very homesick and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. One again my e-mail is jmanholley@msn.com. I am going to try and find a way to upload about 90 pictures I think many of you will enjoy so please check facebook and this blog for updates. Oh any happy Super Bowl Sunday. Its 7pm Sunday here which means most of my friends are just waking up in the states. 8 hour time difference.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)