Ghana p1 - How I met the fresh prince of Bel Air

So it turns out that writing about my Ghana trip later actually means two months later, my bad. I've been really awful with updating this blog recently and I'll try to throw a few posts up in the next week or two to give updates on my recent shenanigans.


Back to my Ghana trip in, oh, JULY. 


July 29th
After desperately searching, my bag was nowhere to be found in the Accra airport. As Katie was the first friend I've seen from back home since I left for Taiwan, I envisioned our meeting something like this:

However, our reunion actually included much less slow motion running and much more sulking and whining on my part. 


I found the poster I mentioned on part one of this blog post about the first thing I see when entering the Accra airport.

Also, this lovely sign is posted outside the airport. You really like to give a good impression on your guests, don't ya Ghana?

Katie told me we could take a cab to our hostel or try out a "tro-tro", the cheap, local way of getting around Ghana. I obviously picked tro-tro, since anything with that name had to be high class and full of awesome. We crammed in a stinky, broken down van and paid the equivalent of 40 cents to be dropped off at our hostel. I had absolutely NO idea what was going on because even though Ghanaians speak English, it's so incredibly different from the English I am used to and I could hardly decipher what was being said. Luckily, Katie translated for me (from English to English).

We jumped out of the tro-tro and headed toward our hostel to nap and shower, not that it mattered much since I only had one set of clothing with me. We trotro-ed it up back into the city and got a surprisingly expensive meal - something like 8$ for a chicken sandwich and soda, really Africa? We later bumped into some other Peace Corps worker friends of Katie's and went to Happy Hour at a very westernized Ghanaian bar. We returned back by 9 and I passed out.


July 30th
Day 2 in Africa and I still am luggage-less, meaning I am on day 3 of wearing the same underwear. This is probably not something I should admit online, so please erase the previous sentence from your memory. We decided to hit up the Accra mall, which is one of the fancier parts of the city. I was definitely dressed for the part in Katie's loaned clothing.

Sampling Ghanaian beer, Star

We pestered the airport for about the 11th time and finally found out where my bag was and picked it up. I changed my underwear (WOOHOO) and Katie and I left for dinner and drinks with another PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer). We ate some chicken jerk which must be eaten with your hands, and only the right hand. Something like wiping with your left and it being unsanitary or something; I wasn't paying too much attention because the deliciousness of the chicken jerk distracted me. We left for a bar around 7 or 8, where Katie and her friend tried to marry me off to a Ghanaian named Junior. Tempting, but no. At one point I flat out fell asleep on the bar for a solid half hour. At 9 o'clock. Embarrassing. Thanks, jet lag, for making me look like some sort of alcoholic in a random African country at NINE fricken' PM.


July 31st
As there's not much to do in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and as Katie lives quite far away, we left early in the morning to take a bus to Kumasi, a city farther north. The bus, though not as crowded as the lovely tro-tros, was still quite crowded and unpleasant. Pastor Henry tried to lighten the mood by standing up and giving the bus a sermon. Yay. Then we got to sample the local movies of the Ghanaians, which are quite possibly the worst movies of all time. I was highly amused at first by their awfulness, but this eventually faded. To create these glorious movies, someone takes a piece of paper and writes a bunch of words on it, eats the paper, and shits out the words in random order. This is called the plot. They then create special effects on a very advanced program called Microsoft Paint. Most of the movies don't have subtitles and I'm pretty sure I'm not fluent in any Ghanaian tribal languages, so I almost wished for Pastor Henry to educate the bus more on Jesus instead of watching them. 

We got off the bus to a hostel much nicer than expected. We paid maybe 10-12 US$ each for the room, so you can't hope for much. Since the bus to Kumasi took most of the day, we didn't really have time to do anything but eat and sleep.


August 1st
We woke up early again to head North to Katie's village in yet another invigorating bus ride. The movies were equally awful, so to pass the time we decided to do what most people do when bored on a bus in Ghana, which is start a 2-person sing-a-long/interpretive seat dance to Enrique Iglesias.

As shown in the picture above, the Ghanaians definitely approved of our decision.

Early evening we made it to Tamale (not pronounced like the Mexican food), the city near Katie's village. We took a tro-tro to Gushie which fortunately contained neither Ghanaian movies nor Pastor Henry. 


First of all, let me describe Katie's village. The city she lives and volunteers in does not have electricity. The people mostly live in mud huts, which I was, for some reason, beyond excited to see and take pictures of. The city is located near a highway, so it's not nearly as remote as I picture it in my head, though it is still quite hard to get to from Accra. Northern Ghana is mostly Muslim, meaning all the women wear head scarves, and is much poorer than the Christian south. A select, educated few can speak English in Gushie, but most communication is done through Dagbani, the local dialect. Katie can speak a decent amount of Dagbani, but I just used my normal approach in Taiwan of nodding and smiling but having no idea what's going on. Or just saying "Naaaa!", which is the answer to about 50% of the greetings in Dagbani, so you've got a good chance of appearing that you understand. 


A new batch of PCVs had recently arrived at Katie's village, so me being a new foreigner in Gushie wasn't nearly as exciting for the villagers as it was for me. I sat in for a bit of the Peace Corps training and chatted with the PCVs, which was super interesting for me since I seriously considered joining the Peace Corps before I came to Taiwan. Though it would have been very interesting, I'm definitely glad I picked Taiwan.


Katie and I walked around and she introduced me in Dagbani to members of her community. Apparently I got many marriage proposals. Must keep these in the back of my mind just in case I convert to Islam and decide to be one of the wives of old African dudes in a village with no electricity. Taking pictures isn't an offensive thing there and I kept snapping everything and everyone I saw - partially because everyone kept asking me to take pictures of them. Especially the children - they LOVED seeing themselves in my pictures. I took a metric shit ton of pictures of the villagers, some just to appease their photo demands, but some just because I was so intrigued by such a different way of life. I'll just let the photos do the talking and throw a bunch down at the bottom of this post.


With the other volunteers, I met the chief of the village. What - a CHIEF?! Yes! I was stoked to see this chief character, but we had to go through this whole process to see him. We stood outside his ... hut? Batcave? Chief-mobile? for about 20 minutes and had to pay 2 Ghanaian Cedis (1.50$ US) and bring cola nuts to offer. When he finally granted us permission to enter, we had to take off our shoes, squat down, and clap. Someone in the tribe who spoke English translated the chief's welcome for us. When I envisioned meeting this chief, I pictured this.

This is pretty much the opposite of the chief. Our chief was fat and squatty. Face paint? Nope, just a floppy purple hat that looked straight out of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. He was sitting on a fancy pillow, not paying attention to us or the translator because he was texting someone. Probably the lyrics to the Fresh Prince theme song.

The chief's translator told me that I could have my own naming ceremony done by him on Friday, when the counsel of elders were present. I shit you not, this was told to me.

In keeping with the previous theme, this is what was going on in my head.

 Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out and I never got my naming ceremony. Wahhhhh. 

August 2nd

I wrote down on a piece of paper the things I wanted to talk about on the blog since I know myself and knew I'd probably procrastinate in posting and therefore forget most of what happened. All I wrote for August 2nd was this:

Bucket on head

Robin of the past, y u no write clearer???

Your guess is as good as mine...

August 3rd

Rain, rain, and more rain. Katie and I stayed in her hut most of the morning and early afternoon and played bananagrams and read, what else do you do when there's no electricity? We had to cook and read by candlelight during the night, which was fucking cool. I'm sure it would not be cool after a week, but since I was only electricity-less for a few days, I found it awesome.

Once the rain cleared we hitchhiked a ride (yes! my first time hitchhiking!) toward a nearby town called Savalugu, where a huge market is located. The women carry stuff around on top of there heads, which I give mad props to - that looks hard.

The most stuff I have ever seen on anyone's head. Ever.

They sold a lot of clothes too. It was a bit like Goodwill, but outside and even cheaper. I know I really wanted that Daffy Duck hat, but alas, I refrained.

After the market, Katie invited me to party it up like she does in her village. Because Savalugu has electricity, she often makes trips to her friends house and crashes there. We drank up local style with sachets of alcohol mixed with crystal light from back home - CLASS! Her friend has a projector, and since we were getting intoxicated from the sachets of shots, we watched the best thing in existence, which is a Celine Dion concert DVD. 

I'm not joking and I have NO REGRETS.

August 4

After our night of Celine, we headed back to Tamale. I bought some souvenirs and we wandered around the city a bit. Katie had told me all about the awkwardly awesome local night clubs and I was super excited to try one so we rounded up a group of other PCVs for a night out in Tamale. After some more sachets mixed with soda, we attempted to visit a local favorite. But, turns out my trip overlapped with Ramadan and the night clubs were closed. Boo. We got a hotel in Tamale for our last night in the north before we became real tourists of Ghana, since up until this point, we had just been wandering around the capital and Katie's village. I'll write up the touristy bit of Ghana another day.

And here are the pictures I promised.

official member of the silly hats club

It's been about two months from my last post and I have MUCH to update. I've been back in Taiwan for over a month now and have yet to describe my African adventures. An unfortunate pipe bursting incident left me computer-less for a few weeks and though I actually really enjoyed being disconnected from the internet, I was not able to catch up on the bazillion things I need to write about. 


First up: HONG KONG.


Tuesday, July 26th
As the Taipei to Ghana route is clearly not a popular one, I had to fly to HK first and decided to crash there for a few days by myself. Hong Kong is like Taiwan in where it's technically part of China but acts as if it's its own country so I didn't need a visa (WOOHOO no getting kicked out like I did in India). They speak Cantonese, not Mandarin, but luckily basically everyone speaks English there. I didn't arrive in the city until later in the night so I didn't do much the first day. I checked into my hostel in ChungKing Mansions which is WAYY sketch. There were lots of Indians that worked there who harassed me everywhere I went - sometimes even grabbing my hand and trying to pull me into their shops. No thank you. According to a guidebook, the area I stayed in was the most crowded place in the entire world (can that really be true?) Once I got up into my hostel, it was pretty nice for how cheap it was. The workers thought someone named Robin was a dude though so they put me in a room with another guy, whoops. I went out to get some late dinner but most of the restaurants and shops cost at least 10$ a meal, even the cheap places, so I ended up buying some microwaveable frozen dinner in 7-11. And they didn't even microwave it for me like they do in Taipei. Wahhh.


Wednesday, July 27th
I woke up early, determined to see as much as I could on my only full day in Hong Kong. I started off first on the MTR to Lantau Island, a super touristy place where the biggest outside Buddha in the world is located. Biggest Buddha in the world?! CAN'T MISS THAT.


I took a gondola up to the island and had some GORGEOUS views.

I wandered around and saw some cool Asian-y buildings.

THEN CAME THE NINJAS.

After the kick ass ninjas, I made of the best decisions in my entire life. I BOUGHT THIS HAT.

BEST IDEA EVER. AND YES, I WORE IT AROUND LOOKING LIKE A FOOL.

Travelling alone is not so bad except when you want to buy silly hats and have to ask random people to take pictures of you looking like a tool. Still worth it.

Then came giant Buddha in all his glory.

I stopped for some Hong Kongian (Hong Kongonese? Hong Kongican? Hong Konger?) cuisine.

I tried to look for places to shop, but every mall I found was filled with Prada and Gucci and designers. No gracias. I gave up and headed toward Victoria's Peak, a cool place that overlooks the city. You take a tram that has some historical significance that took about 2 hours to get on because there were so many damn people.  I made it right as night fell so I got to see the sun set over the mountains and the city lights at night. 

Then I did the most logical thing one does when in Hong Kong, which is go to Bubba Gump Shrimp (from the Forrest Gump movie) bar. This drink cost 11$ and contained about 4 drops of alcohol but was SO worth it because they let me keep the cup. I'm pretty sure I've achieved Nirvana, or Maslow's hierarchy of needs or something with the accumulation of the hat and my Bubba Gump shrimp cup in my life. I have used both the hat and cup 0 times since returning BUT I DON'T CARE BEST IDEAS EVER.

Thursday July 28th
I woke up for my last day in Hong Kong with only one thing on my mind - shopping. I asked the hostel worker where I could find non-designer clothes and discovered clothing heaven - aka H&M. I spent almost half of what I brought for my entire trip at that store, not that I brought much considering Ghana is quite cheap. Still, high quality, low cost, fashionable clothes that fit all 5 feet 9.5 inches of me are a rare find in Taipei so I went a little crazy. Left with no spare cash, I chilled in a park until I had to leave for my flight.


I went back to the HK airport early, fortunately, since I nearly wasn't allowed on my flight (WHY DO I HAVE THESE PROBLEMS?!). Ethiopian Airlines demanded to see the credit card I purchased my ticket with. But, oh wait, I lost my wallet 3 months back in a seedy night club in Taipei. I don't understand why they needed to see it, since the name on the ticket and passport matched up. There's only one other girl with my first and last name I've found through google - she apparently knits and sells her designs online (definitely not me). So unless the United Knitters of the World conference was held in Hong Kong this year and this other Robin chick was like, hey, I'd really just love to visit Ethiopia, and she broke into hostels (probs with her knitting needles) searching for other Robins who were also flying to Ethiopia, I'm pretty sure you don't need to see my credit card. After a painful hour of waiting, calls to the managers, and screen shots of my online bank account, they let me through.


Once on the plane, I squished into my tiny seat - literally couldn't fit my knees behind the seat. The in flight entertainment starting promisingly enough with an episode of the Office, but not even Dwight and Jim shenanigans could save me from the stuffy temperature that amplified the spicy stench of the dude next to me. Then they played one of those awful 80s Chinese movies that was in Mandarin Chinese with no subtitles. Great choice Ethiopian Airlines, when flying from HK (where people speak Cantonese and English) to Ethiopia (where I don't know what they speak and I'm too lazy to google it but I'm pretty damn sure it's not Mandarin).


Friday July 29th
After approximately 152 hours of flight, we arrived in Addis Ababa at some crazy hour in the morning. This airport was quite possibly the most jank airport of all time. People were smoking inside and there was trash everywhere. I tried to go through the carry-on scanner machines and sit at my gate, but the worker shooed me away because he was napping. When flying back, I came through at peak hours and the people flying were pushing and shoving and yelling at the about 8 workers in the entire airport. It reminded me of Lord of the Flies when the kids went ape-shit crazy and raped pigs or whatever. Well, ok, no pig rape-age happened in the airport, but same thing. If Golding is still alive, I should e-mail him and suggest a Lord of the Flies part 2 that takes place in the Addis Ababa airport.


The Ethiopia to Ghana flight was more bearable but still effing long. I finally arrived to a poster saying, I kid you not, "Ghana welcomes you! Except pedophiles and sexual deviants." Wow. Katie later told me it's illegal to be gay in Ghana. Filled with adrenaline of being in a new country (and continent) I ran my sleep deprived body to pick up my bag. Except, oh wait, it's not there. Fuck. I started crying because I've gone 36 hours without sleep and my whiny privileged butt is appalled by the jank that is the 3rd world. My backpack with EVERYTHING was gone - including my money for Ghana. I had Taiwanese and Hong Kong dollars with me, but Ghanian banks unsurprisingly don't transfer those money types, only American dollars.




OMG CLIFFHANGER. 
I'll write part 2 later about the rest of Ghana.

why i'm screwed if the zombie apocalypse comes

Welp, I did something super awesome last night.


I lost my wallet.
I went out for dinner and drinks for my ex-roommate's going away party last night, and a friend of mine and I decided to later partake in a night out at the very classy establishment, WAX. Sometime between pulling out my wallet for the bouncer and throwing my purse in the locker (approximately 2.3 minutes) I lost my wallet. When I was about to leave at 2am, I opened the locker and couldn't find my wallet anywhere. 


It's not like it contained anything really important. Just my American credit card, Taiwanese bank card, my Alien Residency card, and the rest of the cash I needed until payday. You know, nothing important at all.


I had to borrow 1000$ (approximate 35$US) from my friend so I could take a cab home and now I'm figuring out how to last on what's left of that until payday. I'm still hoping the club will call me today telling me someone found my wallet, but chances are slim. Most of the money will be going to food, since literally the only edible things in my apartment are the following:

• soy sauce
• peanut butter
• vodka

Not a well balanced diet.

Where does vodka fit in here??

This is actually a lie, since I realized today I hid away some food in my zombie apocalypse kit in case zombies invade Taipei. I strategically bought only food I think is nasty, so I wouldn't be tempted to eat it, but if the zombies came I would. Mostly I just have craisins. 

Who eats this shit anyway?

I broke into the zombie apocalypse kit though because desperate times call for desperate measures. I ask any zombies reading this blog to please postpone their invasion until my supplies can be replenished. Also, can cats turn into zombies? I really hope not. Potato would make a freaky one-eyed cat zombie.


This wallet incident has great timing too, since I'm going to Africa in about 3 weeks. Luckily, I did finally get all my immunizations. I hope I meet lots of people with Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Tetanus, Diphtheria, Meningitis, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and/or Malaria so I can laugh in their faces with my immunities. 


In other recent news, I accidentally got... wait for it.... Asian bangs.


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I went to the salon, where my stylist knew very little English. I had someone call in advance to tell them what I wanted. The stylist made a "snip" motion with her fingers and I said "bu yao, bu yao" (I don't want, I don't want). She asked again, saying, "only a little?" "BU YAO." "Please? A little?" "Ok, fine." Snip, snip, snip, there goes my bangs. And my dignity. Now I have straight across bangs, a la 12 year old girl style. 

Pedobear approves

So not only am I broke, wallet-less, ID-less, vulnerable to zombie attacks, but I now look like a wanna-be Asian or a wanna-be 12 year old girl. At least I won't get meningitis when the zombies come...

"I DON'T HAVE CHINA! I DON'T HAVE CHINA!"

Miscommunication fails through languages can be super hilarious. Back when I was studying Spanish in high school, I remember a kid who stood up in front of the entire school in Spain we did our exchange program at and proudly announced that he had an erection instead of that telling them he liked running. Another instance, a girl ordered a penis sandwich on accident. 

My students, too, are always saying accidentally inappropriate things. Last week, for instance, a kid spelled "short" as "shart" on his homework. Two of my 4 year olds often say the word "bitch" because they can't pronounce "fish" or other similar sounding words. One student left out the "-ry" when writing "Are you hungry? Yes, I am hungry". Etc, etc. I need to take pictures of these and start uploading them to facebook or seomthing.

And of course, 80% of things translated to English from Chinese here are atrocious. Take my last field trip with the kiddos to the bug museum:

I am far from immune from translation errors. Since my Chinese skills are positively awful, I am sure I've said some ridiculous things without realizing it. I've been in Taiwan for 10 months and just now realized I've been confusing the country of England and the English language. I've been running up to cab drivers and 7-11 workers yelling, "ENGLAND?! ENGLAND?!" I can only imagine that they think I've fallen on my head, woke up with amnesia, and am trying to figure out the country I'm in. 

Then, today, some Taiwanese chick called me and started speaking Chinese to me. I tried to tell her I didn't understand Chinese but she kept talking so I just started yelling "MEI YO ZHONG GUA" which I later realized is the equivalent of yelling "I DON'T HAVE CHINA!". While it is true that I do not own the country of China, it was not the exact message I was trying to convey...

why yellow fever vaccines and fried chicken sellers suck

Time's slowly creeping closer to the end of my first year in Taiwan and my vacay to Africa.


In preparation for Africa, I decided to head to the hospital to get pills and vaccinations. In particular, I have to get a Yellow Fever vaccination certificate to authorize my visa into Ghana (SEE! I'm not gonna get kicked out this time!!). I went to the hospital, got lost, and took a cab there. The cab driver had no idea what I wanted even though I though I had the Chinese address and kept saying "hospital" and coughing and acting sick so he'd bring me to the hospital. A few loops later, I reached my destination only to be told that said hospital did not have a yellow fever vaccination. Ok, no problem. Jumped in another cab and went to hospital 2. Hospital 2 was severely lacking in English-speaking staff and getting them to understand I wanted a vaccine for an upcoming trip to Ghana with my limited Chinese was about as possible as me training a legless man to tap dance. Finally, an English speaking doctor brought me upstairs and told me they too did not have the vaccine. They wrote down the Chinese address of a third hospital and I jumped in another cab. I walked in this hospital to ask the service desk where to go only to be bombarded by a random Taiwanese chick chatting away to me in Chinese. I just looked at her and said, "no" because I felt approximately like this:

Unfortunately, she switched to English and asked me if I was an English teacher. Guilty - I was wearing my work polo with HESS plastered on it. I told her I was, and she told me her friend sometimes sells me fried chicken sometimes. WHAT. 

She proceeded to talk to me for about 15 minutes, asking me questions like, "where is your Taiwanese friend to help you?". She was the female equivalent to the annoying guy at the bar who keeps pestering, "where's your boyfriend tonight?" except wanting to be my friend. Apparently she asked my name back in September and actually remembered it, which is both impressive and downright creepy, especially since I have no recollection of ever talking to my fried chicken vendor's bff. 


After I finally got rid of her, surprise! Hospital 3's yellow vaccinator doesn't work past 3pm.


Total counts for this afternoon: 4 cab rides, 3 hospitals, 2 hours lost, 1 head ache, and 0 yellow fever vaccines.

On the plus side, according to a random Taiwanese girl, I have very sexy arm hair. 

Don't act like your not impressed.

oh hey, giant panda in the movie theater. so normal.

What's new in the oh-so-glamorous world of the English teacher in Taiwan?

Me and Pony, who shares the same bday as me

A few weeks back I celebrated my 2-year anniversary of my 21st birthday. The day of was pretty normal, I went to work like usual. The weekend after I went out to dinner with a few friends at a hot-pot / all-you-can-eat barbecue restaurant. I don't think I've described the awesomeness of these places yet in a blog post, so get ready. Basically they're pretty much the same as a Mongolian Barbecue restaurant at home, where you pick out raw meat and have it grilled in front of you, except for here you have a mini grill in the middle of your table and you grill it yourself. The waiters bring out menus with different types of meat and you order as much raw meat (and veggies and other snacks) as you'd like.


On top of that, many restaurants offer all-you-can drink beer on top of that. Because most Taiwanese don't drink that much, they don't lose much money off of this. However, us Americans like to take advantage of awesome deals like that. Can you imagine the chaos that would occur if restaurants offered all-you-can drink deals back home?



Also, this past weekend was a 2-day weekend for me (I work Saturdays, remember? I usually only get 1 day off) because Monday was a holiday - Dragon Boat Festival. It's on the fifth day of the fifth month, like Cinco de Mayo, except on the Chinese year, and there are a lot less burritos and alcohol than Cinco de Mayo. Apparently once upon a time, there was this important Chinese dude, and then he died, but no one wanted the fish to eat him so they threw Zong Zi (described to me as a "glutinous rice ball". How appetizing) in the water so the fish would eat that instead of the famous dude. Now, they race boats shaped like dragons to commemorate this, which I don't really get the connection between the dead dude, glutinous rice balls, and the dragon boats, but I get a day off of work so I'm quite satisfied. I asked my students if they were going to go and watch the races but they all kind of rolled their eyes and said no. For those familiar with Holland, Dragon Boat festival is probably equivalent to Tulip Time -- awesome for anyone under the age of 8 or over the age of 60, but everyone else just ignores it and thinks it's moderately lame.


I went out to see the races anyway. They were pretty anticlimactic indeed, but hey, I'm in Taiwan, I gotta watch the festivals. I looked for the rice balls of glutin, but alas, I came back rice-ball-less. We did get some watermelon drinks (just blendified watermelon - literally, that's it) and ice cream that's about 1% cream and 99% ice (they're not huge on their dairy products like we are).

Here are some more pictures from Dragon Boat Festival:

In conclusion, I'll share with you a picture of Potato which shows how we're meant to be together:

Oh, and a random Panda I saw at the movie theater.

So normal.