Weekend in Abomosu!

Staying in Abomosu!

Its been a long time since I've written... ( a week I suppose) I'm actually writing on Abbie's computer, and decided to just write about this weekend... so here it is!

Friday night I was able to catch Abbie on facebook, and she told me Stephen Abu (the son of the family she is staying with) was driving up from Accra to Abomosu to visit his parents! This created an awesome opportunity for Josh and I to get a ride up with him and visit with the other Utah State interns. These guys have a slightly different project than us. Josh and I are working with Kingsbridge, and acting as their interns; basically just doing whatever they want us to. These interns (Spencer and Joey, and their wives Abbie and Emily) are staying in a village, and have basically just been assigned to find ways to help business here, and have some money to dispense the way they best see fit.

The drive up was really nice because we drove with Stephen, his brother in law and sister, and their two kids, along with one other student here from Canada working with autism. We were able to practice some of our Twi and have it corrected by people who speak Twi as their main language. Everyone we are working with in Accra are Ga, so they speak Ga, Twi, and English. However, because Twi is more like a second language to them, they cannot correct our Twi very well, the way that Stephen’s family can. Helping us with specific pronunciations, etc.

Also the drive is beautiful… more what you think of with Africa. Mountains and large trees, mostly palm-like trees. We’re driving through the jungle.. well, sort of. It was beautiful though, and no picture I could take would do it justice. There were many little communities along the way, very small, and much more primitive than Accra or Abomosu. They were really cool to see, I want to maybe visit one someday. It sounds like they’re farming communities.

Being here has been fun, the village is so much different than Accra! Farms, trees, lots of goats everywhere, and all the children here saying “obroni!” (which means white). In Accra I haven’t been called much of anything by people, and we’re always in the car so we don’t interact so much with people. Here they walk everywhere, and each corner children are saying “obroni, obroni coco!” (coco meaning fair.. so.. very white J ).

We went to church here, it is all spoken in English and Twi. People talk slower in church, and so I could actually understand some of the words they were speaking when they would talk in Twi! There was a little girl that came and sat on my lap for most of the meeting (she’s become friends with Emily), and she enjoyed exploring my hair, face, hands, necklace, and arms. She discovered a mole on my arm which I think confused here a lot. Its dark, just like her, but it’s just a little dark spot on my very white body. She tried pinching it, like trying to squish a bug on my arm, she tried wiping it off, etc. It was funny to watch. The only bad news was that the power was off for 2 hours of church. With no fans running.. Ghana is very very hot. We were all dying in there. It was interesting to listen to them talk about savings, budgets, and including both the husband and wife in money planning.

We walked down to the river, down all these little paths past people’s houses. We walked through the farm owned by the Abu’s (the family they’re living with) and even got to talk to someone about a business/loan opportunity. He runs a concrete brick business up here, and needs a loan to buy the supplies to make the rest of his bricks to fulfill an order. We visited his business and discussed his past loans and plans for the future. I’m hoping we can connect him with Kingsbridge, but it looks like a rough match.

Josh and I were supposed to go home today, and just take a cho-cho (taxi-ish service) but we waited too long and missed any good opportunities to leave. Now we’re here for another night! So its time for another night of playing card games. Last night included some jolly ranchers and granola bars – which were met with much delight. Lol. Much more than is really warranted. We’ve only been here a week and already American food is a treasure. We talked about brownies last night (I have a mix at home) and how we will make them sometime. Then today for Joey and Emily’s anniversary, the couple missionaries brought some over! Brownies are good stuff..