NORMAL!?

Recently a friend of mine commented to me about how much he enjoyed reading my first few posts – when everything was fresh, new, exciting, and every little thing got my attention and I felt like a kid in a candy shop. When did life in Bolga become so normal?! Lately I’ve found that I take less pictures and exclaim “ohmy!” less often…on one hand this makes me happy because life in Ghana is now normal and less crazy but on the other hand it makes me sad because Planet Ghana has started to feel like Planet Earth. There will never be a first trip to Africa again. It’s only when I talk with friends from home that I realize how different this is from home. I WOULDN’T TRADE THIS FOR ANYTHING.
Occasionally I am still hit with moments of awe regarding how different my life is in Ghana than it is in Canada. Here are some clips!

Recently while sitting at egg bread with Oliver I saw this truck pull into the tro station and gasped “Oh my goodness”, people looked up to see what was making me exclaim. They said, “Oh, if only Mercedes could see this.”


Last Saturday I was sitting at egg bread (okok, I notice the theme too!) and this man walked by WEARING A POINTED BLACK WITCHES HAT and NOBODY BATTED AN EYELASH (except me and the two other volunteers that I was sitting with and we were laughing so much). This struck me as extremely odd since witchcraft is very real to many people here and being called a witch is a terrible insult and there are witch camps for those accused of being witches.

Trotros (minivans stuffed to the brim with people!) that constantly break down have become normal. My friend Meghan was recently in a tro that broke several times on the trip from Tamale to Bolga, please check out the name of the car. Also, I was on a tro when the engine was malfunctioning so they left the car on, took the cover plate off and started sticking wrenches in. Oh, to be a mechanic in Ghana.




I came out of my room one morning to find my host father plucking the feathers off some guinea fowls he just bought and dyeing them with green dye so that they would know which fowls belong to them.

Taxis here are now normal to me. If there aren’t four people in the back and two in the front passenger seat, I think it’s luxurious. If the door closes and stays closed, I’m impressed by the cars condition. If/when there is a donkey in the trunk, I think "I’m glad I’m not a donkey". Last week while sitting comfortably in the back of a taxi next to an EWB coworker waiting for it to leave, the driver opens the door to put one more person in and my friend says “But, why?”, I laugh and say, “Because we’re in Ghana!”. Being smushed into the taxi totally cracks me up and I enjoy laughing with the Ghanaians who all know how ridiculously smushed we are but somehow we all fit.

There are so many other things but that's just a snap.