Cooking and Concrete

I continue to have incredible adventures here. How blessed I am.
This last weekend, our NYU group went about 4 hours away to a tiny village and helped them build a school for their children. We had to first gather water in huge buckets on our head from a stream about half a mile away, through the entire village, down a hot dirt road and through a small jungle. It was such an experience. I can’t imagine doing that a few times, every day like all the children and women of the village do. All of our necks were hurting from the weight, after a couple trips. It really, really makes you appreciate every drop that you use. After we gathered the water, we all helped to mix the concrete, and then shoveled it into our buckets, and carried it to the school on our heads again, where we would pass it off to a villager who was helping us and they would spread it across the floor. It was a very long, tedious process, but in just six hours, we had set the entire floor of the multi-room school house. It was also fun for me because I am so comfortable with concrete floors from my own house and I could tell everyone about what I remember about pouring the concrete floor in my house. I think my friends have a very funny vision about what my life is like at home☺. Also, halfway through the construction, my friend molly and I peeked our head in to the shade in a little communal hut, and there were about six women cooking Banku, which is a typical dish served here, basically a mixture of mashed cassava dough and ground maize, boiled together until it is a white, fluffy, sticky blob. It is usually eaten with some kind of spicy stew. They saw us observing and asked if we wanted to help, so we did, I ground up some chili peppers in a mortar and pestle, and molly helped to stir the banku. In the end, they shared some of it with us. It was a perfect snack to compliment the work we had been doing.
This week we have had a lot of visitors, many of the other student’s families and boyfriends have come to see them for their spring breaks, so it has been fun being around them, but it makes me miss everyone at home so much more!
Still, I cant believe how quickly this is all going. Tomorrow is April, (happy anniversary mom and dad by the way☺) and then there is really only about a month left. Its hard to process everything that I have experienced so far, and will continue to. There is a lot left to do here. I am working very hard for New Horizons right now, looking for outlets for the wares that the vocational school for the more mature students have created. There are beautiful cards, baskets, doormats, batik cloths and napkins…I really want to get their things out into the community. They occasionally have bazaars, but I think that if I could secure a steady source of business, the vocational school would do wonders for the health of the school. Fifty percent of the profits go to the student that creates the art, and the other half goes towards funds for the school. I have been struggling lately trying to find ways to bring money in for them, when I see all of the good work that is being done, even in policy towards the local attitudes of Ghanaians towards disabilities. I am going to help with this, raising awareness in the community about the importance of treating disabilities here. Many parents either ignore their children or deny their children their basic rights, embarrassed of having giving birth to a disabled child. The mindset behind this desperately needs to change. My head is deep in this right now, as I search for solutions, and changes I can help spark as I finish up my time here.
This long Easter weekend, I am traveling with a group of five friends and we are heading to Togo and Benin! We literally need to leave the country because our visas will expire. We were cheap and only wanted to pay the two month extension fee, but we don’t mind either because it gives us another excuse to travel! I am really looking forward to it, especially because both are Francophone countries. Apparently, the food is fantastic there, and the culture feels very different. From what I know about our plans, we are going to be visiting a python temple and some sacred forest sanctuary…we’ll see what happens! We leave this Friday. I love traveling so spontaneously.
Tonight we are having a Shabbat dinner too, there are a lot of Jewish students on the trip and they wanted to host a dinner for everyone, which should be really fun. We are all looking forward to a change from so much Ghanaian food!
I am thinking of my lovely familiy on their spring break right now, and all of you, hoping all is well. I love you all.