Fufu and palm wine!

This is a wonderful sachet. 10 peswas. 

First day at the beach and my face looks like a tomato. I also got the first of my proposals. I went to Labadi beach (apparently the more touristy of beaches) and the second we arrived we were swarmed with people trying to sell us things.  We tried to move further down away from the crowds of people, but within 10 minutes the 20+ sellers found us, and did not leave until for hours later when we left. Kofi, my beach friend introduced me to palm wine.  I have heard of it before so was excited to finally try it, Im not sure how to describe it other than it was good and I'll probably be drinking that often.  I saw a bit more of poverty on the beach than I had expected, but all in all atleast the ocean was in front of me. 

Despite all the weird food I have been eating, I've remained to stay healthy so far!  I tried fufu for the first time.  A ghanian dish that is made up with pounded cassava that is put with soup and some type of meat. (Its really cool how they make it they have these giant wooden poles that they smash it with to get it to the consistency that it is. And they make it right in front of you!) When its served to you, it looks like a giant dough ball like the size you would use to make a pizza in a bowl drowned in soup and your choice of meat.  Being a vegetarian, I didn't get meat in it which is very uncommon among Ghanians.  All in all, it was spicy and the texture is a bit odd.  I didn't finish it, mostly because Evans, a U-pal through our program warned us not to eat it for a while because it apparently takes 10 hours to digest and he said we were not ready for it so I decided to take it easy. 

I  visited my internship site the other day.  It's a micro finance organization, Alliance for African Women Initiatives (AFAWI ) so it should be interesting once I start.  And if its not interesting, atleast the drive to and from will be.  It's about 2 hours from where I'm living so I had to take 4 trotros and a taxi to get there.  Getting dropped off at a station with about 20 trotros and crowds of people is a bit intimidating.  The drive goes through some rural areas so I get to see a lot of different things going on which makes it worth while, I did hit my head a few times due to the potholes and what not but I'll be getting used to that I suppose. 

I also went to Ashesi University, where I will be taking Entrepreneurship 2 twice a week. I love the drive there, its about 45 minutes but its on top of a mountain so the view is gorgeous! The last 15 minutes of the drive up to the university is a dirt road going through really remote villages and tons and tons of trees.  The class is an Entrepreneurship class, and the 8 other people in my program and I should not be in this class. Its basically the last class business students take before they graduate and its a continuation of the first semesters class, meaning were jumping into a class half way through, so we have no idea what is going on.  Should be funny.

My light in my room finally works! It was out for the past 3 days so it was super exciting to have it back.  I've been using a tiny flashlight to get around my room, which wasn't bad except for the fact that I would always misplace the thing and it would take me a good 5 minutes to find it in the pitch black.  Now that I have my light back, I realized that where mosquito nets exist, clap on lights should also exist.  After I make sure my mosquito net is all tucked in, I have to still get up and turn my light off, which makes me untuck it, and then its hard to tell if its all the way tucked in the dark!  Im sure this is just an obruni problem which I'll get over tomorrow.

Oh another thing that went out was the water stopped working! It was the same day as my long journey on the trotros to my internship so I was hot, sweaty, and ready for a long cold shower, but that didn't happen.  Luckily I had an abundance of sachets of water because I had just bought a giant bag of them, so I tried to use those to shower.  It was a very inefficient shower because half of the water didn't end up hitting my body. Bags of water are harder to aim than you would think.   Even though it wasn't the shower I had hoped for alteast it was still semi cold and satisfying.

Now that I've been here over a week, time to do some laundry.  I've got my bucket and and some Dr. Bronners. This should take me...all day.