Week Three update :)

hi guys,

thought another quick blog entry was in order! its saturday afternoon
and ive just spent the morning with a family of girls who live just
behind us, they have a farm a little while off camp so we went and
visited it. I helped pick peanuts and waved a machete around a bit, no
luck in cutting anything though, i could barely lift it yet alone hit
anything hard enough. one of the girls found us some coconut though,
cut it open and we drank fresh coconut 'juice' haha. mmmm delicious!

im doing really well here in ghana. the first few weeks were full of
frustrations, i think i'll wait til i get home to expand on why - lets
just say the organisation i am working with has some....issues...

But after getting over that (constant process) we are all getting
involved with different things and meeting a lot of amazing people.
i'll try and recap on the week thats been..

sunday morning i did some traditional african cooking with a friend
and her family. after seeing the meat at the market, then cooking with
it, found it a little hard to stomach but it turned out pretty good -
and got a lot of laughs from everyone else watching. also went to
church...again, a little hard to stomach but an experience to
remember! man the women look stunning when they dress up! sunday night
is party night on camp, we all went to this bar across the road, TC's,
crazy crazy place.

during the week i spent my mornings with the hiv aids team, doing
community outreach. this week i got to actually do some of the talking
- a sight to see i must say - i had the honour of doing the speel on
prevention, focusing mainly on condom use. and yes, there is a
demonstration and everything, im becoming somewhat of the condom queen
:-p

we all come home for lunch and lounge around the middle of hte day
because it really is too hot to do anything. the food has been
fantastic - the only time ive felt kinda sick was this morning - some
of us went to accra to the western supermarket and ate way too much
chocolate and cheese last night. but it had to be done as we have no
way of storing food, and couldnt let it all go to waste!

in the afternoons ive been in meetings, hanging out with families or
heaps of kids at our house. there are constantly eyes peeking in, you
feel like you are in a zoo. kids always stand at the door calling
'laura, please come, i beg you' its usually cute, but also crazy
irritating at times. we met with a few other iv's one afternoon this
week - on a camp of about 40,000 people, there are 12 or so white
people, total minority.

oh and i also spent the most painful three hours of my life working
with a friend dave on a logo for a tutoring group a few of us and some
local youth are putting together. its a very very basic logo that
could take 5 minutes to whip up on the right program, but we had to
use paint and publisher and it just wouldnt work out for us. you begin
to see how hard it is to do so much stuff on camp just because the
most basic things arent accessible. my friend allison has had to type
up the same school tests three times over because you cant save to the
computers and then after printing one test for photo copying the
photocopier was going ot be too expensive and the power keeps cutting
out.

went into accra on friday, tried to get some money out but was
unsuccessful. we stocked up for christmas (we are all staying on camp,
might travel afterwards). traffic is ridiculous coming in and out of
town and at one time we were on this bus with 80 people - insane!
coming home we had a bag stolen by this shady guy who was almost
climbing htrough the window of our taxi - he only ended up grabbing a
bag with candy in it so it wasnt too sad for us, we just feel very
outraged. our driver was amazing though, organised our next ride and
was so upset about it and so kind to us. the ghanaians are beautiful
people, as are the liberians :)

i was writing to someone about camp and explained it as a community
under a magnifying glass, or microscope. its really like any community
around the world, but with an amazing array of issues that seem so
much more visible than other places - refugee issues, poverty, teen
prostitution and pregnancies, aids, former child soldiers, gossip,
bickering, family break down, child abuse, alcoholism, divorce etc
etc. the camp is divided into zones (we live in zone ten) and our next
door neighbour is the zone leader. a couple of times this week there
have been heated discussions on our front step, literally, over a
bunch of things, resulting in lots of shouting and noise (usually
before 6am as well haha). obviously there is a lot of frustration
within camp, and so much that goes on that we dont even have a clue
about. but then there is a lot of positive things about the community
and im really having a good time getting to know some people and learn
more about what it means to be a refugee for the past 15 or so years.

not sure if ill post anything before christmas - if not hope you all
have a brilliant christmas! we are planning some games and food for
some of the kids here, and might try and cook something if we get
really inspired :) will be missing seafood and BBQs and my mum's
wombok salad, but pretty excited to see how christmas goes liberian
style :)

love to all! laura xx