New Years

Happy New Years :) Thought I'd pop in with a quick update on the last few days...

We haven't worked for the last week and a half with Christmas and everything, so have had heaps of fun with the kids and everyone else we've met along the way. One highlight was a killer waterfight with half the neighbourhood and probably half our water supply for the week. BUT for the fun and heat relief it brought - totally worth it :)

 

Our last minute plans for New Years were to head into Accra. We stayed at this crazy little hostel right on the coast, literally perched on the top of the cliff. Great view, rooms were very basic but the manager was a lovely old rasta man with funky teeth and a passion for yoga. As always, my memories revolve around the food I've consumed - lunch was at a little smoothie place in Osu (the trendiest suburb) that has smoothies to die for. We stuffed ourselves silly at dinner time, dining at the most popular western restaurant, Frankies, and then stopped at a deserted bar for drinks. Half the country seemed to be in church, but there were a lot of people out on the main street in Osu, so we hung there for awhile, waiting for a count down that never came, hence we actually missed the turn over from 2007 to 2008. Once we got over our disappointment we kept moving, trying to find anywhere with some good music. That hunt led us to a gas station of all places, where the little eatery attached was playing cool reggae beats. There was probably a total of six others there when we arrived, but by the time we left we had attracted a small crowd (I'd like to say it was our good looks and charm, but i think it was mostly the delight of watching uncoodinated white girls try and dance reggae to Bob Marley!). There were some gold conversations that night - I ended up with a set of Ghanaian twins that were certain that my friend Zeina and I were twins (Zeina is a dark-featured Egyptian girl and I'm, well you all know how white I am!). While being way from camp is fun and often really needed, there is nothing like coming back to this place :) i can't post photos at the moment but if you do a google search (buduburam) i'm sure you'll find some sweet shots to get a better idea of what everything looks like.

 

The Jan IVs arrived yesterday and today, very exciting to have some more people around and cool to show the sweet places we've found on camp. I started working again today, doing hiv/aids outreach this morning and brainstorming with one of hte dept. guys on how to improve the work they do. I've got two months left and while I did get to do some cool things in the first month, much of my time was spent figuring out the basics of this place. I feel a lot more in tune with whats going on (always something crazy - we've had sick children and medication overdoses and ghanaian gangs on camp and the usual neighbourhood bickering!) and am looking forward to getting in and doing some cool stuff!

 

Internet time is almost out so I best be off - much love to everyone!! Oh and if anyone has the time, im desperate for news, like current affairs Aus and International, it takes too long to load websites and there are no newspapers here and as a journo student its killing me!! just a copy and paste of an article on anything (even cricket - yes i know thats desperate!) would be appreicated...esp. news on kenya!

 

love to all xx