Day 17: Wednesday, July 16^th

Rainy day! We awoke to a monsoon coming in through the windows in our room and a flood on our floor. We usually leave the windows in our room open at night as we hang our clothes from them to allow them to dry (we have been washing our clothes by hand in a 5 gallon pail in our shower). It was absolutely pouring.. Vancouver has nothing on this rain. We weren’t sure if we should still get up and go to work or if everything would shut down for the day like it does in Canada for a snow day. We decided to get ready and head to Janet’s for breakfast. We knew we would not be able to bike in the rain so we decided to try and take a taxi. Unfortunately there were no taxis to be found so we had to walk to her place (~15 minutes). When we arrived we were absolutely soaked. We quickly learned that on rainy mornings everything shuts down until the rain passes. After eating breakfast (plain bread and bananas as Janet was not expecting us) we walked to the taxi station and were able to find a cab that would drive us to our place to change before heading to work.

We spent most of our work day on our research and inventory projects. It was a very noisy day in the pharmacy (lots of visiting and chatting) so we both found it a bit difficult to get a lot done. In discussion with some of the staff we found out that there is no morphine stocked in the hospital. For narcotics they have a very small supply of meperidine and they have tramadol..sometimes. It seems as though IV diclofenac is the go-to analgesic which is very different from Canada.
After work Katherine drove us into Mampong to the seamstress shop. Due to our flood situation this morning Sarah had to dry out her bra by hanging it out the window while we were driving. We picked out the design for our dresses and were measured for them. The dresses will cost 18 cedis to make (a whole $6). After the dress fitting we walked to the taxi station where we discovered a produce stand selling carrots, cucumbers, green beans, and green peppers. Very exciting to see fresh produce! I bought a bunch of carrots for 2 cedis and cucumbers for 1 cedis each. We then took a taxi home- 1.8 cedis each.
When we got home Sarah realized she had forgotten our phone at the hospital, which we needed for a scheduled phone call with Kyle, so we had to bike back to the hospital to get it. Ironically, when we got to the hospital we had a message from Kyle asking if it would be okay to reschedule our call until tomorrow. Oh well it was nice to get some exercise on our bikes.

Supper consisted of white rice with tomato/fish stew. The fish here is very different. I think the fish are tilapia that are preserved by either smoking or salting. They are sold everywhere on the side of the road and come complete with their skin, heads, fins-everything. There is not a lot of meat on them and they taste fairly fishy. I did my best to eat what meat I could find on the fish in the stew. After we were done eating what we could Janet gave the leftovers to the five children that were hanging around visiting with us (this is a normal occurrence after our meals). The children devoured all of our leftovers- bones, scales, fins and all. It was sad to see how hungry they were. Eating is so different from here than at home. Meals are only consumed twice daily and are mainly carbohydrate with some type of oily, tomato stew, or fufu (the locals favourite food). People eat until there stomachs are distended- which we have observed most people’s are, even if their body is quite lean. Eating does not seem to be as big of a social event as it is at home and is more of a means to survive.

Day 19: Friday, July 18^th

Today was full of adventures. This morning at work we gave a presentation to the pharmacy staff on the organizational structure of the Canadian healthcare system, the B.C. Ministry of Health, and the organizational structure of a hospital focusing on the pharmacy department. Sarah and were surprised by just how interested the staff was in the organizational structure of the different areas of our health care system. They seemed to enjoy the presentation and asked a lot of questions throughout. We showed them pictures of Vancouver and Vancouver General Hospital. They were amazed at how big everything is and I think it helped to put everything into perspective for them.
Right after the presentation we biked to Nsuta. We had scheduled to be at George’s school at 10:30 to do a presentation on hand washing, teeth brushing, and anatomy (by way of singing head and shoulders, knees and toes). When we arrived at the school we were surrounded by soooo many children. They continued to shout out “obruni, obruni!” until their teachers asked them to go back to their classrooms. The school is a cement structure separated into different rooms with old wooden tables and benches for the children to sit on. Some of the classrooms have chalkboards. I did not notice a lot of school supplies anywhere. We did our presentation in three of the classrooms for the older children (~age 4-7). Cisse joined us for our presentation and helped us out a lot by translating everything we said to the children. The children have not yet learned English so we would have been lost without his assistance. Overall, the activities we did seem to go over quite well and we had a lot of fun.

After we finished our presentation we went to Cisse’s place to visit. We learned more about the differences in the culture here Ghana vs. Canada. For example, it is very normal for men to have 2 or more wives at the same time. After our visit went back to our place to relax before soccer training. We went up on the rooftop patio at our place and ate our lunch, and suntanned a bit.
At 4:30 pm we met Cisse at the soccer field for soccer training. He is a coach for a group of boys ranging from ~ age 10 to 25. We felt a bit out of place as we were the only girls but they didn’t really seem to mind. The first hour was spent doing different exercises, drills, and running. It felt great to be doing some exercise. The next hour was spent playing different scrimmage soccer games. The field was very challenging as part of it was red dirt (that was extremely ease to wipe out in- I fell flat on my back) and long tall grass. Some of the players were really good and they could run fast! We had a lot of fun and got really sweaty.

After soccer we went for supper (Jollof rice) and then back to our place to shower. We then went to meet Poppo and Cisse at a local bar called Riches for drinks at 9:30. Apparently this was “really late” the streets were empty and there were only 3 other people at the bar. Sarah and I each had a cider for 4 cedis. We stayed for about an hour before heading back home.

Day 20: Saturday, July 19^th
Janet made us an awesome pancake breakfast. Pancakes and bananas! After that we caught a cab with Poppo to a local mountain called Prayer Mountain. We hiked up the mountain in approximately 45 minutes and got very sweaty as it felt quite humid. Part way up the mountain we could hear people chanting in the bush. There was a lot more developed on the mountain then we thought there might be. There are 4 different camp areas and a few larger church like structures- all of which they would have had to carry up the mountain by foot. People can go and live on the mountain if they are fulfilling a religious purpose. The view from the top was quite amazing as we could see the surrounding villages amongst a lot of greenery. We had to pay 5 cedis after walking around the top to help pay for future development on the mountain.

When we got back to Nsuta we spent the rest of the day working on our research paper. We took a lunch break to eat our avocado and mango that we had bought from the market. So tasty! Later in the afternoon two of the staff members at our guesthouse offered to go and get FanIce from town for us. We let them borrow our bikes (which they loved) and gave them enough money to get themselves an ice cream too. It was a win, win situation for all as they really seemed to enjoy riding our bikes and we got FanIce delivered to us 🙂