Tangled. In. My. HAIR.

Hey All,

So I realized its been a little while since I updated the ‘ol blog so I thought I would try and get something out there. 

Things are going pretty well here.  This week has been an odd one in that I’ve actually only worked 1 day this week.  The work situation is interesting and given its current status I’ll save the explanation for another post.  However, I can say that when work was cancelled on Monday, then on Tuesday, I was beginning to get a little bored.  Don’t get me wrong, I wrote some e-mails, worked out, taught a bunch of little girls some cheerleading moves (Thanks CHS pep-band!), and watched part of the African Cup, so I’ve still been having an interesting time.  Wednesday I did outreach with a different outreach office (same NGO) and it was actually pretty good.  Mostly because I got the chance to talk to some of my coworkers which was nice, one of whom is actually familiar with the type of research I was doing at Linny and OHSU.  I honestly wasn’t expecting that. Today, being Thursday (as I’m writing anyways) I, again, did not have work.  This is due to the fact that (you called it Kelsi) I’ve managed to contract some sort of food/water born illness.  I suspect that this is due to the unexpected culprit of tofu.  I should have known better than to eat Ghanian tofu.  BUT, do not fret loved-ones-of-Lily, I expect to be back to work tomorrow morning.  

Yesterday one of my coworkers asked me if anything had happened to me since I’d gotten to Ghana where I’d thought “Oh my god, that was weird.” The only thing I could think of at the time was the woman in the tro-tro getting her hands thoroughly tangled in my hair as she tried to give it a feel.  I realized on later reflection that my inability to think of the weird things I see is that they are actually becoming normal to me.  So I did my best today to think of some of the things that I’ve become used to that a month ago I would have thought were super, super strange. 

• Grown adults completely forgetting themselves and; touching my hair, proposing, chasing my car, asking to take photos with me, becoming so nervous when I speak to them that they begin to barf, etc. 
• Driving a taxi through a group of small children on the street and simply leaning on the horn to tell them to move.  (This goes hand in hand with driving without a working speedometer, and/or backwards through a public market.)
• Public urination.  Oh you thought only men could do that gracefully?  Think again.
• People who have cell phones and a facebook account but no running water or electricity. 
• The AMAZINGLY high prevalence of people with lazy eyes, and albinos.  So.  Many.  Albinos.
• A goat in your “shower”.  Paired with someone catching a chicken for dinner out of the sewer, and I’ll go ahead and throw in the seemingly intercontinental love of hotdogs, the all-day food. 

And as a quick note, I want to say that I’ve now officially bought my obligatory pair of developing world knock-off ray-bans. 

PLUS I JUST GOIT TO SKYPE WITH SOME OF MY FAVORITE PEOPLE.  LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!