Well, its been awhile since i have  written so i thought id update you on my life lately! Ive been busy with class, catching up on school stuff, friends, and making sure i have time for a nap everyday.  With the heat i HAVE to take a nap atleast once a day just to be able to function properly.  The weather the past week has been so weird and the temperature for the most part has dropped significantly...dont get me wrong its still hot, but its been overcast a lot and raining.  The other day, it was late afternoon and out of no where the entire sky turned dark gray, it got windy, and much cooler.  Clearly it was going to rain and it sure did!

  

Later on that evening we had a pretty bad thunder and lightning storm. I have never seen lightning like this or heard thunder that loud!! The walls of my room were literally shaking. The electricity went out for a split second...luckily it didnt actually go out.  I guess there was really bad flooding in Accra and several people died :( 

Busua Beach!

This past weekend I traveled to Busua Beach with 2 of my friends, Kelsey and Julia. We left Friday after class and took a 4 hour tro tro ride to get to Takoradi where we caught another tro tro to a small town near the beach.  The tro tro we took to Takoradi, I have to say was probably the nicest tro tro I have been in since I got here! It had air conditioning!!!!! Anyway, we arrived in a small town near Busua and took a taxi to the little beach town of Busua.  We arrived at nighttime so it was dark and difficult to see how beautiful this place really was! We immediately went to a place called the Alaska Beach Club where we planned to stay.  We just wanted to get 1 room with 1 bed for 2 nights, and we would all squeeze in together.  This was our cheapest option and the man who greeted us as we arrived was fine with this, however the manager was not. He said the room was only for 2 people and that we would have to get the room with 2 beds (which was twice the price).  He wasn’t very nice and didn’t budge at all with us. He told us we could find somewhere else and then walked away to the office.  We went in and begged and pleaded with him, which led us finally to get the room, thank goodness!  After we dropped all of our stuff off, we walked in to the town and found a place to sit and eat, called Frank’s Restaurant.  Frank was so friendly and nice. I ordered an egg sandwich, which turned out to be 4 egg sandwiches! We went to bed early so we could get up early and spend the day at the beach!

         We woke up at about 7 am Saturday morning.  I walked around a bit and could clearly see how beautiful this place was, I felt as if I were in paradise!  We went back to Frank’s for breakfast and ordered chocolate banana pancakes…OMG were they delicious!!!!  As we were sitting waiting for our food, it started raining.  This was a bummer since we were hoping to have lots of sun and lay out on the beach the whole day.  While Julia surfed for a lot of the day, Kelsey and I decided we weren’t going to just sit around and let the rain ruin our day…so we ran out on the beach in to the rain and went swimming in the ocean.  Even though it was raining, it was still really hot out!  The water was so warm and felt amazing.  I felt like I was a little kid again running around in the sand in the rain and not having a care at all.  Oh yes, I forgot to mention the monkeys, how could I forget?…..There were 3 monkeys running around where we were staying and if you know me, you can imagine I was terrified of these things!  They were crazy!!!  For a minute I felt like I was in a zoo…3 monkeys, 2 dogs, 3 puppies, and a cat running around.  As Kelsey and I got out of the water to go sit on a chair, one of the larger monkeys came up real close to us and I got really nervous.  One of the dogs was sitting next to me….all of the sudden I see the monkey fly off the table towards me and the dog.  I ran, screaming at the top of my lungs, out on to the beach towards the ocean, while the dog went running after me (probably hoping id save it from the monkey jumping on its back), and the monkey ran after the dog.  I was absolutely terrified and jumped straight in to the water!  I seriously thought this thing was going to jump on me.  I wish we had this on video because looking back on it, it was a pretty funny sight to see, although at the time I was scared for my life!  We ate lunch on the beach where we were staying.  I had a hamburger for the first time being here, and it was good, although it was definitely no In N Out!  I was a bit worried about the meat upsetting my stomach since I haven’t eaten much meat here, but I was fine.  At night we went back in to town and got some street food from Frank’s sister for dinner.  We went back to where we stayed and sat out by the beach.  Some guys from the surf shop a few places down started a bonfire and played drums out on the beach before the party started.  There were a bunch of young boys hanging around singing as the drums played, playing on the hammock and climbing in the tree. One of the boys, CJ, recognized me from the night earlier when we had bought drinks from his stand.  We ended taking a bunch of pictures with the kids. I sat on the hammock and they all piled on with me.. you will see from my pictures they all jumped on with me and were swinging the hammock like crazy! I had a lot of fun, I think you will be able to see it in my facial expressions, lol.  As I was getting swung in this hammock by a bunch of wild kids, I felt someone kiss me on the cheek! I said “Hey!! Who just kissed me?!” They all laughed and wouldn’t fess up. I said to the little boy next to me “It was you wasn’t it!” He just laughed and did it again.  It was really sweet.  One thing I love here is that children have learned to make their own fun…something I think children in the states could learn from.  They don’t have laptops, or tv’s, or gameboys, or iphones to sit and occupy their time with, instead they make their own fun playing in the hammock or climbing in the trees.   Anyway, after this we walked down the beach to the Black Star Surf shop where they were having a party for everyone in the town to go to.  There were SO many people….especially children! Music was blasting and people were dancing, there was a fire out on the beach with kids everywhere.   It was a lot of fun to watch some of the guys do a sort of dance off, and watch as one little boy joined in with the older guys.  He sure could dance I tell ya! I love how happy everyone was and it just goes to show you how true it really is that “music is a common language”. I have especially noticed here how whenever music is playing, people will stop what they are doing and dance, not caring at all what others think.  I have noticed just how truly happy people are. 

 

Heres a video i made of my trip...fyi you can make it larger by just clicking the arrows in the bottom right corner!

I went in to the hospital this morning for my internship and there were lots of children! There is now only 1 pediatrician working as the second one had to go back to the hospital in Korle Bu where she works for half the year.  So, Dr. Kwarteng now has a lot on her plate and when i talked to her about this she said that she has to work every single day, even weekends. She has been working every day for the past 2 weeks.  I feel bad for her, it seems as though her job consumes her life, and its sad that there arent other pediatricians to work in this hospital.  Anyway, there were a couple of children who had otitis media (a type of ear infection)...one child had developed septic arthritis in her hip and when she first came in she did not fully stretch her leg at the hip and knee due to the pain.  I saw something that i have never seen before, her leg was wrapped and she had some sort of foot brace with a rope attached and hanging off the side of the bed with a bag weighed down with something. The doctor explained to me that this stretches out the leg and helps relieve the pain. I thought this was really interesting.  I also saw the little girl who had been severely burned on her face, back and arm and was so happy to see that she was very active and happy. She looked SO much better and was finally discharged.  We went over to the maternity ward and there was only 1 baby that had been born yesterday. The doctor did the newborn baby check and then went to speak to the mother who was laying down in the room for c-section patients. She spoke to her in english so i was able to get the conversation for the most part.  I discovered that this woman had HIV and that was why the doctor wanted to speak to her.  She asked her whether she would choose to breastfeed or formula feed the baby and explained to her that she must choose one or the other and stick only to that.  Its very dangerous to do mixed feeding when the mother has HIV as it increases the baby's chance of getting HIV.  The doctor stressed this to the mother that the second she decides to stop breastfeeding, she must only use formula/other foods.  This really interested me because breastfeeding is one of the main areas i am focusing in on for my internship and my research paper.  I had already done some research about HIV positive women and breastfeeding, so i knew all of this, but it was interesting to see it in the form of a real life situation.  The mother also has Hepatitis B, therefore the baby must get the hep b immunization as well as the immunoglobulin if it were available( which it was).  One thing that really surprised me was that the doctor asked one of the nurses if this baby had been fed at all yet, and the nurse replied "I think so yes, with Nan (formula)." The doctor said "did you ask her first if she decided to breastfeed or use formula since she is HIV positive?" , and she said they had not.  This is such an important thing that should be handled right from the start and yet no one even spoke to the mother about her options!

Tonight, me and some girls from our group went in to Osu and had dinner at Citizen's Kofi where it was Taco Tuesday.  We had eaten here before (burritos and nachos) but were really excited about getting tacos.  Well this excitement turned out to be very much so a dissapointment as these tacos were the TINIEST tacos i have ever seen in my life...and they were 4 cedis...not even cheap!! I ate one, then afterwards bought 2 scoops of gelato and was happy.  We took a tro tro there but to get back to campus we got a taxi and the driver let all 6 of us squeeze in to the cab meant for 4 people.  Things are much different here if you didnt already figure that out!! But its all part of the experience and im loving every moment of it :)