Blog 2

After 5 day orientation it was time to leave Accra. Everyone in our group was very excited to go and meet their host family and see where we are staying. I found out that one of the girls from Holland got the same project and she is going to stay with the same family in Mampong. We took a 5 hour bus ride to Kumasi where we meet an organizer from SYTO. After lunch someone from our host family came to get us and take us to our new home. They told us that we are taking a tro tro bus to Mampong and the driver was going to drop us off by the bus. We drove into this crazy busy market place – full of vendors and people walking around carrying stuff on their heads. Our luggages were so big we couldn’t carry them alone and def not in the dirt road. Our host family member Yvonne called two girls over to help us with our luggage. They put those crazy heavy luggages on their heads and carry them to the tro tro. i felt so bad bc they were really really heavy and one of the girls even had a baby on her back. We just stood there shocked and just followed them. It seemed normal to them and supposedly they can carry more weight than our luggages. Although they were very happy for 2 Ghana cedis we tipped them for their help. The tro tro ride wasn’t bad – took us like an hour to get to Mampong. The house we are staying is big and looks better than anything I’ve ever seen. Our room has big beds and we have our own bathroom. There is no running water but we have a toilet in there and a bathtub. We also have a huge container of water what we use for taking baths and flushing the toilet. It is very interesting and very new to us. But I did feel clean and fresh after our bucket shower. Ha-ha. The family is huge; I still don’t really get who lives there and who is there just to visit. It seemed like a lot of people are coming over at dinnertime since our host grandma – Mama Tess makes a lot of food. The dinner was delicious too – we had some fish stew with rice. Saturday we went to check out the Mampong Babies Home where we are going to work starting Monday. It took us like 10-15 min to walk there. The Babies home was big and there were like 50 little babies and kids there. They were giving them a bath one by one when we got there. All the kids were so cute. When they saw us they ran to us and they all wanted to be picked up and held and just be by us. They didn’t let us go and they were fighting for us and tried to be hanging to us the whole time. They def need help in there – there are so many babies and toddles there and maybe 5 people were working. The babies are adorable and you just want to hold them and not let them go and they would let you.