Save water, Pee in the shower :

3 ½ weeks down. 6 to go. The heat is becoming somewhat bearable although I have discovered sweat in areas I didn’t think I could sweat. I have for the first time been able to catch drops of sweat from my upper lip when running. Rehydration at its finest I guess. I have mastered the art of sleeping without sheets or blankets, showering multiple times a day and doing laundry by hand (I’ll admit at times I will pay a couple CDs ($) if im’ feeling especially lazy). Bartering with cabs and flagging down Tros Tros (big vans that have been gutted and so far have a record of fitting 26 people) has also become part of my daily routine to get to and from the hospital. The traffic is so congested near the university some of the nurses I work with will leave two and a half hours early in order to get to work. It is about a 10 minute ride during down times and possible an hour-two from our place during rush hour. Unlike Canada (especially in Walmart parking lots) where pedestrians have the rightaway, crossing the street is at most a calculated run for your lives. There is no need to hit up the shopping mall to or from anywhere because almost everything is sold en route. Men, women and children walk up and down, and in between the roads with baskets on their heads full of movies, food, water, pencils, paper, bowls, mirrors, toys, toilet paper, candy, and even gifts for whatever upcoming holiday it is.


The biggest cultural element learnt in the first week was what we like to call “Ghanaian time”. When you are given a meeting time, do not expect people to even begin to show up until at least a half an hour later and for the meeting to start an hour later. Everything is at a slower pace here (except the traffic), this includes everything from getting the patients their medication to getting back to you with an email/phone call to getting your lock fixed on your door.


The main language in the south of Ghana is “Twi”. Although most everyone knows English it is not used as often as we would like. I find myself constantly asking the nurses, patients and doctors what they are talking about. Every once and a while I will hear the word “obruni”, which means white person, and since I am noticeably the only white person its safe to assume they are talking about me… I have started calling them bebini (black person), they seem to appreciate the humor.


The hospital we are at for a total of 6 weeks is a military hospital, level 4 UN, called military 37. One of the old generals had brought a couple bats as pets when the hospital first opened, when he passed away they set his bats free and have multipled to around a million bats living in the trees and only in the trees on hopsital grounds. Every night at 6 o clock they leave Ghana to fly to Berkina Faso (country to the north of Ghana) to feed, and return every morning around 5 or 6. It used to only serve the Ghanaian Army and other peacekeeping armies who are in partnership with Ghana (such as Nigeria, Pakistan, Lebanon), but in the 90’s opened the doors to the public as well. However the soldiers have private outpatient departments, waiting rooms, and special surgical units (airconditioned, not having to share a room with 8 other patients and cleaner wards). They also have health care coverage (which covers “almost” everything), and extends to their family. Everyone else can apply for the health care insurance but does not cover everything. They patients families will wait around or come in the evening, get the prescriptions, go to the “chemist” (pharmacy) to buy the medications and finally we can give the patients what they need. Pain medication use is rare for the patients and if at all it is “mainly” Tylenol. At least half of the nurses are in the army and for once there is almost a 1:1 ratio of males to females  . The Ghanaian army is widely involved in peacekeeping in many countries, such as Darfur, Sierra Lionne, Cote D’ivoire, Lebanon, Liberia, Chad, Rwanda…..Some of the nurses I have had the chance to work with have been in the army for 10 -20 years and have been to almost all of those places for months. Ranking is huge, calling them by their rank such as “Left tenant”, or “WO1”… The actual hospital reminds me of a hospital from early 1900’s/ the tv show M.A.S.H. The pediatric emerg unit I was one for the first couple of weeks had bare necessities, one suction, one oxygen tank, and a sink that worked at best 2/7 days. The electricity and water are turned off around 8pm and do not come back on until 6am, however most days the water only runs for a couple hours. Buckets and buckets of water are filled up when it is running so we can wash our hands or whatever else needs cleaning. Running water is a commodity and I never realized how much we take it for granted! The other day we learnt peeing in the shower is encouraged because of how much water it saves.


I have finally graduated from drinking bottled water to bagged water. I can get 12 L for 1 CD which is about 70-80cents Canadian. So far so good.
Getting to know the Ghanaian ways has taught us getting a straight answer out of someone who is trying to sell you something is one of the hardest things to do. Answering a question with a question was most likely invented in Ghana. Repetition is key here, 4 seems to be the golden number.


So far on the weekends we have traveled throughout Accra and a bit of Ghana. Accra is a huge city with a population of over 2 million, it is busy, dirty, markets to random stands are on every corner and in between, kids and people running around and the majority of buildings are half built; but after you get to know it you realize it has its own beauty. A couple weekends ago we traveled to a small town called Busua, right on the coast, it was a whole different world. Goats and chickens walking free, hardly any cars, and you see a bit of everything. This town was paradise away from the city. We arrived late at night after touring Elmina castle, picked the cheapest hostel and woke to a beach in our front yard. There was even a monkey chained to a tree at our hostel, all I could think of was Kevin telling me monkeys throw their own feces at people, whether or not this is true I stayed far away. We met a friend who cooked us lobster dinner (the freshest lobster I have ever having bought it straight from the boats as they came in) who called himself “Daniel the Pancake man”. He set up chairs on his front porch, got his two boys to light candles for us and proceeded to cook us the best lobster dinner I have ever have.

Elmina castle, built by the portugese in the late 1400’s, is the oldest European building in Africa. At first a trading post for goods such as food and materials but after the Dutch took hold in the mid 1600s it became a trading post for slaves. We were able to visit the dungeons, holding cells and walk the walk a slave took before boarding a ship for America to work on sugar plantations. The history of slave trade is unbelievable, it is estimated for every 100 slaves who survived the crossing, another 50 -100 died while trekking across inland to the coast. From the gold coast alone (Ghana) they say around 1 million slaves were transported to Americas from 1600 to 1850.

A couple of us went to a football game the other weekend. First things first, bathroom and then our seats, we were only a little shocked seeing men in the womens washroom, thinking designated bathrooms may be something else ignored in Ghana. After we sat down and looked around I realized we were the only girls in the whole stadium, clearing up the whole washroom incident. Thank goodness for short hair, I didn’t stand out at all (the other day in the hospital one of the patients called me brother instead of sister…). Halfway through the game one of the players was knocked down unconscious and they instantly started CPR, within about 15 seconds the player jumped up and started crawling away from his “rescuers”. The game continued on.


We visited a vulnerable children and orphans institute one weekend to help give out Vitamin A enriched food (oil and rice) and to play with the kids. The majority of the kids (98%) were HIV positive, had lost their moms’ to HIV/AIDS or had died in childbirth. They come once a month to this institute for food (that will hopefully last a month), measurements of weight and height for all the kids, and education on prevention and staying healthy. We taught them the good old duck duck goose game and played it for hours on end.