Perspective

My third first-impression of Cairo is...............it's soooooooooo clean!

Honestly, I'm in shock.

But coming from Ghana most definitely plays a part.

And there are nice gardens and landscaping. And things don't look as crumbly or yellow/brown as I remember. And it isn't THAT hot (I may be speaking prematurely).

As the plane approached Cairo, it seemed to be moving in slow motion, but my heart kept beating faster and faster. I was anxious, nervous, had that kind of sick stomach feeling. Afraid that the country I love will not live up to my memories of it.

In 3 hours, I've had tea with mint, traversed the streets I once knew so well but have somehow forgotten. Now I'm waiting for my friend to come back after Friday prayers so we can eat and play backgammon and surprise some other friends! I'm even looking forward to going to the supermarket near where Dom and I lived. I hope the vegetable guy is still there--he was my favorite.

In 12 hours time I'll be back at the airport for my South Africa flight and the partial-family reunion!

No place like home

I spent the weekend with Jane and her brother at a home for children with disabilities called Hand in Hand, about 2 hours north of Kumasi (Ghana's 'second' city, 5 hours from Accra where I live). We were doing some research for Jane about cultural attitudes toward people with mental handicaps. Read her insights and some of the witchcraft stories here.

We arrived late at night, after a supposed 2 hour tro-tro ride doubled in time (due to construction and 7 unauthorized stops--meaning, the driver stopped for personal business with no mind paid towards the 18 people sardined into the vehicle). Walking to our round stone hut, I felt the dew on my feet. It was a sensation I haven't felt for a very, very long time. Seeing the open, green, grassy lawn and the expansive sky filled with stars, I could almost believe I was in Iowa. In the morning, I awoke to the baaaaaa-aaa of goats and was almost ready to believe I was back home and the lambs had just been weaned.

Zoo

Watching those obrunis is such fun!

Finders Keepers?

After our 6th visit to the airport, Jane got her lost bag back. And this time we didn't even have to bribe anyone for her to get through security or customs to the arrivals hall!

On the way home, triumphant that we had the bag (which had a lot of my stuff in it too!), my cell phone slipped out of my pocket.

I didn't notice till I was home. I had Jane call the number to see if it was somewhere around the house. Instead, a man answered but a woman began speaking. She said she'd bring the phone to a bar near our place in half an hour. But then the phone was switched off...Then it was ringing, but it went busy; they weren't taking our call.

I'm hoping a pleading text message might do the trick, but I don't have much faith:

"Please, I beg, I have important numbers on my phone I need. If you return it, I will consider you well. If you are a true Christian, you will do what is right. Please call."

Several minutes later, I called and the number went busy.

Losers weepers.

Drinking from the Nile

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a piece of paper and cringed.

ACC-JNB $1068
ACC-CPT $1268
ACC-CAI $750

It was from back in May or June, when I was trying to figure out my life as well as my trip to South Africa. At this point I had not been tentatively hired by OPE and started the work-permit-waiting-game. I had since purchased a ticket from Accra to Cape Town via Johannesburg, to join my mom (her first trip abroad!!!!), brother and friend on holiday. I’d scrapped the plans for Egypt, thinking I’d have already started at OPE or would upon my return.

It pained me to see this paper and realize that the way things are working out, I have time before the job starts and that it would have been cheaper, in fact, to fly via Egypt. But now, it was too late; I already had another ticket…

I was also jealous that Jane and her family would be in Egypt in the second half of August.

I decided, on the off chance that something good could come of this tormenting find, to go back to the travel agency.

How much would I be penalized to cancel my ticket? 25%. Ouch.

Does Egypt Air fly to Cape Town? No. Uh-oh.

How expensive is it to fly something else Jo’burg to Cape Town? $533. Too much!

Could I train or bus between the two cities? No, not really.

But still, I wasn’t deterred. The thought had nestled itself into my brain and I had to be absolutely sure that it wasn’t feasible.

I went online, found 1Time, a low-budget, no-frills South African airline carrier. The flight from Jo’burg to Cape Town was cheap. After 3 pages of calculations and double checking with my roommate, I realized canceling that the South Africa Airways flight, rebooking with Egypt Air with a stopover, and getting the domestic carrier separately would cost me less than an additional $300.

I called OPE to see if they had any idea when my work permit would come and ask if I could extend my vacation plans. The woman didn’t seem bothered and I said I’d be back by the end of August.

The last thing to do was to call Tarek, my closest Egyptian friend in Cairo. I had already led him to believe, at one point, that I would visit this summer, but then had to tell him I’d try to make it at Christmas time, en route to the US. I would have assuredly started work by then and was going to squeeze it in, maybe staying a week, depending on vacation time.

Tarek confirmed he was around in August and had wanted to take a week’s vacation, but had been waiting for me!

This is the long way to say: I’M GOING TO EGYPT!!!!

Next Thursday, I’ll fly Accra to Cairo, with a forced layover for a day (they put me up in a hotel!), then to South Africa for 2 weeks with family, then back to Egypt from the 13th until September 1st.

It almost feels like I’m going home.

Boil Boil Toil and Trouble

We were making dinner when.........we ran out of gas! The pasta was half cooked, the sauce half warm, and the vegetables halfway stir-fried.

I thought that we could trick the noodles into thinking they were in boiling water by blowing bubbles. It didn't work.







Jane's quick thinking saved the day. Good, since we had a dinner guest coming!

Using boiling water from the kettle, we heated the sauce by sitting it in the water, boiled the veggies to cook the rest of the way and re-added boiling water to finish the pasta.

In the News

According to the front page of the main Ghanaian newspaper, the founder and leader of a church was taken to court for failing to return a generator he had rented. His defense: dwarfs had stolen it. (Not actual midgets, but small, invisible beings from the spirit realm. The belief is that the dwarf’s feet point backwards, so if you try to follow the footprints of one, you will actually end up where he started.)

The belongings of several pupils at an elementary school went missing (mostly just ‘small money’). One teacher, in order to find the culprit, presided over a trial by ordeal in his classroom. He cut himself and put some blood onto a rock. Students were told to lick the blood-smeared rock. If innocent, nothing would happen. But if guilty…When this came to the attention of parents and administrators, the teacher was fired (and I think he was charged with something criminal).

A 73-year-old Kenyan grandfather pulled the tongue out of a leopard, killing it, after it attacked him as he was working in a field.

Ducks don’t actually quack; they make a sound closer to ah-ah. They cannot, in fact, make constantans. Dogs say er-ruf. Cows go eh-muh. Cats are the animals that most closely say what we claim they say: meow. These findings were the result of a $290 million project, funded by the Australian government.

In My Book

I was recently reading “The Namesake,” by Jhumpa Lahiri. Halfway through the book, the protagonist ends up attending Yale. I read with pleasure names and places familiar, yet distant: JE, Commons, High Street, Cross Campus. Though I can control my geographic distance from Yale, it hit me that I can’t halt the temporal distance that insists upon asserting itself.

Departure from OA

So, three weeks after my stated last day of working at Orphanage Africa, I finally stopped working there Friday. The OPE (refugee job) work permit still hasn't come yet, so I had to extend my own tourist visa last week till it comes. They didn't want to give me the form for a re-entry visa, telling me to apply for it duirng my two week stay in South Africa (hello?!! hassle!!!!). Eventually, the immigration officer that I had met the last time I was there 3 months ago remembered me and could still pronounce my last name properly (the other time, when I went to collect my passport two weeks after leaving it, he surprised me by knowing my name from memory).

I didn't actually have enough money with me at the time, but a kind Ghanaian man came to my aid and gave me the 10,000 cedis (just over a $1) that I was short. I scrounged around in my purse and saw I had 1,300 in change: the exact fare for a tro-tro home, though it wasn't so far I couldn't have walked. I went to the ATM nearby to try to get money and go back to return it, but I had the wrong card and didn't know the PIN.

My boss ended up picking me up to go to a program, but I spent the day with only the change to my name. I have been thinking about trying to get by on a $1/day, as so much of the world has to do because of poverty. I'm establishing the rules, though afraid I won't abide by them: I can't use internet credit I already have, I can't use my cell phone credit, I can't eat food at home that I've already paid for. I think it would be really tough...I'll let you know if I try.


From the June Monthly Report I prepared

Pictures available HERE.

Somonya Babies

On Sunday, June 26^th, I received the following text message from the OA President:

“2 babies found, both almost dead. Both now in St. Martin’s Hosp in Somanya. One has been nibbled by maggots, the other is skeleton. Have asked Ishmael to go and see.”

On Monday, Ishmael, Lizzie and I set out to visit these babies. Kofi is from Ayenyah, the site of our future orphanage. He is three months old and his mother died two months ago. He was being carried for by his mother’s family. He is severely malnourished, but those words cannot communicate adequately how terribly skinny he is. I had to avert my eyes, it hurt just to look at him. In my mind, I kept thinking of him as ‘it,’ he looked so un-human. I wondered how anyone could have let a baby get so close to the edge of death and realized: poverty and lack of education. If a baby is being breast-feed, like most here in Ghana are, but the mother dies, the villagers cannot just simply go to the supermarket to get baby formula as a replacement as we would do. As a cost comparison, baby milk costs about 42,000 cedis/month, while the monthly budget for this family is about 200,000 cedis. In all likelihood, the baby was fed gruel, which lacks the necessary nutrients and vitamins a baby needs.

The second baby, Efia, was found abandoned in the bush in a basket that Friday. Like Kofi, Efia means “Friday-born” in a local language. She is about two months old and not much else is currently known about her.

Orphanage Africa is attempting to have both babies sent to Ampomah upon their discharge, as we can provide the care and have the resources necessary to ensure a successful recovery.

Interviews for my position

Executive Director Kwame, Home Director Phyllis and I held interviews for the position over the course of 3 days.

During one interview, I was surprised to hear Phyllis question the applicant as to whether he believes in witchcraft and demons! (He was holding a book on his lap, Defeating Demons, which may have been the basis for the question, as well as his current profession as a preacher for a specific church.) The question is relevant when dealing with children, as such beliefs could affect the person’s approach in handling certain matters (e.g. sickness). However, I never expected that I would be sitting in an interview where such a question would be asked. It certainly wouldn’t have happened in the US! (His answer, by the way, was that he believes in demons and spirits, but said they cannot do anything to someone who believes in Christ.)

Kwame probed the applicants’ social awareness and ability to articulate an opinion and argument by asking if they believed if prostitution should be legalized, a topic that has seen a lot of press recently. Almost all of the applicants said that it should not be, based on religious and moral reasoning. However, some acknowledged the increased ability to regulate the trade and protect both the men and women involved.

Amongst the applicants, one emerged as our clear choice. Henry will join the OA team in July. Though Ghanaian, he completed university work in Kenya and Tanzania and has experience with NGOs as well as social work.

In Hot Water

For the last month or so, showering has been a problem.

Oh, we have water flowing, unlike when I first moved in.

The problem is that it's cold water and, if you can believe it, the weather is also cold. It makes it very difficult to shower!

Until...

I met a Ghanaian woman living in Virginia at the internet cafe. She was surprised I would want to live here and asked if I have a tv and a/c (no, no).

I hate to admit I didn't think of what she later suggested on my own.

It's so obvious. So simple.

And sooooo blissful.

Boil hot water and add it to make warm water, then take a good ole bucket bath.

Ahhhhh, now I can happily and warmly be clean!

Outreach Upclose and Personal

Sitting in a car with Vera, her two sons, and Hawa, I saw the obstacles that they are up against in doing their outreach. The driver, a 28-year old male friend of Vera’s, confessed that he had extra-martial affairs and “took the risk,” meaning that he has unprotected sex. He said so unabashedly, straightforwardly, without guilt. We began to plead with him, to remind him of his wife who would have to pay for his transgressions. With Hawa beside me, it was only too clear how an innocent wife could suffer. Yes, he knew AIDs was real, but he still seemed to think he was invincible. She began: would you believe if I said I had HIV? Do you think you can tell if someone has it, that you’re safe because you’d know? That’s when she told him she was an HIV patient; he grew quieter at the news.

I had to get out of the car at this point, but was left thinking about his cavalier attitude and dangerous behavior. I asked Hawa about it today and she said that shortly after I left them, he called his wife and told her to meet him so that they could go be tested together that very day. It seems he took Hawa’s message to heart and, hopefully, will proceed with more care in the future.