Everyone here is a ridiculously good dancer. Dancing is all over. My
sisters are always dancing (not much else to do). And I went to church
a few weeks ago, which was basically one-third dance party, one-third
preaching and one-third miscellaneous ("God has blessed me with these
yams").

Everything here comes in a black plastic bag (called "poly-tin" bags).
Tomatoes at the market - black plastic bag. 500 mL of treated water in
a bag for 3 cents - black plastic bag. Fried rice from a street vendor
- black plastic bag (I eat with my hands directly out of a plastic
bag).

FanIce is wooonderful. This is ice cream that comes in a plastic pouch
(not black) produced in Ghana but apparently owned by some folks in
the Netherlands. You bite off a corner of the plastic and suck/squeeze
out its tasty goodness. The artificial stabilizers, colors, and
flavors give it a taste and consistency that has been aptly compared
to frozen cake batter. Wooonderful. I eat about 5 a week.

Vehicle safety has not reached Ghana. Yesterday I put on a seatbelt in
the front seat of a cab and after it clicked in, a cloud of dust
escaped from the clicky part. It probably hadn't been used in years.
It's not unusual for 2 people to ride in a passenger seat or for 20
people to pile in to the back of a pickup. But one of the best things
I've seen in Ghana was a train in Accra the day before the first World
Cup game. The train had a locomotive and 4 passenger covers. The
entire thing was covered with people riding on the outside hanging on
waving Ghanaian flags and other paraphernalia. No vehicle emissions
standards either.

I've rode in a taxi with a goat. Chickens and goats are everywhere.
Lizards too. The school I was teaching at (as practice for when I'm a
real teacher) has a crocodile pit. But they were just sitting there,
which was boring (and nature exists to amuse me). So I poked one of
them in the eye (with a very long stick). This got his attention and
for a split second (the one in which he tried to bite the stick in
half) looking at crocodiles was fun.

I let my 4 year old brother draw in my notebook. This makes him very
happy. So my guess is that either the family can't afford extra paper
for the kid to scribble in or they just don't consider that a good use
of resources (probably a little of both). For example, his mother
yelled at him for spoiling my notebook. But he drew a worm, a snake
(which looked a lot like the worm), a cat (the family cat is named
Poos), a horse and a cup. If the family had a fridge, that's where
they'd go. He also tries to spin his pen like I do.

Littering: Just Do It. There aren't many garbage cans around, probably
because there aren't many garbage trucks either. So, people litter. I
hate littering, but is it litter when that's what everyone does with
their garbage? It's actually not as bad as you may think because with
the exception of the black plastic bags, 500 mL water bags and FanIce
wrappers, Ghanaians don't create much trash.

Music here is seemingly random, although I'm sure there's some order
to it. Other than Ghanaian music which I won't go into because I don't
know enough about it, there's a lot of random dance music from the 90s
(Matt: Danzel is too recent for Ghana), and Ghanaians like hearing the
lyrics. So that means slower songs (tons of Celine Dion) and country
music. Country music is kind of big here. It's funny every time.

OK, that's about it for now...2 more weeks of living with a Ghanaian
family until we all leave for a few days to visit our permanent sites.
Then we come back and continue living with our Ghanaian hosts for
another 2 weeks. Time...goes...by...so...slowly... when you're living
with a Ghanaian family in a small village. My hobbies in the village
include sweating, not understanding the language, washing my clothing
by hand until my knuckles bleed, and killing cockroaches!

¶ 3:39 PM