I've been living in with my host family for more than a week. A little
bit about the place:

My estimate is that the village is about 6 city blocks (say from 96th
and Broadway to 99th and Columbus). It extends a bit farther than
that, but it's very sparsely populated once you leave the main area.
It's home to about 2,500 people. The layout shown in my pictures (link
on the right) is fairly common. Houses range from a mudhut with a
grass roof to a small compound with an open-air courtyard in the
middle and several isolated rooms around the courtyard.

The village is along the main road, which is a good thing. The
electric poles seem to also follow the main road, so the village has
electricity. As far as I've seen, it's used for lights, TV and radios.
If there is any refrigeration, it's probably only in stores and spots
(aka bars). Being along the main road also means that the nearby city
is easily accessible. This means economic opportunity, better schools
and probably other good things that I can't think of.

I think I've finally figured out who lives in the house - there's my
mother, sisters ages 16, 15, 12 and 8 (roughly), brothers ages 2 and 4
weeks, and 2 of my father's brothers who are both in their 20s. I have
my own room as do the two uncles and everyone else seems to sleep in
one room together.

My oldest sister, the one who speaks the best English, is always doing
chores - washing dishes, cooking, selling rice at the market, fetching
water, doing laundry, sweeping (the dirt - yes, they sweep the leaves
from the dirt), etc. Last Sunday, after I came back from town where I
went on the Internet and drank beer with other volunteers, I asked her
what she did that day. Her reply: "I fetched water." Oh. I didn't have
any follow-ups.

The next two oldest sisters also speak English, but not as well, and
they're busy too. So with the English speaking crowd occupied, it's
basically me, the 8 year old and the 2 year old much of the time. So I
don't spend a whole lot of time around the house, although I do enjoy
putting the two year old on my shoulders and last week the 4 week old
fell asleep on my stomach. It's also very hot in my room - it seems
that the metal roof insulated with burlap sacks is quite adept at
trapping heat, an unfortunate property in this climate.

When I am home, it's usually to eat. I get almost the same food
everyday. Breakfast is an omelet with tomatoes and onions, a huge hunk
of bread, an orange, and hot water with chocolate powder. I get lunch
in town because the two times I was home for lunch they served a plate
of fruit. Dinner is either boiled yams or rice with some tomato-based
sauce that either has fish, canned meat or chicken in it. I'm not sick
(yet), so I'm not complaining.

I poop into a pit, but it's a better situation than a lot of other
volunteers have. It has a concrete and plastic throne and it's in a
nicely built little wooden structure with a pipe coming out of the
roof so the place doesn't smell. I'm doing my own laundry (by hand). I
take bucket baths.

Sleeping is hard because villagers seem to have a different conception
of personal space. They either don't realize or don't care that when
you blast the radio, the sound waves travel farther than your ears.
And Ghanaians loooove playing things loudly. As a Ghanaian on PC staff
explained, when Ghanaians buy a radio, they are buying it for the
whole house. I'm also next to a spot (aka bar), so that only makes
things worse. Oddly, the spot not only blasts music at night but also
at about 6:00 am. I guess there's a morning drinking crowd. Oh, and
there are goats, chickens and roosters everywhere. So they're pretty
noisy too. Generally, there is a different definition of privacy here.
It's not just about personal space - a pretty standard question is to
ask for my mother and father's names. In the US, we would assume that
it's part of a scam, but in Ghana it's such a standard question that
answering it is one of the first things they taught me how to say in
Fante.

Homestay lasts until August 15 with a break in the middle to visit my
eventual site. I am really looking forward to that.

Addendum #1: Uri - I have not used the epoxy. It looks complicated.
But it was on the list of stuff to bring, and it was cheap, so I got
it. So basically, in terms of the epoxy, I basically brought it in
terms of me bringing stuff to Ghana.

Addendum #2: Another comparison to camp - they have a beit am here. I
don't think they call it that, but the biggest building in town is
large open room that's used for meetings.

Addendum #3: Ghana is out of the World Cup. After the game, someone in
the village said that it was the white referees trying to keep African
football down. I pointed out that Ghana failed to score a goal, which
was not the refs' fault. The whole being white in Africa thing will
not go away...ever. Yesterday, I made a little girl cry, just by being
white. I got into a cab, which she was already in. When she turned and
saw me, she just started crying and wouldn't stop. So they took her
out of the cab, which was not moving at the time, but every time they
tried to put her back in she started to cry. Sometimes little kids get
really excited. The other day I was walking through a new part of town
and a girl, probably about 5, spotted me and started screaming,
"obrooni! obrooni!" She was so excited that she ran inside to get all
of her brothers and sisters. A small pack of children came running out
of the house after me (not in a dangerous way, they were genuinely
excited).

Addendum #4: Happy July 4 and Happy July 6 (one-year anniversary of
New York not winning the 2012 Olympics).

¶ 1:20 PM