Akwabaa Brunee!!

Akwabaa brunee!!
^ pretty much the most common phrase we hear no matter where we go, it means "Welcome White People!"

Boy oh boy, where to start? Today is my 4th day of being in this wonderful country but it feels like I've been here for years. Saturday a small group of us arrived in Accra in which we were immediately engulfed with a big sweaty hug (aka the humidity) that hit us hard. It is almost unbelievably hot here. Even inside you can feel the water in the air stick to every part of your body. BUT it's okay!! June and July are Ghana's rainy season and since we've been here its already rained a bunch of times cooling down the heat a little bit.... but it also adds to the humidity haha.

Sunday morning we all woke up early and walked about 15 minutes to a LDS church building that we found. There is 1 girl here who is not Mormon but decided to tag along as well. Attending church here was so fun! Everyone loves talking to and getting to know the "brunees" (white people).  Experiencing church in a different culture is such a testament to me of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It really doesn't matter where you are, who you are, what language you speak or anything really-- the gospel is the unifier for all things. My heart grew so much for these people who have such a strong conviction for something they know is true and the way they go about worshiping their beliefs. By the end of the meetings all of the women were calling us their daughters and inviting us to more activities. You could really feel the love. Just amazing.

But that not what we came to do!

Yesterday is when the real work began. Workers from United For Sight sorted out our group of 12 in half-- sending 6 to a different location with a clinic named Saint Thomas until Thursday night. The other 6 (including me) stayed in Accra to work for the Crystal Eye Clinic.

The way this works is everyday you attend a different location in an area (e.g. Accra) that previously had been advertised for people to come. Our team arrives at churches, community centers, abandoned buildings, etc. to set up shop. One of the workers explains to the crowd (literally hundreds) of people the process of what will happen in their native tongue (usually Twi, but there are hundreds of tribal languages, like today we learned Gha). First the patients get registered and then are testing for visual acuity. We volunteers do the acuity testing which consists of standing about 6 meters away with your eye reader sheet. The patients then go to the doctors, who test, prescribe medicine, and in some cases make referrals for surgery. We handle check out by distributing medication and glasses and record all transaction and patient history.

....and that's exactly what we do all day every day. It's such fulfilling work though. A remarkable amount of people's visual acuity registers as NPL (no light perception) and it's very clear they have cataracts from just looking at their eye, which we can provide a surgery to COMPLETELY RESTORE their blindness. Which is incredible! All surgeries are subsided by Unite For Sight, so they get cured for free!

I am learning so much from the people and just being surrounded by the culture. Some things I have learned thus far....
1. DO NOT take malaria pills with food in your stomach!! About 2 hours after arriving in Ghana and right after eating I thought that would be a good time...it wasnt. I ended up throwing up on the street next to like 5 little kids who laughed...a lot.
2. Saying small phrases in native languages makes you sounds stupid, but will make almost every Ghanaian laugh very very hard. So do it a lot.
3. All the food is spicy. All the food consists of mainly rice and chicken.
4. Plantain chips are bomb.
5. Fanice is the best invention (IT'S ICE CREAM AND ONLY ABOUT 40 CENTS BUT I STILL MIGHT JUST SPEND ALL MY MONEY)
6. Cold showers are amazing and the only time you aren't sweating
7. "Shower" is a loose term. Very loose. It pretty much consists of 2 buckets and pouring it on your body.
8. Ghanaians are the happiest people on the planet! I am convinced. Today, I asked an old man today why he was so nice to us brunees. His response: "We love strangers"




pictures:

• Deborah and Amy-- school girls i met today from Sege. They TRIED to teach me how to dance (they are much better than me)
• The building where we set up shop on the first day. We saw over 230 people that day 
• Excited for the first day of work!!
• The church building and the street it was on. (Don't be fooled by the rain clouds, they came and went in like an hour)