What Happens in Africa... STAYS

We woke up at 5am with everything packed and ready to go. What a strange feeling. We had to strap the back seat out of the trotro on the back of all the luggage so none would fall out: it was quite the sight! We then took the 2 hour drive to the airport in Accra. We were all exhausted from barely any sleep the night before, I managed to make it on the airplane though! : ) Both flights were pretty good.. Our first flight was 2 hours early so we had plenty of time to go through customs. After saying goodbye to Canadian George, it was off to SLC! It was so fun to arrive home and be on American soil again. It was weird seeing so many white people but I got use to it pretty fast.

PARTY IN THE USA!
It's weird being home and I am having withdrawals. Taking showers is amazing, I can't seem to take one long enough! I keep forgetting its winter and I am freezing to death every day here! I miss the nature and landscape of Africa. It's so green and luscious wherever you are. I miss the students always brightening my day and giving me countless reasons to smile and enjoy the moment. I miss is all. I feel like i have just been thrown back into reality into the same old day to day routine. I never thought it would be this hard. I miss serving every day all day- I went from loving from the inside out with my whole heart and to now focusing on my selfish life and what I need to do to get ready for school. I wonder how my kids are every day...
I am excited to take everything I learned in Africa and make it build me to become who God wants me to be. I know God is mindful of them. I know he is watching over them. What a blessing to know this. I know my Savior lives and loves each of us, we are all His children- even across the world in AFRICA!

SPORTS WEEK

This is a very special time of year to be in Kibi, Ghana. All the schools in Kibi get together once a year for a week long sports tournament. They have Football (Soccer), Net ball, Running, and Volleyball. The Friday before the week starts the kids all get in huge long lines and have weigh ins. They each are weighed to see if they are between 50-54.5kg. They must be in this scale or they are not allowed to play. The week is full of loud music, dancing, lots of food vendors, and kids who can't get enough sports! We sat in the hot hot sun from 7am-5pm every day to watch! I felt like I was back home at soccer tournaments and I grew a greater appreciation for my mother who spent year after year watching all of us every Saturday. The deaf are looked down upon in Ghana and this is where I saw it first hand. The deaf were last every day.. The hearing kids make fun of them and the refs are biased. A lot of the hearing teams cheated as well and got students from the High School to come play on their team. It's sad the extent they go to to win, however, they never do! DEAF ALWAYS WINS! KibiDeafs older boys soccer team won the entire week! They won the "cup" in the end and we were all SO proud of them! It was so much fun to celebrate with them and see their hard work turn into an accomplishment. They are the sweetest kids and deserve that trophy! They practice so much and so hard, I love watching them. They are each so talented.

It's Nice To Be Nice & Good To Be Wise

Today we went to Accra to attend the temple and what a beautiful time it was! This was a day I will never forget. I loved being in the temple and feeling beauty all around. It keeps life in perspective and makes me even more grateful to be here, experiencing all that I am.After the temple we went back to the Culture Center in the center of Accra and boy was it cultural! When we got there I got swept away by Humble Lyle who wanted to sell me sweet painted shirts for 45 Ghana Cedis. I literally only had 5 so I was trying to think up ways to bargain and he took his shirt off of his body and gave it to me for 5...plus my SOHI water bottle. He was fascinated with it, the fact that it was blue and could hold a liquid.. was awesome.

After that encounter I met my Rastafarian soul brothers. Fuzzy, Daniel Djembe Drum, Denis Rap Dee, and my favorite: Antiga Martin. They are the greatest people. They invited us to come "make music" with them in their shop, so I spent about an hour playing the drums and dancing with them. It was a blast! Martin gave me a necklace to always remember that "we are one" and he wanted me to stay and hang out with him all night and he'd bring me back in the morning... yikes!!! no way!! These guys definitely had Rasta-vibes! They were awesome and it was very fun to learn how to play the drums.

Fantastic FOUR

Every day when I walk to school I pass a little house on the left, tucked back into the tall grass with 4 beautiful children living there. Their names are Andrew (7), Desire (12), Goodwill (10), and Ms. Catherine (14). They are the most down to earth loving family. I can see their love for each other by the way they treat each other- they are best friends! They do everything and anything together and always want to talk talk talk my ear off. Whenever I walk by their house I hear "MAYGENN!!" and they all come running out to give me hugs. At night when I walk by I will heart "Maygen, You are invited" in their raspy childish voices. This means they are inviting me in to eat with them. They make my day every time I see them, they are always so caring and want to know about my day. Andrew asks for me to bring him toffee everyday, "maygen, I want toffeeee.. or maygen, I want a bicycle." Such funny kids- Andrew thinks I can just run home to America real quick and grab him some toffee : )


One day they invited me over to watch them dance. Here is some of their sweet goodness:

They were so hard to say goodbye to, I need to get that little Andrew some toffee!!

Emmanuel's Gift

Meet Emmanuel.
This boy is my everything. He is literally sunshine and radiates wherever he goes. He is always so happy and he is my best friend here. He lives each day to the fullest and ALWAYS has a smile on his face. He lights up whenever he sees me and I love our friendship. He is 14 years old and in my P-5 class. I tutor him every night and we are working so hard on remembering whether 7 is spelled: "seven" or "twenty".. he gets the two mixed up quite a lot : ) but I love him for it. He is the one individual that I am trying to make a difference to. Tutoring him is awesome. He wants to learn and he is always asking for more. It was his idea to be tutored, he would rather learn than play with friends at night. I believe that is what is needed. They need their own desire to want to learn beyond in the classroom so then they try harder and work to learn, instead of just memorize. he does his homework every night and is excited about it. i have been creating his homework in worksheets that I make up and have ready for him each night at 6:30 when I tutor. He LOVES them! It shows him that I care about him enough to take time to make him something special. He gets so excited. He has some misunderstandings still but they are slowly becoming understandings. he just needs a little more explanation of things and he is wonderful! I love that he wants to learn for himself. He tries to never cheat, unlike some of my students.. oh children.. I made him flashcards for him to practice going from the number to the word form and vise-versa. I can't wait to see his progression!

I call him twinkle eyes because his eyes literally sparkle. They are so darling. He also makes a crackling sound with his voice when he is embarrassed or nervous. I love when he gets a question wrong as well, I can see his brain working and he sincerely signs sorry and fixes it. I adore this boy with my whole heart and soul- he is the reason I am here!

NAMES

The name game here is quite the treat. each person is given a name according to the day they were born, so everyone has the same name! here they are:

MALE:

Monday- Kwadwo

Tuesday- Kwabena

Wednesday- Kwaku

Thursday- Yaw

Friday- Kofi

Saturday- Kwame

Sunday- Kwasi

FEMALE:

Monday- Adwoa

Tuesday- Abena

Wednesday- Akua

Thursday- Yaa

Friday- Afua

Saturday- Ama

Sunday- Akosua

Now as you can imagine, this makes for name signs to be very similar.. which makes everything that much harder! i hope you enjoy finding out your ghanaian name!

Love,

Abena

Cape Coast

I have officially hit my one month mark and I am half way done.. I have mixed emotions- I am excited to be home but never want to leave the green, warm, miraculous Africa with the most remarkable people. Their life stories would blow your mind.
For the one month mark, we took a weekend trip down to Cape Coast to go to the Kankum Canopy bridge walk and the Slave Castles. We started off in Kankum. It was so weird to see other Obrunis.. I didn't like it. It was a large tourist attraction but I am happy we went. The bridges are basically a ladder with a board on top the width of one body. There were 7 bridges from tree to tree that I went on. They wobbled sooo badly! At first I was very scared but after my second or third bridge it was all fun and games! It was so awesome to think that I was atop of an African jungle..walking! I am in AFRICA, it still amazes me. The scenery was beautiful! So many different trees, leaves, and shades of green. I loved every bit! The hike up was sweet too because we were walking deep into the jungle.

After finishing the canopy walk we took off to the slave castles. They were fascinating!! We went into the different dungeons and they were pitch black large rooms that fit 2,000 men in their own cells 1,000 females in theirs. They would be there for around 2 months and then be taken in shackles to the "Door of No Return" where they were shipped out to work. The whole slave trade was a secret to the public. If they tried to escape they were thrown in a cell with no air, no water, and no food. They were kept there until they died. What happened here is such a tragedy but nonetheless they are very cool castles and right on the edge of the coast.

After the castles we went and had lunch at a resort right on the beach! It was a blast to play in the sand and feel the ocean! We had so much fun just running around and taking a break from all the stress; it felt like vacation. There were so many white people there and they were all very fat. They were all laying around drinking and smoking and being lazy, I was embarrassed for them. It also broke my heart that someone would travel all the way to Africa to do that, that isn't Africa at all- I can get that in Florida... I love the beach though!!