A Low Cost Vacation

The Peace Corps benefit of twenty four vacation days a year is really nice. If you have money, you can venture away from volunteer life and do something fun. I've seen other volunteers take vacation days to go to Spain, Italy, Morocco, South Africa, and Tanzania. Those of us who came home for Christmas used our vacation days to visit the U.S. A lot of people use vacation days when people from home come to visit. These vacation days accrue throughout service, and after our close-of-service (COS) conference we are no longer allowed to use them. My group's COS conference is coming up soon, which prompted me to use up all my remaining vacation days while I still could. I wanted to go to the beach, but I had no money and no one to accompany me. The inflation in Ghana now has me scraping by right before we get paid each month. I needed a vacation that would pretty much be free, so I came to stay at our house/suboffice. The suboffice is like a luxurious palace compared with my village life. It has wifi. It has showers with great water pressure. It has a real kitchen. It has electricity, which means fans and the ability to stay up past eight. Best of all it has other volunteers constantly passing through and staying there. It is used for volunteers to have a place to stay when necessary, and a place for them to have meetings and do work. Everyone passing through laughs when I tell them I'm taking vacation here (I mean, I laugh too) but honestly this has been a great vacation. I've seen a lot of my favorite people and had many laughs. This vacation couldn't have come at a better time either, my home life was getting a little weird before I left. I don't know if I was imagining it but it felt like my host family was not happy with me. It could just be that they are so busy we don't communicate well. The mom is always stressed out trying to keep the provisions store well stocked, and cook the family dinner. She is always yelling at the kids. She always cooks late, which is terribly inconvenient for a place that does not have electricity. Maybe the problem started this one night when she was cooking really late. It was about nine oclock and I was tired of waiting for dinner to be ready. I wanted to go to sleep. So I told them I was going to bed. She said "OH! No won't you eat? It is almost nearing to finish." I said it was okay I would just sleep. She said "Oh! Can you sleep like that? With no chop?" and I was like like "Yeah" and went to bed. I was hungry but it was so late. The next morning she made me eat the dinner leftover for breakfast. Maybe that offended her and caused some weirdness in the house, I don't know. What I do know is that the day before I left for vacation they harvested ALL the avocados from the tree in our yard, and she did not give me a single one. This may make me sound petty but you have to understand that Ghanaians, when they have an abundance of something, they ALWAYS give you some. They always offer to give you some and many times when you say no thanks they still force you to take some. The whole time I have lived with this family, when they harvest something they automatically bring me some of whatever it is. I was totally eyeing the avocados, she knows I love them, and she didn't offer any to me. That is why I think something was wrong. I eat her dinner that she cooks every night. Sometimes I feel bad because I am hungry and thinking thoughts like, "Where is my food? Why did they start cooking so late? Ughhh" when maybe I should just be grateful to have someone feeding me. When I came back from Tamale I told her I wanted to eat with them again she said she liked that better, but sometimes I feel bad like I am putting a burden on them. Ghanaians often say things to your face that they don't mean so I don't know if she really likes it or not. I know she tries to cook things that I like. She started cooking palm nut soup more often when I started talking about how much I liked it. I just don't know if it puts additional stress on her. Either way, when I go back I've decided to cook dinner for myself again. Not because of what I was just mentioning but because the Ghanaian diet seven days a week is not a healthy one. The second thing that happened where I felt hostility was with my host dad. I was working to get a truck driver to deliver the finished beehives. The original guy was trying to charge more than he had first estimated, so I asked John if he knew anyone that could do it. He knew a guy and arranged for him to come and do the job for a cheaper price. He said the driver would come, but on the day he never came. Again the next day he did not show up. Then I just went back to the first driver and begged him to reduce the price. The same day as I was delivering the hives, there were white people coming to visit our village and see where their donated money was going. It was a really big ordeal and everyone was in motion, getting ready to pretend like they cared and that they were trying their best. I specifically did not want to meet the white people, because they give the village free stuff which makes it hard to do Peace Corps work. I went out to deliver the hives. When I was finished with my work that day and got back to the house, I asked John how the white people's visit went. He said "It was fine. The driver was very sick. Very sick oh when you see him it is not good at all." I asked if he was vomiting and John didn't really answer or continue conversing so I left it at that. I didn't really care about what happened with the white people, I was trying to make conversation. The next day, or maybe two after that, John brought up how the truck driver who never showed up to deliver the bee hives for me was so sick.I said, "Oh no! Really? Sorry for him...I didn't know." and John said "I told you the other day" which really confused me, and John followed with "You were standing right there. I don't know if you weren't listening or what." and I just said sorry but I honestly did not remember him telling me about the truck driver. It was only the next day that I made the connection and remembered. But he didn't make it very clear when he told me. The tone of his voice when he said maybe I just wasn't listening was a very "I'm done with you, you suck" kind of tone.

Okay Sorry that was probably too much information but for those of you who really cared enough to read all of that, you understand where I am at right now. My house is not a happy place for me to be, and the two people closest to me seem to be annoyed with me and ready for me to leave.

On the work related front: my beekeeping group now has all the beekeeping equipment and they have hives in the forest! They are trained on how to monitor the bees and take care of the hive. Some of the first hives they put out are colonized. There are other people interested in joining the group. The group is going to start a savings account at the local microfinance bank. They are doing super well! They have room for improvement of course, but I am really proud of what they have accomplished. It is hard to work with people in my area because they just want things to be done for them, or given to them. I am glad that I kept true to my philosophy of meeting them only halfway, because I can see that they have more ownership over this group. They are doing it their way, and it is going well. I have high hopes that the group will not dissipate after my departure, but in order to improve the functionality of the group a bit more I have requested that the PC sends another volunteer when I leave. I am wrapping everything up and taking these last couple months to just spend time with the host country nationals that I care about. I think it'll be a good next couple of months.