Today is my first day in Ghana! After over 24 hours of plane rides and layovers and 3 flights, we made it. I’m excited to spend the next month in Elmina, and to explore Accra and other towns and villages.
My first impressions of here are that Accra is a very colorful city. Every building is a bright and beautiful color, the dirt here is a rusty red color, and the clothes are full of patterns and colors. Women carry food on their heads to sell on street corners, and there’s always music playing live from somewhere.
I’ll be spending the next month in Elmina, a city we will travel to tomorrow, which is on the coast of Africa. There I will be working at health posts and in a hospital, and doing other community service projects. One of my goals this trip is to have some experience with health care in Ghana, as well as to learn more about the culture of the people here. By working with healthcare in Ghana, I should be able to accomplish both!
The people here speak mostly English and Twi, along with a few other languages. One of the reasons I chose to study abroad in Ghana was that I personally am not very good with languages and wanted to go somewhere where I would be able to understand many people, as well as learn a new language firsthand that I otherwise would never be exposed to. In preparation for the trip, we had to learn some Fante, which will be spoken in Elmina.
In order to help learn the language and remember things that happened on the trip, I’ll be writing down my daily experiences in a journal, something that it’s recommend that everyone going abroad should do, that way I can look back years from now and have my experiences be as vibrant and memorable as if they had just happened.
Today I am very excited to be going exploring Accra and the rest of Ghana! I’m interested to learn more about the culture and the people here, and very excited for the trips we will make on the weekends. One of the trips we will make will be a safari to a national park, and seeing the animals in their natural habitats will be really exciting to experience, especially as a Biology major.
I’m off to explore Accra!
Until next time,
Liddy