Day 48 - Oworobong

Today started early!  Eight of us met up at 7 am and walked out of the port to meet BD, who was waiting for us with a “Semester at Sea” sign.  A girl from our group, Ashley, organized a trip to the Rohde Foundation in Oworobong, a 5-hour drive.  BD was very welcoming and showed us to our van, a rickety contraption that you wouldn’t guess could drive.  We piled in with our stuff, talked a little, but mostly dozed off after the first hour.  In the time that I was awake, I took in the landscape; we had passed the cities and were rising into the green, rolling hills of the Ghanaian countryside.  There were some times that it was impossible to sleep because the roads were so bumpy.

Note: In order to understand what I’m saying, you have to throw away any pre-conception of what words mean, words like “highway,” “clinic,” and “hospital bed.”

The highway we took was occasionally paved, but mostly dirt with unimaginably deep potholes that the driver had to skillful maneuver around.  Sometimes there was a relatively smooth transition from pavement to dirt, sometimes there was a large drop.  The times when the dirt road was fairly level, it was covered in rocks that violently shook the van and us with it.  Later, I learned that we had avoided the main road because they were doing construction on it, and it would have been too bumpy.

We drove past some homes that looked to be made of mud with tin roofs.  There wasn’t anything that looked cohesive enough to resemble a village.  We were a long ways from home, in more ways than one.  I couldn’t help but think that if anything were to go wrong, they would never find us, not ever.

We arrived at the Rohde Foundation at exactly noon, and we were welcomed by Kofi, whose first words after he welcomed us were “Lunch is ready.”  We entered the Emergency Ward, which had in it a few empty beds with mosquito nets and a dining table.  We were shown to our room in the Guest Ward, which looked like a hostel but with mosquito nets.   For lunch, we were served heaping portions of rice with a chicken-vegetable sauce on the side.  Kofi asked if there were any vegetarians.  When we replied no, he cried, “Oh, thank god!”  After lunch, we were passed bags of water – bags!  We quickly learned to love these 500-mL bags of water.  You bite off a corner and suck out of it.

We were given about 10 minutes to rest, during which we learned how to use the bathroom.  There was drainage in the clinic, but not running water.  All the water was brought in by buckets from a pump about 75 m away.  “Flushing” the toilet meant pouring in water from a bucket.  The sink had a bag of water hanging above it with a hose, and they brought out soap for us so we could wash our hands.  Believe it or not, we were living a life of village luxury.

Kofi was determined to show us their local waterfall, and he and other members from the clinic led us on a path partly along the road, partly through people’s yards.  There were goats and chickens roaming freely, and the continuous crow of a rooster.  If you thought roosters only crowed at sunrise, you were very wrong.  Eventually we reached a path lined with foliage and started climbing down the steep trail.  The path was wet and muddy, and we often slipped or stepped on unstable ground and fell.  At this point, I would like to note that one person from our group, Jake, was in a wheelchair, and watching how the men – both African and American – helped carry him down was a small miracle in itself.

We did not walk that far, but the journey was long.  We were slipping a lot, and I couldn’t imagine how the guys carries Jake were doing it.  Jake yelled, “It better be one hell of a waterfall!”

And it was!  We finally reached the bottom and were right in front of the waterfall.  It was magnificent.  The waterfall made a small pool before flowing off into a large river, and we were so close that we were literally soaked from the mist.  We took our time wandering around before making our way back up.

We returned to the clinic, and by this time all the local children were out of school and rushed around us.  Jake was by far the favorite; he would carry kids on his lap while a dozen more pushed him around.  The children liked to touch us; they would hold both of our hands, sometimes fighting with each other over them, and they would rub their faces along our arms.  Playing with them was a little challenging, not only because they were full of energy while we were exhausted.  The kids don’t learn English until middle school, so we couldn’t communicate well.  Also, they didn’t know any basic hand signals that we would consider common, like the finger for “one minute.”  Instead, they would also hold up a finger in imitation.  They loved getting their picture taken and then looking at them on our digital cameras.  I once tried kneeling down to take a picture from their height, but this backfired as they all copied me and knelt down, too.

We wanted to hand out toothbrushes to the kids, and with Kofi’s OK, we brought them out.  The kids grabbed handfuls, then fought with each other to get more.  It was a disaster.  It ended with Kofi confiscating all the toothbrushes and making the kids line up so he could distribute them one by one.  Later, the kids would ask us individually for more brushes, though we knew they had received them already.  The older ones would just ask for money.  One came up to me and said hi and asked my name.  I told him.  Then he asked, “So where’s my money?”

Kofi then led us around the village, introducing us to anyone who was at home.  The kids followed us everywhere, never letting go of our hands and arms.  We met a lady mashing up cassava for dinner, a man who was the priest of the river, and a woman packaging coal in small portions that everyone could afford.  One woman we lived around a communal courtyard that had a TV and a bunch of phone chargers hanging from a wall.  She had her own business of hooking up the generator and charging 1 cedi so people could charge their phones.  She also hosted movie nights.

We returned to the clinic for another wonderful meal accompanied by a bag of water.  Over dinner, we had a long talk about the mission of the Rohde Foundation.  Kofi passed around a piece of coal they had made from corn cobs.  They planned to sell it for less than wood coal, and it burned longer.  This was part of their sustainability effort.  Their other goals were to provide healthcare to as many people as possible and to make their efforts economically sustainable by profits from cocoa farming.  At the end, Kofi made a demonstration.  He had BD turn off the lights, and we sat in darkness for a few minutes.  Kofi told us that with donations, they were able to install solar-powered lights in March of this year.  Before, when a woman would go into labor in the middle of the night, the baby would be delivered by candlelight or flashlight.

After dinner, we went outside to play with the kids, who had returned after having dinner at home.  The sky was incredible; with no light pollution, we could see the stars and the Milky Way clearly.  There was also a lightning storm, even though there were no clouds in sight.  We were told it must be raining somewhere.  Slowly, we peeled away from the children to go to bed.  It was probably no later than 8 pm, but the sun sets around 6 pm at the equator, plus we were exhausted!  I made up my bed, which was a pillow and a thin mattress that fell through the wooden boards underneath when I moved.  There were no blankets, but it was so hot even at night, that we didn’t need them.  I secured the mosquito net under my mattress and fell into deep sleep.