My home in Ghana.

Before I left for Ghana, I mentioned to a lot of my friends and family that I would begin a blog in order to keep in touch. My first thought was that having a blog would make the usual question of "So what's Ghana like?" much easier to answer - and hopefully avoid - when I get home.  After being here again and thinking about what I wish to write about, however, I'm nervous that the point of my posts may be lost in translation.  As a result I would like to provide a disclaimer for my blog: when I write about how my life is here or the situations that I am a part of, please do not feel sorry for me. My goal of this blog is mainly to give anyone who reads it an idea of what it's like to live in Ghana.  That yes, life is different, but not necessarily better or worse. As sociologists would say, try to read my posts coming from the context that I am currently living in!

This is part of my bedroom! I love having my own space here so I have somewhere to get away. In this picture my mosquito net is on top of my bed because the ceiling is too high to hang the net from. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it. The "mattress" is made up of foam so every time I wake up and get out of bed there's an indentation where I slept. It's not the most comfortable bed but I'm managing!

This is the other side of my room. I brought a TON of toiletries from home because I wasn't sure if I would be able to find them here. In fact, I went to the Western supermarket in Accra this weekend and I found shampoo! I was happy to see that I could get it here if I needed to. Since it's not a popular item, however, the smallest bottle of Pantene was 16 dollars! I'm hoping I can just get more shampoo from home when I need it (hint hint).

The structure with a landscape on it is my closet. It's so humid here that it's important to have a closet with a zipper on it so hopefully my clothes don't start to smell. My roof leaks too sometimes so I'm glad to have the additional cover over some of my things!

Ovens aren't common in Ghana and I'm not sure I've even seen a microwave here. Most homes will have a coalpot or upgrade to a hot plate. I'm not very good at cooking here yet - note the pineapple and oranges, as I eat them often!

This is the other side of my kitchen. There is a refridgerator but electricity goes out often so that it's not very convenient. I use it more to store food away from the bugs than to keep things cold! There are several food stands near my apartment so it's not much trouble to buy what I need for any meal anyway!

 This is the bathroom. The water is shut off every other week so when the water is going to be turned off, we fill every bucket up except for one, which is used as the shower bucket. There are also two other big buckets - such as the green one in the back - that we fill. One is used for washing dishes and the other one is used for flushing the toilet. The water in the green one here is for showers. I'm not sure how much water I used when I was back in the States; I can only imagine how many buckets worth I used in a week there!

When there is running water, it isn't strong enough to make a shower and, as you can see, the faucet isn't high enough for showers anyway! So regardless of whether the water is on, bucket showers it is! Sometimes I heat up some water on the hotplate to make the showers a bit nicer.

Also, the smaller buckets are used for laundry! Laundry is only done during weeks when this running water and it usually takes three buckets. One bucket is filled with laundry detergent and water and the clothes soak in that. The other two are used to rinse out the soap (it's best to rinse out the clothes twice).

Hi Mom and Dad!

Those are my pictures for now - I hope I can post soon but it's all up to the internet gods!