(Notice that this blog post is directly from the diary that I wrote in Ghana. All of my feelings and thoughts is how I felt during my journey.)
Last night I slept really well! Even though it’s not so soundproof and I hear the children all the time. But I have never had difficulties falling asleep when there are sounds around me. My room is right next to one of the children’s bedrooms.
Today we plan to go down to the beach here in Senya, with all the children. It will be fun! I really miss Helping Hand and the children over there. I can’t stop thinking about them. So I have a hard time letting the children at Mums care into my heart (I feel awful about that). I haven’t been able to socialize as much as I wanted with the children since I mourn about leaving Helping Hand.
Hygiene at this place hasn’t been good and if I compare with my previous homes here, the hygiene is not so good. This has resulted in that many of the children have scabies. That’s the rashes I talked about in a post here some days ago.
Today I bought a big bag of water bags for my last week here. A boy from the orphanage named Emanuell came with me and helped me. He is 13 years old. He carried the bag with water home, on his head! Like it was nothing. He didn’t even hold it up with his hands. It’s so fascinating! I asked him a thousand times if it went well and he just looked at me smiled and said “yes”. It was really nice of him to help me with that since those bags are really heavy.
It’s great that there are two rooms for the volunteers here. Then you don’t have to live many people in a small area. I sleep in one of the rooms while Anna and Madeleine share the other room. There is a door between the rooms that we always have open. So we are never alone. I’m really not a person who likes to be alone, it’s really not my thing. I miss Niclas more and more, I long to come home and just hug my family! In the beginning I was meant to live all three weeks at Helping hand (with no electricity and no running water). I have tried to live without running water but during my stay here in Ghana I have always had electricity, except for a few days when the electricity disappeared. I don’t think I could live without electricity it’s a convenience that I don’t want to be without. Without the electricity I had not been able to charge my camera and take all these lovely photographs of the children. I have charged my camera several times already. I’m not so fond of the toilet and the shower here (I think I’ve been spoiled with nice showers at my previous host families). It’s quite interesting because if someone would introduce me to this shower in Sweden, I had refused to step into it. But here in Ghana, it’s just part of life. And I’m so happy to be able to take a shower (bucket bath) every day here. My skin would not be so happy if I couldn’t do that.
There is a lot more mosquitoes here, than it was at the other places I’ve been to here in Ghana. I can probably expect more mosquito bites now. Anna and Madeleine are two really nice girls! I really like them and I’m enjoying working with them. We never went to the beach since Anna became sick. She had 39 degree fever. It was a bit sad. I hope she gets better soon and that it isn’t anything more than fever. Agnes gave us really good lunch today. Some sort of plantain pancakes and also watermelon. Good!
I have many thoughts on what happens when I get home again. Am I going to feel changed? Am I going to freeze a lot? Am I going to feel strange that I have changed when everything at home is as usual? Will I act differently? Am I going to appreciate everything I have more? For how long will I do that? How is it going to feel when I get back to school? Am I going to appreciate the food at school now that I’ve seen what the children eat here? Will I always remember the children and wonder how their lives turned out? Am I going to change my ways and act differently now when I have such a clear perspective on life? I have an incredible amount of thoughts in my head around that, right now. It feels so unreal to think that I am home, in my own room, with my things, my cat and all the luxurious things that we don’t appreciate enough, about one week. There are two completely different worlds, different realities, completely opposite to each other, but in the same world. I feel fortunate of all the things and my family that I have at home. Feelings and thoughts are really up and down all the time here.
We had good dinner tonight and I ate two portions! Agnes was really happy about that! I think I’m a person who prefers to eat together with friends, at least some company. So that was really nice. Agnes is a woman who works here. She is petite but pretty tough and strong. I have a feeling that she’s had a hard life. She jokes a lot with us and the children while she has manners on them. When I live here she is my host mother. I like her a lot.
Since Anna didn’t feel good today we haven’t been doing so much. I’ve been resting a lot and read a little bit in my book. My mark from the tuberculosis vaccination hasn’t looked so good for a few days, but it hasn’t been any danger. I’ve got a lot of small wounds from my band-aid and those have been more difficult to handle than the big one. Tonight when I changed my band-aid (I change every morning and evening), I was cleaning it and it started to bleed. I hope it looks better tomorrow.
Tonight my mother called me and it was so nice to hear her voice again! I really miss her. I talked a bit with Niclas too and it was so nice. I had forgotten what his laugh sounded like so it felt really great to hear it. We decided that they should call me on Tuesday again. Now I’ll say goodnight to all of my thoughts, read my book for a while and then sleep for the night. I really like my mosquito net here, it feels like sleeping in a cosy little hut.
