(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 didn’t sleep so well. It’s been hot and I have turned and twisted around in my bed a lot. So this morning I didn’t feel so alert. There are a lot of mosquitoes that live in our toilet. I think it’s going to be very interesting to go to the toilet in Sweden again, where you just press a button and then the toilet flushes. Here I have to fetch water in a bucket and pour directly into the toilet to flush. Often it’s dirty water I flush with. I’m really happy that I’ve had toilet seats to sit on during my journey here. And not some hole in the ground…
Today I feel tired and sweaty. I’m not in a good mood today and I feel like I want to sleep all day long and get one day closer to home. Nevertheless, I don’t feel as homesick as I did in the beginning of this journey. I like the life here a lot! Its two contradictory feelings at the same time. I saved one of my candy bags with “Ahlgrens bilar” for this last week but today I couldn’t find it! It made me sad, I wanted to eat candy haha.
Today both Faustina and Agnes were tired and slept a lot. I don’t know why but they havea lot of hard work to do and it’s probably exhausting. I’ve been thinking about something… The children in these orphanages could run away very easily since there aren’t any fences here. But it feels like they have some kind of instinct that tells them not to do that.
Today we’ve heard drumming all the time, there are different schools practicing their marches for Ghana’s Independence Day which is on Sunday. Maybe I’ll have time to see some of it before I have to go to the airport. It would be nice.
This day is so incredibly slow and I miss my family pretty much today. I’ve barely been able to do anything today. I’ve felt low on energy… I spent the afternoon with the children and it made me happy again! I also found my candy and that made me happy haha. Talked a bit with my neighbor today and he told me that he wanted to have my camera. Next time I come to Ghana, I’ll give him my camera, he told me. But I need it myself and I don’t want to give it away so now I’m going to keep it close to me all the time.
Anna and Madeleine want to get health insurance for the children but to be able to do that they have to get the children’s real birth dates and names. Many children are called a name depending on which day of the week they were born, a “week name”. They often have a “week name” and a “school name” which is the name that is in papers and documents, sometimes they also have another nickname. Therefore it’s not easy to know their real names. In a lot of the families they don’t know when the child is born, which date. I hope Anna and Madeleine succeed with this project.
In the papers for two of the children there were other names than their “school names”. The madams were not happy about it and told the children that they can’t lie about such things! So they yelled at the children and threatened to beat them up. It’s probably not even the children’s fault.
There are some former volunteers who have fixed bunk beds for the older children. The children has wet the bed and destroyed the mattresses. Agnes wasn’t so happy about it, and tonight she gave them a big scolding. I was there and I didn’t really know how to react or act. I was a little shaken up, so I chose to leave. There’s not much I can do about it. I really felt helpless.
Dinner today was something that contained nuts (I often get a reaction when I eat nuts), but I was really hungry so I ate it anyway. Everything went well and I didn’t get any reaction from it. I’m fascinated by how they cook their food here and I have taken some pictures of it.
After dinner tonight my belly felt bad again and I had to rush to the toilet. It had been good for a day and now it’s bad again. I don’t understand why. Good night, I hope for better sleep tonight.
