A very exciting advancement at the beginning of the week was a meeting with Best Buddies Ghana! On Sunday night, when I returned from Cape Coast, three individuals from Best Buddies Ghana and one Ghanaian volunteer from the Autism Center came over to the Ikando house for a meeting about starting Best Buddies at the Autism Center. The college student, Isaac, was excited about expanding the program and took on the responsibility/opportunity of starting up the Autism Center site. He was scheduled to visit Tuesday, and then Wednesday, but finally, today, he came and saw the center! (In Ghana, scheduled meetings are often delayed due to lack of knowledge of location, transportation issues, and just the general culture of delay.) Today, Isaac came and visited the center! He met the children, teachers, and administrators, and then, we decided to just go ahead and get started. We walked across the street to a private, "Regular School," and met directly with the head master! We had no appointment, but Isaac, Diane, and I just walked in and sold the project! The head master said he would be excited to expose his children to social interaction with children with Autism.
After school each day, we have had lots of Ghanaian experiences. We have made really good friends with Asana, who we have always called, "The Batik Lady." Batik is like tie-dye here, and is a very popular type of fabric. Asana owns a batik shop that is on the road in between the house and the Autism center. We stop each way to chat with her, and have become close with her entire family. This past week, the front of her shop is closed because she is actually making the batik. We have been in the back with her each afternoon helping make it, and we even got to design our own fabrics! [I made curtains for the new condo.] It has been very interesting to be so involved with her business, family, and life. We have gotten really close, and today she already talked about how she is going to cry so much when we leave.
We also went over to Richard's house last night. Richard is a teacher at the Autism center who we have become good friends with. Additionally, Muhamad is a volunteer from Kwame Nkrumah University in Kumasi, working at AACT only for the summer. We have become friendly with him, and he lives right around the corner from the center. His mom owns a shop with ice-cream, and he takes us to his house to show us his amazing artwork!
Ghanaian Houses/Family Life
Ghanaian houses/buildings in general are very different from anything I have known. A "house" is not necessarily all indoors. A "house" as they refer to it is more of a courtyard with enclosed rooms as mini "houses" all around a middle open space. This open space has "lawn-furniture" and sometimes a kitchen area, and dry-lines. Many nuclear families tend to live around the same courtyard area, or house as they call it here.
Tonight, we went to the movies! We went in Nima, which is not a very ritzy area of town and certainly not a very touristy one. The movie theater was outside, under the stars, with people walking arond with items on their head to sell! It was a hilarious experience, with old 80s movies and Ghanaians constantly talking and moving about.
Ghanaian houses/buildings in general are very different from anything I have known. A "house" is not necessarily all indoors. A "house" as they refer to it is more of a courtyard with enclosed rooms as mini "houses" all around a middle open space. This open space has "lawn-furniture" and sometimes a kitchen area, and dry-lines. Many nuclear families tend to live around the same courtyard area, or house as they call it here.
Tonight, we went to the movies! We went in Nima, which is not a very ritzy area of town and certainly not a very touristy one. The movie theater was outside, under the stars, with people walking arond with items on their head to sell! It was a hilarious experience, with old 80s movies and Ghanaians constantly talking and moving about.
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