I love the Smell of Ghana

I love the smell of Ghana. But having said that, there is a certain way to smell Ghana. When you are walking and can feel a hot air under your nose you generally do not want to take a breath because the chances are that you will be smelling either trash, burning trash, dead fish, sewage, or human crap. BUT if you inhale when you feel a cool air under your nose, that is when you smell the real Ghana. You can smell the ocean, the palm trees, the hot pepper being cooked, the soap they use to do their laundry, and the sweat off the crazed football fans. That is what Ghana smells like. I love it.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to doing my laundry this weekend. I love washing my clothes by hand and most of all I love the soap that I get to use! It gets really foamy. I also want to say how refreshing bucket showers are. Maybe I love them because I am so dirty by the time I get to shower that any water feels great. A couple days ago I took the morning off to go to a pool so that I could get a shower. The water isn't running in my Host House and so there hasn't been water for me to shower.

Ok a lot of you have been asking about where I am staying and maybe I didn't do a very good job of explaining it before so I will try again. My first night in Ghana I stayed in the Foster Home that I set up for the boys. The trouble with that was it took 2 1/2 hours to get to the orphanage from there in traffic and so we decided I needed to move closer. The second night I stayed at a guest house about a 10 minute drive away from the orphanage while I waited for a host family to fall into place. Now I am staying in a Host Family. The foster home I set up for the boys has a housefather that checks in on them daily. I am living with the housefather's parents and his 5 sisters. I walk about 10 minutes to a tro tro stop and then take a five minute tro tro ride to the orphanage every morning. At night the boys get a taxi for me and get me a very cheap price and wait for my call of when I get home. I am very grateful that Samuel (age 27, the housefather) and his family are letting me stay in their house. It is not ideal conditions but that is ok. My room is about 95 degrees every night while I try and sleep and then I get woken up at 5am when the girls get up to get ready for school. The toilet doesn't have running water and as I said before I haven't really had showering water. I have told the host family that I do not need them to cook for me because then it would make it more difficult to get back from the orphanage for dinner. I am still doing my own thing and getting my own food where I like it and am comfortable with it.

I know a lot of you are wondering about the Foster Home and how my fundraising is working out. So far it is going great! I am so happy with the progress I am seeing here already. There are a few kinks I need to work out here and there but it is going well. I will talk about that more in the next e-mail.

I have been going to Cantonments Football Club every afternoon with a couple of my boys that train there. It is really nice that I am getting to spend so much time there because I know all of the other boys so well. For those of you who don't remember, this is where my friend David coached for over a year and I was there everyday with him at some point and got to know his players very well. It is good to be back with them.

I am starting to think that more people in Ghana know me than I know. People are constantly saying "Hello Claire" and I have no idea who they are. It is a great feeling. I am back in the community I left a year ago and I fit right back in where I did before.

I sometimes forget how much sadness is here in Ghana. I love it so much that I forget how difficult it can be to get through the day without wanting to go home and just sleep. Francis has been having a really difficult time with Victor's death. He was telling me that Victor was the only person who made him happy and now he is gone. Ishmael- one of David's footballers told me that the reason he dropped out of school was because his mother died 5 years ago and he had to drop out to take care of everything, his father disowned him. The girl who was living at the orphanage who was blind died while I was away. I am not sure what she died of but I know that one volunteer tried to give her blood and she died anyway. The kids cry and the scream and they fight and they are hurting and I want to be able to fix it all and I sometimes feel helpless.

I love it here. I am happy here. Even with all the sadness you find a way to work through it and keep going, because it is when people say that nothing can be done or that Africa is a lost cause that the worst happens. So I will continue to get out of bed and hug those crying children and find a way to make their lives a little bit easier. I know this was a really long update.....sorry for that. Let me know if you have any questions, I would love to hear from people back home.