Emily and Joey: Last Week in Abomosu

We have been busy since we have been home and so I will be updating our blog with some old posts. This was going to be one long post but I think I will split it up into two smaller posts. I haven't finished the second half so just stay tuned.

On Tuesday, August 3rd Abbie and Spencer left to go to Estonia, which left Joey and me in Abomosu alone for our last week in Ghana. Joey and I had told Stephen that we wanted to go and work on his farm for a day to see if we could survive. We decided that now that the professors had come and checked on everything, loans were given out, and business classes were over that it would be the perfect time to go. Well Stephen is in charge of planning a funeral for a previous member of parliament and funerals are a big deal anyways so he informed us that he wouldn't be able to take us and that due to the drought (it rained quite a bit when we were first there but not as much as their usual rainy season, the farmers and crops and "crying for rain") there wasn't anything that we could do. Stephen told us that he had some workers that were going to harvest cocoa and that he would have Nkansah take us to the cocoa farm and let us watch how they harvest the cocoa. It was such a fun experience. The workers made it look so easy so Joey and I had to take this opportunity to work on the farm. Nkansah gave us some quick lessons and then let us try. Joey said that this is one of the scariest things he has ever done. It is so weird, first you are holding this large knife, second you have to hit the cocoa hard so that the knife cuts into it, and then you hand covers the whole cocoa when you try to hold it. It was quite a difficult task but we are glad we got a chance to try. I admire these workers, they were so fast.

Pile of Cocoa that was ready to be harvested.

Joey attempting to cut open the cocoa!

Emily scraping cocoa out of the shell.

Then we went to play soccer with the children in the village. We had done this a couple of times when we first arrived in Abomosu and then either didn't have a ball or time to go play. We went up to Presby Primary School and played soccer for the afternoon. The girls didn't want me to play and kept trying to get me to play hand games with them, let them play with my hair or carry them around on my back.

Joey still had some students from his business class to meet with that wanted to complete their business plans and also to do some mentoring with the loan recipients so we spent the next couple of days doing that. We had also been asked to put together a profile for the Freedom Fighters- the Abomosu Football/Soccer Club. There is a team in Florida that may be willing to sponsor the team but they wanted pictures and profiles on the players so we went to watch the team's practice and set up a time to put together profiles. These players looked like they were between 20-24 years old but they were all between 16-20 years old.

Soccer Practice for the Freedom Fighters

Freedom Fighters Practice

Freedom Fighters Team Photo

My soccer friends- they kept me very entertained

I knew that I had less than a week left in Ghana and that I needed to truly become Ghanian so on our last Saturday I went to get my hair braided. This is quite the process and is very painful. It took four hours to get braided but I have really enjoyed it. Stephen Jr's wife Sonya told me that if I would have had it done in Accra it wouldn't have been as painful because there are salons there that are used to doing Obroni hair. Joey wanted to see what I would look like as a brunette so we figured this would also be a great way to do it without dying my hair. There were three women braiding my hair at a time and three other women helping prep the extensions. It is strange having that many hands touching my hair at the same time. After they braid a strand they take scissors to it to make sure that there isn't any hair sticking out of the braids. After they braided all of my hair they added some sort of wax/gel stuff to my hair and then they use a candle to burn the wax. This was scary to have a flame to close to my face. After they have burned all the strands of hair they pull it all back into a ponytail and dip it into some boiling hot water to rinse of the wax.

(This is the reason I hadn't made this post earlier. I wanted to surprise everyone when I came home with my hair braided.)

The start of the 4 hour process

Part way through the process

Almost Done

The Hair Saloon Ladies (yes they spell it Saloon)

Close-up of the hair

Joey enjoying taking pictures of my hair

Walking home from Church on our last Sunday in Abomosu

Last Sunday in Abomosu

One of the loan recipients Ben Boadu was starting a sugar cane farm. We had told him that we wanted to see him plant the sugar cane so on Monday, August 9 Joey and I rode our bikes to his farm which was farther than we had thought. We were able to watch him plant his sugar cane starters. It is such a simple process.