TIGB: THIS IS GHANA BABY!

Post date: Jan 29, 2015 3:50:8 PM

My second Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trip could not have been more different than my first one if I tried. During my first ASB trip to Costa Rica I was a stressed out jerk who alienated my entire group.

During my second trip, to Ghana, I was a laid back jerk who alienated my entire group, except a close group of friends I remain in contact with to this day.

But seriously, remember when I said that I went to Belize and had expectations of what it was like, so I was surprised by everything? Well, I went to Ghana with no expectations at all. I intentionally realized that I had no idea what Africa was like, and I wasn’t going to know before I got there.

And because I had no expectations I was surprised by everything. Go figure.

We kept hearing this phrase "TIA" which we found out means "This is Africa!". In response we came up with a phrase of our own. TIGB! This is Ghana Baby!

This volunteer trip was also very different in that we made even less of a difference in the lives of people we were volunteering for than we did in Costa Rica. I spent my time volunteering in a pediatric AIDS clinic. But here’s the thing, I’m not a doctor. I can’t perform medical procedures or see the massive amounts of patients that need care. All I could do was sit with the children who had no one to care for them, and no family left and hang out. I played a lot of cards.

One of the little girls was named Princess. She was PAINFULLY shy and the first day walked up to the doctor I was talking to and asked him if she could go home. She had no home, her parents had died of AIDS. So he told her if the white woman told her she could go home then she could. I don’t speak Ghanian and she didn’t speak English, so there was no way I could tell her anything. But she did learn to curl up into my lap in the morning and sit there looking at me with her large and dark eyes while I spoke with the Doctor.

There are a million stories I could tell you about Ghana (and someday I might expand this post and do just that) and they are all because of the group within the group. We hit it off immediately: Jenny, Lipface, ATrain and Nick. We are also known as Team Awesome.

While the majority of our group feared leaving our lovely little American compound in the middle of Kumasi, Team Awesome embraced Ghana. We tried the bars, we tried the food, we wandered through the market. We got weaves in our hair, we bargained with taxi drivers, as if the 10 cents we were haggling over made a difference to us. And we embraced all that Ghana had to offer. Many a story. Perhaps another time.