Laughing through our Overnight Outreach

        I don't even know where to begin with explaining this week. It was such a hilarious week and we just found ourselves laughing and laughing at everything. Every time we thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. It's hard to explain everything that happened, and writing it down makes it not seem to bad, but here is an attempt.

She was so cute! She wanted to be my helper
all day too.

        So let me start with Monday. Monday we planned to leave at 6:30am to go to Elmina where we would stay for three days. So we got up and packed everything up, put the stuff we weren't bringing into storage so we didn't have to pay for two hotels, and were ready to leave. Well two other girls had come and their clinic leaders (Charity Eye Clinic) didn't pick them up and so after making a million phone calls, our staff members decided that they should come with us. So we finally left around 8am and headed to Elmina which was about 2.5 hours away. The first day of clinic was rough. There were 8 of us, doing a 4 person job. So it was frustrating figuring out what everyone should be doing and how we could all be productive and organized. After finally finishing, everyone was starving and so we went to eat, chicken and rice of course, and it was 22 cedis when it is normally 6! So that was crazy. Then we got to our hotel (The Hollywood hotel) and well I ended up having to share a room with mercy, our Ghanaian staff member. I was sooo worried about that but they didn't have another room available so I just prayed that it would be okay. I didn't really sleep at all that night because I was nervous and worried about sharing a room with a Ghanaian haha. Luckily she is probably the most hygienic African here, and she is very respectful of privacy. So it ended up not being toooo bad besides the fact that she woke up at 4am.

Mosquito net life.

        Anyway, Tuesday we wake up and they tell us that if we start early then we can finish by 12 and go to the Elmina Slave castle and look at the beaches there as well and maybe go to the market. So we started at 7am. An hour into it, the doctor disappeared which meant everything had to pause. Then there was this huge fiasco of the coordinator at Elmina telling our staff members that they owed him money but in reality they didn't and so the doctor was gone straightening it out. Even that didn't fix everything so after the day ended they all had a little meeting to fix it all, which added more time to the day. Well we didn't finish until 5:30 so we didn't have time for the castle. Also during that day, all the patients suddenly started yelling at each other. I'm not sure if people were cutting in line, or what exactly happened but it got suuuper loud at one point and it was kind of scary haha. Oh and there was this music playing for a majority of the day that was so loud and shaking the building so much that all of us started feeling nauseous and dizzy. Well when it came time to go get dinner we decided to go to cape coast so we could get food for cheaper, and we did so that was good....but sadly it made everyone sick. We were all tired at that point so we decided to go back to the hotel and sleep. Well we all knew there might have been bed bugs but we were exhausted and we only had one night there so we didn't want to be annoying and complain make everyone move so we all decided to just tough it out and stay there one more night.
        On Wednesday we got up and there had been no power all night, which meant we were all suuuper sweaty and gross...and then there was no water. So we used wipes and then packed everything up and left, all sticky and probs stinky though we showed the night before and everyone was just not too excited for the day. Well our driver, Seth, wanted to stay another night but Mercy and Doctor Imma wanted to leave back to Accra that night to get back to their families. We all wanted to leave though so we thought for sure we would. Well we start early, 7am without breakfast or snacks left. The doctor and Mercy both were super sick from the food they ate the night before and so that slowed the doctor down a lot because he was running to the bathroom frequently. The whole time all the staff members were mad at each other cuz two wanted to stay and two wanted to leave and nobody understood why we would stay. So there was a little tension there. Oh and this whole trip we never really had any drinking water at all because it all tasted soo nasty, So everyone was a bit dehydrated and sick. Patients were being really rude that day as well. They were yelling at us, saying it was our fault that we didn't have the glasses style they wanted and that the glasses were too expensive (mind you some of them we sell for 60 cents and the most expensive are not even 2 US dollars) and ya they were all just being rude. One man yelled at a girl from my group so much that she just went into a little shock and cried and it was so sad. Around 12 or so, I started feeling super sick. I was coughing up a storm, I started feeling soo dizzy and nauseous and I thought I was going to throw up. So I went and laid down and like passed out on this wooden bench and just slept there for a bit. Well when I woke up I felt even more nauseous and my head cold was even worse and it was just bad. Finally we finished around 4:30.
        Well we got to Elmina castle after work finished and it was closed but they were willing to take us if we all paid a lot, so we said no thanks and decided just to eat there. Everyone ordered food, except me because I was soo sick at that point. Well we were only with Mercy and apparently Seth had ordered us all jollof to eat. So we get back to the hotel, there was still no Water to shower, Mercy and Doctor Imma left to go back to Accra, and Seth tells us we are all staying. At this point we were all a little grumpy. So Seth tells us that in the past he was at an outreach and left Wednesday night and then the coordinator couldn't get all the patients to surgery Thursday morning, so nobody showed up and Seth got in trouble for it and the clinic had to pay. So it was understandable. That's when we told Seth that there were bed bugs and it was just ridiculous That we didn't have power or water and bed bugs and we were paying so much money. So he decided that we should switch hotels. The guy was drunk when we went to pay him for the two nights so that was disastrous but we finally got it all worked out. Then before we left we sat down and had jollof. A secret zip lock back was being passed around and people were dying at home much food it was. The lady told us it took her over two hours to make too. When we finally finished, we left to another hotel and it looked EXACTLY the same as the first one. So funny. The colors were the same, the signs, everything. Pretty sure it was like a sister hotel. We checked it out and then decided we wanted to go see how much this nice resort was that we had passed. Well it ended up being 400 Cedis a night and they would only allow 2 to a room (if they would allow 4 to a room then we were going to do it) but since we were an odd number, I would need my own room and the one boy in our group would need his own room so it would be so pricey. The hotel was so nice though. There were nice fountains and spiral staircases and guys in tuxes and all this nice looking fancy stuff. Also all these nice cars were in the parking lot, but later we realized they were all rental cars and nobody was actually staying there haha. So we went back to the first new hotel where there was water and by that point it was like 9:45 so we stuck with it. Pretty sure there were bed bugs there too but hey, what can you do.
        Thursday we woke up at 5:15am and left. Seth ended up not having to help at all. We didn't do anythingggg that morning. So everyone was hungry, a little annoyed that we stayed for no reason, and since the car ride was super bumpy we were all pretty nauseous and ready to puke out the window. By the time we got back to Accra, Seth felt bad. He ended up letting us go back to our hotel and stay there until 2pm. Later he bought us all KFC as well haha. While at our hotel we all washed and sprayed everythinggg and just made sure there were no bugs left. I'm not sure if we actually ended up having bed bugs or not but now I kinda feel like were just bugs in the hotels so we were paranoid.
        Anyway, the week was disastrous and there were so many more details of just things that made it even worse but all we can do is laugh about it. It's just so funny being here with all the crazy things that happen to us. We are in Africa, what else can we expect haha. I love it and I love all the crazy and terrible things that happen because hey make for funny memories and help us to be even more grateful for all the little luxuries in America. I can't believe I have been here for a month now!! So crazy! Besides school and my mission, I've never been anywhere for this long. I'm so glad I came on this adventure though! It's so much fun being in Ghana everyday!

Patients sleeping at the eye clinic after their surgeries. 

View from where we worked, that's Elmina castle.

Drive by of the beach!