My Ghana Adventures: Weekend Expedition

This past weekend was quite the adventure!!

The girls after the temple!

To start out, our mode of transportation was the trotros! Those are an adventure in themselves. Pretty much a big van pulls up and the guy yells where it is going and you get on. Well there are 13 of us obrunis and only one person knew where to go. So luckily we jump on and the guy takes us to a station where we find someone that was willing to take us all the way to the temple (normally you have to take a couple trotros.) We ended up getting to the temple right on time. It was pretty packed but luckily just enough room left for us. It was the most incredible temple experience I have ever had. I have never felt so much love especially when entering the celestial room. They were so happy to see us and grateful we were there. A big group from Togo visiting too. I guess they come for a few days and all go to the temple as much as possible while there because it is a far trip for them. So We got to go with that group and do a session. I was able to do a Family name for one of the people from
Togo and it was a girl born in April of 1993! It was a cool experience, and of course the cleanest place you will find in Africa. Also, inside the temple was so colorful and pretty. I've never seen a temple with so much color. Rather than the fabric on the chairs being a dark red, dark blue, or white, they were a colorful African print pattern. The celestial room was beautiful as well.
After the temple we went to the art market in Accra and it was insane!! I wish I had a picture, but as soon as we walked up, we got attacked like crazy. It was so much fun bartering though and we got pretty good. I'm sure we all still got ripped off a little bit but hey, what can you do. The whole experience was just so hilarious. I thought about the little street markets
On the way home, 9 of us left together and it was an insane trip home. We knew our destination so we went to the trotro station and asked for achimota. We were led to a trotro that would take us part way. We we got to the next Station, everyone wanted to help us. We told someone achimota and then like 20 people jumped on us yelling "achimota?? Achimota??" And they all wanted us to take their bus thing. Once we got onto one, all the people selling food flocked us, trying to make us buy everything. Luckily, we made it home safely and it wasn't even difficult so we were pretty proud of that.

Walking to help ward members.

On Saturday night there was a hugeeee storm. It was pretty fun and super crazy, but also a bummer. The power went out everywhere, the wifi was shot, pipes broke, rooms were flooded, it was all a big mess. So Sunday for the third hour of church since not many people were there we all divided up into groups and went out to check on the families who weren't there. It was incredible to see how people actually lived. Rather than just seeing the outside of these communities like we normally do, we walked through allies, over man made bridges that were very unsafe, through mud, over rivers, etc.. It was so cool. Sadly, a lot of people were affected but they were so grateful that we went to check on them and help them. One funny thing that happened was when we were walking around in the little village things there was a little group of boys and they just watched us pass. I saw them stare at the other white people in my group so when I passed them this happened:

Me: "ete sen?" (how are you)
Boys in unison: "eye, na wo nso eh?" (Fine, and you?")
Me: "eye" (fine)
*45 second delay"
Boys in unison: "eyyyy!! Obruni!!! Obruni!!! " (obruni means white person)
And they all busted up laughing and shocked that I spoke to them in Twi. It was great.

Other random things from the week:
I was working visual acuity testing the patients eyes and a man sat down and the conversation was as follows:
Me: ete sen? (How are you?)
Him: eye, na wo nso eh. (good and you?)
Me: eye (good)
Him: you are beautiful, will you marry me?
Me: I'm already getting married in three months in the US.
Him: oh thank God. You are beautiful, you should get married. Lucky man.
Me: awkward laugh and continued with the eye test haha

People hiss at each other to get attention here. Like if you want to buy something you just hiss and flag them over and they come. Well I was walking to get fruit one day with two other girls and we heard someone hissing at us and I said "I think someone is hissing at us" and the other girl said "ya don't turn around" so we kept walking and they didn't stop and they shouted so we finally turned around so they would stop and it was our driver running after us trying to get us to stop. Turns out we needed to be back at the hotel to get picked up and hour earlier because plans changed and he saw us walking when he was driving there haha

Africa has been an adventure. I love it. Stay tuned for the next post about this last week which was insane. It was pretty crazy to say the least!