Giving a Face to Ghana--from Jennifer

I've often felt that we fear only what we have yet to see and know. The world seems such a big, dangerous place, and a word like "Africa" brings so many misconceptions and unknowns to mind that we hardly know how to imagine how we could survive its challenges or learn to love its people. But now Ghana has a face, the face of children in the schools where we work, the face of host families which do their best to bring us into their lives as best they can, the face of our beloved coordinators who do all they can to make this a good experience for all of us.

I know the girls have been challenged in these first few days of home stay and service work, but it has been consistently moving to watch them navigate those challenges and learn to let Ghana and its people into their hearts. When we finally arrived in Kumasi, after a very long drive from Accra on Monday, the host families were anxiously awaiting us at the meeting point. Each family greeted their new daughter with hugs and warmth, and I found myself weeping a little on the sidelines as I watched. The girls had been so afraid of this part of the experience, the biggest challenge of an Experiment trip, yet here were these real, warm people leading them out to their cars, holding their hands and calling them "daughter" already.

The first night was hard for many in the group. Many homes here don't have running water all the time, so many of us took bucket showers that first night and had to pour water into the toilets to make them flush. Some families have more English speakers, some have fewer, and some girls have had to navigate significant communication barriers. We are all gaining weight rapidly from the big meals, and many girls are still learning to find polite ways to cut back the size of their meals so they don't overeat. The food is delicious, though, so it's tempting to eat everything we are served. Tonight I had my first experience with kenken, a corn dough eaten with fish and a chili pepper and tomato sauce that was so good I ate about twice as much as I should have.

Our work in the schools has brought us into the heart of Ghana. I have been with Katie, Abbey, Kira, Emily and Kay at Martyrs of Uganda Jubilee School, an elementary school run by the FST Sisters, while Amber has been with Jill, Beth, Berenice, Ximena and Allie at Prince of Peace, a high school for girls. While Amber's group worked in classrooms the first day, they were able to convince the school to let them do some "real" service work by painting the front of the school building. It has been hard to convince the sisters at Jubilee School to let us do the same, so we have been relieving teachers and working in the classrooms. It has been a beautiful experience--the children are lovely and curious about us, and every child seems to need to touch us (I had a boy spend several minutes rubbing my arm today, apparently fascinated by the smoothness of my white skin).

One of my favorite moments was when a crowd of 5-6 year olds gathered behind Abbey, staring at her blonde ponytail. I encouraged them to touch it, telling them it was just hair, but they all stepped back farther like they were scared. So I stepped forward and touched her hair myself, smiling and encouraging them--and seconds later there were 30 hands reaching out to stroke her hair and giggling at how smooth it was. Kira's flower fairies went over so well that she quickly ran out of supplies, and when she took a soccer ball onto the field at lunch, she was immediately swarmed by students--so many that a game became impossible. My biggest challenge today was being asked to sing the U.S. national anthem and accidentally launching into "America the Beautiful" because I couldn't remember which song was which with 50 eager faces staring at me and giggling at my every error.

The children crowd around to see photos of our families, telling me how beautiful my mother and sister are, laughing when I imitate the way my cat Pablo follows me around the house, talking to me constantly. They call me Adua, meaning Monday born, but they also seem to like pronouncing Jennifer. Hands reach out, children press in, curious. The color of skin becomes a fascination, and Emily and I agreed that it's really different to be in a place where race isn't a taboo to avoid but a basic reality it's ok to talk about and be curious about. Even my host sister and I compared our skin at dinner tonight, touching each other and trying to decide if my skin really was smoother than hers somehow. Everywhere we go they call us "obruni," or white person, but it's not even slightly derogatory--it's just a statement of fact.

This is the face of Ghana: the face of its children, its kind, warm people. And I am proud of how well the girls are letting themselves embrace this experience already, of how quickly they're becoming flexible travelers and are letting Ghana into their hearts.