Girl Goes Ghana

When I was little (and not so little), my mom was fond of reciting a nursery rhyme to me: "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row." I don't know what a cockle shell is, but in all fairness, I do have a tendency to be contrary. I came to Ghana to be a volunteer in the Peace Corps health sector. Of all the Peace Corps sectors in Ghana (health, education, and agriculture), I would say that ours is the most loosely defined. At my site, I don't have any projects that I'm specifically assigned to work on. For the first three months, in fact, we are not encouraged to work at all. Instead, we are meant to spend time getting to know our new neighbors and friends and practicing the language. This is all well and good, but to be honest, there are only so many hours I can spend every day socializing and hanging out with people with whom I still don't share a common language. I have a

In the United States, I am used to feeling fairly confident about my accomplishments in life. Minimally, I know I am capable of getting through just about any interaction without violating any unspoken norms and of taking care of myself on a daily basis. Living in Ghana has changed that a bit. Before being placed in our permanent sites, the other trainees and I underwent 10 weeks of cultural and technical training. You would think, after ten weeks of that, that little things like eating and sitting without making a fool of yourself would be easy. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. For example, shortly after I got to site, my landlord offered me an orange to eat. I was very happy to accept. However, the thing about oranges in Ghana is that A) they are not orange, and B) if you try to eat them like you eat oranges in America, you will make an utter fool of yourself. To eat a (green) orange in Ghana, you need a knife. You slip the nice between the hard, green outer peel and