Linh: Volta Regional Hospital and Community Medical Outreach

Salutations Earthlings!

This is Linh talking, and this is my first blog since I'm not a big writer, but anyways... it has been 2 billion years since we blogged last, and most definitely it has been a very interesting few days. So right after Erica's blog post on Monday, we got to go out and experience the Ghanaian nightlife. In my head, I imagined a crazy situation since the Ghanaians really know how to enjoy themselves. However, it was a Monday night and we went out at 8:30 pm, so I was a little bit let down by the extreme calmness of the city. On the other hand, the "chillness" of the place gave us an chance to bond more with the other college kids that were staying with us in the hostel. They were cool people, just you know, talking and stuff (wink wink). After enjoying our Alvaro, some of us went back to the hostel, resting and get ready for a big day ahead.

It was Tuesday morning, and like every morning in Ghana so far, we were having toast and oatmeal for breakfast, and leaving the hostel at Ghanaian 9 am (+1:30 hr) to the Regional Hospital to play with the kids. We brought the donations, excitedly going to the hospital. The Volta Regional Hospital was HUGE!!! It was so unexpected and we were so overwhelmed by the vast scale of the hospital. We came to the children ward of the hospital to give out all the stuff animals, cookies and fruit juice that we got for the sick kids. The excited look in their eyes when they receive the toys were just so happy, it made everyone of us feel like we actually had a small impact to their stay at the hospital. After coming back from Regional, we were welcomed by a herd of people. There were about 16 new people coming from England. 

There were too many people. The common room was a literal burning oven full of people moving, and a lot of moving people in a confine space is never a good sign. So to run away from that densely populated room and the future of getting into a messy soccer match, we went to the orphanage to hang out and play with our little friends. They seemed to be super hyper and were climbing up onto me like little monkeys, but as always, they were so much fun to be around with. Being at boarding school for a long time prior to this trip, seeing the kids really reminded me of my sister :(. We came back to the house at around 6 pm, and the hostel was a ZOO!!!! NO FOOD, NO WATER, NO CHAIR, NO PEACE, and worst of all, NO TOILET PAPER!!!!!!! SO MANY PEOPLE WERE HERE!!!! So our whole group of 5 people just decided to watch " The Devil Wears Prada" and have a nice long rest before continuing our journey the next day: the largest Community Outreach we would ever do.

YAY WEDNESDAY!! Today we were supposed to leave at around 8 to be able to get to the village early to set up our outreach; but again, it's Ghana, and we had to do stuff Ghanaian time. It was a long ride from the hostel to the village, which took us a round 1 hour without stopping. We got the opportunity to bond with the new people. I actually really like them. We got to the village around 11 am, and we were greeted by the chief and the elders of the village. So many people came to the outreach, and we had a pretty hard time getting through all of them.

Since there were so many volunteers today, the work stations were extremely inefficient due to the excessive amount of people standing around and doing nothing. But it was fun and we learnt a lot about the people around us. There wasn't anything particularly significant though, since the pace of the outreach was pretty slow. The afternoon again went pretty uneventful with us finishing the outreach and come back to the hostel at around 5pm, therefore we could not go to the orphanage as we planned the previous night. Again, wanting to plan ahead and be ready for the next day, Richard and us discussed the plan for tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be our last day in Ho, and we will have to say good bye to our lovely friends and children at the orphanage T^T, but I can't wait until I get back to Vietnam, sleeping on my own bed and listening to my family bickering. After all, it has been a long time since I see them, and Ghana really reminds me of Vietnam 10 years ago, my childhood.

See ya later alligator
LinhDan Nguyen
06.15.2012