The Island of Pediatakorpe

I spent three amazing days living with a family on the island of Pediatakorpe. If you remember from my last post, I said the island is in the Volta lake, but it's actually in the river portion that leads out to the sea. Six of us went out to live the village life and really get to know the people there, just to have a better idea of what people do,see, feel, and need in life. This particular island has has NGO visitors before and has a mira-go-round powering the electricity in the school, and we repainted the mira-go-round as something of payment for the hospitality shown to us. Our adoptive families received money as well, of course.

Starting the first day, my name became Daikie, and my family always addressed me with "este-daikie," or "sister dah-ee-kee." This name is from their tribe, although I don't know what it means. It was fun to try learning the dangme (or dangbe, i hear it different every time)language in such a short time. I didn't make it very far, but it was worth learning what I did. I've included a picasa album of pictures for you to look at, although I'm not a big picture taker compared to what I may have been a few years ago.

Pediatorkope Island 2010

There'll be more pictures to include later once I get the compilation of all our group's pictures. Let me just add, I usually never put up others' pictures with my personal pictures if I wasn't physically present for their picture being taken. Just so you know :)

I'm pretty tired now, but I want to at least list some things included in my island experience:
eat slimy okra stew with pieces of kasava&plantain dough,
fish & crabs & oysters in every dinner's soup,
come out of "bathing area" wrapped in the required bathing cloth,
women's bare chests hanging out for breast feeding or because of laziness,
string of beads around babies' waistline instead of diapers,
people chewing sticks,
chewing on sugarcane (so sweet and juicy!),
drink from tons of coconuts cut from trees,
eat the soft coconut meat and think it tastes sweet,
slide through the mud in a downpour,
walk in mangroves,
watch what i thought was a small island float away,
listen to my family sing along with the radio,
sleep on a matt under a bednet,
not sleep well because of the chorus of frogs after rain storm,
not sleep well because the heat is stifeling,
sleep well because i'm exhausted,
working with siblings to line up fresh oysters into soft soil at sundown,
smacking mosquitos away despite my deet-covered ankles,
drink plastic-tasting water from pouches,
NOT drinking the river water like natives,
repeatedly bathe myself with bucket water and then urinate in the same little spot where everyone else does the same thing (this may sound bad, but its not too bad since it was on a pile of seashells),
try to ignore vibrantly red little beatles and people passing by while doing my business behind a bush,
play clapping & dancing games with adorable half-dressed little kids,
tie kise, my little "nephew," to my back the traditional way,
swim in the ocean where it meets the Volta river and get pummeled by waves,
attend a pentacostal service and dance with the women,
get mentioned and prayed for multiple times in said religious service,
ETC!!!

Off to bed now. PS- I did a phone interview (back at a hostel in Accra) for a DC internship right after my island experience.... it took me a couple hours of preparation previous to the phone call to recall proper english sentence structure and vocabulary again. :)

More to come...