Day 4 (tuesday)

This is the lovely Maureen.

Just inside the gates at the guest house I'll be living in.

The breakfast Maureen prepared for me.

Looking across campus from the social work/sociology building.

I woke up around 9:30 this time.   Breakfast tea and fruit were brought to me.  As I began getting ready I learned (ete sen = how are you, eye (pronounced eh-yay) = I am fine) so I am learning the language (twi dialect) and beginning to embrace the culture. We went to KNUST (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology) with Kwadwo and met the dean, the head of the sociology/social work department and some students.  I also met a former student who is going to be helping me develop my course of action and who currently works for the department of social welfare in kumasi (Lisa).  I sat in the office for a few hours while Kwadwo was out working and briefly spoke to a few people. I spoke to a research assistant, I forgot his name, and asked what he was most passionate about in his studies and they were environmental studies and public health...specifically he was concerned with the sanitation and disposing of waste and that improving that could go to improve the well-being of the whole community and that they were very much connected.  I came home and was again, very tired, and prepared to lay down but moments later, Maureen said she was fixing some dinner (she has been ill for the past week and has yet to really leave...possible symptoms of malaria) to make her feel better.  She made soup for herself and a really rich veggie stew with rice for me. I ate in her room and she shared some pictures of her family and shared with me a time recently where she fractured her leg in an auto accident...she had surgery to repair it and the recovery was very long...she was also with people who died in that accident, the scars were both physically and emotionally significant. I became very tired so I went to lay down and began falling asleep when a sudden rain storm hit, and boy was it something fierce, it was like we were at the bottom of a Niagara Falls  and I woke right up to some water in my room coming down the walls a little bit and dripping through the ceiling so I had to get up and move the bed and desk to the center of the room to avoid as much water as possible.  The nice part was after the water stopped leaking into the room, it became a little bit cooler and much easier to fall asleep.