fun times in physiotherapy :)

Eve, from Scotland, with our favorite patient Abi who fractured his femur!

Me with Maamesi - the sweetest girl with CP

The four "obrunis" (foreigners): Lisa, Laurel, Eve and me

Lisa, me and Eve. Love my job!!!

I cannot believe we are already in week three!! Time is absolutely flying by! A month from Wednesday Sara and I will be leaving Cape Coast to travel throughout Ghana for ten days – insane!! This weekend was really great: Olivia (a gap year student from South of London), Louise, Sara and I traveled to Nzulezo, a village on stilts. It was a five-hour trip from Cape Coast by tro-tro. Tros are basically VW vans that are used as an inexpensive mode of transportation between cities. They are quite an experience though because they cram people in and are pretty hot and a bit miserable for five hours. But we survived our first real tro journey! We were staying in Beyin Beach Resort, which is conveniently next to the Nzulezo Visitors Centre, and a beach resort with a lot of character and things we now consider complete luxuries (chocolate bars, hot water, coffee, even Monopoly!!). Saturday morning we went to the stilt village. Nzulezo lies on the fresh-water Lake Amansuri about 5 km from Beyin, an hour canoe ride. The village houses about 500 people and is one solid construction raised about the water with a wood and raffia walkway between the houses and buildings. Our guide told us that they live above the water because their ancestors were refugees from modern-day Nigeria who were chased to the Lake by another tribe during a war. It’s the rainy season right now and this past week rained more than they have seen in four years. Unfortunately that meant that the village was pretty much flooded. You couldn’t even see the stilts from which the village is named and some of the buildings (including the guesthouse where we almost stayed) were half underwater. It was really sad to be walking through the village and just wading through the water covering the walkways. But apparently when this happened four years ago, it only took a week to drain enough and since it has been relatively dry since Saturday, I’m hoping the village will be back to life soon! Even though it was really different from how it typically looks, it was actually pretty cool to get to experience the one weekend when it was flooded! We spent Saturday afternoon on the beach, enjoying the sunshine and then made the six-hour trek home Sunday morning. It was a great experience!! And hopefully the pictures will upload ☺

Kakum National Park Canopy Walk

Louise, Sara, Sam and Me - Our Housemates! :)

My new boyfriend, P.K.

Living the life at Coconut Grove Beach Resort

Home Sweet Home

We have been in Ghana almost two weeks now and although it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, it has been absolutely amazing as well! I was pretty homesick for the first week; definitely more than I was expecting! But I have really started to settle in – into my placement, our host family, and the group of volunteers.
I am at Central Regional Hospital, the largest hospital in Ghana and very modern by Ghanaian standards although very different from “modern” back home. I am going to be spending my first month in Physical Therapy and moving to a Pediatric Ward for July. The Physical Therapy unit has been so awesome thus far and the therapists are really welcoming. There are two other volunteers, a physiotherapy student from Scotland and a licensed physiotherapist from Australia as well as two resident therapists. I spent the first week half of the week observing Laurel and Eve and they are a wealth of knowledge and have been wonderful! Now I am doing more things a PT Tech would do back home: taking vitals, applying electrical stimulation and TENS, administering therapeutic ultrasounds, stretching, massaging and supervising patients’ exercise programs. The majority of the patients are stroke victims and back pains although there are a lot of children with cerebral palsy whom I love working with since pediatric PT would probably be my focus. I am learning so much I can’t believe it! What great experience! I could see myself being happy doing PT or OT as a career although I want to wait to contrast it with the Peds ward…everyone who knows me knows how much I love to change my mind about medicine!!
Our house and family are perfect. There are now four volunteers staying here and a fifth is coming next week. Louise is from Scotland and is going into her fourth year of medicine at Edinburgh. Sam is from London and is on a gap year after school and he is going to Nottingham in the fall. The four of us have a lot of fun together and it’s even better having lots of people around! Millicent, our house mom, is so great about feeding us and getting us whatever we need. I am now a lot more comfortable with the family so we spend a lot more time with them. There are so many people that live here that I can’t even keep track of who is permanent, who is just visiting, who is family, who is renting a room…Besides Millicent, we mostly just interact with Angela (Millicent’s daughter, 26, AMAZING and so helpful, just signed a contract to play soccer in Germany, all around stellar person), her son P.K. (almost 3, NEVER sits still, adorable and so much fun although exhausting! Loves to hang out on the roof with us), Joe (Millicent’s youngest child, 20, loves having people his age around especially now that Sam is here and there’s another guy!) and Kwasi (Angela’s nephew although I have no idea the relation, 13, brilliant, I’m going to kidnap him and bring him home). The house is so wonderful!!
Last weekend Sara and I went to two different beach resorts that are like 15 km away in opposite directions. Coconut Grove on Saturday was in Elmina and is super luxurious. It has a pool and is on the beach although it’s not safe to swim there (common in Ghana because the coast is rocky and the undercurrent is apparently incredibly strong). It rained off and on during the day but was still the perfect day. We were deliriously happy and when we couldn’t be in the pool we were running in the sea in the pouring rain in our swimsuits or sitting under a cabana listening to the rain. Sunday we went to Anomabu Beach Resort, which is really popular with the volunteers. It was a really sunny day and you can swim in the ocean at Anomabu. Overall it was an incredibly relaxing and wonderful weekend! This weekend we went to Kakum National Park on Saturday to do the canopy walk – walking on 7 rope bridges high atop a rainforest was quite an experience!
More volunteers are coming to Cape Coast through Projects Abroad everyday and it makes it even more exciting and even more fun! We honestly are living the life here…getting amazing exposure to medicine, making awesome friends, experiencing life in Africa, beaches every weekend…sometimes I wonder if it’s real! Cannot wait to be home with family and friends though and hope all is well! <3<3

Internet is not very good here so I don’t know that I will ever be able to post pictures while I am here but I will try to!!