Some Ghana Highlights

While in the states, I got the opportunity to tell people about my daily life in Ghana (over and over), and some anecdotes proved to be extremely popular. Such as the fact that I occasionally kill my own chickens. It’s not hard, you just slit the throat, and I feather and gut them myself too. To buy any food, I used to ride my bike to the market to get everything I needed (or whatever was available at that time (but there is pretty much nothing available in Ghana (ever))). One thing they do have in Ghana is chickens, but you can only buy live chickens. I never cooked meat when I was cooking just for myself (I think the reasons are obvious), but whenever I had guests over to my house, I had to cook meat for them, because in Ghanaian culture it would be extremely rude not to. So I bought the live chickens, strapped them in the basket on the back of my bike, and went home and made dinner.

I also killed a goat once. It was during a huge festival with drumming, dancing, chanting and singing- it was really cool, straight out of National Geographic. All the dancers were wearing cool masks and headdresses, and body paint and traditional loincloth type things. They also had metal things hanging off their ankles, similar to bells, but not quite the same, which made noise when they danced. It was amazing. Anyways, I was the guest of honor because I was the only white person there. So they gave me the honor of killing the goat. Goats have thick, tough skin, so it was a bit hard to slit its throat. It was pretty gross, but definitely a unique and amazing experience.