Life is good.

Friday, after a two hour wait for the driver, I finally got to go to City of Refuge. The trip there was about an hour, driving through Accra and then into Tama, a neighboring city. The drive was actually really cool, simply because we got to see and an area that was not Accra. It was much more rural and had many fewer people. I saw a monkey being walked on a leash like a pet--I wish I had had my camera to record it! 

A trip down a twisty little dirt road (the dirt is red though, not brown) later, we were at City of Refuge. It is a small concrete house with a fenced in yard. An older Ghanian couple, who act as the parents of the 24 children housed there, met us and greeted us. We were led into what kind of looks like the living room, where 24 kids between the ages of 5 and 12 were waiting. They all got quiet really quickly when they saw us, and sat on chairs/couches just watching. These kids are just absolutely beautiful. They had the brightest eyes and biggest smiles (although they tried not to let us see their smiles too much--they were shy). All of them were rescued from the Volta region where they had been sold basically as slaves to the fishermen there. They have had to do harder manual labor than most Americans will ever have to do, and some of them are only five. The purpose of the City of Refuge is to get these kids out of these awful situations and into a warm, safe home. We met a young couple from Florida who just got there a week ago and who are going to be living there for a while, seeing what they can do to help. They told us that a lot of the kids still have contact with their parents who sold them, and their parents won't take them back because they know they have a better life at City of Refuge. The parents don't necessarily not car about their children, but sometimes they have to sell one child to feed three others. It's absolutely horrific.

All of us sat around with the children so we could talk a little bit about what it is that we were hoping to do there and what the center could use. Apparently the kids spend a ton of time doing chores and schoolwork--getting these kids into school is another huge goal of this organization. They have a yard to play in, but the yard is pretty much clay-like dirt and concrete. They get some tutoring from the couple, John and Rachel, and from Kofi, one of the administrators there. They have no organized sports or games or anything, but they do have a ton of books and apparently get really excited when they get to read one-on-one with someone. 

So a major need of the center is just more tutoring with the kids and playing with them. There are some nearby fields that we can take the kids to for sports, and John and Rachel want to start some sort of garden in the back yard. Some of the girls that I was with are really into theatre and dancing, so they want to do some theatre games with the kids. One major barrier these kids have is that they don't know very much english. After third grade, all of their schooling is done in englis. This means that two of the kids there can't even start school next week because their english isn't good enough for their grade level. They're going to need a ton of one-on-one time to get them caught up and ready for school. For all of the kids, we're going to try to use a lot of English to help them learn more (and maybe they can teach us some Twi!).

At this point, we got a tour of the building. There are four bedrooms that hold 6 kids each (there are only 6 girls, the other 18 are boys). They have the living room, a huge long table that they eat at, a kitchen, and the yards. They really just don't have much to play with, mainly books and stuffed animals. John and Rachel were talking about things they want to do to help the kids, such as sorting through the books and creating some sort of color-coding system for what level of reading they are for.

When we were done the tour, I was already so stoked about working there. Then I got to go to the back room with John, Rachel, Kofi, and Victor, the NYU internship coordinator, to talk about what I want to do with my internship. I know I definitely want to have a balance of spending time with the kids and also doing some stuff on a larger scale, like learning about how City of Refuge works. I got to talk to everyone for a long time, and it sounds like John and Rachel are going to work with me a lot to figure some stuff out about City of Refuge. They said one major area that isn't very developed is research on child trafficking. It's a hard balance, because they don't want the kids there to think that every time they see a white person they have to talk about their story, but these kids do have really insane and incredible stories that tell a lot about child trafficking. Apparently, there is very little literature on the subject. I think I'm going to structure my internship around doing research on child trafficking or something. I'm not entirely sure exactly what I will do yet, but I'm SO EXCITED! I was on a high all of Friday night. I feel like this is why I came to Africa and the type of thing I really want to do. It's the perfect organization for me to be working with--small and intimate, tons of potential, room for new ideas. Ahhhhh so excited!

Yesterday Holley, Sarah, Miranda, Kalin, Katie and I all went to a pool at a local hotel. It was such a hot, perfect pool day. I ended up getting really burned despite putting on sunscreen every 15 minutes, but it was worth it. It was just relaxing and warm and felt like a vacation.

I love it here! Now I'm about to have a cooking class with our CRAs--I get to learn how to make fried plantains! Then later today, we're going to the Ghana-Sudan World Cup qualifying soccer game! Life is good.