A fun (second to) last day

Today, my last full day in Ghana, was wonderful. This morning, I woke up and realized I didn’t have any water left, so I went to the reservoir outside my house to fill some buckets of water. Fetching water in this reservoir is pretty difficult though, because the bucket tends to float on the surface of the water, so you have to throw the bucket in just right and get enough water fill the bucket and make it heavy enough to sink. Plus, the bucket that you use to get water from the reservoir has a rope on it so you can pull it back up, but it’s very slippery so it’s really easy to let the rope slip through your fingers when you throw the bucket into the reservoir. One of the girls living down the hall saw me fetching water and chuckled a bit at my struggles as we said good morning. Eventually, I filled my bucket and went to go empty it in my tub upstairs. When I came back down to fill the bucket again (for the record, there are two buckets. One to fetch water from the reservoir and one to bring the water up to my room), I found that someone had already filled the reservoir bucket for me. I transferred the water to the other bucket, went upstairs, and when I came back down, sure enough, I found the bucket full of water again. This happened two more times before I had enough water to last me for today and tomorrow. When I finally closed the metal lid over the reservoir, the same girl that had laughed at me poked her head out of her window. Apparently she was the one that kept fetching the water for me. Having the girl next door help you fetch water in the morning because you’re slightly incompetent… definitely not a bad way to start off your day.

After doing a bit of packing and such, I decided to take a short nap since we had gotten home around 1:00 last night and I woke up again at 6:00. Usually, it’s a bad thing if you fall asleep and forget to lock your door, but today, it was secretly a great decision. I had no clue how long I had been asleep for, but the next thing I knew, someone was poking me awake. I opened my eyes and saw 8 or 9 NAP students standing in my room. They knew it was my last day so they wanted to come spend some time with me. For those who have never experienced waking up to the smiling faces of 7, 8, and 9-year old kids, you should definitely try it some time. Frankly, I’m not sure there’s a better way to be woken up.

One of the kids who came to my room, Opata, is the one I was telling you about whose mother just recently had a baby girl. Today, he took me to the baby’s “Outdooring Ceremony” which, from what I could gather, is basically like a baby shower for after the baby is born. Anyway, I got to hold the baby again and got a few pictures with her and her mother. I was a lot less nervous this time holding the baby even though she was only a month older. Probably because she looked a lot less breakable than she did a month ago.

After spending an hour or so with the kids, I came home to finish packing. An hour or so later, Sir Dun stopped by my room to help me pack. In other words, he looked at pictures on my laptop while I folded clothes and gathered my things. Thanks, Sir Dun.

When I got tired of packing, both of us headed back to the school to spend some time with Madam Gifty and her family. We had dinner together and then I got to play with Fifii and Izzy for one last time. It’s sad to think that I won’t get to play with her again and also that chances are she will have absolutely no clue who I am whenever I get to visit Ghana again. I tried remembering some people from when I was 3 years old and realized I don’t remember anyone. Oh well… I’ll just send her pictures or something.

Now, I guess it’s time to finish packing everything and spend one last night in this room in Ghana. By this time tomorrow, I’ll be getting ready to take off from the Accra Airport (scheduled departure of 10:30PM local time, so 5:30PM EST). The only thing left to do after I finish packing is say goodbye to everyone at school tomorrow. And do my best not to completely lose it when Madam Gifty starts crying (she’s already told me that she’s definitely going to cry tomorrow).