The past few days have been really awesome. Last Friday, we had a woman come to do some lovely womanly maintenance for like ten of us girls. She did some very affordable threading/sugaring right in our living room. A leg wax here is only 10 Cedi! That is so ridiculously amazing. Currently me, Griffin, Caroline, and Mallory are partaking in a few No-Shave weeks so we can delight in cheap leg waxing. Beauty is pain...c'est la vie.
On Saturday I woke up at 5:45. A.M.! It was terribly early, but I managed to wake up, make some toast with amaaaaaazing bread (one of our CRA's moms is a caterer and we can place orders weekly), get dressed and be on a bus by 6:30 A.M. After drifting in and out of sleep for the whole bus ride we arrived in Elmina at the Coconu

We had a batik lesson from some local women which was so incredible. We did everything! We designed our stamps, carved them out of foam, stamped wax on cloth, dyed the cloth, and hung them up to dry. I was the first one out of the group to finish and we were all so stunned at how great mine came out. The woman running the show called me her star student. I attribute my success to my years of tie-dying. It's just a gift that will never really come in useful. Oh well, it was great experience.
On Monday, I had a full day at my internship at the LRC. It was really intense for my first real day of work. I went with the executive director, Edward, to visit a prison to check up on some UNDP programs being run there. We were mainly visiting classes which were part of the UNDP funded prison education program. When we were in the last of the classrooms we were to visit at the prison, I was truly astonished by what one of the prisoners said. A prisoner had asked a question and mentioned that he had been in prison for ten years as a remand prisoner. I was shocked and appalled. This man had not even stood trial and yet was been kept as a prisoner. Edward was also shocked and gave out his business card and truly seemed to want to help the people with the injustice they were facing. After the classes, we were taken to see a remand block of cells. It was absolutely despicable to see the conditions these men lived in. In a cell meant for less than 10 people, 43 people were living (possibly even more) without any beds or mattresses. I really didn’t have much to say because I was just in such a state of shock that people could be forced to live in such inhumane conditions. It's just so hard to imagine the conditions these people, who are possibly innocent, must live in. Hopefully, I'll get to do some more work on it through my internship.
Tomorrow I've got my photo class. For my next project I'm doing a series of photographs of Richard, one of the security guards at Church Crescent. I'm excited because he's really a great guy and was so happy to help me out. Hopefully my photos won't be called "coke light" this time around.
peace and love
No comments:
Post a Comment