“I’m a reverend. You will be a doctor. We need to get married.”

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Willemien got here yesterday. When I was finished with my work, I stumbled my way back to the hostel (making a few 180 turns on the way) and we went to get lunch. The only restaurant that I know of is called “His Place” and it is a few blocks away from the wall surrounding the hospital grounds. The day before, I had made a friend there named Stella. She is 23 and not married. She is about 5 feet tall and is super cute and friendly. We talked for a while on Tuesday night, and she invited me to come to church with her this Sunday. She attends a Pentecostal church, so that will be really interesting. She is very gracious and complimentary, and puts her hand on my shoulder when she talks to me. Every time I order something, she says apologetically, “Erika, I will be right out!! Don’t you worry! I will be back fast! Your order!” and then scurries away. When she does that, I almost want to introduce her to the Erika-style, “I CAN DO THINGS!!” mantra, but she’s already so peppy that I think that her coworker might kill her if she started saying that.

Anyway, Willemien and I passed a nails salon (okay… ‘salon’ in the least formal of terms) and we got our nails painted after we ate. I asked for light pink and the girl brought out a neon orange color but I definitely love it. I’m pretty sure that Christina (or any 11 year old girl) is a much better nail-painter than this girl (and WAY nicer), but we couldn’t resist since it was 2 GhC for fingers and toes ($1.40). The women painting the nails were chattering in Twi so Willemien and I couldn’t understand what they were saying (I REALLY need to learn Twi!!) but I am pretty sure it wasn’t anything nice. When Willemien told them her name, they put on this really high-pitched voice and repeated it over and over. They also mocked me when I asked for “just polish, no fake nails.” That is consistent with the impression I have been getting from most of the Ghanaian women here. For whatever reason, they are really hard to get to know, be friends with, hang out with, everything. Even at the student hostel in Kumasi, only half of the girls said hi to us and we were able to have a conversation with only one girl. Whenever we went to clubs in Kumasi, we would go with a group of 4-8 Ghanaian guys and see more that we knew at the club, but there were no Ghanaian med students there. We’ve askd the guys about that and they’ve given us 2 different answers: 1) the Ghanaian med students go to different clubs, and 2) the Ghanaian med students like to date residents and not other med students, so they don’t want to hang out with Ghanaians their own age. Whatever the reason is, they were way less outwardly welcoming and social than the guys. Mom, I know you’re thinking to yourself, “of course the guys were really nice—they like hanging out with pretty white girls,” but the guys were incredibly friendly toward the Obroni guys also. It’s still a mystery, but the fact remains that I have 100 Ghanaian guy friends and 1 Ghanaian girl friend. This makes me appreciate Stella even more.

The title of this post is what a guy said to me yesterday in the internet café after talking at me for a few minutes. In his head, it made perfect logic. When I fired back with the logical, “I don’t know you so I can’t marry you,” he fired right back with, “We will become friends! Our marriage starts here in Ghana and when I come to the United States, we will be married in your Presbyterian church!” How can you argue with such a reasonable man??

Ghanaian proverb of the day: Let not what you cannot do tear you from what you can do.