First few days in Ghana

Holy Camoley, Time has just flown by!! I will give you a synopsis of what has happened thus far:
Tuesday morning I left to the airport, my kind sister Manda gave me a ride:) I found the terminal just fine, yada yada. Bad news was they delayed our flight about 20 minutes, which was terrible because we only had 30 minutes to get to our next one in Chicago. So in Chicago, justin and i truly RAN to our terminal, but the plane had left us :( they were super nice and put us on the next flight to frankfurt that left in 2 hours. the flights were fine, and i thought, enjoyable. i slept a lot, which was a dream. in frankfurt, we met up with amy and took that plane to lagos. oh Africa. it is so beautiful. We never actually got off the plane in nigeria, but looking out the window was quite lovely. then to accra. HOORAY for ghana!!! there were signs reading 'akwaaba!' (welcome) everywhere. yayy! they stamped out passports and we exchanged money. then, our bags never came :( it missed the transfer I guess. sad. but we met margaret and shannon in the airport and played phase ten until whitney and michelle got there. Then we took 2 taxis to the "beverly hills hotel" in accra. It was quite nice :) there was airconditioning, so that was a dream. it was on asylum down street or area (kjirsten!!!) anyways.





the next morning (thursday?) we ate oranges from the street and walked around a lot. we got a tour at the national museum of ghana at it was SO incredibly hot i almost died. truly. plus i was wearing the same clothes. then we ate some delicious rice stuff and came back to the hotel. we slept. jet lag. hottness. tiredness. margaret, justin and i went back to the airport and finally got our luggage. I was soooo happy. quite the adventures.





friday we packed up our stuff and went to the STC bus station at 8:30. all the busses to kumasi were full until 12:30, so we sat and waited for 4 hours. good thing it was cloudy and windy. pretty relaxing. I just read my book and chilled. we made a friend named stephen, the police officer. who got all our emails, and sent us a group email. ahhaha so funny!! he said i looked like a baby. this is what he sent to us:

Hello my dear, I am a Ghanaian living in Accra the Capital city gentleman; I am highly romantic, caring, loving and very patient and free to be approached. My height is (5. 8) and my profession is a computer Engineering, I have brown eyes, and black hair… I belong to Roman Catholic Church and my interest is swimming, eating, listening to music, playing basketball, and watching TV, romantic walking and talks, sight seeing, playing games on the computer and going to the cinema for an interesting movie.As you know i like talk and i always like to know new friends and want new friends who are open and friendly as you know it and become a friends forever as my good ones as you know it but you girls are friendly and open as i wan it ok.but be very careful as i told you girl and i don't like to hear that any of you lost something here in Ghana ok and i like you all to mail me and talk to me as you know it but this is my first mail so later we can talk more ok.Is me stephen the police man at STC in Accra as you know it.

So hillarious. Truly. So the bus took 8 hours to get to kumasi. good thing it was airconditioned. it truly was such a great ride!! i enjoyed every minute of it. i could not stop looking out the window. the best part was when we drove through the towns, all the little kids would look up, see our white faces and smile and point and yell "obruni!" (white people?) hahah we would wave and smile back. kind of feel like somewhat of a celebrity. it is weird. next favorite part was buying 1/4 of a fresh pineapple and eating it on the bus. SOOOO divinely delicious, truly. Also, hilarity, when people ask where we are from and we say America or the USA, they say "awww Obama" yeah!!! go barak! i love it.

it is really hot here. and humid. but i'm not dying. I have not showered since tuesday. i LOVE it. truly. the humidity is great especially for my skin. the food is great. we had this huge egg sandwich thing this morning. mmm. and its only 11:08 right now (AM). Yay!!

I dont know what else to say. I love ghana, I am happy, all is well. LOVE!

THE PROJECT

I wanted to blog a little about my project, so you all got a little background for what I will be doing in Ghana. But first, I will explain these few things.

I am going to Ghana through BYU (I am not an offish BYU student, still at UVU). It is with their International Studies Programs, and its called a field study. I will be living in Ghana for approx 90 days starting May 7th, (but I leave the 5th). I will be gone until August 20th.
Now you are asking, wait, the math doesn't match up?! What the? Well, I will be in Europe (London, Edinburgh, Dublin) for about 2 weeks afterwards. So. Ya.
We are traveling with a group of 7 of us, one is a field facilitator (Margaret) and she has been to the field several times now. Then there are me, Amy, Whitney, Michelle, Shannon, and Justin. We will be living with a family in Ghana, and it is really safe there, so please don't worry too much.

My Project

Title:
Memoirs of Pregnancy: An Oral History Collection of Ghanaian Women’s Experiences with Pregnancy and Birth.

Specific Aims:
The purpose of this study is to discover how women within Wiamoase, Ghana have experienced pregnancy and birth. I want to be able to understand more fully how a woman personally feels about birth and pregnancy and have her share her own experiences on the subject. She will be interviewed multiple times, so an accurate as possible oral history can be recorded on her views and experiences with this topic. A collection of stories will be gathered and completed for the final result.

Method:
I will find my participants from a third party. I will start by gaining a relationship with them. I will inform them that I am doing a research project to collect oral histories, and explain the research goals to them. I will then ask if they are interested in participating, and helping me out with the research. I will then proceed to schedule an initial interview.
Written consent will be necessary for the women to participate in the study. They will be informed that they may discontinue their participation in the study at any time, whether it is during an interview, or the studies length as a whole. They will be informed that they may ask any questions about the study or research itself.
The interviews conducted will be semi-structured or unstructured. (See Appendix F for possible interview questions.) Interview questions will not be used strictly, but just as a reference to guide conversation if necessary. Interviews could last anywhere from 15-90 minutes, depending on how many previous interviews there have been, and how open and willing the woman is when discussing these topics of pregnancy and birth. Women will most likely be interviewed weekly if allowed, or as many times as necessary to gather enough information to create an oral history.
The initial interview will be mostly introductory and start the setting the background of her experiences. As the study continues, the interviews will increase in length. Times and lengths of interviews could vary because they will be unstructured or semi-structured.
Interviews will be recorded by an audio recorder and also recorded in writing. The tapes will be listened to, and transcribed with as much detail and accuracy as possible. Recordings will then be deleted for confidentiality. Notes and all other written data will be shredded at the end of the study.
A translator will be necessary for interviewing. I will find a fluent English speaker who is willing to help with the project to translate at each interview.
During interviewing, the same themes or ideas that are brought up between women will be noted. These themes will be explored deeper in further interviews. Themes could be things such as similar feelings when they first found out they were pregnant, family relationships and their feelings toward pregnancy, support from members in the community, choices on childbirth, healthcare, etc. Themes will not be used to comparatively, but just to go more in depth individually.
Oral histories will be recorded for each woman. I will go about doing this by taking all of the information from the interviews and transcribing them. Transcriptions of personal interviews will be confirmed accurate by the woman being interviewed.

Sorry if that sounds totally boring (copied and pasted from my actual proposal). Anyways.

That's pretty much it. So, I'll be living with the people, doing this project, and also 9 credits while in the field. Busy, busy.