Since we didn’t have power last night, my fan didn’t work. Since my fan didn’t work cover up all the other noise, I woke up very early to the roaster this morning. That is definitely one thing I could do without.
The plan for the day was to do our laundry in the morning and then hang our by pool at the Elmina Beach Resort for the rest of the day, however, that is not the way things happened. When we woke up it was cloudy like it was going to rain so we decided to hold off on doing laundry, as there would be nowhere to hang our clean clothes to dry if it was raining.
Instead, we ate breakfast and sat on the porch upstairs to read. Ekaieta told us Ellen, the woman who takes care of the house, was going to church and asked if we wanted to go, so we went.
We went to the Methodist church of Elmina and Ellen read scripture. It was an adventure. Most of the service was in Fanti so it reminded me of trying to watch church on the Spanish channel at home, I didn’t understand any of it. At the end, they did do a 5-minute overview of everything they had been talking about for the past 3 hours, which was very nice.
During the service they have multiple offerings where you go up and place money into this bucket in the center of the room. Not thinking, I put my money in the bucket using my left hand. Later, ekaeta reminded me of the left hand rule, and how many people could have found that offensive. I’m hoping they will forgive me because I am a foreigner.
They also play very festive music and are a lot more animated during their services. Church here is a lot more like a big party. During the service they played “Holy Holy Holy”, which was awesome because I know how it sounds in English and so it was cool to hear it in Fanti. They worship a lot differently then we do in the U.S In the middle of the service everyone stands up and started dancing and at one point we were all in a conga line dancing around the room.
After we got back from church we were informed that we needed to attend a funeral next door. The man who lived next door past away recently and because the doctors here are not as educated they are not sure why. It was sad because his wife is left to take care of their two young kids. The funeral overall was very confusing. When we got there we said hello to the family and then we sat around for a few minutes, then they gave us a bag of food, and then we left.
After the funeral 5 more volunteers arrived in Cape Coast. It’s nice to have more people around, but should make simple tasks, like getting a cab in the morning very interesting. While they settled in Sarah and I walked across the street to the Elmina Beach Resort and hung out by the pool. They let us buy a pass for 20 cedis for 2 months and now we can go there and use the pool, the gym, and the Internet. its an awesome deal!
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