Busy day 2

Spending the day at the orphanage here was very humbling. First, I was formally introduced to the director of the orphanage to get permission to take a tour. My flight attendant I spoke of before took me around the property and showed me the old and young boys and girls houses, along with the much younger children's house, and then to the nursery. I was able to take pictures at will throughout the property except for the nursery where I was asked to not take any...I quickly found out why. That was an image that I will have a hard time forgetting. I have never seen so many babies and toddlers and so little space. The conditions were horrible. Fortunately, the moldy cribs were being slowly replaced by sturdy metal cribs by the non profit I mentioned, Dreams for Orphans. That group has done a lot for the orphanage and I was impressed to see the amount of improvements they have made (ex. bunk beds for all the children so they didn't have to sleep on the floor, building a library) with their limited amount of resources. I loved having the opportunity to meet the kids and hear what their life was like. Some of them were in the process of being adopted so that was a positive side of the day.

I was constantly swarmed by the kids as I was shooting them and their living conditions. The second I kneeled down to photograph someone, a kiddo would cling on for a piggy back ride. The little ones were running up with their hands held up for me to pick them up or grabbed my hand to walk with me. It was surprising how little supervision a group of 30 children had and that they were able to leave the property out into the public streets at anytime.

After the day at the orphanage, we went to Leslie's place to watch the Ghana vs. Germany Soccer game. Due to Crappy (with a capital C) roads and some serious traffic, we got there a little after the game started which gave me the chance to see swarms of people huddled around a tiny tv on the side of the road and in little shops to watch the game. The whole country (besides everyone in traffic) was glued to the TV. Leslie had a few friends over and all the guys were speaking/yelling in pidgin (which doesn't sound anything like english), throughout the game. Well, as you probably know, Ghana lost....BUT, so did Serbia which means that Ghana qualified to go on to the next round. And guess who they are playing on Saturday...USA. That should be interesting. Lauren doesn't even hesitate when she says she is all for Ghana. I, on the otherhand, am so TORN! So I look at it this way: since they are playing each other, at least one of them will go onto the next round!

The fact that Ghana lost didn't seem to bother anyone. As soon as everyone saw the brackets, we heard a mob of fans assembling outside of the apartment. I grabbed my little camera and Lo and I recruited a guy to come with us to join the mob. Blow horns, carhorns, screaming, dancing, blocking all traffic, running up the motorway, and crazy celebration ensued. Lauren and I attracted a LOT of attention as we stood out in the crowd. I won't go into a lot of detail but we made a smart decision in bringing a strong guy that we knew along with us. That being said, I was never scared and I had great time.

We had a late drive home and on the way they do routine police checks of cars after 10 pm at night. We hit 4 police checks on the way home. This is how they normally go: you pull up, turn you overhead light on, keep windows rolled up. Police man shines his lights at you and in the back seat of the car and then shakes his crappy flashlight to signal that you can go through. Well, at one stop, we were asked to pull over. I rolled down the window an inch and the police basically asked if he could come home with us to which lauren replied, "my husband wouldn't like that", and he said, "what about your sister (implying me)?" and lauren replied "she's married too, our husbands are at home". He gave us a bit of a hard time and then let us go on our way. I was shocked. Lauren's response to me "there's your first taste of Ghanaian police, you've seen nothing yet."