Saturday, June 25, 2011

Feeling better and a tourist-y day

I guess I should start by saying I’ve felt pretty good the last few days, and that I was able to go to the field on Wednesday and Thursday.  Friday is our day for data analysis so we don’t usually go to the field that day anyway.  This week we switched Friday and Saturday, so yesterday we actually went to a large craft market.
I know a lot of people have been worried about me and the fact that I got malaria.  However, I’ve been in good hands and seem to have recovered pretty well.  I’m still waiting on the results of the rest of my bloodwork to make sure it wasn’t anything else, but since I finished the malaria medicine and now feel better, I’m calling my illness malaria until I hear otherwise.  What makes it complicated is that I had malaria tests run three times and they came back negative.  However, a negative malaria test in a malaria endemic area doesn’t rule out the diagnosis, because the tests aren’t perfect.  Anywho.
Yesterday I was a typical American all day it was was nice :)  I slept in and then Diana and Sylvie and I went to the Culteral Center in downtown Accra, which is a large semi-tourist-y craft market.  You can buy almost anything in the normal open air markets, but most people don't sell a lot of crafts there, its more like food and household supplies and clothes and such. 
The craft market was very large, and really the first place people were trying to get us into their shops to buy things since I've been in Ghana.  Even then they were pushy but not completely in our faces (mostly); I know a lot of other places in West Africa are much worse.  We walked around and haggled and bought some things for about 3 hours, and then took a taxi to Oso, a tourist-y part of town where we found a rather western restuarant and I got a good hamburger.  We also got ice cream there, my first since I've been in Ghana.  Then our on cab ride home we sang along to random country songs and Christmas carols off my friends' iphones.  I think our cabbie must have thought we were a little nuts.  We continued to listen to Christmas music once we were back at our house, and started planning other sightseeing adventures for the rest of the summer. 
I was also able to briefly talk to my mom and then my uncle for a while, so all in all it was a very good day.  Yay for not being sick!

1 comment:

  1. Yay for quinine! Yay for craft market! I would LOVE to go to a crafts market in any place in the world, just about. Sounds super fantastic.

    Glad you're having such a great time!

    <3

    ReplyDelete