So... almost a month since my last entry. I am back, safely in the country. And seeing as i am back this will be my last journal entry, i am no longer KTinGhana. sorry kids. The flights home were CRAZY, i met Nigerian soldiers going to Liberia for peacekeeping with the UN. Then had a physical run in with MORGAN FREEMAN who i talked to for a good amount of time about being in Africa and his time spent in Dubai. Then sat next to a woman who might help me to get an internship...  Needless to say it was a long succession of 3 flights with little to no lay overs, about 40 hours of travel. Following that was our annual family party where i saw many of the people who i had often thought of and had short conversations with many about my time away. It was a nice sort of homecoming. Then we flew to Michigan for almost a week to spend Christmas. It was cold outside but warm inside and a relaxing holiday spent with family who i don't see enough. Then it was time to come home and find a place to live which i thought i did but actually didn't. Then it was new year's, spent in SF partying it up 80's style at The Cat Club with girlfriends, where our driver for the night happened to be GHANIAN!! And then to go looking for houses again and finally find one. Meanwhile what little freetime there was, was spent catching up with friends or shopping, it seems that my shopping habit was not cured as i had hoped. There is a new variety which i had forgotten existed in food and clothes. Tomorrow school starts. Tomorrow i also move into my new house. A lot is happening. Within the past 36 hours i have actually realized that i went to West Africa and lived there and now i am back. Wait. What happened again i find myself thinking.

 Everything has changed, but then again everything hasn't. Life picked up just how i expected of course a few glitches but nothing sereious. I feel like a different person, but only sometimes. And at those times i don't know why but then again i do. Everything i was sure of before going, all the things in which most of my beleifs were based on, things i thought were as solid as a rock have been flipped over. While in Ghana this was fine because everyone was going through this and eventually we got used to thinking differently. Living there became normal. Now i'm back and living here is also normal. But, how do i incorperate what i thought and learned while i was there with who i want to be here? And how do i explain the changes to people who can never fully understand what i've seen, expierenced, or lived through. How do i talk about the horrible things that are still happening in Africa without promoting negative sterotypes? And how do i fully explain the wonderful smiles, beauty, and spirit there in a way in which people could understand it? More importantly how do i tell people about infinitate ways in which others live, and live happily for that matter which we would immediatly judge. The heirarchy of what we think is important does not apply in a place which is incomparable to our home. Is polygamy a problem that someone should focus on when people are starving? Can you expect children to go to school when there is no medical care and they or thier parents get sick all the time or when there are no teachers? What are important values to us are important because we are not, for the most part, trying to live and survive. We expect that we will live and have running-drinkable- water, have some sort of access to health care and food. But when those basic needs are not being met, who are we to go somewhere and tell them their way of life is wrong? Survival comes first and the rest is a privledge. Factioned interest groups such as gay rights, gun control, sports teams and the PTA, while all valid here and important to many people(including myself) are a privledge. We ARE surviving regardless of the precieved comfort level we will live to set goals and achieve them beyond eating and sleeping. I wish i could just make a list of what i learned as a way to share to it and also as a way to organize my overwhelmed mind. How does one organize that though. It's impossible when most are conflicting in some way. The ride is over but the journey is actually just beginning.

 I am infinitly thankful to come home and still be healthy, my friend who got sick was helicoptered to UCSF from Africa and is still very much in sereious condition. But he is still alive. However the most important thing i could have ever learned is that no matter how hungery, unhealthy, or poor a person is the spirit of love, family, friends and laughter is something that can survive unconditionally and it DOES in ways i never thought imaginable. So cheers to human spirit as it is the most important thing in life.

XoXo. Happy new year friends family and strangers.

so earlier i spoke of ponding. the tradition of public humilitation which happens when a Legon STUDENT steals. Unfortunatly i just learned what happens when someone who is not a student steals from the dorms. I have heard from friends who have tried to travel to cote de ivore about their runins with bandits and criminals who were missing many fingers or even hands, because that is what happens when you steal. They cut off your finger or hand, yes today this still happens. Ghana however, i always think of it as such a devoping country. Many of the people often say how you can get everything here that you could get in the US and some people just want it so badly to be on the same "Level" as the US, what that means i'm am not entirely sure. So..yesterday a guy was caught stealing a cell phone in the dorms where the boys in our program live,on the 5th floor, our guys live on the 4th. The guy was caught and he ran into the bathroom on the fourth floor, where he was followed by a huge mass and beat quite badly. A friend of one of my fellow EAPers took him (the californian) into the bathroom, right by his room, where this beating was taking place. I didn't talk to him but others did and said he was super upset and could not beleive that college students were acting like that,primitative and yelling and screaming and getting blood all over, just a horrible scene it seems. Eventually a truck or somthing came and took him to the hospital.Where he died today. This guy was beat to death in the bathroom that we use for stealing a cell phone. WHAT?!?! when talking to other friends here no one seems suprised. The police don't do anything, so when that happens they say you just have to take matters into your own hands. Mind you this happened in the dorms of one of the BEST universities in all of West Africa. That seems quite extreme and before coming here i never could have imagined that scene taking place. However, now i can, i have seen and been involved in situations where this type of human abandonment has been present, IT IS SCARY. I am still horrified and had a bad feeling in my stomach since i found out, but its true. I come from a country where, yes much of our system is corrupt. There are horrible violent things that happen, and people are beaten to death. BUT when this happens, its a huge deal usually and people are dealt with. Nothing will happen here to these students who beat thisguy. Nothing.  Regardless of the state of the system, i do live in a place where one does exist. That in itself is something that i had not ever truely realized the importance of unitl this horrible reminder. So as i think about how there are HUGE differences between Ghana and the USA i am remined of things in both that i miss, will miss, and am looking foreward to more than i can even imagine. Thanksgiving is next week and now i know what this holiday truely means. Xoxo