Day 7: Happy Birthday

Today was a low key Friday; however, it was full of much celebration. The birthday tradition in Ghana is that anyone and everyone will pour water on you at any point throughout the day. I was lucky enough to witness three peoples birthdays today. Buckets after buckets of water poured on them when they were least expecting it. And they just have to take it you can’t run away. I couldn’t tell if I would love this or hate this. I mean it would be really fun to get back at people on their birthdays (cough big sis Mol). In addition to that, they have two big birthday celebrations during the year instead of individually celebrating each person’s. This is probably because most people do not know their specific birthdays, normally only their birth month. So tonight we celebrated all of the January-June birthdays. We had a big dinner in the cafeteria with everyone together. I really liked this because we typically split up at dinner time into different families. Another thing is that the gender division is very prominent. The boys and girls always sit separately. I naively tried to sit with a group of boys the other day, not knowingly, and they told me to move. At first I was offended but then understood that this is simply their way of life. It is a very patriarchal society as well.  One of the other volunteers here mentioned that she didn’t want to have kids. One of the CORM kids replied, “well what if your husband wants kids?” She said then we will have to talk about it. They sort of laughed at her and explained that whatever the husband says goes.  

I felt so full of life at the celebration dinner tonight. Each kid got presents that had been donated and their faces lit up. To continue, we also greatly celebrated the first three CORM kids that went on and graduated senior high this past Tuesday. This is such a huge accomplishment sand shows the progress cycle that CORM has made.  Growing up they did not even think about the possibility of an education and now they are going on to the University. Johnbull and Stacy gave them iPhones as a present, they were very emotional. I am so happy for them and this set a great example in front of all of the kids to continue pushing themselves in school.

A few more buckets of water poured and it was time for movie night (every Friday). Last week we watched Greatest Showman. I had watched this about a week prior when I was at home with my mom. I told her it was dumb and not my type of movie. Annnddddd it is now my favorite movie. All of the kids get so into it, singing along and oo-ing and ahh-ing at every new scene. It makes it so much more lively and enjoyable when you’re in that environment. It is like one big movie theater with all of your friends and everyone being themselves. I stole popcorn from easily 7 little kids tonight...WAKANDA FOREVER.