My name is Paige Deffenbaugh, and I am a senior honors nursing student in the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing. I am currently studying abroad for three weeks in Ghana, Africa with 14 other nursing students and two of our nursing instructors. The first two weeks we are spending in the northern part of Ghana in a city named Bolgatanga. The last week will be spent traveling to a city named Accra in the southern part of Ghana and stopping at multiple places along the way, including Mole Park, Kumasi, and Cape Coast. I’m going to share with you some highlights and pictures from my second week in Ghana!
To begin our second week in Bolgatanga, we actually took a short ride in the van farther north to visit a crocodile pond! When we arrived, one of the workers took us down closer to the pond so that we could see the crocodiles better. A few men began trying to coax two of the crocodiles out of the water using a chicken so that we could take pictures with them. The crocodiles were a little slow to exit the water and didn’t appear to be hungry at all, as we had been told that a bunch of people had visited the pond the day before. After a little while though, both of the crocodiles had made their way onto the land near us. First, the men taught us a little bit about what to do and what not to do around the crocodiles so that we wouldn’t get hurt. Then, we began taking turns taking pictures with the crocodiles and touching them. They were pretty calm and barely moved throughout the whole process. You could tell they knew the drill and had been around humans in this setting many times before.
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| Yes, they are both real! The crocodile I am touching is over 100 years old. |
Along with my teaching project on respiratory illnesses that I mentioned in my previous blog post, I am also teaching about women’s health with my friends Maggie and Hannah. This week we had the opportunity to teach at a local girls senior high school. Along with our women’s health topic, choking, wound care, anemia, and sickle-cell anemia were also taught by some of the other nursing students. All of the high school girls were gathered in a big auditorium, which was a little intimidating to us all at first. There were close to 500 girls in attendance we were told! Most of the teaching projects we do here in Ghana are either individual or small-group teaching, so we just weren’t used to teaching such a large crowd. However, we got more comfortable as the time passed and successfully educated the young women about the different phases of the menstrual cycle, feminine hygiene, risks of infection, birth control methods, safe sex, and consent. Many of the young women came up to us afterwards with great questions, so it was encouraging to know that they were paying attention and wanted to learn more about the subject. After the entire teaching presentation, some of the girls received cosmetic bags filled with toiletries and feminine hygiene products.
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| Maggie, Hannah, and I teaching about women’s heath to hundreds of high school girls. |
Here in Bolgatanga, there is a basket market held every three days. This week was our third and final time to go to the basket market. On basket market day, we always woke up earlier than normal and were on the van ready to leave by 6:45 am. This was so that we could be some of the first people there and score the best baskets. We were all a little intimidated on our first visit to the basket market, as the people selling baskets began swarming up to us immediately trying to get us to buy their baskets. Before we knew it, we were all surrounded by a crowd of people coming at us from all directions. We quickly learned the best way to tell them no and to move on though. The exciting part is the bargaining. You never simply pay the basket sellers the first asking price for the baskets, you always bargain with them for the best price. We quickly caught on and were pros in no time. It became a fun little game for us all to play - who was the best bargainer and could get their baskets for the best prices? Going to the basket market was definitely something that we all looked forward to and will miss, so we had to get our fair share of it in. Most of us have accumulated quite a haul of baskets during our stay in Bolgatanga, as they make great gifts for family and friends. Now we just have to figure out how to get all of our baskets home!
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| Showing off our basket haul at our first basket market. It was a little rainy, but that didn’t stop us from going! |
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| Another entertaining part of our trips to the basket market was figuring out how to get all 15 of us + our baskets into the van for the ride back to the hotel! |
Those are just a few highlights from my second week in Ghana! Stay tuned for more updates.
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Paige Deffenbaugh is spending the summer 2019 term in Ghana with our
U of A Faculty-Led: Community Health Nursing in Ghana program.
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