August 3rd. Surreal.

We really did a lot today. We started our day on the outreach but ended up back in the capital city of Accra. When you do so much traveling on a workday, it’s bound to feel long and surreal.

This is how it started (I’ll list for the readers’ sake): Wake up at seven. Sort glasses; laugh at the 60’s type spectacles. Travel to the makeshift clinic. Get set up with the stations: medical history, eye charts, physician, medicine and eyeglass dispensary.

I was doing eye exams, which are in meters here, and I’m happy to say I’ve got 6/6 distance vision! Because I only speak Brofo (that’s English), I mostly communicated with hand motions, smiles, and a mix of English and Twi. By the end of the day, I did about fifty eye charts. The patients were all smiles… some peaked with their other eye, some showed off, and some were just nervous.

I’ve been getting the feeling that whenever we go somewhere, we’ll always be trailed by a group of kids. They just smile so wide, and are always ready to show off their English. I think the eye test was good fun for them. They slowly inched towards us, and were eager to try the eye test as well. Every once in a while, they’d whisper the number we pointed to from the sidelines. They did a lot of dancing too. Ghanaians are natural CatDaddy-ers.

Eventually we headed back to Accra. As we traveled, I got the impression villages were always set up in the same way: the main street and small-scattered houses that all face, and are spread out from, the main street. I don’t know… it’s a little hard to explain.

Once we got back to Accra I relaxed a while and got ready for dinner. We went out to a Lebanese restaurant in the younger up-and-coming district of Accra. It was noisy, vibrant, and very lively. It reminded me a little of my trip to Beijing, with all the expats and younger travelers who were here for unknown reasons.

Everyone in our group was super interesting. They were either in university, or med school, or even recent graduates and going into their ophthalmology specialization. Most of us were American, though many were also Canadian, and some even British or studying in Ireland. It was really interesting to hear about everyone’s unique background.