Back with the Boys…and Annie

Wednesday May 27, 2015

Jarome, aka "Biggy."

This week I am back with Crystal eye clinic! It feels good to be back. I missed these guys. Ernest, John, BB and now Jerome. Jerome picked us up from the airport but wasn’t working with us because he was working as an intern at the hospital. He is an Ophthalmic nurse. I love him, he’s a super funny guy. It has been a fun few days with him in the mix. We are on another overnight outreach to Takoradi. It is a city in the Western Region past Cape Coast. They have been very long days. Roughly 300 patients every day. Luckily we have been working pretty fast so we are finished around 6 or so each day. We are staying at a pretty descent hotel too. The first 2 nights we didn’t have AC but last night we did. Because of the power outages, when the generators are running there isn’t enough electricity generated to run the air conditioners. I am sharing a room with Daniel and Austin and there is one queen sized bed haha. It has made for some interesting nights. Our second night all 3 of us were pretty out of it. We watched a movie on my laptop that night and afterwards went straight to bed. Austin and I had fallen asleep near the end of the movie. I honestly done know why but I moved from the bed to the couch after the movie and sept there for an hour or so. I woke up and remember asking myself why I was sleeping on the couch, I returned to the bed only to find that Austin was sleeping like my dog does by taking up the whole bed so all I am left with is a small sliver at the end. At that point I was too tired to care and so I slept on my back for another 30 minutes or so and then I groggily asked austin to move over. He gave me a death stare and rolled over. He doesn’t remember anything. Now Daniel was sleeping in his net on the other side of the bed. Where was my net? On the floor haha. It takes up too much room with D’s net and I was too tired to get it. Our first night we all slept in our nets. It was the first time Austin had even pulled his net out of the bag. He had bought one of the ones that you have to hang from the ceiling. The exact kind that they tell you NOT to bring because they are pretty much useless. We ended up draping it over top of mine and D’s nets. It looked so funny because it hardly left any room for Austin in the middle. Anyways back to the weird night. In the middle of the night Daniel felt something move near the side of his tent. He flicked it but it didn’t move. He thought it might be a lizard or something so he punched it. Turns out is was Austin’s foot. He had been moving his toes in his sleep haha. Right at the moment Daniel punched his foot Austin was experiencing a scary part of his dream. A dew days ago the 3 of us watched the conjuring and it took its toll on Austin. For those of you that have seen the movie you will understand this a bit better. But the part where the girl is having her foot pulled in her bed was the exact thing that Austin experienced in his dream when D punched him in the foot. So he woke up pretty startled. And for some reason Daniel was laughing I guess, he doesn’t really remember why. So that was our night. It was pretty funny to talk about our 3 different experiences and perspectives on what happened. Sorry if it didn't make sense or just was not funny at all, but to us it was hilarious. We even started laughing about it when we were each writing it in our journals later haha.

Annie is the only girl on the trip and Gavin is the only guy back in Accra with the other group. Everyone that is one this outreach is: Austin, Daniel, Richard, Jerry, Annie and myself along with the Crystal workers I mentioned earlier. Richard and Jerry usually get their own rooms but they had to share this trip. They also had a queen size bed in their room along with a small couch like ours but they refused to sleep in the same bed haha. So they take turns sleeping on the couch. They keep asking if there is another available room but I don’t think that there will be. Annie one morning finally said, "why don't you just share a bed!" ....(silence). Not all men can share beds I guess.

John and his new "girlfriends." He always has new girlfriends wherever we go haha.

The first few outreach days have been pretty good! The work is the same as it always has been. I love spending time with John. I am trying to learn some more languages from him. He’s taught me some more Dangme. Thats his native language. We have had some good laughs and inside jokes. He is defiantly one of my favourites. 

It doesn't get much cuter than this.

Of course there are always children wherever we go. they love hanging out with Obruni’s. There was day especially where this one girl loved looking through my camera at everything. She wouldn’t take any pictures, she didn’t know how, but she just used it as like a magnifying glass to look at everything. There were some other kids that I spent some time talking to and taking pictures with too. Black babies are still the cutes things on the planet hands down. I have met and played with some pretty cute kids. I wish I had pictures with all of them but I don’t. 

She was the one that loves my camera.

Temple Trips!

Saturday May 23, 2015

I finally was able to go to the temple this week, not just once but twice! Thursday was another clinic day with St. Thomas. I got to see some more surgeries which are always awesome to observe. I love the doctors at the clinic, Dr. Gyasi, Dr. Ela, and Dr. Elom. They all remembered who I was and glad that I knew what I was doing so I could train some of the others in the group. Everyone else hadn’t been to the clinic yet. They did a lot of surgeries that day, around 30. I only shadowed about a third of those. After that Mary Ellen and I switched with Annie and Richard so they could observe the rest and left to tray and make it to the last session at the temple. We made it with about 30 minutes to spare. The temple grounds are beautiful! The church has a stake centre on one side and apartment buildings on the other for senior couples and members traveling from far away to stay at. There were only 2 others in the session when I got there, a total of 12 ended up showing (most were temple workers). So naturally who do they pick to be the witness couple? Mary Ellen and I. It was my first time and I can say that I was very attentive throughout the whole session haha. Mary Ellen actually did the endowment for one of Sister Hill’s names! I met some amazing members at the temple. I love how no matter where you are from you immediately have this strong bond with other members especially at the temple.

The temple Thursday night.

Friday was a really short day with St. Thomas. We saw maybe 40 patients. We got home around 4pm and chilled until the crystal group got home. Then some of us went out for chinese. Saturday was our temple and beach day. We went and did baptisms in the morning, and Annie and Gavin did a session in french. Gavin served his mission in Paris and Annie took it in school. We met a few senior couples outside the temple. The first ones we talked to knew the Hills very well and was able to call them for me. I talked to sister Hill on the phone (I told her that I was your nephew Toni). She was pleasantly surprised to here that I was in Ghana haha. I hope I will have time to go and stop by there place to visit. They don’t live on the temple grounds but they live close by. The temple was very busy. All the members come in from all over on saturdays, They were really accommodating with us, it was great. To speed things up they had us do the confirmations right next to the font dripping wet haha. 

After the temple we took a taxi to Bojo beach for the rest of the day. It is supposedly the nicest beach near Accra. By Ghana standards it was pretty nice but I found the water worse then when we went in Elmena. It was very salty and it just felt really dirty. I only swam for maybe 45 min. The beach was pretty sketchy too haha. There were rusty bottle caps, broken glass, and other garbage strewed everywhere. But nonetheless it was fun. It ended up raining pretty hard on us at the end of the day. What was cool about Bojo beach is that we had to take a boat ride across the canal to the beach from the hotel. The boats that they have in Ghana are all hand carved. I have seen many boats being chiseled on the beaches here. They use them mainly as fishing boats. We stayed and at dinner at the hotel as we dried off. Then we got a taxi ride back to the Telecentre. It is the beginning of the rainy season here so we get flash rain storms nearly every day. And when it rains here it doesn't ever sprinkle. It pours!  

Taking the boat across the short canal to the beach.

Sunday May 24, 2015

Arnold came to church! He works on the St. Thomas crew! We had been inviting him for about 2 weeks and then he shows up after sacrament meeting! We caught hime talking to the mission president out in the hall. We were all very excited to see him. He seems very interested in the gospel. Tapping into the missionary side of me feels so good. I spent a good amount of time talking to him along with the mission president about the Book of mormon and some other questions he had. He had been asking for a book of mormon for the past week so we got him one and he seemed excited to finally get one. The missionary work in general here is flourishing. There has not been a week where there hasn’t been a baptism. In 4 weeks we have witnessed 6 confirmations! Its amazing to see people so receptive here. I hope that Arnold reads the Book of Mormon. I am with crystal thus next week so I wont be able to talk to him but the others will definitely help answer any questions he has. 

Chicken, Chicken, Goat!

Wednesday May 20, 2015

This week I am with St. Thomas again. Mary Ellen, Annie, Richard, Jerry and myself left for the Eastern region in the morning. The first town we were in was (I cant remember, oops), but it means “all you need is Salt.” Implying that it is very fruitful and has everything that you need to live. I love the Eastern region, it is so lush here! There are more bugs however, I’ve gotten more bites here than my whole trip thus far combined. Most of the bites I think though are ant bites, not mosquitoes. They have these super tiny ants everywhere that you cant feel when they crawl on you but I couldn’t feel any of the bites I got. I definitely slept in my net though. 

The kids here are wonderful! We love teaching them games to play like frisbee, missionary tag, and a modified form of duck, duck, goose just with chickens and goats (we figured it related to them better). Chickens roam the streets like squirrels here and there are more goats then dogs in Ghana. We played with a big group of kids in Osiem who were so cute! They caught on quickly with the concept of chicken, chicken, goat but they didn’t understand that you had to beat the other person to the empty spot. But it was still fun haha. I of course threw my frisbee around as well, the kids are always fascinated with that and fight over who gets to throw it next. 

Today we were in a town called Bogoro and there was a school next door the the church we were at that was playing music and singing really loud. After we had finished with all the visual acuity Annie and I walked over to see what was happening. Some of the students were practicing for a dance competition. The girls were practicing their dance number and the boys were on the drums. There were kids everywhere! After a short while one of the dance teacher came and grabbed my hand and pulling me in said “Come. You will dance.” It took me a minute but I picked up on the few dance moves they were doing. All the kids were laughing and cheering me on and would get especially loud when I got a certain dance step haha. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures or footage of me dancing. Maybe that was for the best to save me from any embarrassment back home. 

After the outreach we were told of a small waterfall nearby that we could hike to. We finished early so a local woman took us. It wasn’t what I expected but still really cool. The waterfall was more of a trickle than anything but I am sure it looks pretty good during a huge rain storm. 

Our hotel was pretty nice as well. The rooms weren't as good at the ones at the Telecentre but we had a restaurant right in the hotel that made pretty good food. I had a big Tilapia fish with fried rice that was really good! And at 35 cedi a night for my own room it was a lot cheaper than the telecentre as well. 

One of the volunteers, Richard, the medical school graduate from London has been doing his own partial examinations at the outreaches. I shadowed him for a while each day and learned a lot about different diseases and conditions. He is very smart and knows more than he should about eyes because they don’t focus too much on Ophthalmology in med school. I get to use the Ophthalmoscope and everything, its pretty awesome!

Nicknames

So I haven’t really taken the time to really talk about the people that I am on this trip with. Or any of the Crystal or St. Thomas clinic staff. I would be having near the time of my life without all of them. 

There are 10 of us from BYU including Dr. Page, the director of the Global Health Internships and a public health professor. Other than him there is Rachel, Alyssa, Annie, Mary Ellen, Marissa Daniel, Gavin, Austin and myself. Marissa loves nicknames and so she insisted on picking nicknames for all of us. Rachel (Ray, or Richy as John calls her) is just a ball of sunshine haha. She was a cheerleader in high school and hates being ripped off. Out of all of us I would say that she gets the most upset over the cost of our hotel, but she's great. Alyssa is a little quieter but very smart. Her and Rachel are roommates and I have probably spent the least amount of time with them just because I haven’t been on the same shifts as them. Annie (Ace was Marissa’s nickname but it hasn't really stuck, still working on one) is from Seattle, she is Chinese but doesn’t speak the language. Super nice girl, hard working and smart. She is on a research team with Mary Ellen and myself. Annie has celiac’s disease so she cant eat gluten. Which has proven to be very difficult here! I feel bad for her because almost everywhere we go to eat she has to decline something or try and break through the language barrier to ask if they have anything different. She can eat rice though, and there is no shortage of that here! Mary Ellen (Mare, or Auntie Mary as all the Ghanians call her) is one of the nicest girls I’ve met. She can socialize with a rock if she wanted to. People are drawn to her because of her demeanour and also her height haha. She is 6 feet tall so not super tall but that’s taller than most men here in Ghana. Mary Ellen and I had a public health class together last semester, Environmental Health so I feel as though I know her the best. Marissa (or Riss) is the life of the party. She brings excitement to the group and there is never a dull moment when she is around. Her and Mary Ellen are roommates and those two are now the best of friends. Marissa is Peruvian but has lived in California her whole life. Daniel (or “D”) is just a great guy. I don't know how else to explain him, he's just one of those guys that you love because they are just…great! He is part of BYU mens chorus and served his mission in Mexico about a year and a half ago. Gavin (Vinny is his nickname) is by far the quietest of the bunch. He seems quite independent which isn’t a bad thing but sometimes we lose him because he will wander off randomly haha. It’s happened at the mall, church, outreaches and everywhere in between. He always turns up though so we are never worried when we don't know where he is. He served his mission in Paris, France and only has been home about 2 months. He was ecstatic when he found a number of french speakers at church. Most were missionaries or investigators. He stayed after church the other day to teach in french with the missionaries. And oh man does he sweat! I’ve not seem him dry once this trip. He has a big blonde fro too, just like the one I used to have in high school. Good kid, I like him. Then there is Austin (we haven’t figured out a nickname yet) he’s from Utah and is my roommate. A great guy, I love him, I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate. We have some pretty good laughs. He is a type I diabetic and has been since childhood. It has been incredibly interesting to live with a diabetic. I have learned a ton from watching him and asking him questions. I have watched him do everything from check his blood glucose, which I have done a bunch with BYU EMS, to refill and change his insulin pump to giving himself the occasional injection. He said he would let me inject him next time so I am looking forward to that! I guess I should mention my nickname haha. They call me Scoobs because I am really good at impressions they have come to find out and Scooby-Do was one of the first that I did. But thats the BYU crew! They are awesome and lots of fun. I am the oldest one of the group which seems a little weird sometimes but I am used to being the older one. I have always hung out with people younger than me. 

There are some other volunteers that I have met and worked with. Mariana was here for our first week and then went back to Australia. She is a recently graduated medical student and is interested in Ophthalmology. There is Richard from London who is here with us until June who is also a recently graduated med student interested in Ophthalmology. Jerry is the other Canadian from Montreal. He’s a funny guy. He seems pretty serious a lot of the times and we are trying to break his shell a bit while we are on an overnight outreach with him. I like him. Darren and Tia Hill and their 3 kids, Grayson, Eva, and Lila are awesome! They just left but I was able to work with Darren my first week. He is going into his last year of medical school in the states. They came out here with their whole family for 1 month! He is the only Unite For Sight volunteer so his wife entertains the kids while he is out on outreaches or in the clinic every day. She is a champ! I loved their little family and was beyond impressed with their decision to come out here together. 

Us with the Hills on Sunday. Front from left to right: Grayson, Tia, Lila, Aiva, Darren, Rachel, Merissa, Alyssa, Annie. Back row: Gavin, me, Mary Ellen, then Daniel and Austin in the very back. 

The Crystal crew…

My man John! 

Ernest is the main Optometrist but he’s also one of the youngest. He is hilarious! He loves to sing songs in the van and always makes the outreaches not only go by faster because he sees the most patients but also fun. Then there is Dennis, the other Optometrist. Dennis is a great guy but he does like to take his time and a lot of breaks haha. He sees probably less than half the patients that Ernest gets through in a day. One day we were in the Central region and Dennis sits down at the table for examinations and says to Austin “(sigh) I do not want to work today.” I think he took about 4 breaks within the first hour and a half haha. But don’t get me wrong I like Dennis he can be pretty funny. John is one of the drivers and he usually runs the dispensing table and translating. He speaks at least 4 different African languages so he comes in handy. I love John, I think he is my favourite. He loves to joke around and flirt with all the girls. He’s 41, married and has 3 kids. Mary Ellen is his favourite person in our group, he gets so excited when he sees her it funny. He was the one that drove us to Cape Coast. One day I let him borrow my pen, my nice Zebra F-701, and afterwards he says “Court…I really love this pen! When you leave I want this pen.” I told him that if he can go the whole 6 weeks without crashing the van he can have my pen. Lastly there is Bismarck, or BB, he is another driver. I believe he is the youngest of the bunch but like John he flirts with everyone. Most of the time he is is on his tablet but he is pretty chill. 

Ernest is the one in the middle. BB is in the back holding the flower of Ernest's head and you cant see him but Dennis is holding the banana. And of course Austin is the white guy. Darren has his back to us.

The St. Thomas crew…

Ema is the Optometrist and I still don’t know how much English he knows haha. There will be times where you will be talking to him and when you wait for a response all you get is a smile and a nod. But as I have spent more time with him I’ve been able to tell more when he doesn’t understand. Him and Seth, the driver, love fufu. It’s their favourite food. They have it every night. I have had it twice with them, this last time was better than the first. I will explain what fufu is in another post. Seth is a super nice guy, he is tall and skinny and I always see him in a dress shirt, slacks and dress shoes. When he drives he doesn’t try and avoid the pot holes as much as John does and sometimes I wonder how the van has survived this long without blowing a tire or the suspension. Arnold is the last of the St. Thomas crew. He’s a good guy, I like him. He has a competitive side to him and so we end up doing arm wrestles or endless games of chess on the computer etc. He loves it when I play music on my phone. He heard one Taylor Swift song and immediately fell in love with her. When I switched to another artist he as asked “can you go back to Swift? I like her.” He likes to joke around a bit as well. St. Thomas is much more lax than Crystal is, part of that is because they see less than half the amount of patients so they have more time. They never seem like they are in a rush, but that is the nature of every Ghanian. 

Dr. Ema, Mary Ellen and myself eating fufu in the Eastern region after an outreach. Ema loves his fufu haha.

Golden Tulips, Pizza and Ultron

Saturday May 16, 2015

Saturday was defiantly a “western” day. First we took a couple taxis (there were 9 of us) to the Golden Tulip, a resort in Accra. For a hotel that is $296 US dollars per night it was smaller than I expected but still nice, especially by Ghanian standards. The pool was small and not as nice as La Palm, another expensive hotel that some had swam at our first week. Initially it cost 40 cedi to swim and lounge but a couple of the girls worked their magic and got us in for 30 cedi each. Thats roughly $8 US. It was so nice to swim, sunbathe and just relax. It didn’t feel like we were in Africa anymore, well until I opened my eyes and saw all of the Obimini’s (black people). They had some pretty awesome looking food there too! I’m talking huge cheeseburgers with bacon and fries, ribs, steaks, and much more. But I wasn’t ready to fork over 30 cedi for a single hot dog and fries (and that was the cheapest item). Stakes were 80, 90 or even 100 cedi. So I payed for a coke and stuck with my Eatmore bars and beef jerky. I realized also that the pop here isn’t made with corn syrup but actual sugar cane. It tastes so much better, I love it! 

Pool side, The Golden Tulip. Nothing extravagant but still a little paradise.

After the pool we headed over to the Accra Mall. We got pizza, which was actually really good, bought a few things at Shoprite (a western style grocery store), then headed to the Theatre. There are certain things in the grocery store that are crazy expensive! For example red bell peppers were 70 cedi for 100g! can you imagine paying nearly $20 for a few peppers? No wonder they dont eat vegetables here, they cost too much! 

The movie we saw was the real reason why we came to the mall. We saw the new Avengers movie, Age of Ultron. It was SO GOOD! I absolutely loved it! Movies have become a prized possession on this trip that’s for sure. I was the only one to bring any DVD’s and it has helped us all enjoy some good down time we’ve had. But my selection was heavily limited to the movies I could find in my house. We don’t have too many DVD’s left in their appropriate cases anymore (I blame chase and his younger years of endless movie watching on our portable DVD player and never putting them back). But we are making due. 

Playing Catchup

So its been almost a week since the last time I have written anything! I knew my diligence wouldn’t last. I had the same problem on my mission as well. Journal writing is just so tasking sometimes especially when there are much better things that I would rather be doing like reading or spending time with friends. But I know that I will be grateful in the future when I can go back and read about my adventures. So shall we go back to Thursday?

Thursday May 14th was actually a really cool day! It was the first time I was in the St. Thomas Eye Clinic. I first helped out and observed pre-surgery examinations with Dr. Ese. He seemed really young to be an Ophthalmologist but everyone here looks younger than they actually are. The other week we helped a woman that was 100 years old and she didn’t look older than 80. After that I went upstairs to change for surgeries! I changed into scrubs and went downstairs to the “theatre,” which is what they call the operating room. In the prep room there were a couple nurses prepping patients for surgery. It was a small room where organization was not the highest priority. After putting on a mask and hair net I watched as they numbed the eye(s) with lidocaine. I couldn’t believe the size of needle they used! Despite being a small gauged needle, maybe 28 or 30, it was long, around 3.5 inches. They took iodine swabs and cleaned the area under the eye then inserted the needle under the eye and all the way to the back of the eye. What surprised me more I think was how calm every patient was. They didn’t even flinch or squirm at all. But I think that was either because of the culture of doing what you're told or you’ll be beaten or the fact that nearly all of them couldn’t see out of that eye so they didn’t know what was coming. After the anesthesia the nurses put make-shift pressure bandages over their eyes but placing gauze on the eye and a tennis ball strapped to a pantie hose that was tied around the head. This kept slight pressure on the eye. 

The surgeries were very interesting. I was observing Dr. Gyasi (pronounced Jesse). He is a great guy! He loved answering all of my questions and was more than willing to show me anything I asked. I saw about 4 cataract surgeries in the space of an hour or so. The technology they have is definitely not what we have in North America but they made due. They were making certain tools from bending the needles of syringes to scrape away thick cataracts. I’m not sure if this was a well known technique or just their way of saving money but it worked. The cataracts I saw were very hard and I may never see any like them back home because people simply don’t let them get that bad. I really enjoyed watching the surgeries and I could spend much more time getting into the details of other techniques and things they did that were intriguing. 

Friday May 15th

We finished early and were back at the Telecentre by 4pm. Now there was talk that morning of going to the temple with everyone but it was just Austin, Daniel and myself at the hotel. The rest had the day off after spending the former part of the week on an overnight outreach. We weren’t sure if they were expecting us to meet them at the temple or if they were going to be coming back from swimming or wherever they were and then we all head out together. By the time we had decided that they were expecting us to meet them there it was too late. We wouldn't have made it there in time for the 6:30 session. I was kind of bummed that we didn’t get to go but there will be other days to go to the temple. 

Keep Calm, Just Swim

Wed. May 13, 2015

Had the shortest day to date! We finished around noon! We only saw a total of 31 patients today up in a small village called Agona. It’s a beautiful place in the middle of the jungle. There they speak Fante, similar to Twi. 

What did we do for the rest of the day? Well for starters we went to the beach! And when I say beach you are welcome to picture a nice beach but then dump a ton of garbage all over it. I couldn’t believe how much trash there was. We saw a man walk down to the shore as we were playing frisbee and dump a small garbage can of garbage along with who knows what else. We saw roughly 3 naked children while we were there, one of which just squat down on the spot and dropped some kids off at the pool. If you plan on going to an african beach don’t plan on having any time alone. We always had people around us, mainly children. It was lots of fun despite the uncleanliness. We had to tell ourselves to not think about what goes into the water but to just enjoy it. 

Then we went to another slave castle with Arnold, one of the St. Thomas workers and his friend Irene. It’s called the Elmena slave castle. They were just closing when we got there but they said that they would do one more tour just for us. It was similar to the one in Cape Coast but slightly different in some ways. For one this one was the first major European slave castle built in Africa. Built by the Portugese in 1492 it was and still is the largest one ever built. From the roof we could see the Cape coast castle in the distance. I didn’t realize how close they were. 

Ill give you one guess to who Arnold is. 

The beach next to Elmena Castle. 

The signage next to Elmena Castle. It's a good thing they said something. 

The town we are staying in seems small in my eyes but it seems like a major fishing town. They have a large port and tons of fishing boats. The streets were filled with people too. Many who would call out to us, some who asked for money and others to come and buy their goods. You learn to play dump like you can’t hear them because many of them know we have money and take advantage of us. For example we took a short taxi ride up to the castle and the driver said 80 pesewas which is like 21 cents. When we get there we give him 1 cedi which is more than what he told us and then he says that its 80 each! Never had I heard of people paying individually for a taxi ride. He was cheating us for sure. Arnold didn’t want confrontation and we didn't want arnold to pay so we did. When you think about it, it’s hardly anything but I don't like getting taken advantage of no matter how little it seems. We ran into the missionaries again today and they were telling us that they cant take a taxi for 2.50 cedi up to Agona 45 minutes away where we were working today so we know taxies are cheap here. So a taxi driver that is trying to get 3.20 from us when we went 3 blocks is ridiculous. But it all worked out. 

There is so much more that I could share about Ghana but its hard to put it into words and I don’t have the time nor the patience, if I am being honest, to write it all haha. I am loving it here and I am glad that I am here for another 5 weeks! There will be some awesome adventures for sure!

Oh I almost forgot about a funny thing someone said to me as we were walking down the street after the beach. I was wearing my swim suit and tank top and I was waving and saying hi to some people in their shops as we passed. One guy says hi and I return the greeting, then he says “you have a nice body!” haha I didn’t really know what to say so I said thank you and continued on. I think its the skin more than anything. I have had many children look in awe and touch my skin. I am sure for many of them its the first time they have been this close to an Obruni before so touching white skin is pretty big deal. Nothing is as cute as a small black child waving back to you as you pass. They always have a huge smile on their face and you feel like you just made their day!