03/09/2009

For anyone keeping up with my Ghana journal:

The refugee camp was awful. I wrote a long post about it, but I didn’t write everything because I didn’t want my family to worry. It really messed with me. This is exactly why I do policy work and not counseling or community work. Ever since talking with those women, I just start crying spontaneously. I didn’t go to work today. I needed a day to just process everything. I don’t think a day will cut it though. My heart feels like it weighs a million pounds. Those women are the definition of resilient. I don’t know how they keep functioning and fighting to survive every day.

I wrote this a week ago but internet in Ghana sucks so I couldn’t post it until now:

I really wish no one had mentioned the amount of weight I would probably lose when I came to Ghana. We only really eat one meal a day of rice and beans and egg. I usually have a banana for breakfast. Other than that, the heat makes us not feel hungry. My room mate says she must have lost at least ten pounds since she got here in January. It is making me obsessive about my food intake. I came here expecting to lose weight, which, in my head, quickly became one of the major benefits. I will most likely lose weight no matter what because of all the walking and eating so little. However, eating disorder mentality is rearing its ugly head. It is making me super conscious of the already limited amounts of food we eat. It is making me paranoid that maybe I won’t lose weight – that the natural course of our time here won’t be enough to make me lose weight. Which isn’t logical.
 
When I home, I am so much more in control of it. That’s what it always boils down to though. Control. Something I lack here in Ghana.