Can I tell you something?

'You can keep a secret right?

Yea, you can trust me.

ok............'

In CWY,nothing you do is a secret. No matter how hard you try to keep something under wrapps, chances are, pretty much everyone else in the group already knows about it. I wont get into all the scandelous things we do as a group and as individuals (maybe after the program ends;)... but let's just say no angels came to Ghana this year, at least not to Otuam...... Or Saltpond for that matter.

Anyway.....

You know when you've done something 'bad', or exciting and your first reaction is to want to tell somebody. To give out all the juicy details of how you did _________ with __________ all afternoon and didnt get caught. Or like, when someone is your friend, but something they said really bothered you, you dont want to really confront them so you take your frustrations out by telling someone else. _______ Is my really good friend, but she does this thing that seriously annoys me sometimes.

In group of 18, seperated by nationality and again by personaity, you only really have a few good friends at a time, if at all. Everyone else, you're just kind of nice to... like, pleasant and polite, then all of a sudden it all turns around and everyone is friends with different people again, so the pleasant and polite really works in your favor. If you stop being close with one person (for whatever reason) and you need someone else, people arent going to want to be your friend if you've been a total bitch in the past. Ok, enough of this... what I'm trying to say is..

Here, you feellike you can only trust a few people, so you confide in whoever it is you trust at any given time. you say things like "___________ was being so irritatng today. fuck, she's such a dumbass".... or "I went to ______________ with ___________" and it usually ends with "I trust you not to tell anyone" so you tell that person because you're under the impression thatyou completely trust them with the darkest, most incriminating details of your temporary 6 month life. Then of course, alliances change and trust shifts. Sometimes even if you stop being friends with someone, you can still trust them, but it gets complicated when they trust someone else. Someone you may not necessarily trust...

it's like "________ came to visit me, but _________ dosent know. Dont tell anyone ok?... I can trust you?.. I dont want the whole group talking about it" "Of course you can trust me".....Then it goes "So I was talking to _________ yesterday, she said ___________ came to visit, can you believe it? she told me not to tell anyone, but I'm telling you because i trust you, ok? she'll be really mad if she hears about it" "Oh yea yea, of course you can trust me. Wow, so _____________ really went to visit her? I wonder what they talked about?... probably feelings? haha... weird they hang out.. _______________ wouldnt be happy to hear about it" "I know right!".... Then again and again and again til the story's gone around 9 or even 18 times; sometimes it even comes back to ou completely different.

Anyway... There's no closure to this blog. Just another experience of Canada World Youth, another life lesson to learn, another thing we deal with day to day.

new friends... o_O

We've been in Ghana for just over a month now, and almost everyone has been sick in some way. Wether it be diarhea (I cant spell that word o_O) or something else, each canadian in my group has been ill here, except me. I always boasted about always being fine, I've never had trouble with the food or anything. and then BAM. I get a fucking parasite. Just like that. 4 Days, no appetite, no food, vomit pretty much everything i do consume and not being able to explain to my host mother why. In 4 days, I've lost so much weight that i can feel my ribs, my clothes dont fit proerly and the beads i wear around my waist can come of if im not carful.

I tell my counterpart i threw up, "Are you pregnant?"... "No I'm NOT (*&^%$) pregnant"..."When was the last time you were dewormed?".... "Ummmmmm... NEVER?!"

So I went to the clinic this morning, to ask for deworming treatment (which, needless to say I've never had to do before) and the nurse, who's actually really cool.... new friend of mine -Fred.. helped me. But, I have to say, I'm not sure i trust their judgment completely. They asked if I have malaria (Everything you go to the clinic for, you get treated for malaria. You have a fever = Malaria. Your throat closes up and you cant breathe = Malaria. YOu have an infection on your skin, but you said yes when they asked about headache = Malaria. You test negative for the malaria parasite, you still have malaria. If symptoms persist and the malaria treatment dosent work come back and we'll actually try to figure out what's wrong. Anyway, I insisted that i do not have malaria, and thankfully wasnt given treatment for it. Typhoid however was one of the things i got in my cocktail of treatment... I wasnt sure how to argue against it (esp considering I've been vaccinated against typhoid) so ijust took the pills but never intended to take them. Then I asked my CP to ask the nurse what they were, and then he told her it was for general infection. riiight. ok. I'l TOTALLY take those pills. I did get a deworming treatment tho, which i will take. as much as i talk about wanting to lose weight sometimes, once it actuallyhappens it freaks me out (esp considering the circumstances)....