Heres a post I wrote a week ago on my laptop.

Today is Tuesday, December 12th, the day my volunteer project with Projects Abroad is officially up, the day marked on my flight itinerary for me to leave. But I'm still here! and I'm gonna stay here! I talked to KLM, and they said 'its ok that you dont want to leave December 12th, you just come back here and tell us when you figure out exactly when you would like to go.' No charge, no rules to follow, Dutch airlines are very nice to students.
Right now I am typing on my laptop in the bed of my 'peculiar friend' Katri-leena. She broke up with me a few weeks ago, but chooses to torture me by lying in bed with me all day. Shes talking about Finland and her friends and her plans for the future, and thats nice, but I have a hard time concentrating when you're absent-mindedly running your hands around my stomach and my back. Ahh! It is not fine, as people say here. Still, I appreciate her and her roomate Mari very much. Collectively, they are known as 'Finland' to me and my Projects Abroad volunteer friends. If I'm going to hang out with them, I'm going to hang out with 'Finland', if I'm going to sleep at their house, I'm going to sleep at 'Finland'.
Their room is in the bottom floor of a story building. They have one room, some boys from Benin here learning English have another, and some men from Nigeria live in the last one. The kitchen and bathroom are shared, as is the electric hot plate where we make our porridge in the morning. 'Finland' is something of a meeting house for neighborhood friends, they're always having visitors over. The two most common guests are Edmond and Richard. Edmond is a very handsome, very muscular young man who works for his older brother at a local fried rice joint called Papa Nesto's. They are very cheap and always go out of there way to make dishes palatable for vegetarians, that is, Katti and Mari and I. Edmond's father was a very famous musician in Ghana, a sort of big band television performer like Ricky Ricardo. I'm sure I could make a more apt comparison to someone else, but damn!, Im only 18. Anyway, Edmond is very poor now, works like a dog, shares a bed with his senior brother, and is always in good spirits. He is head over heels in love with Mari, who likes him back but unfortunately cannot return his advances because she has a boyfriend back in Finland. But Edmond never seems to let this get him down, and is often over at the girls house entertaining them with his knowledge of funny African customs and his musical and dramatic talents.
Richard is as skinny as Edmond is built, and likes music and acting even more. He is a born entertainer, always beginning a freestyle rap in his native tongue Twi or telling weird jokes or imitating people he has met. By day he works at a curtain shop, but business is slow, and he dreams of becoming a hip-life rapper. He has a gig at a festival soon, which he got by submitting his friends album. So now he has to go there and pretend to be his friend! It will be hard, because his friends voice is a very deep baritone. But I bet he can pull it off, or I at least hope he can. As far as I can tell, he shares a skinny bed with two other men.
The people here will never cease to amaze me in how resilient they are in their poverty, and how little they let it affect their happiness. Of course, they hope for more, but they know the importance of being happy now. And I am going to have to learn from them. I never had to share a bed in my life in America. But, for the next three months, or however long I stay here, I will be dependent on the kindness and sharing spirit of others. I will be sleeping with my drumming instructor in Menkassim, I will be sleeping with Katti and Mari in Finland (pure deliscious torture, lying between two undressed girls), I will be sleeping with my friends Orlando and Siebe at their respective houses, and I will probably be reliant on the kindness of others. I am excited and nervous at the prospect of leading such a itinerant existence. I will be living out of my bag, and the future is uncertain except that I know it will never stop coming on and on and has to taken used. And, if things get too hard, I will just get on a plane back home. Not exactly Down and Out in Paris and London, but still uncertain enough to keep me on my toes.
Well, the future beckons! I have to catch a tro-tro to Menkassim. I'll write from there.