A Lot of Fun and a Little Culture Shock

Maaha!

(Good afternoon!) I am currently hanging out at the Busy Internet cafe on ring road near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, where I will soon be heading to face the throngs of people and try to buy some new shoes.

Last weekend we went on a field trip to Cape Coast and it was awesome. We started with an NGO fair, like the one in Accra, and there were a lot of cool presentations. After that we had some time to do our own thing, and Sarah and I went on an epic adventure around the city. We got thoroughly lost, and made friends with every single child in one neighbourhood, because we stopped to talk to a man outside a little resto-bar. He introduced himself as "Justice Capee" which was pretty funny, because we were walking along Capee street. He sent me an e-mail later, which said his name was Yaroo, so I think that's what he's actually called, but I'm still not sure.

 We took pictures with him and the kids. They really seemed to enjoy the cameras. We eventually found our way back to our guest house, after stopping to watch some football (soccer) on the beach, and making friends with the coach of the football team at the local Senior High School. I find it astounding the really awesome people that you can meet just walking down the street here.

Everyone talks to us when we walk around here. As obrunis, we stand out quite a bit, and mostly people are really nice. They are curious about us, and why we are here, or they want to make sure we're not lost. Part of that concern for foreigners comes from the heavy reliance on extended family groups for support here. Since they see us here alone, clearly far away from our family support groups, a lot of people feel compelled to make sure that we're okay. It's very sweet.

Sometimes standing out can be disadvantageous though. I can't count the number of times I've been proposed to just walking down the street. People ask me for money, or gifts, or food. People are always trying to sell me things. People ask me to take them to Canada if I tell them where I'm from, or America more often than not. People hiss at me all the time. Hissing and kissing noises are the usual practice for getting someone's attention, especially a woman, a customer, or a taxi. People grab my arms and put their arms around me, especially in crowded markets. It's hard sometimes to remember that it's not a big deal here, even though it sometimes feels rather aggressive. Still, I've been doing pretty well, and the easiest way to deal with it is usually just to laugh it off. Sometimes I've had to be firm with people to get them to let me go or leave me alone, but for the most part, people are just trying to get my attention.

Anyways, on Saturday we went to Kakum National Park, and it seems that the internet will be fast enough for me to upload a video or two of that. (I'll see if I can embed it, or link to it. In fact, I may go back and edit a bunch of old posts and put in some videos, if I can get them to upload. I'll let you know how that goes.) We did a canopy walk, which was awesome, and I'm very proud of myself for doing it because I'm usually terrified of heights. It was high, but I got used to it, and then it was so much fun.

We also toured the Slave Castle, which was beautiful and horrifying. The tour was really good, if a little long. There's not too much to say about it though... the building was lovely and the stories were sad.

We went out to a little bar and club on the beach. It was attached to a resort of some kind, so there were a lot of expats. The music was good, and I got to know a bunch of the other students on the trip a little better. That was pretty much our weekend; after that we just came home and did homework.

I actually got to hang out with the host family a little more this week. I went with my host mother to the "Saloon" to get her hair done, which I found absolutely hilarious. So did she, once I explained that in Canada when we say "Salon" we mean a hair place, and when we say "Saloon" we mean a bar with swinging doors and cowboys.

The lady who was doing her hair tried to teach me how to twist the little braids that she was doing, but I was incompetent at it. She also tried to teach me more Twi. She taught me some new foods, which was fun. She asked me what Canadian food was like. I always find that question difficult to answer, because there isn't a lot of really "Canadian" food that I eat on a regular basis. Mostly we eat pseudo-Italian food, and things like that. The other thing is, we don't have the kind of staple-food diet that people have here. For the most part, people rotate through banku with fish, noodles, and either rice balls or fufu with one of three or four soups. Yams or plantains with the same kinds of stews also get rotated through, but there isn't as much variety as I might see at home. They change things up by changing the kind of meat that they put in their soups and stews, but a lot of the flavours are the same. I told her the most Canadian thing I could think of was maple syrup, and she insisted that I make some for her.

I wasn't sure how to tell her that you can't just "make" maple syrup, so I just smiled and nodded.

Katie and I also made spaghetti for my host family on Friday night. We went to the Western style mall to get ingredients (and ice cream) and then came home and cooked. Our host mother helped us chop the onions, because both Katie and I are huge wusses about chopping onions, but we did the rest.

Interestingly, oregano and basil are impossible to find here. I found parsley, sage, rosemary, and black pepper, so it still mostly tasted like spaghetti at home, but no basil or oregano. I used a mix of tomato paste and tomato "puree" because I couldn't find crushed tomatoes, and it amounted to the same thing. Ground beef was easy to procure, as were the noodles themselves. Onions and garlic were a little more expensive than at home, but readily available, so that was good.

It was really funny watching the family trying to eat spaghetti. I'm pretty sure it was about as funny as it was for them watching us try to eat fufu. I taught my host mother how to twirl the noodles around a fork with a spoon, and she was very good at it, but eventually she gave up and ate it with her hands like she's used to. Despite the difficulties in eating it, the spaghetti seemed to be a big hit. It felt nice to kind of share something from home with them.

I guess the last little update I have to share is about yesterday's beach adventure. My roommate Katie, and another of our friends from the program, Nora, and I all decided that we were going to go to the beach. The beaches right near the city are typically pretty dirty, and you really can't swim at them, so we decided we'd try to go to a little resort called Bojo Beach. The entrance cost was only ten cidies, so it really wasn't too bad. The adventure was getting across the city to where the beach was.

We walked to campus, which took the usual 30 minutes, and picked a tro tro at the main gate. Tro tros are kind of like buses here. They're privately owned vans that run regular routes across the city. A trip usually costs between 50 peshwas and 1 cidi, so from about 27-53 cents give or take. We took one from campus to Circle, and then another to Kaneshi, and we were going to take another to Aplaku, the little town where Bojo Beach is, but it started to rain. It was actually quite a thing to witness. We were walking down Kaneshi, the biggest market in Accra, on a market day, and the sky started to look pretty grey. Within the span of four minutes, the street literally emptied. People were puttering all around us, rushing to get things inside or covered. After five minutes, it started to smell like rain, and a woman who was almost running past us said, "The rain is coming!" In the most dramatic voice you can imagine. Literally thirty seconds later, we saw a sheet of rain coming towards us, and we promptly picked a taxi.

Unfortunately, because of the rain, we had to ignore the rule that says "Don't get into a taxi before you've negotiated the price." So when we finally got to the beach, we got royally ripped off. I was pretty annoyed about it, but there was not much we could do, and in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that much money. He charged us forty cidies for what should have been about fifteen, but it was still only about twenty dollars Canadian. It was still better than being soaking wet and muddy.

The worst thing about rain here is definitely the mud. It's so  dusty when it's dry, and it's so muddy when it's wet. It's slippery and dangerous and red. I can see how disease and things can be exacerbated by the rainy season. The open gutters that run along all the roads get full and sometimes overflow, and puddles form on every street and sidewalk, because they're not very well drained. The puddles are still around today, despite the heat, especially in bushier areas, and they're breeding grounds for bacteria and mosquitoes. I'm really glad that we're mostly here for the dry season.

That's pretty much all I've got to report for now. Stay tuned for videos as I'm able to upload them. It may take a while, because the internet is really slow, and I need to set aside like three hours for some of them. More adventures to come. I'll keep you posted.

Tales of Terror

This week went pretty smoothly –really.

Classes have continued to be fun and interesting, even though there are stacks and stacks of readings, and the due dates for our assignments are starting to loom dangerously near overhead. The week itself was fairly uneventful.

This weekend we had our first NGO (that’s Non-Government Organization) fair, where representatives from the various organizations told us about their work and the placements available for us should we choose to work with them. One that caught my eye was called Hope for Future Generations (HFFG), but I’m trying not to make up my mind about anything until we see a few more options. There was also one called Trashy Bags, whose work you can look at and read about here, that I thought was really interesting, but I have no skill in design and/or visual art, so I wouldn’t qualify for the internship that they’re offering.

After the fair, I went with my friend Sarah to get coffee with a political sciences and archaeology (interesting combination, I know) student that I met on campus. He was really interesting to talk to. We mostly talked about politics and the upcoming election, but we also talked about the distinct lack of funding for arts at the University of Ghana. I think he may have designs on Sarah, but he might have just been fascinated by her red hair. All in all, it was a very pleasant afternoon.

We then went to the central Bank of Ghana, where we met a friend of my dad’s named Carmencita. Her driver, John, who was very friendly, picked us up from campus and showed us to the Ghana Stock Exchange, as well as the Library at the central bank. We had a nice chat with the librarian, and everyone there was very impressed with our limited knowledge of Twi.

From there we went right across the street to the Mövenpick to get some cake to have for dessert. It was completely surreal. The lobby was massive and everything was polished and beautiful. We looked around a little while Carmencita dealt with the baker. There were at least two swimming pools with beautiful terraces all around, and a poolside bar with a big screen TV, and corridors with boutiques branching off the lobby selling everything from toothbrushes to diamond necklaces. The opulence of everything came in very stark contrast to the Ghana that we’d been experiencing for the last few weeks. It was here, Carmencita told us, that she likes to have Sunday brunch, because they have very nice sushi. It was a mind-blowing experience.

After this little adventure, we went to Carmencita’s home, which was also quite extravagant. It was provided for her by her employer because of the huge difficulties associated with finding accommodation in Accra. It’s not uncommon here for landlords to demand a two or more year lease, with rent paid up front in full. Though she lives alone, with her dog Hope, she has a five bedroom home that is very tastefully furnished. She has a backup generator, and has invited Sarah and me to camp out at her place if we ever need some peace and quiet, or if our power goes out. She offered this multiple times, presumably to convince us that she was being sincere and not just being polite. She is such a wonderfully kind woman, I am so happy to have her as a contact here in Accra. We had dinner with her and one of her friends, Alberta, who works at the Bank of Ghana’s IMF (International Monetary Fund) liaison desk. She was so friendly; it was really a great time having dinner with them. We were talking and laughing and eating for hours.

 And the cake was absolutely heavenly. It was a chocolate mousse cake. Sweets can be very hard to find in Ghana, as most Ghanaians don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and dairy products are rare and expensive, due to problems with refrigeration given the frequent power outages. Mostly people have little cans of condensed milk that they put in tea, coffee (of the instant variety that is almost exclusively available), porridge, and milo. Milo is a kind of chocolate-type beverage, very similar to ovaltine, which can be had hot or cold. I quite like it. Anyway, the whole evening felt like a little vacation from real life.

So, of course, when we came back, real life had to make up for lost time.

On Saturday morning, I was gently woken by the gospel music playing from somewhere outside my window at the leisurely hour of 4:00AM at a soothing billion and a half decibels. This was perfectly acceptable, of course, because anyone who wasn’t already in a Mosque at that time was both awake and devoutly Christian anyways, except for Katie and I. I lay in bed and experienced a little bit of what they call “obruni rage” for a few hours.

“Obruni” is a Twi word that literally translates to “stranger,” but can be used to address any white (or Asian, or otherwise non-Ghanaian-looking) person. I’m not exactly sure what the social tone of this word is. I know it’s perfectly acceptable for children to call me this, and I am sometimes addressed as Obruni by the elderly as well, but as far as I can tell, it’s not really okay for my peers to call me this unless they are my friends and are clearly joking around.

“Obruni rage” is used to reference symptoms of culture shock that everyone experiences when they more to a new place, specifically the frustration and irrational anger that’s sometimes felt when things feel very foreign. Certainly, the noise etiquette of this neighbourhood was extremely frustrating and foreign at 4:00 that morning. Finally, with the combination of earplugs that I saved from the flight over and my huge pink Skullcrusher headphones I was able to block out the music enough to fall back asleep, though even then it was still audible.

When we got up, we had breakfast and did laundry, which seems to be the routine for Saturday mornings. While we were doing our laundry, my youngest host-brother, Nana, was playing in the little yard around us. I use “yard” to refer to the concrete courtyard that connects the three houses in our family compound, all enclosed by the main gate. Somehow in his playing, Nana took a bit of a tumble. I didn’t see it, I just heard the thunk as he fell. He seemed to be okay, though there was some confusion for a while. He managed to tear open a pretty serious gash on his big toe, but otherwise appeared to be fine. Automatically, I went to get my first aid kit, and after Auntie had cleaned the cut with some kind of chemical that I didn’t recognize, I offered some Polysporin and one of the fun fingertip band-aids that I brought with me.

Now, I’m not too squeamish when it comes to blood and gore. Looking at the gash didn’t bother me. Having to touch the wound as I applied the polysporin didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that Nana, as two year olds do, was screaming and struggling the whole time that I was trying to help. It was heartbreaking for me, as I am so seldom around small children, but with the way he was twitching I was really scared that I was going to accidentally push the torn skin back as I dabbed on the polysporin. It was fairly traumatizing. Luckily, Auntie (as my host-mother likes to be called) was holding Nana’s foot while I put on the band-aid.

Needless to say, that was a rather stressful situation for me.

My next tale of terror actually happened this morning while I was having my shower. The worst things always happen in the shower. I had just started washing my hair, and was generally minding my own business, when I felt something on my leg. At first, I thought it was a hair that just felt like it was moving because of the water flow. Unfortunately, when that is the case, it’s a downward movement, not an upward movement. In the span of about half a second I came to this conclusion, looked down, squealed, and brushed a centipede/millipede kind of bug that was about four inches long, off of my calf.

Luckily, at this point most of the family had gone to church, so it was only Katie who heard my little scream of horror and subsequent jibblies. Now, I’m not really fond of insect life, especially when it’s inside, but I’m usually pretty good at keeping my voice down when I see a bug, and I can generally deal with them myself, if I have to, with minimal flipping-out. For example, a few days ago at dinner, there was a spider on the wall, whom I have named Polyp. This is because the spider was (including legs) about the size of a tennis ball, and looked almost exactly like the nasty exploding squid monster things called Polyps from Gears of War 3. I didn’t even start when I saw this spider, and continued to eat my dinner in peace, watching it as it moved back and forth on the wall, each of us just minding our own business.  

This Polyp is just a baby. It was only about the size of my thumb.

There is one distinct exception to this rule, however, and that is when I’m in the shower. I don’t know why, exactly, but it always seems so much more horrific when there is a bug in the shower. Consequently, if I do find a bug in my house, it always seems to be when I’m in the shower. They always seem to come after me when I’m naked and vulnerable. It’s like they stake the place out just to pounce on me.

Anyway, after jumping out of the shower (and my skin), I managed to use my shoe to squash it and the cup that we shower with to wash the thing down the drain. After some commiseration and sympathy from Katie, I resumed my shower, cursing vehemently.

This right here is a monster just like the millipede that attacked me in the shower. This was actually taken in the classroom at the Institute of African Studies, but it's roughly the same size and shape. 

Again, luckily, I was so freaked out by this course of events that I had my eye on the drain, because the nasty thing crawled up out of the drain again. Apparently, although it was squashed, it was not dead. So, of course, I freaked out once again, and pounded it into mush with my shoe. When it was no longer recognizable as anything resembling a living organism, I once again washed the wretched mush down the drain.

This occurred at about seven this morning, and I am still freaking out a little bit.

Hopefully I’ll get over this, and I’ll be able to feel safe in my shower again. For now though, I’ve got my head on a swivel the whole time. 

I've finally given in and made my way to the biggest internet cafe in Accra: Busy Internet. It is air conditioned, and nice, and it costs roughly a dollar for an hour of reliable internet. It's not the fastest internet in the world, but it's consistent, which is a godsend after fighting with my little expresso internet stick day in and day out. It works on campus fairly well, but almost never connects to the internet for more than half a second when I'm in my room. It's extremely frustrating. 

Anyway, I have two papers due every week for the next three weeks that desperately need my attention. I'll try to get a good chunk of them due today so that I can get back to my adventures. As always, I'll keep you posted!

A New Home

We’ve just moved into our homestays, and I am excited and scared. My host family seems really nice. I’m really getting along well with my host siblings, who are helping to teach me Twi. This is especially important because my host mother and father don’t speak very much English. This may prove to be problematic later on, but we’ll see. As far as I can tell, there are five children living in this house with us, but I’m not entirely sure. Nana is the youngest, and he’s probably around one or two. The next one is Felix (pronounced Fellix) who’s probably around ten or eleven. Then there’s Gideon, whom my roommate and I are not entirely sure lives in this house. He eats with us and always seems to be around, but sometimes he gets called away by other community members and doesn’t come back for extended periods. Anyways, he told me he was fifteen, but he looks about twelve or thirteen. He’s in Junior Secondary II, equivalent to eighth grade for us. Then there’s Benedicta, shortened to Bene, who’s probably about fourteen, and Mary who goes to work most days, though I don’t know where, and looks to be sixteen or seventeen.

I’m paired up with another girl from my program, Katie, and our room is blue. We have our own bathroom in our room, which consists of a toilet and a bucket shower area. The whole thing is maybe six feet long and three feet wide, but it is very clean, and there is a big vat of water for us to fill our bucket with right outside. I am happy. They have been feeding us mostly semi-familiar food. For instance, the first night we got here we had rice and ramen noodles and chicken in a mildly spicy red sauce, that I can only guess is tomato based. We’ve since had oatmeal and porridge (which is kind of like cream of wheat but made from maize) yams and fish in a spicy red sauce with shredded vegetables in it, and groundnut (peanut) soup with rice balls. We helped “drive” the rice for the rice balls: a process that involves mashing the rice into a paste with a wooden paddle, in a pot that is tilted and braced by iron rods that hook onto the handles of the pot. Whoever is driving then plants their feet on the rods to steady the pot while they mash the rice, which is a rather violent and rigorous process, I found. The paste is then rolled around in a damp bowl until it forms a lump of similar size and shape to the fufu that we've had, and it is consumed in the same manner.

When I asked to help make dinner today, my host mother said that on the weekend she would take us to the market to get ingredients and then together we would cook dinner. I am very excited. I don’t know what we’ll make, but if it’s anything like the rice balls today, it will be an adventure. I told her that one day I would get the ingredients and make spaghetti. I think I’ll be able to get everything I need for it. I might have to crush the tomatoes myself, and I don’t know what the situation for garlic and spices will be, but I know that pasta and tomatoes and onions are available here, so I’ll figure out the rest as I go. There’s a western style grocery store not far from my house that I’ll check out and try to compile the ingredients. I don’t know when I’ll do that though, because after class I’ve been pretty busy with homework and socializing. The workload hasn’t been too bad yet, but I have six assignments to complete in the next two months, plus a very sizable stack of readings, and the October exams feel like they’re just around the corner. Still, I’m determined to make time to hang out with my host family and make the most of this experience.

On our first day, we went out to the community sports pitch after dinner and played volleyball (kind of) with a bunch of the kids there. There were a few young men around our age who seemed to be leading the activity, and a bunch of girls around 14-20, and a few boys that were mostly younger. I was actually pretty good, and it was a lot of fun. Katie did her best, and it was hilarious, but she had fun too. Mostly our evening activities with the family involve little Twi teaching sessions with various family members. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and I think I’m actually starting to pick things up.

Our walk to school is pretty treacherous. We technically don't have to take the dangerous route by the open gutter (that I think used to be a natural waterway, and now provides food for many of the neighbourhood chickens) but it shaves about 10 minutes off our already 35 minute long walk to school, and our host family would judge us if we took the long way.

At first I was kind of nervous about this living situation, just because communication with my host family might be really hard, but at the same time Katie and I are learning more Twi, and faster, than just about anyone else. Maybe we’ll actually be able to speak more than just a few words in every few sentences.

There’s always more to say, but I think I’ll cut it short for now. I still have a lot of reading to do for tomorrow. On Friday we have a field trip to the Eastern Region, so I’m sure there will be lots to say about that. As always, I’ll keep you posted. 

A lot of Adjusting

This has been a very eventful week.

Today we went to the Botanical Gardens. It was really beautiful and nice and cool, which was so refreshing. I tried really hard not to freak out over the insect life, including both red and black ants that reached about two inches in length. I was not a huge fan. Still, it was really need to see the trees here. There were cacao and shea butter trees, and all kinds of palms. Some of the palm trees were planted by the British one hundred and seventeen years ago when they started the gardens.

Earlier in the week we toured Accra a bit and saw some major landmarks including the fastest internet cafe in the area, the Independence Square, the big traffic circle named after the late first President with the huge market growing out of it, and the area called Osu, where most of the western style stores and things are located. For those of you keeping score at home, there is in fact no McDonald's in Ghana. There is, however, a KFC in Osu. I didn't really exercise my haggling skills when I bought a purse, that I desperately needed, and three yards of fabric to have a dress made out of, but Rafka told me I got a decent price. The Ghanaian students in the program with us are Rafka, Phebe (yes, it's spelled without an "o") Angel, Hawawu, and Rockson. So far I've been closest with Phebe, but I hope that the others will open up as time goes on.

We also did a scavenger hunt in Medina and East Legon to get us familiar with the neighbourhoods that we'll be doing our homestays. I was officially the first of us to trip on the uneven ground and fall on all fours. Luckily, I did not fall into the gutter. It was extremely embarrassing, but I tried to laugh it off. Luckily, no one outside our group seemed to witness it. Still, the tour was a lot of fun, and I tried fufu for the first time. It's kind of a gelatinous glob of pounded cassava and plantain that sits in a bowl of soup. The way it is eaten is by using the fingers of the left hand to pull a chunk of fufu off, make a kind of bowl shape in it with the thumb, dunking it in the soup, and then swallowing it whole. I was brave enough to try this practice, and it was surprisingly delicious. I had it with groundnut (peanut) soup that was spicy, but in a sort of delayed way, and had chunks of chicken in it. It was really really good. I think it may become my comfort food here in Ghana.

I find I've been adjusting decently to the food. I mean, I like almost everything I've eaten, but I still crave familiar things like spaghetti, and dairy products. I find I've been sleeping a lot, which is a pretty common symptom of culture shock. I went to bed at about 6:00PM last night, but I got up again at 6:00AM. "The early bird gets the water" seems to be the rule of thumb here at the student hostel. I really don't mind bucket showers; they feel nice and aren't too hard once you get the hang of them. I don't even mind the trek down to the courtyard (when the taps are working) or across the parking lot to the water tankard (when they are not) to get water. What I mind is the trek back across the parking lot and/or up five flights of stairs with the water in order to have my shower every morning. This is necessary to shower, flush the toilet, and do laundry. I'm not really a fan.

I filmed a quick tour of my room at the student hostel with my cute little camcorder, so you can watch that here, if you like!

But tomorrow we'll be moving to our homestays and there will be a whole new set of adventures to tackle. I am very excited to meet my host family, and to have a place to call home for a while. As always, I will keep you posted!