Four walls and a keyboard: What do I see outside my window tonight?

Four walls and a keyboard

'I love talking about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.' ~ Oscar Wilde

Sunday, September 17, 2006

What do I see outside my window tonight?

Africa!!!!!!!!!!!! hahaha, Voellmecke said that a past intern did that when he first arrived in Ghana, so it seemed fitting!

It has been a whirlwind week since we left Ottawa. Let's see....on the way to Ghana we saw Vince Vaughn in the Toronto airport, no word of a lie. He is much skinnier in person. The plane ride from London to Accra was very exciting for me because I had a window seat, it was during the day, and the sky was clear, so I got to see England, France, and the Sahara desert, it was unreal.

We arrived in Accra late on the 12th, sans clothes, as my luggage didnt make it. That turned into a fiasco, actually. I was at the airport every night this week pretty much trying to get my suitcase. It finally arrived on Thursdday night, and British Airways did compensate me 35 pounds for my incovenience, not too bad!

In the meantime SEND's driver, Banahene, and his girlfriend Cassandra took me to Makola Market for clothes. Cassandra did my bargaining for me in Twi, because I would have had no clue. It was seriously crazy there! People everywhere trying to sell me stuff because I am an obruni (white person). And there was so many shops, vendors, and things to see. But the prices weren't bad- I got three shirts, three skirts a pair of capris and two pairs of underwear for about 200,000 cedis, or about 20 bucks. So it didn't break the bank!

The money has been taking some time to get used to. The other day I took out 800,000 cedis, about 80 bucks, and it came out in a huge wad. Today I paid my guesthouse bill and it was about 1,600,000 cedis, so you could imagine how long it took me to count it out in 20,000 bills, haha.

Most of the week I've been stressing about my luggage, but we've also had the opportunity to get to know people that work for SEND Foundation, and to learn more about the work we'll be doing. Mr. Kumara is the CEO of SEND, and a very interesting character. He created SEND and he is doing some very good work in the Northern Region of the COuntry, and in Liberia. We've also made friends with some people in the office like Banahene, the Driver, Noah, the watchman, and Hanny, another intern from Ghana. There's some Nigerians at our guesthouse who are taking courses so we've spent some time chatting with them.

SEND's main office is not directly in Accra, but in Tema, basically a suburb of Accra. So any business in the main city we've had to take the main highway along the coast, and if you thought you've seen congestion, holy cow it is crazy here! It's so bad that this whole market around selling thiings to people in their cars has popped up, and you'll see kids walking on the side of the road selling toilet paper and oranges.

Everyone has been very friendly and nice though, and I've been welcomed to Ghana a few times.

The weather has been extremely hot and humid, and it rained pretty much all day yesterday. Tema and Accra are right on the coast, lots of palm trees, and although we haven't had time to find the closest beach, we've had plenty of opportunity to see it when travelling into Accra. We're still in the brunt of the rainy season, but there've been some power outages because the Volta Lake is low and Ghana's power is hydro electric. So most of the day today was spent without power.

Joanie, and Nicky haha, you'll get a kick out of this. The other day we walked to a gas station/fast food restaurant to get some money and food and on the way back two guys gave us their phone numbers. And at the market I got a marriage proposal. A Canadian passport must be a powerful aphrodisiac!

What else to say, the food is good, there's a lot of chicken and rice, and chili oil, which I LOVE! The chocolate is awesome, and so is the ice cream.

Early early tomorrow morning we head out for Tamale, on a 12 hour bus ride. It is super early but it's a great opportunity to see what the rest of teh country looks like. We'll be in Tamale for a week and then I'm off to KPandai, Jeanine is off to Salaga.

I've still to figure out how to post pics but once I do i'll send them out.

Well it's late here and time for bed. Over and out!

posted by angelina @ 1:13 PM

1 Comments:

At 4:20 PM, Anonymous said…

no getting married over there