Easter Weekend

I hope everyone had a very nice Easter weekend. It was one of the nicer weekends I’ve had. My roommate was out of town for a church thing, so I had a room to myself for a few days, which was very relaxing. Friday and Saturday were quiet without much worth noting, except the fact that it was nice to be with friends without anything to worry about.
Sunday was such a nice morning though. A few friends and I took advantage of the empty building (everyone was either traveling or at church all day) and made a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, pastries bought the night before, coffee, juice and milk (made from milk powder of course, which is actually quite good after being without milk for 3 months). We then boiled some eggs and spent the afternoon painting them and playing cards. One of my friends had brought a bag of jelly beans from home that she had saved until now, so we enjoyed a little sugar-fix which none of us has had since January.
Monday was also fun. (The University of Ghana does not hold lectures Good Friday or Easter Monday, so it was a very long weekend.) A few of us volunteer at an orphanage a little ways from campus called M’adamfo Paa, and we went to help with an Easter party there on Monday. We helped chop vegetables to make a giant pot of jollof rice, and as it was cooking, it began to rain so much. The rain made everything muddy and wet, but also cooled the air. After we served lunch to the 30 children, and ate some ourselves, everyone began dancing in the rain and the puddles to music blasting from a stereo in one of the buildings. It was so fun. I’m not much of a dancer, but you wouldn’t believe how these children can move. Ghanaians just grow up dancing and you can’t stop them from moving whenever there’s music on. It was so cool to be a part of the group. I definitely feel that the Ghanaians on campus are much different than Ghanaians I’ve met anywhere else. On campus, they do not talk to me and are not nearly as welcoming and friendly and warm as everywhere else. Everyone at the M’adamfo Paa was so nice and such a joy to be around… I feel alienated on campus. For anyone planning to study abroad here: don’t get discouraged if the students on campus don’t welcome you with open arms… but make sure to find something to do off campus so you can meet some really awesome people. They are out there, you just have to go find them.

I suppose I should wrap this up, but I will say that this is my last week of classes. Then we have a “revision week” and then 3 weeks for finals. That means I only have 5 weeks left. I feel like I’ve come a long way since January and I will be so happy to go home, but I will be a little sad to leave Ghana. It was sometimes rough getting to this point, but I’m so glad I came.

Photos From Kumasi

Sad news... I've been trying to upload photos from last weekend, but I haven't been able to find an internet connection that is fast enough to handle it.

So, anyone who wants to see pictures from it will have to ask once I'm home (or check Facebook because I will probably try to put most of them up there once I'm back).

So sorry!

Kumasi Weekend

The weeks are flying by now, even though the days sometimes seem to drag on…

Last weekend was one of the best I’ve had since coming here. CIEE took us on a trip to Kumasi, which is a major city in Ghana. It is the city where the king of the Asante empire lives, and the home of Adinkra and Kente cloth. Our first stop on Saturday was to an Adinkra village, where they make traditional Adinkra cloth. Adinkra symbols are traditional symbols, and they can portray historical events, human behavior and attitudes, animal behavior, and some simply signify the shapes of specific objects. There are 60-100 different symbols, which can mean anything from strength and diligence to wisdom and defiance. We were shown how they make permanent dye from only the bark of a specific tree and water.
Then we went to a Kente cloth village. Kente cloth is traditional hand-woven cloth that is quite expensive and symbolic. It is made of thin woven strips that are sewn together to make larger pieces of cloth. The patterns each symbolize something.
These villages were interesting, but quite difficult to enjoy because the sellers there were so aggressive. It made for a really stressful experience.

We stayed at the nicest hotel I’ve ever seen – The Golden Tulip. Ghana’s football (soccer) team, The Black Stars, was also staying there. That was insane.

On Sunday, we began by visiting the palace and museum of the Asante king. It was a very cool place – there were peacocks in the yard! I learned some interesting things. The matrilineal inheritance of the Asante people was finally explained to me… it had never really made sense before. (Basically, inheritance comes from the mother’s brother. So, if I was an Asante and I had children, those children would inherit from Jack. And my husband would pass his inheritance to his sister’s children, not his own. This is awesome because it gives women much more sway in the family and makes female children desirable.)
After the museum, we went to a Black Stars game! That was one of the best, most fun things I’ve done in Ghana. A match is only 90 minutes, but we got there 3 hours before its start, and the crowd was so much fun. For the entire 5 hours we were there, the people never stopped dancing and singing and cheering. It was such an amazing experience. Ghana won against Benin: 1-0. The only goal was scored in the very first minutes of the game. But the rest of it was still exciting; the crowd made it so awesome.

Well I should be going to get dinner now, so I should be wrapping this up. I will just finish by saying that I recommend going to see a football game in Africa (however make sure to choose a peaceful/safe country – the Cote d’Ivoire game was such a tragedy).


Also, photos of this trip will be forthcoming...

Beauty and the Beast (University of Ghana edition)

Plays/musicals here are usually a theatre student's final project. Each senior in the School of Performing Arts has to choose a show and put it on as their final project. So, there is at least one show every weekend, sometimes 2. I was considering being in Beauty & the Beast at the beginning, but the practices were at 6am and often twice a day and that was just too much for me. Anyway, the show was so amazing. I mean, the mics didn't usually work and the musical accompaniment (NOT an orchestra) was often too loud and there were technical things wrong like that. But the acting was good and the audience was so funny. Also the costumes were ridiculous – in a good way. There's this crazy thing here, where no one publicly shows affection, so when Belle and the beast kiss at the end after he's transformed, the audience lost their minds. Like, they were screaming and jumping out of their seats and waving their arms. And throughout the whole show, audience members were making comments to the players on stage. One guy behind me kept saying "Oh he's a romantic beast!" It was so funny. I think that if I didn't know the plot/all the words, I would have been frustrated because with the poor microphones and audience yelling and the accents, I would have missed so much. It was just so funny to see how everyone reacted to the show. The audience LOVED IT. They cheered so much at the end.

Some Thoughts Today...

There’s a practice here that I find somewhat rude and definitely uncomfortable. Sometimes, when I’m sitting in my room doing whatever, someone will knock at the door. When I answer it, in will come a complete stranger with a bag of shirts or jewelry or shoes or something like that. She will then proceed to spread out all the items in the bag around the room or on my bed and then tell me how nice it all is and how much it costs. Then when I decline, as I usually do – because I have no need for "nice earrings…from the UK!" – the woman will look offended and pack all her stuff back up and leave. But it just baffles me because 1) I did not ask you to come here and sell me anything; and 2) who goes in someone’s room and expects the inhabitants to buy from them?

No one else seems to think this is weird, and my roommate/her friends crowd around and shop from the piles on the bed. I am firmly of the culture in which I go to a store when I want something and shop without being pestered and make my decision and pay. I’m just not sure how to handle this situation without offending the woman…

Mole National Game Reserve (+ epic bus ride)

It’s been a while since my last entry, so it’s time for another…

This weekend, I and 3 friends took a crazy trip to Mole (pronounced Mol-ay) National Game Reserve with the Computer Science Department here at the University of Ghana. This was our first trip with a student-organized group, and I’ll just say that “organized” is a flexible term.

The itinerary is as follows:

Meet Thursday at 3:30pm so the bus can depart at 4:30.

Drive 12-14 hours and arrive at Mole early Friday morning.

Tour the park, see elephants, relax for a bit.

Drive back later Friday and get back to the university early Saturday.

So, this means 2 nights on an air-conditioned bus for a few hours at the park. But it was only 35 cedis for the trip and snacks and a meal.

Well, knowing that Ghanaians are typically running late anyway, we arrived at the meeting spot at 4 (instead of 3:30). THE BUS LEFT AT 8:30pm. So, we waited for over 4 hours for that bus to go. The bus was there on time, but the student “organization” had to send someone out to get food for our meal the next day, and it took so so long thanks to Accra’s notorious traffic. There were a handful of us “oburonis” who had been there since 4, and we were all very angry, especially since many of the African students didn’t show up until 6:30pm. Obviously, no one had gotten the message out to us that we were leaving significantly later than originally planned.

So, we ranted that if the food didn’t get here by 8, we were going to demand our money back. (They say the best time to see elephants and other animals is very early in the morning, and at this rate, we wouldn’t get there until at least late morning, and we were not about to take a 14 hour bus ride and then NOT see any elephants.)

The food got there at 7:55 (no lie) and we piled on the bus and pulled out shortly thereafter.

The ride was a fiasco… it was the middle of the night, and the TVs were blasting these epic Ghanaian 4-part soap opera films at top volume and students were standing in the aisles and shouting to talk to each other. It was crazy. My friends and I were so confused why all these people were not trying to get some sleep. The “bathroom stops” were generally just on the side of the road, or one memorable time at a gas station with a “female urinal.” That is not something I’d like to repeat.

The last two hours of the ride were on the bumpiest road I have ever been on in my life. Looking around, you could see everyone’s faces shaking and the windows sounded like they would break because they were shaking so much. Needless to say, there was no sleeping on that portion of the trip.

When we finally got to Mole, it was great. The food they gave us (that we waited 4 hours for) was too spicy for me, but we had brought some bread, so I was ok. We hung out for a bit, and then took a tour of the park. We saw some monkeys in a tree… but only at a distance because our group of 50 could not seem to stay quiet, so we didn’t see as many animals as I think we could have. We saw some kind of antelope and warthogs. Then, finally, we saw elephants! (The picture isn't a very good one of me... but there's an elephant!) They were behind some trees most of the time, so they weren’t right in front of us, but they were at a water hole, bathing themselves and just being elephants. It was so cool. I would love to go back there with significantly fewer people.

The ride back was better, but with a few unplanned stops. One stop at Larabanga (which was on the way), to see the “natural-built mosque.” It is said that one day, the villagers woke up and this mosque was just there. The village was like nothing I’ve ever seen. It was mostly mud huts with grass-thatch roofs. When we got out of the bus, the children swarmed the oburonis (of course) and we all went to take pictures of the mosque.

Our second stop was at Kintampo Falls. The falls were very scenic, but since Friday was Ghana’s Independence Day, it was so crowded.

Overall, it was a pretty cool trip, even though the “organization” was not exactly what I’m used to, and the bus ride was very long. If we try to make it back to Mole – there is a hippo sanctuary near there – we will be spending much more time there, so that hopefully, we have more time in Mole than on the bus.

Shai Hills Resourse Reserve

This weekend, I and 3 friends took a trip to Shai Hills Resource Reserve. I’m not entirely sure how far it is from campus, since it took us about 3 hours to get there and 1 ½ hours to get back. We received directions Saturday morning from the front desk man in our building, who basically said:

Take a trotro to Madina, then one to Dodowa, then another to Doryumu. And from there, walk to the hotel.

From campus to Madina was fine. Madina to Dodowa was fine. Then we ran into some problems… the only tro in Dodowa took us to Ashaiman, where we were directed to a tro that would take us to Doryumu.
This extra leg (from Dodowa to Ashaiman) was a long trip in the wrong direction, that we backtracked later on the way to our destination. Granted, it was somewhere around 80 cents each and an hour of our time – we hadn’t planned anything else that day – so it wasn’t really a problem.
Upon arrival, we got a double room for all 4 of us for 34.50 cedis. (The beds were put together, and we slept horizontally… does that make sense?) We spent the afternoon/evening relaxing in the air conditioning – luxury! – and were asleep by 10pm.

The next morning, we woke at 5:30am and left for the reserve once the sun had risen at 6. We had read in the guidebook that the best time to see animals was early in the morning, so we made our way down the long road to the reserve. There, we saw baboons and took a long tour that ended at a bat cave. The baboons we saw were right at the entrance. The guide said that they were almost like domesticated animals because they had gotten used to eating food from visitors. There were others in the reserve, though, that stayed far away and didn't approach us. It was very cool. I’m so glad we went because it was so nice to go somewhere without 40 other American students. It also gave us a feeling of accomplishment because we did this whole trip on our own (except for the bad directions from the guy at our front desk).

Update re: Terrible Day

The re-registering thing has (hopefully) been resolved.
My friend from my Tuesday morning class went with me to re-register and was such a huge help. She’s originally from Boston, but was in the northern part of Ghana over the summer, volunteering at an orphanage, and has come back for her final semester of university. She is so comfortable here, and has mastered how to talk to people and get things done. Plus, when we were told to wait an hour until everyone was back from lunch, it was so nice to be able to talk to her to pass the time.

So, she helped me maneuver the re-registering process and that ended well. Today, the woman from the IPO said I am in the system now, so everything should be fine.

I still haven’t gotten my mail (I think Thursday I may venture out).

And I still haven’t gotten my history readings, but I’m just going to be patient with that and keep checking, but not really expecting it. That should relieve a lot of my stress.

I really just need to learn how to let go and accept the fact that there is very little I can control here.

Sometimes, Things Get Rough...

Today was one of the most frustrating days I’ve had since coming here. I’ve been sad and homesick sometimes, but this was the first time I’ve just been angry and felt out of control.

1. I’ve been trying to obtain a packet of readings for my history class since last week. It was supposed to be ready (copied and bound) by Wednesday, so I went there that afternoon, and the readings weren’t ready. I went back this morning (because we were having an open-book test at my 9:30am class) at 8am and was told that they were out and I should come back in the afternoon. Luckily, the test didn’t happen because not enough people had been able to get the readings.
2. I went to the CIEE office today to see if the package my parents sent had come yet. I got a slip of paper that said to go the post office in Accra to retrieve it.
3. While in the CIEE office, one of the women who works there informed me that I (and 2 others in our group) are not actually registered with the University of Ghana and do not exist in the computer system. The International Programmes Office had told her that day. And I have until Wednesday to re-register. This process involves going to the Registry building (which has to be like a 40 minute walk from my room, UPHILL) and finding a specific woman and telling her that I need to be re-registered. I’m not sure what “re-registering” includes or how long it will take. But, then I have to walk BACK to the other side of campus near my room to the International Programmes Office to tell a woman there that I’m now re-registered.

So, after all this news, I went back to the History Department to pick up the readings around 3pm. I asked the woman in office if I could get the readings for my class. And she mumbled something, and I asked her to repeat it. She said that the man who does that isn’t in and could I go and come back. “What time?” I asked. And she said in 30 minutes. So I just walked out and had a little breakdown outside the office, out of frustration and disbelief that things which should be so easy are so difficult. I walked to the bank to get 1 cedi bills in exchange for my 10s (since no one ever has change, it’s easier to pay for things with 1s). I made my way back to the History Department, and the man was in, and he had me put my name on a list to get the readings and told me to come back tomorrow to pick them up.

This whole combination of things happened to me today, and tomorrow I will tackle the re-registering process (Also, I’m not sure how this happened, since I registered a month ago with the rest of my 45-person group and got an ID card and everything.) and hopefully get my history packet. Then, I think Wednesday, or shortly thereafter, I’m going to venture to the post office.

I think there are some social rules with which I am not familiar. This whole “run-around” thing is bringing me down, but I wonder if there is anything I can do to make things run more smoothly. I’m trying not to take it personally, but it sometimes feels like since I’m a foreigner, people are not trying to help me. But I’m sure I’m just frustrated and that’s not really the case. These things should be so easy to do though! I’m just having trouble understanding why they are so difficult and taking so long.

Also there’s no water today.

Belated Photos from Cape Coast Trip

Sorry, the internet has not been fast enough to upload pictures this week, but I'm going to give it another try tonight...



A view from the Canopy Walk in Kakum National Park. (You can see the rope bridge in the middle.)


A few of the girls in my group helping the fishermen pull in their net.

View of the ocean from Cape Coast Castle.

Cape Coast Weekend Trip

Last night, I came back to my first water outage. I don’t know if that’s the right phrase, but when I returned to my building, it was to find that there was no running water. So, I filled a bucket from the tanks outside and used that to flush the toilet and take a bucket-bath. It’s surprising the small amount of water that is really necessary to bathe. Running water is one thing I will not take for granted again (to be added to the previous list).

In other news, CIEE took us on a trip to Cape Coast this weekend. On Saturday, we left campus at 6:30am aboard a very fancy bus. Cape Coast is so beautiful, with coconut-tree-lined beaches and magnificent ocean views. We saw a group of fishermen pulling in their net, and they let us help them for a few minutes. To do this, they have a rope that goes out to sea, and you can’t see where it ends. There are about 10 of them, singing and clapping a rhythm, and they pull the rope every few beats. Literally, they pull in the net an inch at a time. The rope is wrapped once around the trunk of a coconut tree and some men are sitting on the ground, keeping it tight around the tree after each pull so that the net won’t pull the other men out to sea. My hands were sore after only a few minutes, and they told us that it would take another 3 hours or so before it is completely pulled in.

Saturday, we went to Cape Coast Castle, which was where Europeans kept African slaves before shipping them off to Europe and the Americas. It was a sobering experience, and the place was so hard to see. There was such beauty there, but there was such cruelty as well. We went on a tour which took us into the dungeons for men and for women. Directly above the men’s dungeon was the castle’s chapel. The dungeons were crowded, dark and poorly ventilated. There was also no sewage system except trenches in the floor and a box. We also saw the “Door of No Return” which opens up to the sea. Slaves were led through tunnels to this door, and then they were loaded on ships and sent across the Atlantic Ocean. Seeing this place was a difficult experience for me, and I only wonder what people today can do to rectify the injustices of the past and make sure they aren’t repeated in the future.

On Sunday, we went to Kakum National Park, and I saw my first rainforest. We went on the “canopy walk,” which involves rope bridges between trees, high up in the rainforest canopy. It was amazing. I’d like to go back with a smaller group of people because 50 students can be pretty loud. We didn’t see much wildlife, but perhaps we would with fewer people. It’s about 3 ½ hours from campus, so some of us could plausibly go as a day trip.

Today, it’s back to classes for me, and running water.

A Few Things I'm Thankful For Now...

I know it’s only Groundhog Day, but I thought I’d make a posting about some things I’ve taken for granted that this trip has made me thankful for.


Washing machines
To be sure, there is something therapeutic about taking a few hours on Sunday to wash your clothes by hand. You get to know them a lot better. But it is HARD… So hard to get them clean and then to get all the soap out.

Reliable 24/7 electricity
I was basically without electricity in my room the whole weekend (but it came on for Saturday night and then turned off again Sunday morning). This has made me thankful for a whole host of other things – including air conditioning and showers with the light on and refrigerators – but they all come of the availability of constant electricity.

Blending in
On campus, it’s not so bad. But when my friends from the program and I go anywhere else, we stick out so much. I’ve been called “oburoni!” (which means “white person”), “white lady!” “Allison!” and some other random girls’ names, just while walking down the street. Men seem to call us by whatever girl’s name they can think of, even when it’s definitely not right. When children should “oburoni,” it’s pretty cute – they just want to wave at us. But when it’s adults, it gets old. I just feel it’s so ironic that generally, at home, I try to find unique clothing and haircuts and whatever to look different, and here, all I’d really like is to go somewhere and get no attention.

Being busy
There is so much downtime here, and I find myself needing something to do. I went to the first rehearsal of Beauty and the Beast today on campus as an attempt to alleviate my free-time problem. I’m so used to being busy all the time at home, and now I just wish I could occupy my time better, but there really isn’t that much to do between classes, or after dark (since we can’t go out alone, I always need to have someone willing to go with me to do anything after 6pm).

Knowing the rules
We always joke that there’s nothing that we can really do to make ourselves more awkward than we already are. But it’s so frustrating to know that there are social rules and expectations that are not the same as the ones with which I’m familiar. And no one will explicitly tell me those rules, so I just have to stumble around and mess it up until I figure it out. Until you have to leave the place where you’ve always lived, you never think about those rules, but getting around is so difficult without then.

Cheese (milk in general)
There is no milk here! Only at the western grocery store, and it’s terribly expensive. But more than milk, I miss cheese. Mac and cheese. Grilled cheese sandwiches. Quesadillas. Cheddar cheese. Cheese and crackers. Cheesesteaks. So many foods with cheese that I love. I don’t think I could have ever imagined a place without cheese. All there is is Laughing Cow cheese – the spreadable kind – that I usually get on my egg sandwich. (An egg sandwich costs .60, but with cheese, it’s 1.00, so cheese is somewhat of an expense.)


Those of you with all these things… be thankful! You don’t what you’ll miss until you no longer have it. In the meantime, I’m enjoying “sweet bread,” which is like white bread, but sweeter. And a suntan. And plantains. And papaya. And the insanity of riding trotros. And church/a rooster outside my window at 5:30am… except that one not so much. But really, there are some very nice people here, and I’m enjoying getting lunch for the equivalent of $1.

So, there are ups and downs, but I expect to learn a lot more about myself from this experience…

Aburi Trip

Yesterday was our CIEE trip to Aburi. First, we went to a bead-making village and saw how they make glass beads. This involves smashing glass bottles into powder and mixing the glass powder with powder dye. The powder is put into a mold and then into an oven. Once cool, the beads are hand-painted.


Our second stop was at a wood-carving village, which had about 600 people carving and selling items. It was really cool, but very overwhelming with everyone trying to get you to come into their little stalls to look at/buy the carved things. Each one kind of had the same stuff, and there were just so many of them.

The final stop was the Aburi Botanical Gardens. It was such a relaxing place with amazing, huge trees. There were all kinds of plants and trees that I've never seen before. Our guide told us what that each were and the purpose they each served. There was a cinnamon tree and and all-spice tree and they smelled great. There were these little fern-like things in the grass that close up their leaves when you touch them.


Overall, it was a very fun trip, and I'd really like to go back to the gardens. We just didn't get as much time to relax as I would have liked because we had to be back in time for an event for international students on campus with dinner and performances. I had a very full day yesterday, but it was nice. Today is Sunday, and so it is a very lazy day... very little is open and most people were in church all morning. I've heard that the services here are 3-4 hours long, but I haven't been to one yet. I'm sure I will go eventually though.

I'm not sure what else I have to do today besides hang out with some friends I have in the program. Hopefully classes will start for real this week, so I can begin to get in some kind of routine here. Tomorrow I have History of Western Medicine in Ghana. And the others that I've registered for are

Geography of Gender and Development in Africa
African Pop Music
African Myths and Symbols
Intro to Twi

I don't know that I'll be able to do the drumming class anymore, but I have until Feb 6 to have a finalized schedule, so if I decide to add a 2 credit drumming course, I will do it at the last minute. For now though, these 5 classes are the ones I'll be taking.

Some Photos

My pink room!

Balme Library on campus

View of Accra from the highest point on campus (sorry about the fuzziness...)

The fancy hotel they had us in for orientation

See the bats hanging from the tree?

A New President & A Power Outage

For Obama’s Inauguration yesterday, we went to the W.E.B. DuBois Center in Accra. There was a huge crowd of people from all kinds of countries gathered around a screen that had CNN’s coverage of the event projected on it. It was quite a moving experience, watching Obama be sworn in from Africa. Everyone clapped and cheered. Afterward, people on the street wanted to talk with us about it and to ask how we voted and how we feel about it. People here seem really happy about Obama being America’s president.

In fact, when I first moved into my room (before my roommate was here), there were 2 women in the process of moving out who had been taking winter break classes. They each had a little baby. (So, the first thing I saw in my new room was 2 little babies on my bed. I was so confused… would my roommate have a kid? Do they let students live in the dorms with babies??) One of the women left with her child, but the other took longer to pack up. She let me hold the baby, and told me he was 4 months old and his name was Barack. I did some babysitting that day, as she had to go downstairs and left me with the baby. It was a pretty strange experience. People in the US I don’t think would trust a total stranger with their baby while they left the building. But anyway, nothing bad happened, and I gave her an Obama pin and she was so happy. Women here use a big piece of fabric and sort of tie their babies onto their backs; it looks so efficient and much closer than pushing a baby in a stroller.



So I meant to post this yesterday, but I instead experienced my first power outage. The power went out first in the afternoon, and then we were running on generators. Around 11pm, those too turned off, and I was in the dark. Apparently, the internet goes down when the electricity goes down. The running water was fine though, luckily. When I left for class today at 9am, there was no power, but it was back on when I got back around one.

I think this trip will make me so much more thankful for the things that I used to take for granted at home. Like, fast internet and 24/7 electricity and air conditioning. And also make me more aware of the things I have that I don’t really need. People here get along fine (and I’m getting along fine too) without those things…

Yay for Internet!

I finally have consistent internet access in my room. So, it seems like a good time for a blog post.

I’ve been here for less than 2 weeks now, and I’m becoming more comfortable. It is still so hot, but I’m getting used to it. The pace is also much slower here, which makes a lot of sense, considering the heat. It is just so difficult to move too quickly in this weather. Things like start times are also more flexible than I’m used to at home. For example, classes “started” today. However, I’ve been told that no one actually goes to classes for the first 2 weeks, not even the lecturers. The add/drop period ends on February 6^th, so everyone has to have a final schedule by then, but in the meantime, classes don’t really happen for the first 2 weeks.

Registration was a little strange to me, but effective I suppose. Say I want to take a history class… I walk to the history department building on Thursday and put my name on a list for the class that I want. But then they say that they won’t have the schedule up until Monday. So, on Monday, I find out when the class meets, and then depending on if it fits in my schedule, I can drop it or keep it. To drop it, I have to go to the department building again and make sure they cross my name off the list. I actually signed up for two history classes. (The History of Western Medicine in Ghana, and Economic History of West Africa from 1800-1960) We were advised to sign up for more classes than we need so that we can see if we like them and then drop them before Feb 6. However, if classes don’t meet before then, I don’t know how that exactly will work… But anyway.

The classes I’ve registered for (of which, some will be dropped) are:

Poverty & Rural Development

History of Western Medicine in Ghana

Economic History of W. Africa 1800-1960

Geography of Gender & Development

Drumming for Foreigners

West African Popular Music

I have to take a 6 week course on Twi (the language spoken in this area, pronounced like CHWEE), and I definitely want to take the drumming course and probably the lecture on popular music, so I get to pick two more.

The scavenger hunt from orientation was a good crash course in how to manage the public transportation in Accra, which was so overwhelming at the time. I’ve since been out independently with 2 other girls in the program. We went to the beach, and got a little lost on the way back, but everyone was so nice and showed us the right direction. So, a tro-tro is a large van that has a driver and a “mate.” The mate opens and closes the sliding door and calls out the tro-tro’s destination, so you know which one to get on. It’s pretty hectic, but so cheap. A ride costs less than a cedi. A Ghana Cedi is about $1. And the coins are called Pesewas. So, for example, I can get a meal of fried rice and plantains for one cedi or rice and beans for 50 pesewas. It cost us 3 cedis to take a taxi from campus to a place in East Legon (which isn’t too far), and we had 6 people in the car. Once you decide on a price for a taxi, it generally doesn’t matter how many people you have.

The drivers are crazy here, and there aren’t really any pedestrian rights. I mean, pedestrians have rights, but cars don’t usually stop. It makes crossing the street quite an adventure, and cars (esp taxis) are always honking. I don’t know if they’re honking at me because I’m white and I stick out, or because they just honk at everyone, but the streets are never calm.

This campus is huge. It has 30,000 students, and it took me 20 minutes to get to my Twi class. The other dorm where the rest of our group is staying is about a 30 minute walk. There are taxis on campus who charge 1.50 for a ride anywhere on campus. This is a good thing because it’s really not a good idea to be out alone after 7 or 8pm. The sun goes down at 6pm here, and the streetlights aren’t exactly consistent, so being in the dark alone could be dangerous. I haven’t felt unsafe here, though. Don’t worry.

A woman came to my room yesterday and said that she wanted to do my laundry. So, she came this morning to pick it up (and my neighbor’s too) and did it in my building. I got it off the line tonight. It cost me 5 cedis. I’m going to look around and see if anything is cheaper, but for now, this will work for me. There aren’t any washing machines here; everyone washes their clothes by hand. Well, I think there are some washing machines, but you drop your clothes off and someone else does it and then you pick them up. I’m sure I will have my roommate instruct me in proper handwashing eventually, but I don’t think I’ll be very good at it.

The fruit here is delicious. Today I had an orange, some papaya and bananas. My friends can each eat an entire pineapple, but too much pineapple hurts my tongue. It’s so delicious here though… they call it sugarloaf. And I love the oranges. They peel the top layer of the peel so that the peel isn’t so thick. Then they cut off the top and you squeeze the juice out and eat it that way. It’s so awesome since I really don’t like all chewy pith of an orange. I usually have an orange everyday.

This is a sufficiently long post for now I think… I will write again soon. New things happen to me everyday.

Orientation

Today was the first day of orientation, here in Ghana. There are about 50 of us in the CIEE program (Council for International Educational Exchange), and they have us staying in this fancy hotel called the Coconut Grove. It has air conditioning, running water and a swimming pool. I hope this dispells any myths about life in Africa.
We covered culture shock, malaria, money, transportation and some politics, among other topics today. I also learned that I will be living in the Ghana Hostel on campus. (Not the homestay that I had hoped for, but I'm sure this will be equally rewarding in its own way.) I understand that this "hostel" - dormitory - is suite-style living with 2 people to a room. We move from the hotel to our more permanent housing on Monday.
For tomorrow, they have planned a scavenger hunt through the city of Accra, in which we will be split into groups (each with a leader) and sent out to find certain locations. This will mean we have to put into practice the public transportation techniques they taught us about today. Tro-tros are the cheapest and most efficient form of transportation, and I will wait until I've actually experienced it before I try to explain it.

People here go to bed earlier than I'm used and they wake up earlier too. So, I will have to be going to bed now...
Goodnight!
Kate

Flight in Four Days

I will be leaving on January 8th for Ghana! My flight is scheduled for 6:30pm from Dulles airport, but I still have much to do in the next couple days. I can't really believe this is already here. I know that so many exciting adventures are waiting for me, but I will also really miss special people in my life while I'm gone. The next five months will certainly be unlike any others in my life.

However, seeing as my life is still same old-same old for a few more days, I will leave this post here. The next time I write, it will be from Africa!

Peace