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…