So much happens here that I don’t even know where to begin. After skipping two days of blogging I feel like I’m weeks behind.
I guess I can start with today and work backwards.
Today we met at the University of Ghana (which is a 20 minute walk from our house) and listened to a couple people speak to us about the media in Ghana. It was interesting, but we were all kind of drowsy from last night (which I’ll get to later) and a lot of what they talked about we had heard before… Ken was falling asleep across the table from me and I was struggling to maintain any level of concentration.
Then Leslie gave us a little tour of UG’s School of Communication: the little library and the school’s radio station headquarters. I think the plan was just to pop in to RadioUnivers to check it out, but the man who was running the thing in there got really excited to have visitors so it turned into more than that. There were a few people sort of hanging around in there already, but this guy insisted that we all come in and sit down. Then he proceeded to give us an oral history of the station. We all sort of sat there smiling dumbly as he explained the name of the station. “Univers is short for University. We drop the i, t, and y and you have Univers. Not Universe like the planetary configurations, or stars, you see.”
Then he introduced us to this guy who had been sitting on the side smiling as well. He had a rather fixed expression, and I have to admit, I’d been kind of staring at him this whole time, trying to figure out what was strange about him. I think the kid’s name was Soma, or something like that. Then I felt bad when I realized that he was blind. His show was on next, so RadioUnivers man insists we join them in the broadcast room. So there’s 14 oburonis and these two guys in there, and Soma starts his show.
He has a great radio voice, this guy… he knew what he was doing, too. Confident. The first song he plays is “Candle in the Wind” (or maybe that was the guy right before him?). Then something else cheesy, then Celine Dion (for how much music I’ve heard since I arrived, Celine Dion seems to amount to a disproportionate amount of it) and then Vanessa Williams. (“Did you know she was Miss America?” Soma asked us.) Soma dedicates Vanessa Williams to us, “the Oregon University students from US of A.” Then he conducts a short interview with us, live on air (How long have we been in Ghana? What are our impressions? Have we tried any Ghanaian food yet?) , or rather, with Molly, Nick and Josh, who handled themselves very nicely. Lots of medase’s. I don’t know how to spell that but medase means thank you in Twi, the main language around here.
Anyways, I’ve never had an experience quite like that at RadioUnivers. I can’t even explain how awkward it was, although thankfully the Ghanaians didn’t seem to notice. Some of us couldn’t help giggling at the musical selections, and honestly I’m surprised that no one did notice and get offended – thank God.
Then we went to Bonjour, the fast food place across the street from UG. Chicken Inn, Pizza Inn, and Creamy Inn (ice cream, and, seemingly, booze) all housed under one roof! We knew that Tuesdays at Pizza Inn were not to be missed. “Terrific Tuesdays” mean double the pizza for the same price. So we bought four and got eight, and eleven of us devoured seven of the pizzas – we were huuungry. Pizza here is better than you might expect.
That’s pretty much it for today so far. It’s kinda overcast, though, and it’s probably only about 75 degrees… which is AMAZING after the rest of the weather this week.
Sooo, let’s see, yesterday:
Leslie and “Doc” (Dr. Michael Williams) gave us a tour of Accra, which is enormous: 4.5 million people. And scratch what I said before about nobody living in huts/shacks – that’s our rich suburb, although when I got here it didn’t seem rich. After yesterday, it does. We drove past huge shantytown neighborhoods that smelled terrible, and past slightly nicer shantytown neighborhoods that smelled slightly less terrible… and, for the most part, didn’t see any houses anywhere near as nice as ours… and even though the water pressure at our house is miserable, thank God we have it: 80% of Accra doesn’t even have running water. I have pictures of some of this stuff, which hopefully I can put up here.
In the Muslim neighborhood we drove past, a pack of kids was so excited to see our bus that they ran next to it for a while. “Oburoni! Oburoni oburoni!” All we have to do is smile and wave and they completely lose their beans. It’d be so easy to start a television show for kids here: just hire some white people to smile into a camera. The kids are honestly so cute though. I think every one of us has said at least on one occasion that they want to take some home with them.
We went to a craft market: think Eugene’s Saturday Market, except most stalls carry nearly the same thing. I haven’t gotten used to the bargaining thing yet, and I’m a sucker. I know that these people need my money more than I do so it’s hard for me to be mad even if they are overcharging me. I’m getting better at it though, although not better at not buying things. They sell a lot of beautiful things. My favorite is a silver pendant I got with an Adinkra symbol on it. Adinkra symbols are from the Ga people (I believe – perhaps the Akan, I don’t really have my tribes straight at all) and they used to go mostly on funeral stuff – shawls and things. Now they use them on a lot of stuff, sort of just culturally dominant. Most of them seem to be religious – and Ghanaians have integrated them into their new religious traditions: Christianity and Islam. The pendant I got means “God’s tree” and it connotes something like dependence and reverence to God, which I like quite a bit. I just really like the idea of “God’s tree,” it’s a really nice sounding metaphor.
Then we stayed up laaaate. Investigated the weird local bar across the street, Wazuu, where alcohol is cheap and the bartender is approximately fourteen. Thus the tiredness today.
Ciao for now…
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