akwaaba

After a long lapse in blog entries, mostly because I felt like my life wasn’t interesting enough for a blog and because I was too busy with school to even think about a blog, I am going to resume posting things, because both of these assumptions seem to be incorrect at the moment.

Because, A), I am not in school, not really, and B), because I am spending the next two months in West Africa…

I’m in the dining room of the house I share in Accra, Ghana, with my fellow University of Oregoners: Sheena, Katie, Molly, Ryan, Elon, Michelle, Ken, Nick, Logan, Jessica, Josh, Scot. We don’t have internet access here but it would be silly to write blogs at an internet café when I can just write them here and post later. I’m eating breakfast: Laughing Cow cheese and Ghanaian chocolate, both of which I found at a grocery store we went to yesterday. Not the best breakfast, but I can’t figure out if we have the right converters here to plug in my water-boiler thing, and I’m scared of our stove, which runs on propane and you have to light it manually. So oatmeal for breakfast today ain’t happening. And admittedly, the chocolate and cheese thing is a pretty awesome breakfast.

I came in yesterday morning on a direct flight from New York with Sheena, who coincidentally is also originally a Spokanite. A (presumably Ghanaian) woman across the aisle from us had a baby about ten months old: oh my god, so cute. I’m pretty sure I spent a good half of the flight smiling at her, which made her smile a huge, mostly toothless smile. Her mom let me hold her for a minute, but when she started looking at Sheena, she freaked out a little and I gave her back to her mom. Probably too many unfamiliar faces… Sheena isn’t the sort of person that would freak out babies, as far as I can tell.

Another woman across the aisle from us was Liberian. Her name is Nessie, and she was going back to Ghana for her daughter’s college graduation. She asked me to help her fill out her disembarkation card, and I thought she needed to borrow a pen, or that she didn’t understand the instructions on the card. Then I realized that she couldn’t read or write at all. Liberia is a disaster of a country, at least from what I hear… lots of Liberians are in this huge refugee camp in Ghana, which is where I had considered volunteering for a while after my internship is over. So Nessie was going there. When I understood all of this, I felt so sad for her. But her daughter was graduating from University. It’s hard for me to understand such a combination of things. Obviously, I helped her fill out her card. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone before that was illiterate… or at least that I knew was illiterate. It didn’t stagger me so much that she was, more how that would get in the way of doing things as simple as filling out disembarkation cards… I’m so, so lucky.

The airport in Accra is nice; but festooned all over with soccer things… or, should I say, football. I don’t know the first thing about sports, but apparently I will by the time I leave. Ghanaians are pretty much obsessed with soccer.

Leslie, the professor from UO that runs this program, and Dr. Michael Williams, who lives here in Ghana and helps her run it, picked us up from the airport and took us to our house – which, according to Ghanaian standards, is somewhat of a palace. It reminds me of the condo my family stayed in in Mexico when we went: shabby and weird by American standards but luxurious to locals. I feel bad staying here when I see the kinds of places my neighbors are living in. Not exactly huts, but not exactly real buildings, either. That said, there are other nice houses around, sort of thrown in like ours is.

The house is kind of dirty, though, on the inside. Or maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just old. It’s hard to tell. But the kitchen and the bathrooms freak me out. Enough that I might even clean them. The water pressure sucks, but there’s a French shower head in one of the showers, so that kinda makes up for it. Also, the water is exclusively cold, but that’s actually nice considering how freaking hot it is here.

Temperature-wise, it’s not that bad. Maybe 85, 95 at the peak of the day. But the sun is scorching and it feels like 80% humidity. My hair, regardless of the fact that I blow-dryed it this morning and put gel in it, is not pleased. Really frizzy… maybe I should just dread it. J

We went to Chez Afrique last night, Dr. Michael Williams’ wife’s restaurant/bar. The food was really delicious, or perhaps I was just really hungry. I had my first (probably first of many) African beers. Ghana has two main beers, Star and Club, and it seems that everyone has a preference. They’re both light. I think I’m more of a Star person; Club has a pretty strong aftertaste. They’re both a lot like American beer, though definitely a step up from, say, Miller High Life. Definitely drinkable.

On Fridays and Saturday nights Chez Afrique has live music, which is pretty excellent. A stream of stuff I’ve never heard of mixed with Bob Marley. Lots of reggae, which is great for dancing, so no complaints here. I was exhausted when we went out last night, but there was no way I could avoid dancing. Everyone just seemed to be enjoying themselves so much, and there were other oborunis (white people, think gringo without the offensiveness) who were worse dancers than us, so it wasn’t intimidating.

Other than that, the music here is an amusing blend of mostly American stuff. The very first song I heard, a car playing it outside our house, was Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. No shit. Since then I’ve heard James Blunt, more Celine Dion, some good ol’ 90s classics, and a lot of abrasive American rap, with no bleeped out words. Ghanaians as a whole seem pretty nice, and I haven’t heard any swear yet, but they definitely don’t censor their music. I don’t recognize much, but then, I’m not really a rap girl, so that’s to be expected. Lian would know most of it, probably. Leslie says that Ghanaians think that Americans (especially black Americans) talk like our rap songs sound, which is rather amusing, and to a degree, probably true, at least among my age demographic. Be slappin that ass, gonna f*** that bitch tonight. Okay, so probably not so much. But apparently Ghanaians also love country music, so I guess my musical horizons are going to be broadened a tad here…

p.s. "akwaaba" means "welcome" in Twi, the most used tribal language here.