June 5th

June 5^th

Here we run on GMT, which is about 4 hours ahead. I have read though, and my fellow volunteers have reiterated, that Ghanaians are infamously terrible with time. They usually run an hour or two late, which is understandable given the traffic. Pedro warned me that Evans, my program coordinator, subscribes to the “Ghanian standard time”. So when I was awoken by one of my “nieces” at 8:30am alerting me that Evans was coming at 9, I casually strolled into the dining room and had a quick breakfast with Pedro. Pedro thought 9 meant 11 to Evans so I thought I'd have enough time to exercise in my room, take a shower and get dressed. To my surprise though, I was alerted at 5 minutes to 9 that a car had arrived for me. No matter, I just got dressed real quick and grabbed my stuff and met Marcos (Evan's friend) in the dining room.

We set out on a number of quick errands on the way to the Dream Ghana office. Luckily it wasn't raining today so I got a good luck at some of Nangua. There are a ton of dirt roads and I've never seen so many chickens, goats and people running around with goods balanced on their heads! It's quite a site and Marcos bet me I wouldn't find another like it anywhere in the US. Of all the things I did today the ride over was the coolest. I'm in the car surrounded by Ghanian's either selling or buying goods, carrying babies, what have you and “Waving Flag” comes on the radio. As the car bumped along the pothole filled road it finally hit me, “Wow I am in Africa”. We finally arrived about 30-45 minutes later at the office. I was introduced to Rashida and the 4 of us took turns taking pictures inside the office. Then we set out to the bank to exchange my travelers checks, but they don't do that on the weekends...whoops.

Evans, Marcos and myself set out to have a drum lesson at the “Art center” in Accra Central. It was pretty cool and I wasn't terrible. (A video soon to follow!) The rasta that owned “Trinity art center” told me all about the drum making process, and showed me all of the awesome wood carvings. He gave me a cool bracelet as an akwaba (welcome) gift. Of course I'll be patronizing his shop to thank him for the drum lesson and bring gifts back home.

I told Evans that I would like to learn some history about Ghana so he brought me to the Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Mermorial park (More pictures to follow!)He was basically a beast guy who one Ghana's independence and was the first president of Ghana. He was educated at Lincoln university in Pennsylvania and subsequently UPenn. The park was beautiful and included a museum, the original car Dr. Nkrumah used for State business (a powder blue Cadillac!) , and a tomb that holds both him and his Egyptian wife.

After the park we stopped by the Supreme court (picture to follow). It's closed on Saturdays so I couldn't go in but that outside was pretty cool. After our brief trip to the court we set out for Osu, another commercial neighborhood in Ghana and the neighborhood I'll be working in. (Oh and if you're curious my firm is called Painstil, Painstil & Co.)

We had lunch at a chop bar, which is basically a small cafe that serves beverages and traditional Ghanaian food. Evans and Marcos had their favorite dish banku (ground yams and plantains and molded into a dumpling shaped like a foot ball) in a stew and goat meat. Evans had one of those giant star beers and Marcos had a Guinness (which is 7.5% alc here...what?!?) I had a peanut soup called Nkatenkwan with two hard boiled eggs and 3 giant rice balls (called omo tou) with a pepsi. Lunch was definitely welcome at this point in the day after a bit of walking and drum playing in the hot sun.

At lunch I learned that you can purchase a giant sack full of half litter bags of purified water (about 30 bags per sac) (they give them for free at lunch) for one cedi! That was great news because 1.2 cedis for a liter and a half would add up over 10 weeks, especially in this heat. As soon as I got back to grandma's shop I paid for my bottle I got yesterday and picked up a sac of water (pedro picked up the tab for the beer) . Then I watched the rest of the Ghanian friendly against Latvia. They won 1-0 and hopefully gained a little more confidence going into the cup. I'll be rooting for the Black Stars (they are named for the symbol of their flag, representing African Unity) until they face the US in elimination rounds, in which case I'll have to quietly root for the Yanks.

Dan actually just walked in and told me about her experience with Ghanian standard time haha. We'll probably go out tonight so Pedro and Dan can blow off some steam from their week hard at work.

That's all until next time. And if my posts are too long..too bad just skim them ;P.