June 7th

You never really know what the highlight and lowlight of your day is going to be ahead of time. When I woke up this morning I would have guessed that the highlight would be meeting the lawyers at my firm, and the low light being something silly like Evans being late to pick me up(he was in fact by 30 minutes!) or sweating through my dress clothes on the Tro-Tro (common public transportation system). But the main partner wasn't in today so my short visit at the firm was just “ok”. So then maybe the highlight would be trying red-red for the first time (a Ghanian stew made from what looks to me like black eyed peas, served with sweet fried plantains) and the low light the waitress spilling some of said red-red on my khakis :-/. Perhaps the highlight could have even been acquiring a Black Stars (Ghanian National Team) Jersey for a mere 12 cedis (about $8).

Nope. In fact the highlight turned out to be me, Evans and Marcos emerging unscathed from the car accident we were in on the way home. (The lowlight is clearly the accident itself). One minute I'm admiring the water crashing against the coast from across the highway...the next minute I'm about 10 feet from being in the water.

We were driving southbound when a car inadvertently clipped us from behind. Normally we would have been ok, but at that very moment a motorcycle had passed us on the other side. In order to avoid hitting the motorcyclist , Marcos had to swerve. When he did so we jumped over the divider and spun around a couple of times , toward the sea. Fortunately for all of us, Marcos was able to bring the car to a halt, just seconds before reaching a ditch not 3 feet away from us (or worse the water itself!) We all got out and gave each other the traditional handshake/snap and Evans proclaimed “god was on our side”. Within a minute about 10 guys came up to us and did the same handshake, telling us we were very fortunate. Then we all pushed Marcos car out of the mud, which only suffered a dent from the clip and a flat tire or two, and one of Marcos's fellow taxi drivers drove by to pick us up. While pushing the car, Evans pointed out that we were most lucky not because Marcos brought the car to a stop before hitting the ditch (though of course that prevented us from getting injured) but because there were no other cars barreling down on us when we entered the opposite side of the road. (We spun around so much though I hadn't even realized we were on the other side of the road at that point!)

The strangest thing is my Dad (Sean and Aunt Missy can verify this) experienced a similar accident when he was younger. His good friend Stewie was driving and he was clipped, jumped over the divider, spun several times and finally stopped. An ordinarily busy road was inexplicably vacant, preventing any serious injury. I know they say like father like son, but geeeze!. Well, bottom line is we all made it out safe.

Tomorrow I start my job for real. I'm sharing an office with a lawyer there and I have a pretty nice desk :). One of the legal secretaries is going to be putting work together for me so she told me to tell her what my interests are tomorrow and she'll try to work around those interests. It also seems like I'll be making several court appearances so I'm pumped about that.