Monday July 26th - Sunday Aug 1st

Africa is catching up to me. All of the 4-5 hour nights of sleep, groggy morning jogs, bone ratteling tro-tros and wicked oily food finally made me sick last week. I was well enough Tuesday night to hang out with the usual gang, plus Sebastian my new roommate and Doreen*, who hangs out with us occasionally. Wednesday morning when I just felt awful. At first I thought I just drank to many Gin-Limes, but as the day wore on I felt that my lymph-nodes were swollen. Left work about an hour early, paid someone at my house 5 Cedi to do my laundry (it was an option I had all summer but it felt kinda like taking the easy way out when I wasn’t sick) and went to bed at like 7pm.
Woke up the next morning feeling decently refreshed and my roommate had a problem. The volunteer organization that arranged his house was trying to screw him over. Basically he paid a certain amount and he was told all along that we would be staying in our place. When he arrives the jerk who arranged for his stay tries to all of a sudden bring him to a new, equally fine place but not as convienient for Sebastian because he knows Shara from college . He sucked it up for a few days but since there was open space in my room he asked if he can change rooms. So for the last 9 days of our trip the guy was going to charge $280. Point of reference, when Pedro was a hold over tenant for an extra week, Grandma charged him $7 a night. Basically the organizer was trying to charge him 4 times that much, despite the fact the he misled him about the place he already paid for. Well, sick or not, I certainly wasn’t standing for that BS. I already had beef with him because I suspected he ripped Andrea off for something else. That and he tells this ridiculous story to new volunteers about how I broke an iron in Grandmas house , in an effort to get a “security deposit” from them. I took Sebastian to grandma’s and explained that her nephew was trying to charge Sebastian $280 dollars for 9 days, and asked her if that was a fair price. Her head nearly dropped to the ground. She said she wouldn’t even charge half of that for a 2 week stay. Funny because the guy said it was Grandma who “wouldn’t budge” on the price given the circumstances. So this fraudster sends when of his “employees” (kid’s name is Evans, actually a cool dude, his boss is just a dick), to pick up Sebastian and bring him to the ATM. But we told him that Sebastian wasn’t going anywhere until the money situation was sorted out. So he asked Sebastian to meet him at a restaurant instead to sort it out and I tagged along to make sure he didn’t try to make up “this is Africa” stories to some how get the money. 2 hours of yelling-exposing his dishonesty-laughing about cultural differences-informing him the contract he made Sebastian sign was unenforceable due to fraud-later we agreed that Sebastian would just pay grandma directly the price that she wanted (which ended up being about $100). During the argument, I also called him on ripping Andrea off and he’s now paying her back and he’s not allowed to have anymore volunteers placed at Andrea’s organization. If anyone you know is trying to come to Ghana, don’t do VoluntermatchGhana. This story will be posted on multiple review sites so anyone even thinking about that organization will want to look else where. He may have started out with good intentions, but clearly he’s getting greedy and trying to shave some extra money to line his own pockets.
After that mess was settled had lunch with Sebastian at this chop bar on my Ave. I haven’t been home for lunch time since like my first weekend so it was cool to check it out. Rice balls in peanut soup and a Fanta orange soda. $1 …combined for the both of us . Ridiculous, and it was pretty good.

Friday, though not feeling 100 percent, I went into work. My boss sent me a get well email the day before and he hoped that I could come to the annual “Judicial Vacation Lunch”. The courts (like all of them) go on vacation from August 1st till the first week of October. It’s actually kind of ridiculous because the most clever legal strategy was delaying trial until as late into July as possible until the Judge gives you an adjourn date for October. It actually worked out well on a big case I was working on because (based on my advice  ) my boss had to amend the complaint to put us in better position to win the case. Any way I was told I’d be the “guest of honor” which is pretty humbling since I’m just some American kid who barely finished a year of law school. I think they just wanted to hear my speak (“so they can see if I’m the next Obama” my crazy boss says). We went to this west African buffet which meant salad, rice and plantains for the vegetarian, haha. It was kinda sad saying thank you and preparing to leave my firm, even though I have 3 days to go.
Weekend, me Andrea and Doreen went to Ada. Drey and I had a hard time getting out of Accra because apparently tro tros to Ada double as full on service trucks. We had to wait for several cars before we can force our way onto one because customers were replaced by giant bags of rice, bottles of juice, packages of cookies and who the hell knows what else. Just another ridiculous peccadillo of traveling in Ghana. Ada (or Ada Foah) is pretty nice for the most part. It’s the location where the volta river meets the Atlantic ocean. The river side was beautiful. Giant palm trees, clean sand, neat huts with world flags painted on the doors, hammocks; definitely a nice place to relax after the crazy journey of the week before. However the ocean side still feel victim to the trash of Accra. Ada is two hours away from accra but there were still plastic shopping bags that got caught around Drea’s foot when she tried to go swimming…womp womp. Anyway Doreen joined us on Saturday to spend the night and some other volunteers we know (including our roommate Kate) joined us for the day. The most adventurous thing we did is rent a motor boat to one of the near by islands to visit a rum factory…more like a single still, but none the less it was pretty cool, and the rum was decent. Drey and I bought a 1.5 L bottle for the 3 of us to share (it was Doreen’s b-day). Still not in the mood to drink after last week so I’ll be bringing a half liter home (get excited Rob and Brittany). Kinda fatigued from the sun, playing soccer and my self diagnosed sinus infection (I’ll go to the Doctors when I get back to the States) I just called it an early night. Sounds like a pretty boring weekend but after 9 weeks in Ghana it was intensely relaxing.
With less than a week to go I can only contain my excitement to go home. I’m convince that I’ll experience some “reverse” culture shock, so I’m going to continue my blog at least one week beyond Ghana. Andrea thinks we haven’t been in Ghana long enough to be shocked by our return to the US but even looking at an American dollar (I saw one the other day) looks down right strange to me. I’m sure the little things we’ve grown to take for granted (even just the plain courtesy of saying ‘good morning’ practiced by many more Ghanaians than Americans) will be sorely missed. Well 5 days to a hot shower, non-wicked oily food , and seeing terri for the first time in 2.5 months. 7 Days till saying mom, dad, the kids and my Hoboken friends. I really can’t wait.


Let me take this opportunity, if you've made it down this far, to thank everyone who has joined me on my journey in Ghana, both in real life and through my blog. Thanks Terri for putting up with my "I think I'll go to Africa this summer" spotenuity. Thanks to my parents for not worrying about me too too much. Thanks to all my friends who have commented about my journeys, including Alice Tin and Andrew Rusli who have also written travel blogs this summer with much better writing styles (and if they're nice they'll share their links in a comment)! Thanks to Andrea, Shara, Pedro, Daan, Kate and Sebastian for being the best "Obruni brotahs and sistahs" I could ask for. Those 10 weeks at Grandma's would have been a lot harder without y'all. Thanks to Terry, Cristin, Jackye, Doreen, Julie, Diego, Conrad, multiple Evans, Kwame and Olivia as well for for being great friends during my trip. I hope to stay in touch with you all.








*(Quick side story about Doreen. Born in Ghana and moved to Japan with her parent before her 2nd birthday. Live there for 10 or so years and moved to the US for highschool. Went to Michagan State, taught English in China for a few years but on her 25th birthday (literally) she was told her visa wasn’t getting renewed and she would have to return Ghana – a home that she’s never known. Despite missing Japan like crazy –her parents still live there- she’s holding up decently well.)