Don't worry, God is in control!

Now there’s a comforting thought.. That was just one among many, many signs and stickers with a reference to god that I’ve seen on the trotros and taxis, even in the names of stores! Some others include ‘With God All Things Are Possible’, ‘With God’s Grace Fashion’, ‘Allah is Great’, ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd Chop Bar’ (a chop bar is just a small food place that sells local food), ‘Glory Oil’, all the way up to ‘Repent Enterprises’!

I went to church yesterday for the first time in my life, and I don’t think I’ll be going back in a hurry. Yes, Paul, it was exactly like you thought it might be – the crying, sobbing, shaking, dancing, praying, “PRAISE THE LORD!!!”ing! The sermon was actually really funny, because I went to the youth service, but for the most part I felt like I was mocking them just by being there. The first song they sang had words like ‘I love you, I am desperate for you, I pray that you will control my path today’ – some sentiments I don’t think I’ll be able to share. A lot of the talk was about repenting the sins you have committed against God today so that he can forgive. Two things I’ve never understood about religion – one, why does God need people to pray/thank him everyday, and two, why do people need to give money to the church just for being there? Nadia gave me 5000cedis (about 75cents) to drop into the offering basket. That was fun…

On Saturday night, the family took me to a wedding party. I’m not quite sure what part of the wedding it was, because it was a Ghanaian man marrying a black American woman so it was a sort of jumble of cultures. The man asked the woman to marry him, but she didn’t ask him. He gave her a ring, but she didn’t give him one. When they kissed at the end, everyone cracked up laughing! I had no idea why, but then Nadia told me that Ghanaians do NOT kiss in public. Everyone was laughing throughout the whole night, because of the differences to their usual wedding party. They had a guy (the minister or pastor?) praying that the marriage would be strong enough in God’s eyes to not allow the devil to harm them or their relationship. He kept saying that the devil is everywhere! I’m getting scared of this devil-man… I think he finished every sentence with ‘praise the lord’, to which everyone would say ‘amen’, or ‘amen’, to which everyone would say ‘hallelujah’. Please allow me to apologise if I’m seeming offensive to all the God-lovers out there, but I just haven’t been exposed to such strong religion before! Other than all the godliness, I had a lot of fun - Tiko kept getting me these Gordon’s Spark drinks, which are gin with fruit flavour, and one woman even made me get up and shake my booty!

Now, onto my obroni (white person) life! On Thursday night, a Lithuanian girl called Dalia that I’ve been emailing for months came and picked me up from work to take me out. She took me straight to “Oxford” Street in Osu (the quotation marks because it’s not actually called Oxford Street, but everyone calls it that because it’s possibly the busiest street in Accra and it’s where all the obronis hang out – just like in London). We went to a place called Koala Market (coincidence?), which she says is one of only 2 normal places to shop. We walked inside and I felt myself go ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh – it’s like a normal supermarket!! I saw cake mix, detergent, Red Bull, icecream, fruit and it was all just like home!! So relaxing. After this, and a walk to Independence Square, she took me to Champs Sports Bar at the Paloma Hotel. This place is made especially for obronis. On Thursday nights they hold a quiz night there. They even have half-price margheritas, making them 20000cedis, or about $2.80! Next week I’m bringing a lot of money with me. I met about 14 other trainees who are also here through AIESEC – Romania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Norway, Mexico! I had such a lot of fun, and we even came 3rd in the quiz! We won 100000cedis to put towards our next bill.

I’ve made myself a bit of an itinerary now, so I’ll be doing a trip every weekend until I get home. That way I can keep you and myself interested!

xx

1. As an example..
2. The house-warming party from last week - see the homeowners on the far left and far right.
3. Nadia (front) and Sarah in the car
4. The usual scene - piles of coconuts, women with goods on their heads
5. Me washing for the first time, and lacking the skills

Akwaaba! Welcome to Ghana!

I’ve finally arrived in Ghana! The land where goats, chickens and dogs roam free, women wear loads on their heads and babies on their backs, and Lee sweats!

There was a crazy man on my flight who was running up and down the aisles screaming that the flight attendants thought he was stealing something because he was black. It wasn’t the most settling welcome into a new country! When I arrived though, 2 girls – Nadia and Beryl - met me at the airport with my name on a sign. I was so glad to see two happy faces! The poor girls had to stand out in the heat with a taxi waiting for 2 hours because my flight was late..

Nadia is the girl who’s family I am staying with – her dad, Tiko, her mum, Gladys and her cousin, Sarah. I’m living in a 2-storey house, which is beautiful! On the first night that I was there, the electricity wasn’t working and there was no running water. It was interesting using candles so I could brush my teeth and whatnot. Every morning I have washed myself with 2 buckets, cleaned my teeth with bottled water and eaten breakfast with my hands. Breakfast for me is always tea made with canned evaporated milk, lots of bread with the margarine that the family bought especially for me, and sometimes eggs. Nadia stays at her uni campus from Monday to Friday so I will be mainly staying with her family.

There are two ways to drink water here – bottled water, or water sachets. The sachets are awesome. They are little plastic bags of water that hold 500mL and cost only 300cedis (about 4cents!). You tear off a corner with your teeth and suck the water out. I’m getting used to the local food too – fufu, banku, okro soup and fried plantain with nuts. I get the feeling that I won’t be eating many vegetables while I’m here! Fufu is like a big pile of mush made from crushed fried plantain and cassava (sort of like weird banana and potato), and it is served in okro soup, which I’ve eaten with pig’s feet and fish with the bones still in it. Using your hands, you pull off a piece of the fufu, dip it in the soup and eat it. You only use your right hand because the left is used for private duties. It’s pretty spicy, but my family has started making it less spicy for me because they know I’m soft J Tiko also says that he’s going to buy some pineapple, banana and orange for me!

The local form of transport is the trotro. A trotro is like a minibus that has been decked out to hold about 24 people. Each one has a driver and a ‘mate’ who operates the door and collects the money. The mate will call out the direction in which they are going so that they can pick up more passengers. If someone wants to get on or off, he will bang on the door to let the driver know to stop. If you want to get off while you’re in it, you just call out ‘mate! I will alight here’, and he lets you out! And it’s cheap too! It only costs me about 10000cedis, or $1.30, to travel the hour and 40mins to work using 4 different trotros. Easy.

The family that I’m staying with is being lovely to me. They speak in Ga, so I can’t understand them most of the time, but if they share a joke, or if they’re talking about me, which they usually do, one of them will translate it for me. They’ve already had to pay a carpenter to put up my mosquito net (to which Tiko said ‘now no more malaria!’), they’ve paid an electrician to fix the light in my room (to which Tiko said ‘now Lee has a light too!’), they’ve bought margarine and orange nectar especially for me and they open a new can of evaporated milk for me every morning!

On Saturday night they took me to a house-warming party of one of Tiko’s friends, which was absolutely amazing. The owners of the house wore amazing traditional West African dress, and the guests danced around them with their handkerchiefs waving about in respect. A guy made a speech at the party in Ga, which I couldn’t understand, but all of a sudden everyone was looking at me and laughing, while a guy shoved a camera in my face! I didn’t know what was going on until Nadia explained that he’d just said it must be difficult for the only white girl in our midst!

I’m currently at my second day of work, but I still haven’t done anything but sit on the computer and try to upload this silly blog. I’m supposed to have talked to the CEO to figure out a work plan...but maybe later J

xx

1. The welcome sign at the airport
2. My room for the next 2 months
3. Me eating banku and obviously not enjoying it..
4. The road at the back of the house

A lot to Du, and a lot to Bai...worst joke ever?

And a lot to see if you really like looking at construction sites! Looking back through my photos I can see a lot of awesome stuff about Dubai, but while I was there, construction is all I felt like I was seeing..

I went on a desert safari!! I was in a 4WD with an English-Pakistani family and a Japanese couple on their honeymoon. On our way to the camp we were headed to, we drove at about 160kph along a straight road. The driver said 'it's okay, there are no cameras on this road.' Okay for HIM maybe! We went sand-duning - driving over sand dunes really fast. It was so much fun, but my palms were sweating at the same time. At one point, the driver over-steered and we went over the edge of a dune. When he went to correct it, we went WAY over the other side and ended up sliding down sideways! So scary. The scariness wasn't helped by the driver laughing nervously and all the other people driving past with looks on their faces like 'OH MY GOD should we be helping them?' At that point though, the mother of the family started complaining that her husband has a heart complaint and we couldn't do that again. After that we watched all the other people having fun skidding all over the place, while we drove over the easy parts. At the time I was thankful because my heart was still thumping, but now I wish I'd been in another car!

The next day, I went on the Big Bus Tour! It was a good way to get around the city and see the beaches. I met an English couple and an Australian woman on my journey. I saw two awesome souqs (markets), the Burj Al Arab (that amazing "7-star" hotel shaped like a sail) and Jumeriah beach! On the tour I also found out some cool stuff, like that the government pays for all of the people's water bills and half of their electricity, construction goes on in Dubai 24 hours a day across 2 shifts (unlucky for the people working!), and 2/3 of the world's cranes are currently in Dubai! In the near future they are building a 5-star hotel with 6500 rooms. Is that even possible? I think the biggest there currently has about 1000.. It will of course be the tallest, biggest and best hotel in the world.

Unfortunately this computer won't let me upload any pictures so you'll have to wait..

xx

Dubai it is

So I've arrived in Dubai and survived my first day! I think that the population here is made up of Indians, Arabics and Russians. I haven't met any tourists here, probably because all of the ones staying at my hotel are Russian or Asian and we can't understand each other..



I'm staying in Deira, which I think is like the down-town part of Dubai. At first I was a bit apprehensive because I was expecting the sky-scrapers and mosques that I've always seen in photos, but this morning I'm loving it! All of the men (not many women here!!!) are so nice, even if they are trying to make me look at their Louis Vuitton handbags. Yesterday I walked to the Gold Souq, which is basically just a lot of jewellery shops. There were a few more tourists there, but not too many. I didn't do a whole lot more yesterday because I was just really feeling lonely and probably tired. I ate KFC for lunch and then had a 4 hour nap in the hotel! After my long nap, which made me miss the free shuttle from the hotel to Jumeirah for shopping, I walked across to the Hyatt hotel to see their ice-skating rink. It was pretty cool, and by that I mean cold! I ate dinner at my hotel's restaurant, which is a Russian restaurant that also makes Indian and Arabic food. My food of choice was Lulya Kebab (lamb kebab), which was served like in the picture with a big clump of shredded red onion in the middle. I thought kebabs were on skewers? It was the tastiest kebab ever though! And I got to eat New Zealand butter on my roll, and even peach iced tea out of a wine glass! So good..




Mm so I've broken the TV in my room already.. They gave me a hairdryer with a European style plug, but all the sockets in my room are British style. The TV has a Euro style plug also, so I pulled it out of it's socket. Turns out though that someone had shoved it into a British style socket! Now it won't go back in! No more CNN for me...

My breakfast today was the buffet at the hotel. Pretty good - weird sausages and potatoes, good pancakes and always good tea. Is there a way of having bad tea? I walked across to the fish market. That was awesome! There were so many stalls.. I didn't walk into the actual fish part, but I could sure smell it! All the men were trying to make me take photos of them, which was hilarious. I took a photo of this one guy and showed him the photo and told him it was beautiful. All the guys around him were like 'no! he's not beautiful!'. They went on about it for ages :)



At the moment I'm sitting in a little net cafe with about 9 men around me. This is what it's like everywhere - just me and hundreds of Indian and Arabic men.

1. Me with the whole luxurious row to myself! Ahhhh...
2. Tasty kebab
3. Deira. This is the usual scene - that thing the guy is dragging around is used to transport stuff, and they're usually seen around the place with guys just sitting on them talking. A lot of talking happens here!
4. A guy at the fish market, proud as punch
5. Just around the corner from my hotel. Note the street sign - Community 117, Street 23
6. Delivery, anyone?
   

Quick-assed update

This is a mega quick one. Not much time left on the net!

Firstly, thanks to everyone who came to my party! It was such an awesome night, made possible by all of you! Not to mention how much that money is helping me out :) Thanks a million!

So I'm in Dubai! I plan to write another blog that fills in more detail, but for now just some observations.. It's so different to what I had pictured! I think I've counted about 10 women in the whole half day I've been here, which is a bit amazing. The men are really helpful, but it's still a bit uncomfortable being the only girl walking around. At least the only girl without head-to-toe clothing!

I went for a walk before and walked past 37 phone/phone accessory shops in a row, with one cafeteria to break them up! Crazy, considering I've only seen about 2 people with phones!

I'll write again soon.

It began in Afrika...

So it's the 1st of Feb. That means only a short 11 days until departure! In that short 11 days, I have 4 more shifts of work, BDO, Mum's birthday, Pablo returning from NZ (yes he is!), my dinner, my birthday, then off to the airport. Not to mention packing, partying and seeing boys ;)

I am finally more excited than nervous. I think the turning point for me was when my boss was running around work, pretending he was holding a spear and making clicking and 'ooga-booga' sounds at me to 'get me ready for Ghana'. Straight after that, someone told me that there will be a lot of black people living in trees. Now I'm pumped to get over there and clear up a whole bunch of crazy assumptions that I keep hearing! Seeing the movie 'Babel' right before I leave wasn't a great idea though - the thought that I could be shot in the shoulder, not be able to find a real hospital, be stitched up with a normal sewing needle and string and have only marijuana to calm the pain, while my husband deals with a bus-load of tourists who want to leave as I lay there dying wasn't such a good thing to put in my head before I run off to Afrika alone..

My dear aunty would like me to explain what it is that I'm doing, and why I'm off to Ghana. So here it is - I'm in a student organisation called AIESEC. We're in about 100 countries around the world, and we're made up of about 20 000 like-minded students who want to make an impact on our fair world. We basically develop ourselves while we are in the organisation, building up leadership skills, creating networks of people, and attending life-changing conferences that get you in contact with the best people in the world, teach you a lot about the organisation and about yourself, and let you have LOT of fun and meaningful conversations! The role of our organisation in society is to send students on international internships, which we believe is the best way to increase tolerance among people world-wide. So this brings me to why I'm going to Ghana! For the past year, I've been the Out-Going eXchange Director for AIESEC at Adelaide Uni, meaning that I've been the one sending people overseas - we've sent people to Kenya, Malaysia, The Netherlands, China, Indonesia, and, soon, Ghana and Poland! I've reached the end of my term now and have handed the responsibility over to a lovely girl called Christina. Now it's my turn to go on my own internship. Hence, Ghana!

Now I have some UAE Dirhams and US Dollars, and have sorted out most of my shit. The only problem now is.. how the hell do I fit everything in this little thing?!