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 m
y 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
- The welcome sign at the airport
- My room for the next 2 months
- Me eating banku and obviously not enjoying it..
- The road at the back of the house
4 comments:
Is'nt it great to be so involved in the daily lives of the people you are sharing with. How is your work going? Is it interesting and plenty to do? Keep blogging when you can. We know how frustrating it is when you don't have your own computer
hi all, yeah it breaks up for me too.. All you have to do is highlight it and you can see all the words. Maybe I'm using the wrong type of font?
Pig hooves and fish bones, what kind of stew is that? The banana potato mash sounds prety interesting though, i'd like to give it a shot.
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