The good, the bad and the menu

I feel like I'm so close to the end of my time here. I finished my last day of work on Friday, have 2 weeks of traveling ahead of me, and then home! Crazy how time flies.. It is for this reason that I thought now was an appropriate time for this kind of post – the good, the bad and the menu. It's basically a summary of my time here, grouped into likes, dislikes and food. And it's really long. Enjoy.


The good

The tro-tros – trotros have been a major source of entertainment during my time here. I manage to get at least one hilarious/amusing/confusing/irritating/frustrating story from the tro-tros every day. They've proven a great way to experience the Ghanaian culture.

Tro-tro stations – possibly even more amusing than the tro-tros themselves. I've found the stations bring together the best and worst parts of Ghana into one confusing and bustling place – the sights (the mud, the urination, the mates, the tro-tros, the women selling from their heads), the sounds (hissing, Fanmilk guys honking their horns, kissing sounds, the mates calling out their direction – "Lapaz, Lapaz, Lapaz", tro-tros firing up, popping water sachets as tro-tros drive over them, the women and children selling – "pure water" "yes plantain chips, plantain"), the smells (exhaust fumes, garbage, urine) and, most of all, the utter chaos. Love it.

Bargaining – it's so much fun knowing that you can get most everything from the street for half the price they want. Such a feeling of accomplishment.

Champs Sports Bar – Champs has become such a part of my life here. Thursday night quiz nights kick ass, especially because we've come 3rd twice, winning 100,000 cedis, and even came 2nd last week, winning 200,000! I go there for the hilarious British guy who runs the quiz and reads out funny answers that people give, the chocolate brownies and apple crumble, the chance of winning the tequila or beer round (I won the beer round for my team on St Pat's by carving a naked woman out of a potato!! Woo free green beer!), and the great company of obronis.

Fanmilk – when you hear the honking clown horn, you know good times are coming. Not quite that exciting, but these Fanmilk guys are everywhere selling Fanice (vanilla icecream), Fanchoco (frozen chocolate milk), Fanyogo (frozen strawberry yoghurt) and Tampico (frozen citrus juice), all for about 35cents each.

Smoothy's – smoothies are refreshing at any time, but in Ghana especially so. We have chilled out at Smoothy's many a time, trying the different varieties of smoothies. Sometimes we buy chocolate from the Koala Market and some freshly cut pineapple, mango or papaya from the street and eat that while we while away the hours…

Dancing – Ghanaians love to dance, and seem to do so at every opportunity. Music is everywhere, so people walking past, even women with loads on their heads will do a little jig as they walk by.

Hiplife – Ghana's own musical creation – sort of like American hip-hop done in African language with some beats behind it, including drumming. Pretty cool, which is lucky because it seems to be one of only 4 styles of music played here – hiplife, highlife (for adults, I've been told), reggae and power ballads (bring on Celine Dion!)

Fruit – never in my life have I been tempted with such delicious fruit! Mangoes, pineapples, bananas, papaya, oranges… It's actually strange because it seems that fruit doesn't make it into the Ghanaian diet very often, yet they could have some of the best fruit here on the planet! I'm grateful that you can go up to a woman selling pineapple and she will stop, cut the skin off, cut it into bite-sized pieces, put it in a plastic bag and give you little pieces of wood to eat it with. Still amazes me.

Koala and Max Mart – 2 supermarkets here that are exactly like home. We go there to dream about foods that we're going to eat as soon as we get to our respective homes. We also go there to buy pastries like chocolate croissants and doughnuts, chocolate and jam to put on our morning bread. And they're air-conditioned! And the fact that one is called Koala Market is awesome, especially the picture of the Koala on the wall.

You can never be late – the good side to 'Ghana time', which I will explain soon. Minerals – soft drink/pop/soda or whatever you choose to call them, minerals are cool. They are all in glass bottles, and the stores demand the bottle back immediately. This means you have to skol it while you stand there, or they put it into a plastic bag for you to take away. Did anyone know that Fanta had a cocktail flavour? Well it's the best.

Plantain chips - another thing to buy from the top of a woman's head, plantain chips are made from ripe and un-ripe plantain. They are sliced thinly and then fried, served in plastic bags. The dark brown ones are made from the ripe plantain and they're sweet!

Chop bars - small food bars selling local food, every one of these places has almost the same menu, have no service skills, but are incredibly cheap and have some character. Jollof rice with chicken and coleslaw, with a mineral costs about 20000 cedis, or less than $3!

Spots - small drink bars that sell alcohol and play music. Not much else to them really..

Weekend trips - there are so many cool places to visit that are reasonably close to Accra, as you have seen from my past blogs, and trips out of the hustle and bustle of Accra are the best - they give your lungs a chance to recover from the pollution!

Children - the children everywhere are always the most happy to see us obronis. The little ones will often shout 'obroni' over and over and over until you either wave at them or get so far away they can't see you anymore. The way they dance is cute, their school uniforms are cute, their smiles are cute and their enthusiasm is contagious.

The Alhaji song - just one of the many hip-life songs we hear over and over and it always manages to bring a smile to our faces with its catchy tune. Apparently Alhaji means 'one who has returned from Mecca' or something similar, which doesn't fit the tune of the song, but it's great!

Cheap stuff - at 7300 cedis to the AUD, it's a lot of fun buying each other presents of food and generally having a lot of money!


The bad

The A.M.A. - Accra Metropolitan Authority - these are the people who control a lot of things in Accra - the parking, the newstands, the markets, the taxis, etc. The other day Kevin and I were at the market and we saw an AMA guy walk up to a woman and take the mangoes from her head that she was selling. She tried to get them back from him, so he tipped them all over the muddy ground, before whipping out a cane and lashing her. I saw another AMA guy run up with his cane held high and I turned away with tears in my eyes. I told my host family about it and they said those people the AMA target don't pay their taxes. I said that's no reason to cane them, and they said they're being stubborn so they deserve it. Sure thing.

Lack of utilities - the power cutting off for 12 hours every 2 days isn't cool for so many reasons, and having water that doesn't always run is even worse for hygiene reasons...

Pollution - if this gives you any indication of how bad it is, Amanda works in the children's ward at the hospital here and she said the top 3 things children come in with are malaria, typhoid and respiratory problems, caused by the pollution. You have to be careful of when you choose to have a huge yawn because you might be gulping in some fresh black smoke from the back of that truck in front of you..

Beggars from Niger - I feel sorry for these little kids, but you seriously can't give everyone money everytime you get asked. The little ones from Niger silently put their hand to their mouth and then some go so far as to grab your hand/elbow/skirt or even hug you as you walk along. It breaks my heart.

Rubbish - it costs money to get your rubbish picked up by the authorities, which many people here can't afford. Rubbish lines the streets, and is found in piles everywhere being burnt. The other day Amanda went with her hosts to the place they go to dump their rubbish. They walked for about 2km, and when they got there the big bin was full. They turned around and dumped it straight into a river.

Rain - I love rain usually, but here it makes time stop. Half the trotros and taxis stop operating, the stations and roads turn to mud, the power usually cuts off, people don't come to work, clothes on the line get saturated, and, if you're unlucky enough to leave your windows open like I did the other week, entire rooms get soaked.

Hissing/kissing - I'm sort of used to people hissing and kissing at me to get my attention but it still pisses me off, especially if I'm having a bad Ghana day.

Hawkers - I don't know how many times you have to say no to the people selling shit, but it's hard to get away from them sometimes..

Water sachets - at first I loved the water sachets like crazy. Now, it seems that every one tastes different, which has concerned us since I heard on the news that there is currently no authority that regulates the water sachet industry - meaning possible health issues. They are also a major contributor to the rubbish in the streets.

Being constantly dirty - this is self-explanatory, but basically I sweat as soon as I turn off my fan in the morning after my shower and I don't stop getting covered in sweat and dirt until my shower the next morning.

Unmetered taxis - you have to bargain with each taxi driver before you get in the taxi. They often tell us prices that are way higher than they should be, just because we're obronis. Also, if there's traffic or it has been raining, the prices go up dramatically. The only times I've taken taxis here is when I've been sick and needed to get home ASAP, and bargaining at that time is ultra frustrating.

Open sewers - the smell, the rubbish, the fact that you could trip over them/fall into the disgusting water, just like our friend Mac did the other week. There's not much goodness about open sewers.

Urination - the other day, I saw a guy urinating on the balcony of the 2nd storey of a building. It's just gross.

Ghana time - as an example, we had arranged for a micro-finance company to come and do loan applications with our patients at the clinic. They were to come at 10am sharp. They turned up at 12:45pm.

The menu - see this in more detail below.



The menu

Ingredients

Fish (fried, smoked)
Chicken (fried)
Beef
Pork
Plantain (roasted, fried, boiled) – sort of weird banana
Cassava – sort of like…yam
Yam (roasted, fried, boiled) – sort of like potato
Corn maize
Red palm oil
Groundnuts – like peanuts
Okro – some type of green vegetable, which is sticky
Egg (boiled, fried)
Rice
Beans
Gari – powder which is mixed with hot water to create mush
Bread (tea, wheat, sugar, corn, butter)

The menu

Fufu with light soup – fufu = ground up plantain and cassava, served in a ball in soup Fufu with groundnut soup
Banku with okro stew – banku = cooked corn maize, served in a ball in soup
Banku with okro soup
Chicken stew with rice
Beef and egg stew with rice
Fish stew with rice
Stew with gari
Jollof rice with chicken/fish – jollof rice is chicken with spicy sauce mixed through it
Plain rice with chicken/fish
Fried rice with chicken/fish
Wakye - beans with rice
Omo tuo – rice balls in soup, only served on Sundays
Kenke with stew – kenke = banku, wrapped in leaves and re-boiled so it's hard
Plantain with groundnuts
Yam with pepper – pepper = red sauce made from smoked shrimps, chilli peppers and spices
Yam with stew
Bread with margarine

This is honestly it. I swear. I spend so much money on obroni food and fruit just because all my food makes me feel like I'm full of carbs, starch and oil. I don't know how Ghanaians survive.

Hope you're still awake after that one! So now I'm headed to Togo and Benin, and then to the north of Ghana to see mud mosques, elephants and hippos! Not sure how much I'll be blogging in the next 2 weeks, but you can be sure that once I'm home I'll finish all my blogging business, including photos, and I'll put all my photos on Picasa web and send out the link to everyone. All my love.

1. The door of our tro fell off while we were going along
2. Lapaz station after a rain
3. Champs! The whole roof is covered in flags and guernseys
4. Me with a Fanmilk guy
5. Smoothy's is even on 3rd Lane! How lucky am I?
6. The gang, chillin on the wicker chairs with smoothies
7. Fruit stand in Osu
8. Koala
9. MaxMart is also attached to the Chicken/Pizza Inn - handy for getting a small dessert after 2-4-1 pizza on Tuesday!
10. A chop bar we ate breakfast at one time
11. I came home one night and this group of kids were in the area running around screaming. One of them came up and touched me and ran off so I chased them
12. Buckets in our hotel bathroom, ready for bathing and cleaning the toilet since there was no running water
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15. One of the cutest sights Aman and I saw in Ghana one day in the rain
16. Our water sachet remains after filling our water bottles on one of our trips
17. Small schoolgirl jumping a drain
18. If a wall doesn't say 'do not urinate here', it's probably being urinated on right now
19. You thought I was lying about the menu didn't you?
20. Smoked fish. This stuff I couldn't handle
21. The girls making fufu
22. Banku and soup
23. Fried plantain and nuts

The Ghanaian remote control

This title is about the family situations that I’ve been exposed to lately. The other day, Gladys was sitting on the couch watching TV with Nadia. When it cut to an ad break, the volume went incredibly loud so Gladys called out something in Ga to Sarah. Sarah runs in from the kitchen 3 rooms away, goes to the TV, turns it down, grabs the remote control, hands it to Gladys and goes back to whatever she was doing in the kitchen. Another example is from Kevin’s household. His host mum, aptly called ‘Big Mama’, was sitting in the living room. Her mobile started ringing on the opposite side of the table in front of her. She called out something to her niece, Annie, in Twi. Annie runs in from the next room, picks up the phone, pushes the answer button, hands the phone to Big Mama and goes back to whatever she was doing. This sort of thing happens everywhere, so we have named it the Ghanaian remote control. Great name huh?

The Ghanaian culture sure is an interesting one. I realised the other day that every thing I see or hear, I immediately compare it in my head to home and it’s almost always the complete opposite to the norms that I’m used to. I’m particularly interested in family dynamics. I spoke to Nadia about this the other day because I needed to understand what the deal is, and this is what I got from it. Males do basically nothing in the house. Males don’t cook or clean (unless they’re cool like Tiko, who sometimes whips something up in the kitchen). In fact, she told me about her friend’s dad who seriously only bathes, eats and brushes his teeth by himself! The females of the family organise his food, carry water upstairs for him and clean his clothes. If there is a young boy in the family, he will probably clean the car every day or carry water, but that’s about all. I think I’m lucky that I’m living with Tiko, who’s lived in England before and seems pretty chilled out about putting in some work, because otherwise I’d be going crazy. Most adult men work outside of the house. Females on the other hand have it a bit worse. Young females start doing work around the house pretty early. It’s the females’ job to cook and clean. Once they become mothers however, it seems that they get their children to do a lot of the work (like in the above situations), and only few work outside of the house. I also had to ask if this meant that when Nadia gets a boyfriend, she will be cooking and cleaning for him. She said that before they get married it won’t be like that because he’ll have to be doing things to win her over, like taking her out and so on. When they get married or move in together though…

Today I went to visit the bakery group of The Almond Tree to teach them some English. I’m quite proud of myself for this because I’ve never taught people before! Kevin and I went together and there were only 2 people there today so we had one-on-one sessions with them, which was lucky. They never went to school as children, so although they know how to speak English, they’ve only been learning how to write it for the past month from the Canadian volunteers. The guy I worked with was up to the letter H, so I got him up to M, which was very exciting. It’s really frustrating work. We were teaching them how to write the letters, how to say them and also how to sound them out. The letter ‘I’ was a killer. We sounded it out about 15 times, saying just the letter I, then saying ‘singing’, ‘Ibrahim’, ‘itchy’, etc to put it in context. I asked him to just say it one last time and he sounded out the letter ‘L’. Why?

A day in the life of an obroni

This is another random blog entry with no real focus. Nothing major has happened, but there’s so much to say!

Some cool stuff has been happening at work for me lately. I was put in charge of the open house we held on the 22nd and it actually went quite well! The girl who has initially started organising it left for Togo a week before the day, so I was basically in charge of pulling it all together and making sure it ran smoothly – a bit difficult to do in Ghana. For starters, everything was late. One of the groups that was to perform was late by an hour, as was the food, setting up the projector and the PA system. Luckily, this is the norm in Ghana so I wasn’t blasted for it. I was blasted for everything else though – why aren’t these photos in the slideshow? where are the guests? (you mean the ones that were only sent invitations 2 days ago??) etc etc.. The actual event ran quite smoothly compared to the normal Ghana things, and at the end my boss shook my hand and said I’d done a good job. Score! After the formalities and stress were over I chilled out in the office for awhile, venting my frustrations to Kevin, before we headed back outside to find everyone dancing! A guy had put music over the PA and everyone in the compound was dancing, including random people who’d heard the music while walking past. So good.

Also, I’ve found work to do for my final 2 weeks at WAAF (after a month and a half of sitting around..) The foundation has a group of 15 HIV positive people who make up a team called The Almond Tree. They’ve been trained by 3 Canadian volunteers over the past 4 months or so in skills needed to start their own businesses and become independent. They’ve been split into groups and each group has been trained in a different skill – bead-making, bread-making, and tye-and-die, batik and sewing. 5 of them even want to head off on their own and start individual businesses – selling slippers (thongs/flip-flops), selling Togolese and Beninese fabrics, operating a chicken coop (called God's Grace), sewing clothes made to order, and owning a provisions store (called Psalm 1:24 just like everything else here haha). Even in the short time that I’ve been around they have made some amazing improvements, and it’s great seeing their optimism! One of them just turned 70 so we had a party for him with a cake we’d made and everything! (yes I made a cake, one of the many things I didn’t see myself doing in Africa…)

Anyway, the point of my story is that 2 of the volunteers have come to the end of their time here so they’ve headed home, and the other one is travelling with her mum for the next 2 weeks, leaving The Almond Tree group to handle everything by themselves. In that 2 weeks, they will be applying for business loans, setting up their businesses and also starting to sell the products that they’ve already made. It’s a really exciting and scary time for them all, especially considering some of them have never worked, some don’t know English incredibly well, not to mention that all of them have HIV and fall sick occasionally. SO Kevin and I will be taking over the role of the other volunteers – guiding the group in their decisions, teaching them computer skills (starting from how to click a mouse) and helping them fill out their application forms. It’s going to be an amazing couple of weeks :)

I made dinner for my family and they actually really liked it! I made an old family favourite, tuna risotto, because it contained boiled egg, rice and tuna and I figured it might be a hit. Gladys asked me for the recipe so I’ll give it to her as my parting gift, and Sarah is still walking around saying ‘tuna risotto’, which I find incredibly amusing.

I headed to the market yesterday with Amanda, the girl who came to Kokrobite with us last week. It was quite the experience! We got it all over in one day, shopping from 10 til 5:30ish and covering the Kaneshie Market, Makola Market and Art’s Centre. I spent 600000 cedis in all (about $80) and I bought incredible amounts of stuff, mainly gifts. I had decided I’m getting a dress made while I’m here so I bought 2 yards of material, which is very exciting! Kaneshie was okay – it’s all in one building, but it’s mainly foods, fabrics and provisions. That’s where I bought my material. Makola was a bit crazier – it’s a massive, sprawling market that’s spread over blocks and blocks, and the only thing to do is keep walking down alleys and streets trying to look at stuff but not really turning in their direction so as to avoid being lunged upon by sellers. I think the funniest thing about that place was the guys walking around with one skirt or pair of pants. They walk up to you and hold the pair of pants against you while you’re walking and say crap like ‘ohh lady this look nice, you buy, you buy’, meanwhile the pants are a size 6 or something ridiculous that would not fit in a million years. We ended up just saying ‘are you crazy?’ to the guys, which was funny. When we sat down to have lunch after a couple of hours of the craziness, we could hardly talk to each other because we were so flustered and frustrated. Even while we were eating lunch we had people coming up trying to sell us graters, sunglasses, toothpaste, drinking glasses…

The Art’s Centre was the most insane 2 hours or our lives. It’s a compound with a whole bunch of stores in it filled with arty stuff – carvings, masks, drums, clothes, jewellery, paintings. Walk inside the compound and there are 3 guys waiting to take you to their store first. We walked in the main area, which had lots of little stalls in it and got SURROUNDED by people – ‘lady, lady, you come, I have earrings you like, name your price’ I’ll give an example of purchasing from these people. Say I wanted to buy a really cool carving. I say ‘how much?’ ‘200000’ ‘ohhh too much, too much! It’s not worth 200!’ ‘how much would you pay? What’s your price?’ ‘I was only looking to pay 60000’ ‘ohh this is worth much more than that! You pay 150000’ ‘no I would only pay 60. oh well, thanks anyway’ walk off… ‘lady, lady, how much you pay?’ ‘I said I would only pay 60000!’ ‘too little! You pay 100000’ ‘no really I would only pay 60’ walk off again and then hear from the background ‘okay you pay, you pay’ meaning I can pay the price I said. Lee shoots, and she scores! At the end of that 2 hours, we had given up with polite and had just started yelling at people to leave us alone. I can’t even properly portray how insane this was…

1. The Almond Tree showroom. It was finally completed in the week of the open day, and it holds some of the jewellery and clothing that the group has made
2. Me in the office after the open day
3. Two of our patients setting up to do batik
4. Kevin with the cake mix, looking his usual excited self
5. Me and the three we were teaching English to - Meri, Idrissu and Janet. We took a normal photo and then Kevin said for us to do a silly one. I held out my peace sign, but the others didn't really know what was going on so they held out their hands too, Idrissu holding out the pen he was holding. Cute
6. Kaneshie Market
7. Me and Aman
8. This lady wanted me to take a photo of her and when I pointed the camera, she opened her mouth!
9. Amanda in the Art's Centre, looking pissed off, trying to bargain down the price of some batik tapestries