Month 2: The Next 50 Days

Month 2: 50 Next Days

In bed with academic lethargy and a bad case of le food poisoning courtesy of Accra Yogo! Vanilla Yoghurt, I am finally updating my blog! I have a lot of ground to cover, having not updated in the last 50 days (I did count; it is 50 exactly).

So here goes. Ten experiences, from worst to best, the full spectrum. In 50 days.

#10: Pseudo-Malaria

 It came quickly in the night, like Alfred Noyes’ “The Highwayman” (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-highwayman/) though resulting in a more protracted pain and without hooves to announce its arrival. I had finished a great night in mid-June; I had finished writing a memo to the Ghanaian parliament on why they should strike down the Election Commission’s bill to increase the number of constituencies from 230 to 275 for the 2012 election, I’d gone to step class at my gym, and Laura, Valerie and I had finished the evening with a grilled chicken salad and chocolate milkshake. 

Within six hours, I was miserable. I wore a high fever, a headache, and a stomachache that squeezed my organs blue. 

On a related note, between mid-June malaria and yesterday’s food poisoning, I think my roommate Laura Jones wins the medal for being that-person-who-has-seen-me-vomit-the-most-besides-my-mother.

#9: Recovering From Malaria
After three hours in a crowded open-air hospital in Nyaho Accra, a blood test paper that reads “no malaria parasite present”, and two days of groggy feverish nonsense, the highlight of the flu is having time off work. Two days after I dived off the deep end, Val caught whatever I had, and both of us were grounded for the week.

That week was filled with Sex and the City, The West Wing, and ice cream.

CDD, the organization that I work for, sent a driver to come and check on me since everyone at the office was really concerned. This was a really hard scene to justify.

#8: Finding a Bookstore

I am accelerating the level of enjoyment that I experienced in each event of this spectrum because I did not take pictures of the mediocre things. And pictures are worth ~500 of my words. From this point on, every event is a level 8+ on the Richter scale of personal enjoyment.

We found a bookstore last weekend. Books are really hard to come by in Accra. They have a lot of corner bookstores, which sell strictly bibles or related religious books. African books are also not too difficult to come by. But if you want anything Western, forget it.

Until last weekend, I had ready everything I had fit into my backpack coming here and all the African classics that I had haphazardly managed to buy. I’d polished off Guns, Germs & Steel (Jared Diamond), The Blind Assassin (Margaret Attwood), The Life of Pi (Yann Martel), After Dark (Haruki Murakami), The World According to Garp (John Irving), Summertime (J.M. Coetzee), The Diary of a Bad Year (J.M. Coetzee), and Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe).  Particularly recommended are The World According to Garp (this is the third time that I have read it), The Blind Assassin and Summertime.

After heading to the bookstore, Laura, Val and I went to Osu and got smoothies and wraps. It had been two months since my lips had touched a chicken wrap. And I came away with the biography of Hillary Clinton.

#7: Ghanaian Cuisine

For all the natural culinary skills that have blessed the members of my non-immediate family (except you, dad!), I seem to have by-passed it all. But I have worked pretty hard at learning how to cook some traditional Ghanaian cuisine. The Strocher Guide to Ghana had me freaked out two months ago that I would hate the food in Ghana. To quote them “it is not that Ghanaian cuisine is bad, per se, but it is nothing that you will find that you miss.”

Fried plantain is the best snack in the world. 

I won’t miss the food in Ghana. But that’s because I’ve broadly learned how to cook everything that I love. My favourite dishes include Ghanaian grilled chicken (with garlic, onions and ginger), Jollof Rice, and Red Red. Red Red is the best dish. It is black-eyed beans in a spicy tomato curry.

Red Red featured above. Made it myself. No big deal. 

The Ghanaians say not to eat Red Red after lunch because of the whole beans beans the magical fruit proverb.  But occasionally, I throw caution into the wind.

(Nothing like a good fart joke to liven up a blog.)  

#6: Exploring the Slave Castle in Cape Coast

At the end of June, Laura, Val, Natalia and I headed to Cape Coast, a sandy stretch of beach along the Ghanaian coast. It was a four hour trotro ride west of Accra to the questionable C-Lotte Hotel, where the manager introduced us to a bedroom occupied by a naked woman, a waitress that served us stone cold omelettes, and a front entrance clad head-to-toe in condom paraphernalia. (If you really love her, wear a cover.)   

After dropping our luggage in the hotel, we went to the Cape Coast Castle, which was the largest slave castle in Ghana during the colonial era. The viceroy lived in the castle along with about two thousand slaves in the segregated dungeons below, waiting for months at a time to be shipped off to the West.

The castle was beautiful.

The dungeons were chilling. 

The Obamas unveiled the castle’s reconstruction in 2009, in Barack Obama’s first trip to Africa.

When I came to Ghana, people told me that Ghana was “Africa for beginners.” Frankly, I think that identity is pretty bogus. I can’t speak with any authority, because I have never been to another African country, but living in Ghana is hard. It is jarring. And even its beautiful parts are gritty. And there isn’t anything watered-down about that. Slaves were deported in Ghana. Thousands of people died in tribal warfare with the colonials in Ghana. Ethnic tensions remain. Ghana was granted independence in 1957, and then promptly underwent four coups to get to the Fourth Republic in 1994 (and has been a democracy ever since).  But it’s got a firm sense of national identity, and it’s proud to be an African state. And the people are nice, and the food is good, and the music and dance are mad fun to partake in.

I think it is only Africa for Beginners because it was Obama’s first African country. 

#5: Painting the Primary School in Ho

The weekend after Cape Coast, Laura, Val, Tukeni and I went back to Ho where we helped to pain the new classroom and wing of a primary school in the village. This is the school that I had written about earlier – the one Valerie had volunteered with two summers ago.

We painted it on Canada Day.

The walls of the Ho Primary School are now a proud shade of Pepto Bismal.

#4: The Beach in Ada Foa

Perhaps the most beautiful place that I have ever visited in the world is Ada, Ghana. Ada is this entirely remote beach village, enclosed by the Atlantic Ocean and a cluster of small sand islands which each host some 200-person community.

We stayed at the Dreamland Beach Resort, which was a fifteen minute walk from this place.

We then came back and fell asleep in the hammocks with a nice bottle of wine, some Margaret Attwood, and a dinner of watermelon, mango and pineapple.

#3: Village in Ada

But before the night of the beautiful beach, we toured around developing villages near Ada Foah. We were guided by a friend of Natalya’s whom was running an NGO in the village. The purpose of the NGO was to train unemployed youth / adults in some working skill, like auto-repair, tailoring, etc.

Children often roll tires as a game. 

And they love getting their pictures taken. 

Women carry heavy loads on their heads to sell -- food, water, utensils, anything. 

The main problem facing the NGO isn’t a lack of funds or organization, like most NGOs in Ghana. But its motive. The problem with occupation in villages like Ada or Ada Foah is that the market is over-saturated with labour without enough capital to fund the service industry. There are too many mechanics and tailors, and not enough people with disposable income to finance them. Most people in Ada or Ada Foah leave to Accra eventually, and it’s a brain drain to the cities.

#2: Touching a Crocodile

It was 100% legit. We were sitting at this restaurant which was encircled by crocodiles in water somewhere near the Kankun National Park. And this waitress came over to Natalia and asked her if she wanted to touch a crocodile. Of course, neither of us had ever desired anything so much. So Natalia  and I said that we would like to touch the crocodile, and we paid her the equivalent of $1.12 for her to lead us across a wire fence that read ‘DO NOT OPEN. DANGEROUS ANIMAL’.

And we crouched by THAT crocodile, and we took pictures.

The crocodile’s name was Saddam Hussein. Which meant that I was a lot closer to hell than I had ever intended to be. (That's just a little Saddam humour for you! Admittedly, in poor taste.) 

#1: Rope Bridge Across the Jungle

At Kankun National Park, we went on an hour’s hike through the jungle, which climaxed at a 2k journey across rope bridges above the tree canopy of the jungle. The rope bridge was 500 meters from the ground, a single string of planks fastened by rope from tree to tree. The bridge shook as we walked across it, one at a time.

At first it was terrifying. And we had to sing “These Are a Few of My Favourite Things.”

Then we loved it, and were near running across it.

You could see some animals in the trees, but not many since most animals come out at night.

I only have 28 days in Ghana left now. But I promise to update before those are up. And if you want a better blow-by-blow account of what I’m up to, this is my friend Valerie’s blog. She updates more frequently than I do, and is good for a laugh: http://valerieinghana.blogspot.com/