Chris and I have once again schlepped our bags and our weary bodies to a new home in an area of Accra called Tema. We had a stroke of luck finding the place, and it is extremely posh and spacious, not to mention less expensive than the last place. We each have our own huge empty rooms with tiny mats on the floor where we sleep. Because I have so few belongings and it all fits in the one dresser provided, it’s basically an empty concrete room with a bug net in one corner. It’s relatively easy to get to and from work and basically takes the same amount of time as before, however now I am coming from an Easterly direction rather than Westerly. At my NGO I’ve been attending meetings, editing and proofreading reports, and spending time with lots of interesting, smart people.
This past weekend was a whirlwind of activity. The plan was for me to go to Kumasi, meet Julie, and for us to head to Bui National Park in the Western Region to see some hippos. I got up early on Friday and headed into the city to find a bus that would take me to Kumasi (the trip should take 4 or 5 hours) and found one that was leaving at 11am. Six hours into the trip I was thinking what an unbelievably long time it was taking (Julie insists the drivers get paid by the hour) and I heard a loud pop and the bus broke down on the side of the road. After about 40 minutes the driver got us fixed up and we were back on the road, which meant that I didn’t get into Kumasi until much later than I had expected, around 6pm. I met up with Julie, we grabbed a bit of food, and found our way by taxi to the tro tro station that would take us North to Techiman, and from there we would get yet another tro tro to Wenchi. It was dark by then and we were ripping down the road, giggling to ourselves in the back, and the trip took about two hours. When we arrived in Techiman I was starting to get a bit hopeless about finding a place to sleep, and we somehow managed to get a tro to Wenchi.
At this juncture I would like to point out that when I am traveling I often deliberately dehydrate myself because there is no where to urinate in Ghana other than the odd awful and very public urinal. By the time we had arrived in Techiman, I hadn’t gone to the bathroom in 14 hours, and had been traveling for equally as long.
So we were on the tro to Wenchi and we got off at the last stop (by this time it was 10pm), which was when I realized, bewildered, that my phone had disappeared. I searched my bags, searched the tro tro, but it was gone. Gone, along with all my contacts and my super organized cellphone calendar.
I was so defeated.
We found a place to stay though, and I reasoned with myself that I would rather have a place to stay than a cell phone, especially considering cells come pretty cheap around here. It’s more of an annoyance and an inconvenience than anything. The place we stayed at was very shady and minimal – two beds, no sink – but we were happy to have anywhere to lie down at that point.
The next morning we hopped on a trotro going to Bui and waited about an hour and a half for it to fill up before it finally exited the lot. We were preparing for about a two and a half hour ride, and they had crammed 4 extra people in the tro so we could barely breathe never mind extend our legs. Half way through the trip I started feeling a fiery sensation on the top of my right thigh, and thinking it was just something to do with being overheated and cramped, ignored it. It got hotter and hotter until it felt like someone had poured lighter fluid on my leg and lit a match. I tried to figure out what had happened when I realized: my pepper spray had got jostled around and the safety came off, and it discharged through my bag and my shorts, all over my thigh.
It burned, it burned. But there was nothing I could do except sit there and bounce along and hope against all odds the burning would stop.
It didn’t.
Eventually we arrived at Bui, and after about a half hour of seeing no people and no vehicles, we finally talked to a man who said he was a guide and could take us on the tour to see the hippos. It was midday at this point, and excruciatingly hot. We dumped our bags and hitched a ride into the wilderness, got in leaky canoes, and saw some real life, terrifyingly big hippos. I was bailing out the boat nervously the whole time. We brought only 1.5 liters of water for the trek, thinking it would be enough, and it didn’t even come close. It was around the same time as we realized that we had not brought enough water, that we realized we had to walk about 3km back to the camp where we were staying.
By the time we were half way back, I could barely drag one foot in front of the other and I thought I was going to vomit from dehydration. Julie said she thought she might pass out and I was starting to wonder what exactly the guide planned on doing if one of us hit the dust. There was a period where the end was no where in sight, and I said out loud, “This is what I imagine hell to be like. The sun bearing down on us, with no end in sight, with no fluids left in our body.”
Eventually though, the end did arrive, and we bolted for our room and chugged down the warm bottle of water we had left there. We were both so dizzy and covered in filth and sweat all we could do was sit on this little wooden bench they had provided for us and feel pity for ourselves. Julie then mentioned she had brought two apples and my jaw hit the floor, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I grabbed the apples out of her bag and we devoured them, I was moaning with delight and I ate the whole thing, even the core, and then I ate her core. I haven’t eaten an apple in 5 months, and I will surely never eat one again as tasty as that one. It tasted unbelievable; it tasted like deity or something out of this world.
There was no electricity where we were staying, so we ate some raw noodles and went to bed early. Our tro tro left the next morning at 5:30am and I didn’t get home that night until 6. It was an exhausting weekend and the heat of my mace hasn’t left my mind, and I had to buy a new phone. But we saw hippos and it’s a good story, and I guess that was the point after all.
Midterms are coming up at the end of the month and my NGO has kicked into overdrive applying for grants, getting a new office, and struggling over revamping their accounting methods.
10 more weeks til my plane takes off.
Claire
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Workin' 9 - 5
Here's my day in a nutshell:
7:30 - Wake up, strumble around my room and start getting ready for work
8:00 - Eat bread and boil water for Nescafe
8:45 - Stand outside my house and wait for a sharecab to take me to the junction
- From the junction I catch a tro tro that follows the oceanside to my second stop
- At a different junction I catch another tro tro where I go to the last stop
- Walk for about 30 minutes through sandy garbage laden backyards to my workplace
10:00 - arrive at work and work on my laptop in the office with my boss and Nii until about 3
12:00 - go across the way to the woman selling fufuo, bring it back to the office and eat
3:00pm - walk back to the main intersection, buy some vegetable and get on a tro tro going home
4:30pm - arrive at my house, say hi to my creepy watchful neighbours, buy a huge bag of purewaters, carry it back to the house on my head
5:00pm - do washing while watching a movie (usually If These Walls Could Talk 2)
5:45pm - start cooking supper (sweat like a maniac on speed) and wait for Chris to get home
6:30pm - eat, and watch True Blood and/or read
9:00pm - do our exercise routine of pushups and situps
There you have it. It's an average day of sweat, grime, people yelling OBRUNI at me, and trying to make sure my room doesn't become completely submerged in ants.
All for now.
7:30 - Wake up, strumble around my room and start getting ready for work
8:00 - Eat bread and boil water for Nescafe
8:45 - Stand outside my house and wait for a sharecab to take me to the junction
- From the junction I catch a tro tro that follows the oceanside to my second stop
- At a different junction I catch another tro tro where I go to the last stop
- Walk for about 30 minutes through sandy garbage laden backyards to my workplace
10:00 - arrive at work and work on my laptop in the office with my boss and Nii until about 3
12:00 - go across the way to the woman selling fufuo, bring it back to the office and eat
3:00pm - walk back to the main intersection, buy some vegetable and get on a tro tro going home
4:30pm - arrive at my house, say hi to my creepy watchful neighbours, buy a huge bag of purewaters, carry it back to the house on my head
5:00pm - do washing while watching a movie (usually If These Walls Could Talk 2)
5:45pm - start cooking supper (sweat like a maniac on speed) and wait for Chris to get home
6:30pm - eat, and watch True Blood and/or read
9:00pm - do our exercise routine of pushups and situps
There you have it. It's an average day of sweat, grime, people yelling OBRUNI at me, and trying to make sure my room doesn't become completely submerged in ants.
All for now.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Bring On February
This month, like those past, has gone by very fast indeed. I have spent most of my time editing the book by my boss is attempting to get published - his life and times as a gay, Christian man in Ghana. It is both heart-wrenching and hopeful, and I have learned so much already from his experiences. Chris and I have made some realizations about the neighbourhood we live in: that it is too isolated and too unsafe. We are starting the stressful process of trying to get refunded and find a new, safer place but everything here takes a long time to come to fruition.
A big part of what has made up my happiness this month has been our kitchen. I have been cooking up a storm and experimenting with Ghanaian ingredients - such as fresh plantains - and I'll be so sad if we move to a place with a less accessible kitchen. This is likely considering this is the first time all year I've had a working fridge.
There's not really much to update right now, still very hot, still going to work, still living with Chris and having lots of good times.
xo
A big part of what has made up my happiness this month has been our kitchen. I have been cooking up a storm and experimenting with Ghanaian ingredients - such as fresh plantains - and I'll be so sad if we move to a place with a less accessible kitchen. This is likely considering this is the first time all year I've had a working fridge.
There's not really much to update right now, still very hot, still going to work, still living with Chris and having lots of good times.
xo
Friday, January 8, 2010
CEPEHRG
The name of my NGO is the Centre for Popular Education on Human Rights, Ghana, and so far I am really enjoying working with them. I have to take a taxi and then two tro tros to get to work, so it takes a while in transit even though geographically the location is close enough to where I live. I catch a taxi outside my house that takes me to a junction, from there I get on a tro that drives along the beach by the ocean, and from there I get another tro that takes me to an area called Teshi. My NGO is hard to find (it's in an unmarked, gated house) and yesterday I got lost and my boss had to come find me, but hopefully since that happened I will be able to get there with relative ease.
So far my duties have included a lot of editing and proofreading, along with writing emails and taking notes on the activities of the organization. I love the guys I work with, they are smart and kind and have a good sense of humour. Yesterday Chris and I got to move into our separate rooms which was fantastic, and so far living in the house is going smoothly.
Although, yesterday Chris and I were talking about how it's our dream house and what that actually means.
This house:
- is at least a tro ride and a taxi ride away from anything
- as of yesterday had almost no gas to cook with and almost no water
- is not near a place to buy phone credit
- is unfinished
- has no door to the bathroom so when you go you have to just hope no one walks in
- has some ants (but not many!)
- is in such a dusty part of town we can't really open the windows and everything is covered in a fine layer of red
- the shower has the water pressure of a slow pee.
- has no beds, just mattresses on the floor
BUT overall the living conditions are spectacularly posh compared to the other places we have stayed and to the majority of Ghana. I think our standards have shifted so low that this place seems like an oasis in the desert simply because it is clean and has a working fridge and nice love seats.
We are so happy buying groceries and being able to stock a fridge for the first time all year and I even bought a sassy tiger print mug to celebrate our last move.
Yesterday we had a bit of a scare where our watchmen (who we didn't know was our watchmen, just thought was a creepy rando) was knocking at the window and acting really strange, saying things that made no sense. I was outside and Chris was poking his head out the window and it was pitch black so neither of us could tell what was going on. We were getting freaked out by his behaviour and eventually I got inside and locked the door and both of us were like What Is Going On?? We were so terrified because (a) if it was our watchman, why was he acting so strange? and (b) if it wasn't our watchmen, who the F was it?? So we hid in my room under the fan with the lights on until we heard banging at the door, when Chris picked up one of my high heeled shoes with a spiky heel and approached the door cautiously. Turn out it was Serge and he was all, why are you guys acting so spooked? The dude was in fact our watchman, and no conclusion as to the bizarre behaviour other than perhaps a result of a solid language/cultural barrier.
Anyyyyyways. Glad that got cleared up because I honestly about had a heart attack.
Chris and I have come to the conclusion that we truly look forward to the time when we go home and generally have an idea about what is going on at any given time. We laugh about it now.
Will keep updating on NGO activities and experiences that change from terror to hilarity.
So far my duties have included a lot of editing and proofreading, along with writing emails and taking notes on the activities of the organization. I love the guys I work with, they are smart and kind and have a good sense of humour. Yesterday Chris and I got to move into our separate rooms which was fantastic, and so far living in the house is going smoothly.
Although, yesterday Chris and I were talking about how it's our dream house and what that actually means.
This house:
- is at least a tro ride and a taxi ride away from anything
- as of yesterday had almost no gas to cook with and almost no water
- is not near a place to buy phone credit
- is unfinished
- has no door to the bathroom so when you go you have to just hope no one walks in
- has some ants (but not many!)
- is in such a dusty part of town we can't really open the windows and everything is covered in a fine layer of red
- the shower has the water pressure of a slow pee.
- has no beds, just mattresses on the floor
BUT overall the living conditions are spectacularly posh compared to the other places we have stayed and to the majority of Ghana. I think our standards have shifted so low that this place seems like an oasis in the desert simply because it is clean and has a working fridge and nice love seats.
We are so happy buying groceries and being able to stock a fridge for the first time all year and I even bought a sassy tiger print mug to celebrate our last move.
Yesterday we had a bit of a scare where our watchmen (who we didn't know was our watchmen, just thought was a creepy rando) was knocking at the window and acting really strange, saying things that made no sense. I was outside and Chris was poking his head out the window and it was pitch black so neither of us could tell what was going on. We were getting freaked out by his behaviour and eventually I got inside and locked the door and both of us were like What Is Going On?? We were so terrified because (a) if it was our watchman, why was he acting so strange? and (b) if it wasn't our watchmen, who the F was it?? So we hid in my room under the fan with the lights on until we heard banging at the door, when Chris picked up one of my high heeled shoes with a spiky heel and approached the door cautiously. Turn out it was Serge and he was all, why are you guys acting so spooked? The dude was in fact our watchman, and no conclusion as to the bizarre behaviour other than perhaps a result of a solid language/cultural barrier.
Anyyyyyways. Glad that got cleared up because I honestly about had a heart attack.
Chris and I have come to the conclusion that we truly look forward to the time when we go home and generally have an idea about what is going on at any given time. We laugh about it now.
Will keep updating on NGO activities and experiences that change from terror to hilarity.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
New Years
Chris and I have been staying at a really cheap hostel situated in a ritzy part of Accra, and the juxtaposition is highly amusing. I was getting bitten all over my body every time I lay in my bed, I think from bed bugs, so I took it upon myself to wash the sheets (which smelled...fermented). The water came out brown. So brown in fact that Chris looked at me and said, "But why is it so milky?" After that the bites decreased, but I was horrified at having slept in that for 2 nights. New years was interesting and ridiculous. Everyone here sets off really loud but not so bright fireworks which sound like gunshots if they are within a block radius, which made us all jump in fear every 20 minutes or so the whole night. Three of our friends met up with Chris and I and we went out to eat and bought some dusty champagne at the gas station to bring back to the hostel with us. We ended up getting locked out of the room and having to get a Ghanaian woman to hipcheck the door open for us with only ten minutes to spare before midnight, allowing us to pop our bubbly and eat our tiny Danish snacks and set of the dangerous firecrackers we bought of a guy on the street. We almost lit the hostel on fire with one stray firecracker, but luckily that was a false alarm. Yesterday the same group of us went to a beautiful beach called Kokrobite outside Accra for the day, which went quite well up until the way home when our tro tro couldn't get up a hill and we had to get out and walk a piece in our sundresses and flip flops until we found another going in our direction.
Chris and I have had some extreme luck this week. We are working at different NGOs that are relatively near each other in Accra so we were hoping to somehow find a place to live together. We met a girl from England who was staying in our hostel, and she used to live here and knew a guy who rented to foreign volunteers. So she called him for us and we met with him today and his house is amazing, with luxuries such as running water and our own rooms and a gated property!! We were so happy to have made that connection and we are hoping to move in by Tuesday. He is an incredibly nice man named Serge who is an artist and a model.
Will keep this blog updated with how my first week at the NGO goes and the new place. I hope everyone is well and staying warm (god knows I am...)
xox
Chris and I have had some extreme luck this week. We are working at different NGOs that are relatively near each other in Accra so we were hoping to somehow find a place to live together. We met a girl from England who was staying in our hostel, and she used to live here and knew a guy who rented to foreign volunteers. So she called him for us and we met with him today and his house is amazing, with luxuries such as running water and our own rooms and a gated property!! We were so happy to have made that connection and we are hoping to move in by Tuesday. He is an incredibly nice man named Serge who is an artist and a model.
Will keep this blog updated with how my first week at the NGO goes and the new place. I hope everyone is well and staying warm (god knows I am...)
xox
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Accra
After a wonderful and cold holiday in Portugal I am glad to be back in sunny Accra. I had forgotten how humid it is in the South because Northern Ghana is extremely dry, and I am remembering what being sweaty actually means. I am staying with my friends Jen and Selina and I start my placement on January 5th.
You can mail me at my original mailing address in Legon as I will be checking that post office box regularly:
Claire Ryan
c/o TIG
Institute of African Studies
PO Box LG 73
Legon, Accra
Ghana, West Africa
Being away really made me realize how much I missed Ghana, and how much I like living here. When my plane landed I felt at peace and as though I was truly coming home. I wait in nervous but optimistic anticipation for my second semester!
Claire
You can mail me at my original mailing address in Legon as I will be checking that post office box regularly:
Claire Ryan
c/o TIG
Institute of African Studies
PO Box LG 73
Legon, Accra
Ghana, West Africa
Being away really made me realize how much I missed Ghana, and how much I like living here. When my plane landed I felt at peace and as though I was truly coming home. I wait in nervous but optimistic anticipation for my second semester!
Claire
Friday, December 18, 2009
December
So I packed up all my stuff, having to leave behind (very regretfully) my steam iron, my laundry basket, and my flip flops. So now I am wrinkly and washing in my bare feet, but I thought I was going to dislocate at least one of my shoulders as it was carrying all of my stuff around Tamale. I got on a bus and went to Kintampo, visited my new friend Rohini and saw waterfalls and met other new friends. I got on another bus yesterday at 9:30am, and got to Accra at 9pm. The distance is about 300km maybe? And it took Twelve Hours. The traffic is ridiculous coming into Accra; it took us 2 and a half hours to drive 27km. The roads are also in horrendous condition slowing down the drive so, so much. It was so good to see my homestay family again and meet my Auntie's children and grandchild. They were hospitable as always and are letting me keep my stuff at their place while I travel. Tomorrow I leave for Portugal for a week, come backon the 27th, will probably hang out with my Ghanaian friend Collins in his village for New Years, and then begin my last four months in Ghana. Time is flying.
xo
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