My Time in Accra: Akwaaba!

Instead of writing to everyone I know, I have decided to write a blog instead, which is something I never thought I would do. So to make it easier on myself I am going to pretend like I am writing to you, my very close friend and/or family member.

…ahem…

Hey! Oh my gosh how are you?! Oh that’s so good to hear :)

So I have officially been in Ghana for two weeks now and it still hasn’t hit me. I don’t think I will ever be able to wrap my mind around it, so I am just going to stop trying haha

On the plane ride to DC I sat with one other girl, and we met up with 5 other girls on the way to Accra. On that flight I sat next to a very nice Ghanaian man who told me a lot of things about Ghana that I didn’t really understand until now. I got about 4 hours of awkward plane sleep before we landed mid afternoon in Ghana. We were greeted with akwaaba (which means welcome) by 3 of our “buddies” Peter, Seth and Daniel, and taken to the International Student Hostel II or ISH II as it is commonly known. I’m on the second floor (which is actually the third) and my roommate, Tessa, is in my program and is from Tallahassee, Florida. Shes a little more used to the heat than I am… it never gets below 84 degrees here and I don’t think I stopped sweating the first week. Im getting used to being sticky most of the time, not bothering putting on makeup before 6 pm and letting my hair do whatever the heck it wants. I was a little nervous to find out the showers are always cold, but I quickly recognized it as a blessing and realized it almost feels better than diving into a pool.

The first few days USAC (my program) provided most of our meals, which was really nice. We had orientation for about 3 days which mostly consisted of people scaring us into not sleeping with strangers, walking alone at night on a dark road or taking drugs from strangers. Thank you USAC for your wealth of knowledge. There were also some helpful tips as well, such as not using your left hand, tips on bargaining and how to shake hands like a Ghanaian (they pull back and snap using their middle fingers, Im still getting it down). After all that we had a long and very hot tour of campus followed by online registration. It gets trickier here because most of the classes didn’t have their timetables up. So basically we signed up for a bunch of classes we thought we might like to take, then we waited until Monday to walk around to each department to check when that class was scheduled for, if it was even being offered. Then we registered with that department for that class. Apparently classes were supposed to start last week. However a lot of the teachers were on strike (a common occurrence?) or most of them simply just don’t go the first week. Most of the Ghanaian students don’t even bother coming back to school until after the first week, so we had a lot of people moving in this last weekend.

After all this I ended up with this schedule:

M: Dance 002- 11:30-1:30pm

Tu: Dance 002- 8:30-9:30 am, Twi-3:00-4:30pm, Dance 044-6:00-7:30pm

W: Drum- 1:30-3:30 pm, Twi 3:30-4:30pm

Th: Theology of St. Paul-1: 30-3:20pm, Hist. of Western Medicine in Ghana-3:30-5:30, Dance 044-6:00-7:30pm

Fr: no class!

I’m also volunteering at an orphanage on Wednesday mornings for my service learning class which starts this week! I’m pretty happy with my schedule, but we will see how it goes this first week!

The only class I’ve had so far has been my 2 dance classes. They are SO fun! My Monday-Tuesday class is all obronis (non Ghanaians), whereas my night class has a bunch of Ghanaian dance students helping us out. I’ve noticed that the Ghanaians look like beautifully exotic birds when they dance, while the obronis look like we got really into the chicken dance. Nonetheless we enjoy ourselves! One of my dance teachers looks just like the host from reading rainbow and is crazy good at dancing. In the night class we have a large, older man with a walking stick and a smile like Louis Armstrong who surprised me with his awesome moves.

Aside from school, I hang out around ISH II with the girls from my group a lot. There are 13 people in our group and only 1 guy. We joke around that we are like his 12 disciples. He has a really big beard and has been called Jesus, Osama and Santa by multiple Ghanaians around Accra. My personal favorite was when we took a day trip to Adaa beach, the kids who sold us our coconuts ran up to him, looked up and just said, “God?”. I don’t think they get many white guys with beards around there.

There’s also a group from England, University of New Hampshire and Canada, as well as many people from Togo, Benin, Nigeria and of course Ghana. Its been really fun getting to know everyone and I am still meeting a ton of new people.

Every Wednesday night here they have something called Reggae Nite at 2 of the local beaches. The first week we went to Labody and had a blast. I felt like I was in a commercial. We walked onto a beautiful beach with wooden tables and chairs set up with lanterns. There was a fairly expensive bar next to the stage where a live reggae band played. We sat around and talked, walked to the water and danced. That Friday one of the yearlong students had a birthday party, so we went to a small restaurant and bar for the first half. It had AC, sooo it was pretty great. We then all went to the local bar not too far off called Jerry’s. it can get a bit rowdy there sometimes, but overall it’s a really fun place to hang out.

The next Wednesday we decided to check out the other Reggae Nite at Tuwalla beach. This was a much different scene than the chill Wednesday prior. The music was much louder, the beach was rockier and uneven, the water was much closer to the tables and tires were used for bonfires sporadically along the beach. I enjoyed meeting new people and hearing their drunken tales as I casually sipped my pineapple juice and dipped my feet in the water. Some of my other friends didn’t enjoy themselves as much, so I think we will be sticking to Labody beach from now on.

The guys here are very forward, I guess because most Ghanaian women are soft spoken and reserved. So we had fun coming up with ways of getting them to leave us alone. Ones I have found to work the best are as follows: “I don’t have a phone” (as it bulges from my front pocket)

“I’m engaged to a man in the states and we are moving to Russia”

“ You will have to ask my dad first, my dowry consists of 5 cows, 2 goats and roughly 700 GHC”

“ There are 15 in line before you so I’m afraid you have to wait until they all die”

or a simple “ No” will also sometimes do the trick. This is normally met with a good-humored laugh, or a questioning glare followed by walking away. If anyone has any more ideas on what to say I would certainly love to hear them!

As far as food, there is a lot. We have a night market right behind ISH that everyone goes to most days. They have the pineapples, mangos and coconuts that put Safeway to shame. Lots of Jollof, waakye, banku, kenkey and platains. Or in other words, flavored rice, rice and beans, mushy dough-like bread, and corn meal. They also have delicious egg and bread sandwiches. There is a restaurant on the ground floor as well, that has slightly more American dishes, but it’s more expensive. Granted more expensive means about 3 or 4 Cedi instead of 1 Cedi (1 cedi= $0.58), so I’m still living off of the $200 I came here with. I’ve really liked all the food I have tried here, but my stomach is starting to do some weird stuff. I’m not sure what exactly is the cause of it, so I generally just pop a couple of Tums every once and a while and I’m ok.

After giving up on finding any other sports team I have decided to join the girls football (soccer) team here. I haven’t played since I was about 12, but how hard can it be?! Apparently really hard. Working out in Ghana makes me feel silly for ever paying for Bikram yoga. We are truly on the equator here. We had our first practice last night for 2 and a half hours. There are only 5 girls on the team as of now, so we practiced with the guys team. The whole first hour and a half was conditioning with no brake. I thought I might die after already having 2 hours of dance earlier that day. Then we scrimmaged for the last hour until the sunset. If I am able to keep this up I will either end up dropping a few pounds or dropping dead.

That’s about all I can remember for now! Black stars play tomorrow in the semi finals, which is very exciting! I will keep this updated when I can!