The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It’s only the end of the third day and I feel like I know Ghana inside and out. However, despite the fact that I may or may not feel like one of the locals, I think I am still considered a tourist. I can’t help but compare our tour bus to one containing 14+ eager Asian tourists (sorry for the racial slur) as we drive around the city wearing our Bermuda shorts and taking cheesy, staged group pictures while screaming such profanities as: “THIS IS SO AFRICA!” We cling to our tour bus for dear life and often stick out like sore, white thumbs in large gatherings of Ghanaians. Even when we try to say things like “thank you” (medaase) in Twi, the Ghanaians just laugh, nod and reply “you’re welcome” in semi-perfect English as we walk away in embarrassment and often confusion.

Maybe I oughta rewind a little… You should probably all know that the second our plane landed and the doors opened I started sweating and I haven’t stopped since. TMI, I know, but seriously the heat and humidity here are unlike anything I’ve ever felt before… Not to mention my feet and legs were incredibly swollen for the entire first day/night, like to the point where I wondered if I would ever have normal sized extremities again. Thankfully I woke up this morning and the girth had been relatively reduced.

General information: The weather has been pretty overcast and humid with occasional monsoons during the night, and the food has been extremely interesting (detailed blog post to come later.) Our lectures on Media in Ghana have been fascinating and enlightening, and the travels in our off time have been of equal if not more value. I have been slowly acquiring various goods such as adequate groceries, a cell phone, and many many pictures. Favorite part of the trip so far: the children.

As for our house… it actually deserves its own blog post but I will now share the most important highlight(s). I am rooming with Ariane and Elise and somehow it took all three of us three entire days to realize the windows in our room were not opened (everyone else figured that out during hour number one) and that that was likely the cause of the smell. What smell, you may ask? I would say it was and still slightly is comparable to that dank, humid, damp, awkward smell exuded from the crocodile exhibit room at any and all zoos. We remain hopeful that with the windows open and the stale air flowing the air quality should be normal within a few days. … Also I attempted to put up a mosquito net after a near fatal run-in with our new gecko roommate, only to have it fall down on top of me at roughly 2 a.m.

Despite all the fun and games, I’ll end this blog on a slightly more serious note. On day 2 we took a bus tour of the entire city and witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly of Accra. On one side of a street you may find a wealthy neighborhood dating back to colonial British times, whereas directly across are dozens, even hundreds of people living amongst their own waste and garbage. Every other building in Accra is unfinished, mere skeletons of houses, offices and hotels that will remain so as along as the interest rate for loans is 25%. Young unemployed men and women dart in between cars, buses and tro-tros hawking items ranging from peanuts and dried fruit to Ghanaian movies and DVD players. The rivers are clogged with debris and in the poorest of areas unsupervised children run barefoot through piles of metal scrap and nap on tires underneath semi-trucks.

It is truly amazing to witness this all first hand… the horrors of poverty are so real when you are placed smack dab in the middle of it. However I will say one thing: the Ghanaian people are an incredibly resilient, friendly, and even joyful people. Even though it is pretty overwhelming for us to be the only white people for sometimes miles, the locals are welcoming and encourage our smiles, conversations, and plentiful photographs. The children stare at first then burst into toothy grins when we wave or make faces at them, and the adults are eager to offer us advice on the local fruits and language.

What is perhaps the most inspiring aspect of Ghanaian life is their affinity for respect and their strong sense of family. At the local football (soccer) game we discovered tonight, there were roughly 8,000 Ghanaians in attendance and each person seemed to be connected to the next through kinship or simply because they were enjoying their favorite sport alongside each other. Despite the fact that it was 80 degrees with 85% humidity and the game was held on a dirt field outside of a school, the locals were content to just exist in that place and time amidst friends, family, music, the announcer’s booming voice and the smells of fried corn permeating the air.

Early on in our stay we were instructed to start every conversation with a Ghanaian by saying, “Good afternoon, how are you doing?” instead of the American style of blurting out a question with the aim of self-gain. We have learned that the Ghanaians appreciate it when we respect them, and in turn we get to witness them in their true light as friends, as families, and when it really comes down to it, as people that are really not so different from you and me.

Signing off for now, more blog posts to come soon!

-Megan