Speaking of Monkeys

While we're on the subject, Ghana received a renowned guest in the form of President George W. Bush last week for 72 whole hours. I suppose that's to make up for the last 7 years of staying in Texas. Or maybe he just wanted to take advantage of his last chance to spend as much taxpayer money as possible: He reportedly rented the entire La Palm Beach Resort (in which a single room costs at least $300) and had sent an advance guard of 600 people weeks before his arrival. He met with President Kufour, but gave no public statement. Nobody is certain why he came, but some quality guesses involve suggestions to set up a US military base in Ghana and the fact that the country recently found a hefty oil reserve just off the coast. Oil and military spending? I'm surprised it took him so long.

But seriously, it has been very interesting to interact with people on this subject. Some Ghanains hate his guts, and we get to explain that just because we're from the US, we are from the 'good state' and we don't support him at all. Some, on the other hand, were very excited about his visit. Some believe it is a step towards putting Ghana on the map an in the spotlight so they can attract funding and development, some believe he really is a generous person for donating a pittance for the US and a fortune for Ghana to malaria eradication projects. Some think a US military base will lead to peace-keeping missions in Liberia, Nigeria, Cote D'Ivoire and Sierra Leone. Mostly, Ghanains are not very attached to the subject of the war in Iraq. Those who oppose it think it was a stupid idea, but don't have the same sense of moral outrage that I've seen in the US and England. I've also run into the idea that I should support my government no matter what. While that sounds silly, it's important to remember that Ghana's last military junta relinquished power in 1993! With the story of Kenya in the background, it makes sense that stability and support of government and governmental institutions vastly outweighs one's feelings on any particular policy. I've just heard a rumor that I can get a Ghanain newspaper delivered to my room, so I'll try to keep you updated on the local news if anything looks interesting. I'm about out of time but I have more to say about my coursework and weekend trips. More soon. I miss you

Break-In Monkey

The title of this post is supposed to be a pun on the "Outbreak Monkey" featured in the movie as the one creature with antibodies to cure a disease that's wiping out the humans left and right. Unfortunately, this encounter was a little less pleasant. I've been holding onto this story because it's such a good one, so try to read slowly and imagine what it was like to be here.
I wake up last Tuesday, minding my own business getting ready for class when I hear these yells from outside. My hall is pretty noisy, so that's not terribly uncommon, but the nature of these screams seemed slightly different, more of a surprise. I open my door to find this:
Now, I'm certainly not accustomed to real live monkeys outside of my door in Berkeley or in San Francisco for that matter. But I thought, as I'm sure many of you are right now, that this is a fairly cute monkey, and so long as it doesn't do anything brash we can make it work. Ghanain students seems to be playing with it a little close for comfort if you ask me (it was climbing on them, making fake little snaps at their hands, etc). Still though, monkeys carry many diseases and I don't really want to get too buddy-buddy with this little guy. The other boys from my program tease it and it ends up running after them, causing them to dive back into their rooms in a frenzy. As I continue to get ready, the noise outside dies down, so I make my way to the bathroom and jump when I realized I've been followed, but remain clam and laugh when the monkey jumps up on the adjacent row of sinks and starts playing with the knobs. I go back into my room, read, slowly pack my things, and cautiously open the door. No sign of the monkey. As I'm closing my door I realize that the door to my balcony is unlocked. Ever vigilant, I walk across the room, lock and door and turn around, only to find that this monkey (roughly 2ft high and 30-40lbs) has walked in through my door. The room is not that big, mostly taken up with beds and desks, which leaves me closer to the monkey than I appreciate at the time. I'm completely freaked out at this point, and as I shout the most absurd things ("No! Bad Monkey! Go away! You're a bad monkey!"), my mind flashes through tactics of scaring animals away. I get big, try to be loud, and squirt water at it. The monkey consequently gets annoyed, jumps on my roommate's bed, gets tangled in his mosquito net, progresses from annoyed to aggresive, and jumps on a chair less than two feet from me. I make a last attempt to scare it by taking a flash photograph which turns out like this:
You cannot see the monkeys face in this photograph, but as it prepared to leap towards me from the chair, it made quite clear the inaccuracy of the statement camp councilors often make that the wildlife 'is more afraid of us than we are of it'. Out of ideas, I quickly slip out the door on the balcony and, trapped, I watch helplessly for a few minutes as the monkey makes its way over to my desk and starts rummaging through my things, mostly keepsakes from home that I really don't want destroyed by a monkey! He eventually is holding two pieces of metal shaped like small stones with the words 'journey' and 'friendship' carved into them- a gift long ago from my very good friend Susanna. He wasted no time picking at them and putting them in his mouth when we both heard a noise outside of the room. For some reason the monkey took that as his cue and, my keepsake still in his mouth, he bolted out of my room. I rush in and slam the front door, not eager to give any sign of invitation. Shortly after I catch my breath, I go outside and try to find him. Some other Ghanain students and the man who washes off our floors in the morning helped coax the monkey into returning my possessions. They still sit safely on my desk, germed up but mine. As I quickly gather my bag, double bolt my door and descend the stairs, I get a call from Alicia asking if I'm still coming to breakfast. I reply that I am on my way, and I have a really good reason for being late.

The update to this story is that the monkey has since been spotted harassing the residents of Volta Hall and the workers at R-Link, a small corner store on campus. Apparently, one of the professors kept it as a pet tied to a tree outside of his house, and it escaped some time in December. It has since been roaming Legon freely, and its past habituation to humans explains why it could not have cared less that I was screaming at it, throwing water or flashing lights. Hopefully it won't be around for a while.

Low low prices...always

I had forgotten in the mention of that food to talk about where we'd gotten most of it. Just this side of Accra is the new Accra Mall. There's no polite way to say this, but it really is a complete mindfuck to wander from the dusty streets of a third world city into, essentially, a Walmart equivalent (down to the cursive signs advertising "always low prices" and the smiley face logo!). The mall is air conditioned, very clean, caters pretty much exclusively to white people, and is generally a very confusing place to be. I walked in, froze, looked around and said out loud to those I was with "where are we?" Still, I wandered the isles confused getting supplies of peanut butter (called groundnut paste here), cereal, juice, and whatever else looked like it wouldn't instantly melt in the cab ride home. I also got the fan, featured a few posts ago, which is actually crucial to survival. I reflect on American consumerism a lot at home, and it's just always a shock to see that while America fails so greatly to export supposed values of freedom, and tolerance, the bottles of Nutella that cost over $10 here are quick to arrive. Even looking around my cluttered room I realize that my "minimalist" packing, in addition to what I've bought here, amounts to a lot. More than I need. I tell myself it's just because I like feeling prepared going into unknown situations, but I'm sure that it has something to do with a love of having stuff that's seeped into me. It's creepy, and I'm trying to cleanse myself and remember that a lot of it isn't important, but I still packed it... It just seemed like a good time to reflect on such things. Maybe I'll give some stuff away if I can find a place that will take it here.

A home cooked meal

A fun mental game that I like to play here is imagining the vast number of tools and technology required to cook food: raw ingredients, refrigeration, running water, seasoning, ovens, stoves, utensils, pots, pans, bowls, peelers, whisks, spatulas, etc. It's easier to reflect on such things when you noticeably don't have any of them, especially if you're as much of a foodie as I am. The "kitchen" in Legon Hall is pretty funny looking- dust covers every surface an inch deep and there are a number of broken electrical outlets and sinks that aren't even connected to water pipes. Volta Hall, where the girls live, is a little more set up for cooking, with a refrigerator and working outlets and occasionally running water. The girls have done a fantastic job amassing some basic tools also, like pots, pans, forks, bowls, knives, and you can get some basic ingredients if you know where to look. In honor of Mama Mia, we decided to give it our best shot and make a meal from scratch...



We settled on the obvious: pasta, sauce (really tomato paste with basil, oregano and cayenne that some of us had brought along), green beans (I still don't believe that we got those! Vegetables are impossible to find here, except maybe cabbage), bread with margarine, and to keep it at the college levels, glasses of fairly cheap but actually pretty good red wine.

It takes a lot to get all of this together. The kids at the International Students Hostel seem to enjoy cooking a little bit more (they have slightly better facilities but nothing like the industrial size kitchen I'm used to). It was fun though, and we ate it out on the steps before watching a couple of Simpsons episodes that I'd brought along on somebody's computer. All in all, a very good night.

Elaine's Birthday in Osu

I'm playing catch up here, but you should all know the highlights of the last two weeks. The first big piece of news is that a girl on our program from Berkeley named Elaine just turned 22. We've already had one birthday (Ali turned 21 and then promptly fell ill with malaria alongside yours truly), but we were so disoriented that aside from showering here with praise and taking her out for drinks we didn't put anything special together. To make up for it, we took Elain to 'Mamma Mia', a real live Italian restaurant in Osu (the wealthier more touristy neighborhood in Accra where you can find supermarkets, fancy restaurants, etc). In fact, there were no Ghanains at the restaurant at all, save a couple of the waiters. It's weird when getting settled to find these pockets of tourism that are not quite like home, but are certainly not the same as the country we are used to seeing.


Here we all are at Mamma Mia's in a group shot. From left to rightNatalie, Katie, Megan, Elaine, Thien Vinh, Kelli, Alicia, Me




Right after dinner, we went to Frankie's- a hotel and restaurant most famous for a downstairs ice cream parlor. They have about 8 flavors, but when it's 90 degrees outside all the time, you take what you can get with a smile so long as it's cold. The smaller 2-scoop cups were really expensive compared to the larger 8-scoop sundaes, so this is Thien Vinh, Alicia, Megan and I embracing the cooperative spirit that is only too famous in Berkeley :-)





The evening continued with drinks and dancing at Lizzie's Bar (really just a bunch of plastic tables outside of a kiosk where you can buy beer, and they have a sound system that is absolutely more powerful than necessary for how crowded the place is.









On the right: Daisy and Cindy who met us there made some friends with soda-guzzling kids.






We then returned home by taxi and got into bed by about 1, which is just unheard of here considering how early people wake up. All in all it was a blast, and I'm sure it's not a birthday Elaine will forget too soon

I did not die of malaria

I'm sorry to have not laid that fear to rest a while ago, but there's been a lot going on which has made writing about it even harder to keep up with. I'm also working on uploading pictures so even typing in this box is wearing this poor computer past its most extreme level of endurance. But I think I'm learning a lesson of all columnists, that you have to keep on schedule or you lose your readers! I hope that you all are still checking this site out.

The first big event occured on the day that I wrote the last post. I was awoken by my roommates at 5:45am because they were about to leave on a field trip down the coast (I was still in bed trying to recover and eventually did laundry and wrote on the blog). They told me that I should pack my things- as orientation winds down it became time for the sexes to be separated. At the end of the day, the three boys would be moving down the way to Legon Hall, the all male dorm while the girls stayed in Volta, the all female dorm. Those who have known me for a while know that I used to indulge in the guiltry pleasure of watching Survivor in its earlier seasons, and this speedy request to pack all of my belongings was definitely reminiscent of a Jeff Probst moment.

The set up is a pretty good one. There are 6 California males on the 4th floor of Annex A of Legon Hall- 3 new this semester and 3 who are staying for the year. Climbing up the stairs in the heat of the day is a feat worthy of a nap with the fan on, there are always people at the ground level selling water, ice cream, eggs, bananas, and whatever else for the day. It is much noisery than the women's dorm as Ghanain men tend to greet each other early in the morning by shouting each other's names back and forth at maximum volume. In addition to the music playing, the birds outside making a racket, and the cheers/shouts/"encouragement" from the atheletic fields just below our windows, 'lively' doesn't begin to express the atmosphere. Thank God for earplugs. Here's a quick virtual tour:


The first thing's first: This is Cybertron Internet, the cafe from which I've written most of my emails and blogs posts. As you approach the hall, there is a large room called the porter's enterance. On the right is this cafe, and on the left are University employees who hold your keys when you go out, monitor security at night, etc. I don't interact with those ones much because our Annex A has its own porters.


Walking past the porters and internet cafe, visitors to Legon hall are greeted by this statue and a fountain. I'm always a bit peeved when the foundtain is running because we have water in the bathroom roughly 10% of the time. That's why I study resource management :-) The comical nature of this rooster at the front of the all male dorm has not ecaped any of us, so we lovingly refer to it as the cock fountain




Continuging past the fountain down this walkway, you can see my building in the distance (white between the two palm trees). It's very green here for having just finished the dry season.



My humble abode- I share this room with Aaronson (see the trip to Makola maret where we bought buckets for a picture). This is just a preliminary decoration setup, but I thought it encompasses the most important things: a mosquito net, a full bookshelf, a cluttered desk and a chair, not to mention the all important fan- I don't know if any of us could survive without them! I haven't fully unpacked my things, perhaps relating to the metaphorical challenge of "unpacking" in a new place.


This is the view from my balcony- just wanted to show off the greenness again. I'll keep you updated about changes to the decor, and keep writing about the other sites on campus tomorrow (on Ghana time- so maybe the day after). I'm thinking about you all often. Take care

The best excuse for not returning emails

This past Thursday our group left for a whirlwind tour of the northern region of Ghana: 7 hour bus ride to Kumasi, 5 hours to Tamale, 3 more hours to Bolga and 1 hour to Paga on the Burkina Faso border. I have very little to report from the trip because I have been positively diagnosed with malaria. That's right- malaria. My blood donating days are over. My symptoms were a sore throat and a cough leading to chills, fever and delerium that presented on Thursday in a bus crammed with UC students. I laid my head on the window and have very little memory of what's happened. Generally there are only a few highlights that come to mind, but I'll try to give you as much of the story as I can muster.

I was delirious for pretty much the whole ride up to Kumasi. I don't remember a thing about it except that the bus broke down and we were stuck at a rest stop for hours waiting for a replacement smaller more cramped bus. I remember sitting at the rest stop unsure of where I was looking in the distance at the tropical foliage and mountains that could be clouds or clouds that could be mountains (I'm still not sure which). I ate a little ice cream and gazed at the faces of people whose names I knew but who I didn't really know well and at the multicolored lizzards crawling on the walls, and listened to the Bob Marley music they were playing in honor of his birthday. It was the most disoriented I've been in a long time, but I continued the trip to Kumasi and Tamale.

We were eating dinner on Friday and I was miserable thinking I wanted so badly to see my family and friends or at least to be somewhere with potable running water and available food that wasn't fried chicken. I missed home. Everyone in the group was really nice, checked in and asked how I was feeling and offered whatever help they could give me, but there's no substitute for home and family and friends who you already know and love. At that point Irene Odotei showed up out of nowhere (she had apparently flown up to Tamale because this is the first time the program has done a trip to the north and she wanted to check in with us). We call her 'Auntie Irene' because Auntie is a common title to give someone your parents' age who you interact with. I just wanted to get up and scream 'You're not my auntie! I'm not related to you!' but I was tired, so I walked silently to my room and laid down. We were staying at the Catholic Guesthouse in Tamale and I was rooming with Wes, one of the other boys. I sat on my bed and looked up to see a crucifix attached to the top of the far wall. Unwilling to deal with it, I turned off the light only to find that the Jesus on the crucifix glowed in the dark! Frusterated, I fell asleep.

The next day I went to the clinic. The north is rural and spaced out but Tamale (the town we were in) is the fastest growing city in West Africa. Still, the clinic was rough. I paid 10 cedi (1 cedi= 1 dollar) to get in, they took my blood pressure and weight and asked me to wait behind door number 5 like a gameshow. The clinic was basically an open corridor that made a square with doors and consulting rooms on the right side. While waiting, I went on a quest to find a bathroom and after encountering many chickens and goats just meandering about I finally found a hole in the ground labelled 'urinal'. I went back and waited more. There is no triage system, so the people waiting varied from looking fine to a teenager sprawled unmoving on a strecher. Kelly, Mac and Aaronson were with me waiting in the corridor just watching the ailments of other patients. At one point a woman who had been cradling and consoling a crying baby came over and just put it in Kelly's lap. She came back and explained that her son had never seen white people and was afraid of her. She gave her son to Kelly to prove that she wasn't any different from the other people around. I was eventually called into a room and met my doctor, a woman who studied in Cuba and moved to Ghana. She took a list of my symptoms and at first said I was suffering because of the dry weather. I explained my symptoms again and noted that I was especially sickly green pale (seriously- I hadn't seen myself in a mirror until the day before and I have never looked more pale than that. I thought I might have lost blood but I had that green tinge). The doctor responded 'You're not pale, it's just the color of your skin'. I protested that indeed I am white but my skin is not generally what I would describe as a sickly green color. A nurse came in and began speaking Spanish to the doctor. After a while I joined in and she jumped saying 'I thought I could talk and you wouldn't understand me.' She warmed up to me immediately and said I probably also had malaria, prescribed tylenol, a multivitamin, a cough syrup and a malaria medication. I went to the pharmacy, waited for the drugs, collected them, took the first malaria pill, and we all stumbled out of the clinic catching a taxi to the 'grocery store' in town with no refrigeration. I settled for some bread, jam and peanut butter, and ate nothing else for the next two days.

We got back to Tamale and Kelly made me some great PB&J sandwiches and I had bought some kiwi-cranberry juice to get some sugar in me. I ate one sandwich and a cup of juice and lay on my bed in the quiet next to an open window and slept for an hour. I dreamed that I learned how to play the harp, which was awesome. I woke up a short time later, still felt shotty, comiserated with day-glow Jesus, ate another sandwhich and fell asleep again. This is when I had my amazing dream that was very vivid. I was back at home and woke up in my bed. I saw my family, took a shower and felt better. I walked downstairs and saw Julia Gitis who was smiling broadly. She told me to follow her outside, and I did. All around my parents house, my adorable friends had set up a HUGE street party. There were video screens over all the houses, several music stages, some cows for some reason, and I talked individually to each person that I had spent the last two days missing tremendously. I had wished that I could spend one day at home without having to travel and then come back to Ghana. I woke up looking out my window to a slight breeze blowing through a pink-blossomed tree and my fever had broken. I started to feel better. After a few more naps, I joined the other three at the Jungle Bar down the street to watch the Ghana vs. Cote d'Ivoire third place match (Ghana had been bumped after losing to Camaroon in a semi-final match. Egypt eventually beat Camaroon to claim the cup for the 6th time, the most any nation has won it). We returned home to find that the rest of the group had returned from their trip to Bolgatanga where they had sat on live (domesticated) crocodiles, seen slave camps of the north, and drove to Paga, the town on the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso. They were all sunburnt but excited, and I'll make the trip up there one of these days. We went out to dinner and I went to bed early except that the cough syrup that was prescribed to me gave me a host of side-effects including nausea, 'nervousness' and dizziness all without the main effect of actually preventing the cough. I eventually fell asleep.

The next day we drove back to Kumasi and I called my parents. That came very close to initiating an international relations nightmare between the US and Ghana, but they were very helpful and booked an appointment for me the next day at a clinic in Accra (the capital) that all of the ambassadors and buisinessmen (read:white people) go to when they're sick. Before we left Kumasi, we stopped at the clinic there because another girl, Ali had developed similar symptoms. She got similar treatment, and while the clinic at Kumasi was nicer, there was no triage and still very few resources available to treat patients- a small lab that could do blood tests but nothing of great value. We mostly slept through the 6 hour journey back to Accra but Sharon (the woman in charge of the UC EAP office in Accra) met us as we arrived, passed out dinner to everyone and let Ali and I drop off our bags before she wisked us away to the hospital. This was clearly closer to first world medicine. We signed up, saw a doctor, got all of the tests we might need (my parents had given me a list of about 8 including a chest x-ray), got a prescription for better malaria treatment (the pharmacist actually laughed at what we showed him we had been taking, which was not terribly comforting) and we followed up with the doctor to interpret the tests. Both of us were negative for malaria but (and here's a valuable lesson for you) were still diagnosed positive with the disease (especially in light of the fact that we had both reacted well to the malaria medication we have, even if it wasn't the best stuff out there). Malaria lives and breeds in fatty tissue, especially the liver. If it has spread to the blood (ie if the blood test is positive), it has burst at the seams and you need super crazy advanced treatment. So we took our new drugs home, told everyone the news, ate a quick dinner, took the first set of pills and went to sleep. It was good to have it all figured out. So that's my story about my first and hopefully last encounter with malaria, and my really good excuse for not having any pictures of Northern Ghana. I'm a little sleepy and still have a cough but I'm getting better rapidly. I love and miss you all and know that I was thinking about you when the going got tough. Be well

Ghanain Food

We were finally permitted to try out some hardcore Ghanain food for lunch after lectures last Wednesday. I'm sure that I'll write more about food as time goes on because I value it so much (I miss fresh produce!). But for now I want to give a brief introduction to Ghanain food with the meal that we had:
This is a table of us at Tasty Treats, a resteraunt that is just out of walking distance of campus on a hot day, but I've heard it's doable. They always have a good assortment of foods and it's classically Ghanain, so it was a proper place for our first Ghanain meal (we've been having Ghanain breakfast, but it's usually porridge or rolls or something not terribly exciting, so this felt like the true first). From left to right: Andria, Alicia, Emily, Katie, Secily.


This was my meal. On the right is a plate of white rice and two types of fried rice with red tomato/palm oil sauce (referred to as gravy), some chicken and a very small portion of cabbage salad. There are hardly any vegetables here, so that cabbage is like gold. The rice, chicken and sauce are a staple of almost every meal. If you order chips (french fries), it comes with rice and chicken unless you ask them specifically for just chips. On the left is fufu. The pale blob is a dough made from mashed cassava/yam and it's in a slightly spice goat soup. You grab a little of the dough with your right hand, put it in your mouth and swallow without chewing. You can also chomp on some of the goat meat if you need a break. Then drink the soup when you're done. It's very heavy and filling so I barely made it through the half-portion pictured above, but it's a classic dish here. I just thought the foodies among us might appreciate it.

Two Religions

Last Sunday before the lectures and the tour of Accra we experienced two of the major religions in Ghana. The first was Christianity. A group of us went to church with the student guides. Note that we look significantly more sweaty/dumpy than the guides. Ghana is a pretty religious nation. The south (where we are) is predominantly Christian and the north is predominantly Muslim. I have yet to meet or hear of a Ghanain atheist. It is a shocking notion to people here that I am not a Christian and even more so that I do not have any particular religious affiliation. It's usually about the 5th question I get asked after my name, where I'm from, etc, and the fact that I am not religious really sets off a twitch or something. I'm going to experiment with some different responses until I find one that communicates what I'm trying to say. At church we caught the last 15 minutes of Bible study and then sat down in a big obvious group. The service was long but included plenty of singing and drumming. At one point the reverend asked all of the people joining the congregation for the first time to introduce themselves. Emily Aeschleman bravely stood up and took the microphone to explain that we are students studying for a semester and to thank them for making us feel welcome (not mentioning that most of us are not religious). The design of the building and the fans made it way more comfortable than the lecture halls we've had to sit in which is a little upsetting to me. But people really like God. They say if you come to Ghana and don't go to church, it's like you never came. It's such a part of the culture here. It's all I can do to bite my tongue and not make too many references to 'Jebus'.

During the sermon the congregation was asked to pray for two things: 1) That the violence in Kenya subsides and that the people there can live in peace and 2) That the Ghanain national football (soccer) team play with integrity and their maximum effort. This brings me to the second religion: Football.

Nii was able to score us tickets to the Ghana vs. Nigeria game on Sunday night in Accra through the black market. The tickets were very expensive for here (about $20), and not a single one of us was willing to miss it. We drove as close as we could get through the the masses passing vendors, clowns, honking car horns, etc. Making our way into the stadium was a battle, and uniformed military men and women searched people as they entered (sidenote: apparently security is so high because Ghana has undergone four major military coups since independence. The current governmental structure has only been in place since 1993! That's why they don't like pictures of government/sensitive areas, but the stadium is apparently ok). I had a ticket all by myself, but my friend Kelly put her arm over my shoulder and pretended to be my wife so I tagged along with a small group of other students. The stadium had numbered seats and everything, but order is no match for a traditional society that's enthusiastic. I ended up sitting on the stairs behind two trombone players and a bunch of drummers who played through the whole game. The crowd cheered at every shot that the Ghana team (the Black Stars for the black star in the center of the Ghanain flag) made, no matter how much it missed by. We were talking about how in the US people boo when their team comes close and doesn't make it. Another interesting difference- Ghana and Nigeria have had political bad vibes in the past. I'm not sure of the exact history, but this was a heated game. But somehow at the stadium, the cheers were not divisive. The Nigerian supporters got a bit of flack, but the point of the African Cup of Nations it seemed was to bring the entire continent together, to show that Africa is not just the home of sand, AIDS and under-development, but that the people are passionate and can get it together to host a great tournament. It was a very empowering place to be. Even more so because Ghana won 2-1 (for those who care- Nigeria got the first goal on a penalty kick and everyone was disheartened, but right before half-time Ghana scored a great goal. At the beginning of the second half, the captain of the Black Stars was given a red card and stress was high. Then, with about 10 minutes left in the second half Ghana scored again. People threw water every time a goal was scored (a big deal b/c it's such a valuable commodity here) and screamed/drummed/danced/embraced all over the place). I screamed myself hoarse.On the way home all the cars honked in celebration, people shouted, and one man started running next to our van and kept up with us for a good 45 seconds even though he lost his two flipflops. He was just shouting 'Go Ghana!' We went to a resteraunt in the boys dorm called Tyme Out to buy some beers to celebrate and went off to bed for lectures early the next morning

Student Guides

I feel the need to introduce you (in the most impersonal way possible) to the four student guides we have. Three are students at the University of Ghana in Legon (one just graduated), and we honestly would not make it very far without them. They have made themselves available to answer all of our questions which must sound rediculous and to take care of us when something goes wrong. They've also taken on a lot of the logistics of our trip.

From left to right: Lizzy (the graduate), Nii (my age, he runs track and does the high jump and gives the meanest high fives), Angie ('Mama Angie', she's a senior, I think she's 26 and we're her children in the most loving way- she always asks if we're taking our malaria medication and that we're eating enough), and Irene (a freshmen, but still more on the ball than the rest of us). To be fair, these are the guides in their church going outfits, so they don't always look so formal, but they are all lovely and if you ever through some bizarre twist of fate get to meet them, you are a lucky human being.

Orientation Activities

Our orientation continued last week mostly with lectures from professors, heads of departments and local reverends. Topics ranged from the history of Ghana to gender roles and inequalities to linguistics ("flirt" here means "have an affair with" and there are about a million other differences in Ghanain English), music, Twi (pronounced Tchwee a language spoken by almost everybody in the nation. Some think it should replace English as the national language), and descriptions of various festivals and celebrations (which include funerals). We have, however, partaken in some exciting outside activities. For example, to the left you will see all of us piled in a van to tour Accra. We looked at the different neighborhoods and identified a we (pronounced like "whey") which is a collection of families who gather at celebrations or to make political decisions. This was amid the modern era Koala supermarket, but they say Ghana is the land of contradictions. There were also some fantastic store names of a religious nature such as "Almighty God Loves You Hair Salon". We saw landmarks such as Independence Square, Kwameh Nkrumah's masuoleum and the Seat of the Government Castle. There are not more pictures because 1) I'm a bad photographer and 2) Pictures of "government property" are forbidden. We were pulled over by a military man in full uniform because one of the girls took a digital picture of the castle. He had a large gun and almost confiscated her camera, but was satisfied when she deleted the picture. Nuts!

Our other excursion was to Makola Market. It was insane. It's a huge outdoor market that spans several city blocks with crowds of people and a string of 20 white kids in single file line looking around timidly. I only made two purchases- the bucket which I am attempting lamely to balance on my head on the left (for storing water, doing laundry and for the imminent bucket showers when the water shuts off) and some clothespins. Quite an experience in a big group, but I would feel comfortable going back with one other person. Now I just have to work on my feeble bargaining skills

A few more basic photos

From left to right: Grace (UCSD), Kelly (UCB) and Wes (UCSD). These are the guys I met at the Wok Inn at the airport, and we hopped the first ride in an International Students Program van to the U of Ghana campus. It was a very important ride and we compared notes about how it feels to really be starting such an outlandish adventure.



Moving in our bags to the porter's lodge, the entrance to the dormitory. Everybody had to bring enough to last six months, and none of us really knew what to expect, but that lead to some exciting suitcase lugging




"For Women of Vision and Style", this is the largest wing of Volta Hall, our temporary dormitory. After orientation, the three guys will move to an all-male dorm called Legon Hall. That will be a big adventure, and I'll be sure to keep you updated




My bed in our temporary room. Note the several heavy books on the case, sunscreen in the foreground, and the fairy-tale poison hanging bed draping (mosquito net). The three guys (Wes, Aaronson and myself) are staying in one of the standard dorm rooms which has 5 beds and is about the same size as my double at Stebbins. Let's think about that. I come from a family of 6 and we can sometimes barely share an entire house, let alone a single cramped room. There's one desk and a balcony that looks onto clotheslines surrounded by barbed wire. The bathroom is right across the hall, but that's a longer story for another day.

Overdue Pictures from Day 1

Here are some photos from my first wanderings around Accra. You should all know that uploading 5 photos here never takes less than ten minutes of watching a blank screen, so I hope they are valuable:
Fishing boats in the harbor

View of Accra from the Lighthouse (the tallest point)



Children playing at the beach (they get really excited about cameras)


The Lighthouse



A disgrace to the mega-churches of the middle of the United States :-) There are a lot of ironically named shops here, most of them having to do with religion

Akwaaba

Which means "Welcome" in Twi, the largest tribal language spoken in Ghana. I'll be taking a class this semester, so more fun foreign words to come. Here's your quick update: I checked out of the hotel yesterday and was told that it would take an hour and a half to get to the airport. In reality, it took twenty minutes so with the extra time I went over to the "Wok Inn" Chinese resteraunt where I met three other Californians. We hung out and after a while a woman came up to us and said "Akwaaba". Her name is Anjali and she's on a year-long program here and came to welcome everyone at the airport because she said when she arrived it was really tough, she was confused, and almost got conned into an unnecessary taxi. We got bottles of water and a ride to campus, and the rest of the group followed behind. We got rooms in Volta Hall (the female dorm where we're staying for orientation for "women of vision and style" according to the sign). We met our guides and they showed us to our rooms and gave us cool welcome tote bags. We had a big group dinner (jollof rice, chicken, lettuce and a red sauce that's very popular here), and went up to bed. There are a grand total of three boys, so we're all in the same room with one key. Everybody had a rocky night sleep interrupted by the Campinile-style clock, a buzz of mosquitoes (yikes!), the heat, and the "jungle noises" outside. Half of us woke up early for breakfast at 7am (thick porridge with condensced milk, cold fried eggs and wonderbread rolls- I admit it, I'm a food snob). We then ventured out to the bank and Anjali showed us around campus- we bought some water and then walked to the EAP study center with free internet. It's pretty slow, but I'll still do my best to keep y'all in the loop. I miss you a lot, but everyone seems well adjusted here. We have a free morning and then the two week orientation continues. We're working on getting tickets to the Ghana vs. Nigeria football (soccer) game on Sunday as part of the African Cup of Nations, so there's a huge amount of national pride and the flag is everywhere. We're also making a trip to Kumasi, and several other surprises which I know and you will have to tune back in to find out. Still working on pictures. With love.