Let them eat cake

Auntie Sharon and Auntie Lizzie are the women who work at the UC Education Abroad Office, and they take really good care of us. I think we are all going to universally miss them. It's really nice to know when you arrive in a new place that somebody is looking out for you. I passed by Sharon drinking water from a sealed sachet (I'll explain later), and she hit me on the arm and said "Let me see that. I am your mother while you are here. You're drinking that brand!". She's just very endearing. Anyways, on Februrary 29, the two of them ordered cake and ice cream to celebrate all of the February born students. We all arrived and the cake was 2 hours late (Ghana time, they call it), but we all gathered and hung out. In a group of 26 it's easy to lose track of people so it's fun to be brought back together for something like that. We sang and were merry, and then a group of about 10 of us walked out of the study center and off of campus to catch a taxi to Kineshie station. We were 5 to a taxi (legally too many, though everybody fit) and our taxi got a flat tire on the 30 minute ride there. Alicia pulled out her camera and started snapping photos (much to the chagrin of the driver changing the tire, I'm sure), and he fixed it remarkably fast. We sped on, and two of us had to get out as we passed a police barricade, but we met up on the other side at the station. From there, we caught a tro-tro to Swedru junction and got another tro-tro from there to Kokrobite beach. The driver originally dropped us off at Big Milly's, but they said they were full. We were looking at another couple rooms at a place called "The Dream" which was way too expensive for what it was, and once we expresed interest the man there became oddly hostile, demanding that we pay up front and suggesting that he would charge us twice as much if we snuck more than three people into a $30 room. At that point, somebody interjected that we could sleep in tents at Big Milly's for $2 each, so we went for it. The tents wouldn't survive long in Yosemite, and ours had a little opening on the bottom so it wasn't fully bug-proof, but after splashing myself in DEET, I survived the night. Part of the problem was that they were thick rubber tents and the air got so hot and stuffy after a couple of hours that we would wake up clawing at the zipper for air. Still, we made it work, and it was fun.
The 9 girls I was with were instantly attracted to the seamstress there selling fabric, dresses, shirts, and her skill at making alterations to things. here they are in various stages of trying on clothes that night. We continued on to walk up the road to the Kokrobite Garden Restaurant, also an inn, and I would recommend you stay there if you ever get the chance. Secluded and beautiful, the restaurant fulfilled our dreams as we ordered bruschetta, pizza, salads, pesto and red wine. It was such a fun decompressing dinner. Running around campus stressing out about finding classes, being sure that you've gone to all the departments you have to visit, etc in addition to going to lectures and trying to find out where they are hiding the class readings from you can wear you out. It was nice to spend a quiet weekend away.




We got back to Big Millie's and did more sitting before bed. That was a big theme of the trip. The next day, we woke up and had French toast with chocolate sauce at the same restaurant (YUM) and then wandered back to lay our towels on the beach. The sand was so hot that running the thirty feet between our towels and the hotel gave me second degree burns on my foot. Everybody got a little pink sunburn too, despite having re-applied sunscreen five times because we were just too sweaty. But that made swimming in the ocean all the more fun. We saw some fishermen pulling the net out and there were hoards of Ghanaian children swimming naked in the water. one had fashioned a surf board out of a large plank of wood (we stayed away from him), but it felt so good to be in the water. We read and lounged on the beach all afternoon and then put in our orders for dinner at Big Milly's. After much more sitting, we grabbed some raised seats because they were supposedly putting on quite a show for us. The show turned out to be not very impressive. Mostly pseudo-reggae music interspersed with some traditional dancing. The real fun part was sitting in a big circle getting to know each other playing long games of mafia.





Feeling remarkably like these children, I went to bed early when the air in the tent was still breathable.





The next morning was more of the same. A great breakfast and lunch at the Garden Restaurant, some sitting on hammocks (those who didn't fear sunburn played in the ocean again), and then taking some tro-tros back to Accra, and then to Legon. A quiet Sunday evening of dinner and sleep followed, and I felt much less stressed out. I wish there was a tropical beach so close to Berkeley!

I apologize for not taking many pictures that weekend. My brain was really fried. If you would like to see more of Kokrobite, I suggest you check out my friends Thien Vinh's and Natalia's blogs for better photos. You can find them under the links section of the blog :-)

Alicia's Birthday

Once again, but I apologize for a lack of a camera at this event. Alicia Sparks had her birthday during that week too, and, being the only student representing UC Santa Barbara, we turned Ben and Wes's room into a hall of drinking games. It seemed appropriate. All you need to know is that some Ghanaians learned how to play beer-pong, there was a lot of hanging out on the balcony, and it became so late that a handful of girls had to walk back at 6am past the preachers in the front. It was a fun celebration, and Alicia greatly appreciated it.

Post-Orientation

I apologize because I didn't bring my camera to our End of Orientation Dinner, but I think it's worth a little description. We found out about it because Auntie Sharon at the EAP office posted a note on the notice board (we are expected to know what goes on the notice board within a day of it being posted by checking it or talking to each other). For the boys, it meant walking back over to the girls dorm where the experience started three weeks ago. I dressed up and arrived early and people slowly came in both from the Spring program and the students who had spent last semester with us as well. We met Auntie Irene there (our program director and the most powerful woman in Ghana. She is a prominent historian and serves on a number of government panels with the president. The mention of her name pretty much anywhere is like an all-access pass). She greeted us all, gave a short speech in her style about how brave we are to be here but how much she loves the country and how much we have to learn. Then they served an elaborate dinner. I had had a late lunch at 4 (it was then 6:30), and still I ate a full plate. The food was amazing- a variety of Ghanaian dishes included a million kinds of rice, yams, chicken, sauces, stews, etc ending with a fruit plate and ice cream. We also drank soda (I never drink soda at home, but somehow have been conned into supporting Coca-Cola at a few events so far). After gorging ourselves on food we sat talking at the tables and were given a few introductory speeches from some of the professors who had given us lectures during orientation. Not long after that we sang happy birthday to Jessica and then, more full than I've been in a long time, we were ushered onto the dance floor to show off what we had learned in those four dance classes we'd had. I don't know that I have adequately described in this blog how much I dislike dancing at home. I have rhythm from drumming, but I have no desire to move when I hear music on the radio in the US. Most people believe that I am just afraid of being judged, which is partly true but I also just don't enjoy dancing. There's something about it that just doesn't appeal to me. The thought of it is enough to make me cringe. But something about getting pushed into a circle of friends who look equally ridiculous and being told to free-form dance for a little while has changed that a little bit. There's something about the music here that makes it a little fun to move to even after a huge meal. Don't try any funny business when I get home though. So there we were on a little patio with Christmas lights for decorations, surrounded by friends of necessity who I have really come to love, tummies more full than ever before, dancing to the drums of West Africa under the full moon. It was like a scene from a movie.
We left from there to go to to Desperados, the bar inside of Commonwealth Hall, the most frat-like of the dorms who consider themselves to be in charge of campus because the hall is located at the top of the hill next to a sign that says "Commonwealth Hall- Vandal City". It was an interesting place by night. We pretty much bee-lined for the bar that was closing soon after our arrival, so we grabbed some beers, sang to Jessica again,a nd then I began the walk home while a couple of non-exhausted adventurers went out to a bar and, when finding it closed, went to La Beach in Accra (shady!). Everyone eventually found their beds that night and fell asleep.

Coming "Home"

It is a weird feeling coming home to a place that, for the last couple of weeks, has been the glaring opposite of my home in a lot of ways. I was anxious to get back because I didn't feel very connected to Legon. I was afraid that I would feel off being back here. I definitely am not as well connected to people on campus as I wish I was, and it's a slow process to settle into such a different place and make good friendships, so it can feel lonely and frustrating. I was surprised to find that I felt really good arriving back on campus. People greeted me (as is customary here- you are right to feel a little down if people pass by you and don't at least make eye contact), and I arrived in my building and had a long conversation with the porters (the men who sit on the ground floor to make sure no crazy people walk through though how they spot them I can't be sure), and just sat on my bed exhausted. I met up with a big group from California for dinner and hung around. It felt good, but also weird because the experience of arriving of course prompted memories of home and what it will be like to really arrive there again. Who knows?

Aburi

We left Kelli at Kineshie station where she had some of her own adventures (taking pictures of a field of dust with a sign in the middle that says "keep off the grass" and buying childrens' stories such as "The Wicked Barber" and "The Man Killer 2: Return of the Man Killer"). Mac, Elaine and I continued on by tro-tro to the town of Aburi, which is a story to itself. Aburi is most famous for a large botanical garden that was out of bloom because it was the end of the dry season when we went. The land had been cleared by the British as a military outpost but when Ghana gained independence the British government funded the creation of a botanical garden as an act of good faith for the new republic. However, because that was in the 50s and nobody knew anything about environmentalism, the garden contains exactly 1 tree species native to Ghana with the hundred or so others imported from the vast collection of plants in the British botanical garden. Ah, ironic twists in history.
We got off the tro-tro and stoped at Edna's place where Elaine and I split banku (fermented corn dough that tastes a little like unbaked sourdough bread if you squint your eyes twist your tongue just right). From there we walked up the road about 5 minutes and arrived at the gate of the gardens. The haze was still present, but they say that on a good day you can see the coastline and the city of Accra, about an hour away. Impressive. While some of the trees were bare, some were really cool.


Here is Elaine standing next to a very large tree that with fern-like leaves









This is the single tree species native to Ghana that is planted at Aburi. I do not remember what it was called but it was overgrown with ivy and grew these large pods that were full of cotton-like material. People use it here to stuff pillows and mattresses because it's cheaper to get than cotton. It had a number of medicinal properties too. Plus, it was huge!




Here are Mac and Elaine peering from the shell of a tree. A tree used to grow on that spot, but a parasitic plant grew around it, sucking up its nutrients. The original tree died and disintegrated over time leaving only the sinewy outline of its parasite. It was so pretty though. Check out the inside of it looking up



We also saw a huge group of uniformed children attending a school tour at the gardens. They really enjoyed seeing the plants and a couple of white people walking around were an added spectacle. They rushed by and we slowly walked on. We met up with a bunch of other people from our program who had come up to Aburi for the day and were leaving as we met them to go to some carving stands just outside of the gardens and then to take a tro-tro home. That left me and Mac, who promptly checked into the Botanical Garden resthouse. We dropped our bags and went to a shop just outside of the gardens that had designed a number of hiking trails in the area. and took a walk at dusk.


This was a farm landscape we saw on the hillside as we mosied our way down the 6km hike. Part of the fun of the trip was that instead of being given a map or directed to follow markers on the "trail" (and I use the term loosely), we were given a packet of photos with a man walking the right way who we were meant to follow in a nightmarish version of "Where's Waldo". This became quite a challenge in the middle of the tropical jungle (where every banana plant looks more or less the same, so figuring out if you are at the right place to turn or not is not possible). We also realized that we'd met quite a lot of confusion because a dirt road that appeared several times on our set of pictures had been paved betwen when the pictures were taken and our hike. Needless to say we got pretty lost, but generally knew the direction of town, so we just meandered along through the woods.

Here is Mac carefully examining the pods of a cocoa tree where all of your chocolate comes from (Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire together produce more than half of the worlds raw cocoa).








This is a very tall tree we saw at dusk






Then we got back to our room and crashed. I read the guide book for a while and we at dinner at the only restaurant around. I ordered rice and chicken and was told there was no rice. My response was to stare blankly at the waiter for what felt like 5 minutes because I honestly didn't understand the concept of not having rice around. I realized that I eat it with almost every meal.
The next morning, I returned to the hike shop to go on an excursion.
Mac didn't feel like it so I went solo on a mountain bike ride. I was homesick and thought that being on a bike was the closest I was going to get to Berkeley in a while. I had a helmet and functioning brakes, which was good becasue the trail was not made for biking on. There were several dry creekbeds full of jagged rocks with steep banks that were allegedly part of the route. I got off and did a lot of walking. Plus, following the Where's Waldo picture set was hard enough on foot, never mind when your main focus is to not die on a bike. Still, it was a fun way to spend the morning (it is, of course, so hot here the thought of riding more then 6km is very unappealing). I was sweating bullets up the last hill in town attracting quite a lot of attention. When I got to the shop and droped off the bike, the men there gave me a chair, some water and some refrigerated pineapple (so good!). I walked back to the resthouse and took a shower before joining Mac for a big breakfast of oats, toast, eggs and tea. Then we caught the first tro-tro we saw because we didn't want to be stranded there on a Sunday

Rewind to two weekends ago

I realize that I've fallen behind on reporting my movements for the last little while. I'm going to try to do some fast paced catch up, starting with two weeks ago...

While I was still in San Francisco I met a teacher at a charter school through a family friend. The teacher, Kokou, is from Ghana and has a lot of family here. Two weeks ago, I met his brother Senam (who will be an important character in coming stories) in the town of Winneba, about an hour west of Accra. He goes to the university there to get a credential in teaching so he can teach English in a school in the northern region for a while. Because I didn't want to go by myself, Kelli, Mac and Elaine came along.

Here they are in our overcrowded bus at Accra's Kineshie station.The bus was quite warm but fortunately there are vendors that walk around the windows selling cookies, water, ice cream and a variety of other goods. At one point somebody took advantage of such a captive audience and came aboard to talk about a great new cell phone charger he was selling. I've seen everything from shoe heels to screened kitchen sink drains being sold on the street. The bus leaves at no scheduled time, just when there are enough people to fill it up. After we sat waiting for a while, the driver slowly pulled forward. Somebody stood up in the front to lead a prayer that we would arrive safely. That was encouraging.

The best part of the ride by far is what I refer to as our in flight entertainment. After we thought we'd left the vendors behind, the man in the yellow stood up and began an elaborate schpeel about the various artifacts he'd brought with him. What we learned: if you have typhoid, just crush some of his patented mango leaves into a tea and you'll be fine. Plus: a stick that magically increases your sperm count. He was an exciting fellow.

We finally arrived in Winneba, and met Senam (in the center) along with some of his friends (Joel on the left, Charles on the right). They showed us around their campus (which is beautiful), we saw Senam's room and met his roommate, and had some really good conversations about what it means to be a teacher in a developing country. They are all good people. Joel is thinking about teaching biology and then becoming a doctor.

This is the view of Winneba from Senam's balcony (he lives on the fourth floor too). It was a lovely city,much cooler than Accra, but note that the haze hasn't lifted. It's a bit of a quieter town. As we walked around, swarms of kids followed us calling out a word in the local language that means "white person". They were really surprised, and so were we. Gaggles of kids would approach slowly, and one brave one would walk forward. Once he survived, the others would come up and play clapping games, etc.

While walking around we saw some cool statues and plaques. The campus was originally set up to be training grounds for the politicians of independent Ghana and was set up by the first president. It has since become a school to educate teachers. You could say there's an important connection here. The plaque reads "If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family". An interesting insight into gender relations here but more on that on a later date...


We then walked over to the beach. The surf is too huge to swim, but it was fun to let the waves run over our feet.

Mac was clearly having a good time

Interesting side feature: the military built this "swimming pool" with a sandy bottom for training. Kids now play in it, but watching the waves crash over it made us cringe a little.

As the sun went down, Joel and Charles left to complete some assignments for school and the rest of us took a taxi to a hotel outside of the guidebook with a pretty strong Rasta theme called the Rocktop. It was two tall buildings painted red, green and yellow with beautiful murals all over them overlooking Winneba Estuary and the Atlantic on a beach with a string of palm trees. It quickly got dark as we enjoyed some drinks on the roof before bedtime.We squeezed five of us into two double rooms. The woman who owns it (Shelley) was really sweet and we may go back there for the big deer hunt festival at the beginning of May...Example of a mural at the Rocktop

We woke up for a 6am breakfast on the rooftop and watched the light slowly fade in. The sun never really rises here, the whole sky just uniformly gets lighter. It's weird since I'm used to the colorful Bay Area sunrises (at least the few that I get up to see). We had a quiet breakfast of eggs, toast and tea and then got in a taxi back to the bus station. Senam left us there to go do some school work and we rode back to Kineshie Station in Accra.

Registration

I have up to date neglected to mention anything academic about this experience, and now that classes have finally started up, it seems like the right time to post about the registration process. The way you register for classes ("courses") here is to examine the handbook of courses (which unhelpfully contains a large number of classes that aren't offered and omits a number of classes that you can take), go around to each department you are interested in, see if the classes you like are actually available, fill out a form for each department, staple on a passport photo and you're done. Until, that is, you leave and you realize you didn't find the separate bulletin board listing the course times and locations, also often incorrect. We are now in week 3 here. The first week a couple of my professors showed up, but a number of them had just found out moments before that the semester had started and were not yet prepared to lecture. I met some other Ghanain students, but for the most part, this is the main week that classes are starting.

Although there is something to be said for internet registration, I have found that I like this system better than Telebears for all of its problems. My one wish semester after semester at Berkeley is that I could find the human being behind the computer who could listen to my problem and help me out. Unfortunately, I have not yet found this person, and have problem after unsolved problem plaguing me (such as a random change in my telebears appointment with no notification, my desire to add a class that isn't in reality full but the computer seems to think so, etc). There are frustrations here for sure, but at least when I end up in a bind, I can always ask somebody in the departments for help, and they always walk me through the process.

This is generally the theme so far in Ghana. There are no maps, and often people give directions that end with "and then you can ask somebody and they will tell you where to go". I've found that it's true in the US that we develop these systems to allow people to figure it out on their own (by checking the internet or following signs/notices) and then expect them to do it. I remember feeling relieved at home when I would find somebody who would give me directions to a place. Here there are not helpful guides or hints, but the advantage is that (especially as a white foreigner) I am not expected to know everything. I can only imagine how unfriendly the US must feel to somebody who has just arrived and can't just figure things out. Just a reminder that if somebody asks you for directions, remember that they may not know the "figure it out" system as well as you, so you should be extra nice to them.