This is Africa

Well, it's been a long, long time since I updated the blog. I was getting a bit tired of blogging, but in honour of surpassing the halfway point of my Ghana trip this week, I decided it's time for a posting.

Not a lot has changed in Ghana. I seem to sweat a lot more lately. Not exactly sure why. Every time I show up to work, people ask "how come you are all wet?" Nobody can believe it's just from perspiration. And that's most of what's new here.

One thing that's not new here is that the news at our station didn't make it to air yet again tonight.

It's a different reason than a few weeks ago when the transmitter broke and the station was off the air for four days. It's also different than last month when the transmitting company wasn't paid for several months and they shut off the transmissions completely. Or the month before that when the government came to shut us down for unpaid taxes

This time, as always, it's a new reason. Not too long ago, the generator failed 5 times in one day, each time knocking the station off the air. So they decided to buy a bigger, better, newer generator. Finally they'd wrestle control from the electrical company and keep the station on all day, all night.

Unfortunately, nobody thought to test the new generator before it was needed. And it was needed tonight. So no evening news tonight.

When asked when it will be fixed, nobody ever knows. When asked why this happened, everybody always knows, and will gladly recite their favourite refrain "This is Africa"

So I sit, writing this on my laptop in a pitch black newsroom, as employees slowly give up and trickle across the street for beer. It's one million degrees and humid in here, the news didn't air today, and I'm down to my last few sips of clean water.

But on the bright side, at least in the darkness nobody can see my sweat-soaked shirt.

Where's Mussolini when you need him?

So I headed off to Cape Coast last weekend. The big annual festival was beginning, the president was going to be there and I had some stories to shoot. It sounded like a nice touristy getaway, but of course, nothing here ever runs totally smoothly.

First, the bus station.

Tickets to the buses here are always sold out, so I had to go down to the bus station a day early. Despite being third in line, it took forever to get the tickets. When I finally got up to the window, the ticket woman was staring off absently into the distance. Almost her entire hand was down the front of her pants, Al Bundy style. I didn't want to interrupt her, so I sat there for about a minute. Finally she looked up, asked me what I wanted, and then spent about 10 minutes printing me the tickets. I'd been warned that the most dangerous thing I had to expect in Ghana were the highways. It wasn't reassuring that she asked for the name and number of my next of kin before handing over the tickets.

We arrived the next morning right at the moment the bus was supposed to leave. Buses in Ghana are always at least an hour late, so imagine my shock when I saw our bus about to pull away. We hurried over and tried to jump on. "This is not your bus" the driver barked. Turns out, it's the bus that was supposed to leave an hour before ours. Our bus wouldn't end up leaving for another 2 hours, the time when the next bus was supposed to leave. That's really late by Canadian standards, but right on time by Ghana standards.

If only they could get the buses running on time. Where's Mussolini when you need him? I mentioned this to Joseph, my friend, housekeeper and camera assistant. I thought it was a joke, but he strongly agreed: Ghana needs a fascist.

The trip to Cape Coast was pleasant. We checked into our hotel, who had given away our double room, but agreed to give us a single room at the same price. I argued. It was futile. We got our single room for the price of a double.

There was a festival going on in the town, so that evening Joseph, our friend Francis, Koby (the guy from the hotel who gave away our room) and I all went down to watch a performance. Out of about 2000 people there, a German woman was the only other white person besides me. We decided it was best to stick together, so that we could share the uncomfortable stares from everyone around us.

There was a big stage with some incredibly talented acrobats. It was hosted by a guy who was continually shouting things in another language. I didn't understand anything he said except 'Coca-Cola' and '3000 cedis' (the price). Coke was evidently the sponsors and he repeated 'Coca-Cola 3000 cedis' over and over and over and...

Here are the acrobats saluting above the coca-cola sign


















The acrobats culminated in a disabled acrobat who couldn't walk. He pranced around the stage on his arms, mimicking sexual movements (very well I might add) and holding his limp legs in the air. It was a bit awkward for us whities.

Soon, the host began whipping the crowd into a frenzy using mostly the words 'Coca-Cola' and '3000 cedis'. He invited people up on stage to stand behind him for some reason. Only a handful were going up. Then things took a turn for the worst: In an attempt to add some novelty to the performance, he called out "Hey mister white man. Come on up". I looked around furiously for another white man, but only saw the whites of 2000 pairs of eyes staring back at me. What's a white man to do? Sighing, I slowly made my way up the flight of stairs to the stage. The German woman was called up next. There we stood, bewildered as the host pranced back and forth like a preacher shouting 'Coca-Cola 3000 cedis' and other things I couldn't understand. The crippled guy was still performing his erotic acrobatic stunts in front of us. Oddly, it seemed that the audience wasn't watching those bizarre performances. Instead, they all seemed to be fixated on the 2 confused white people standing stiffly at center stage.

The preaching continued, the prancing continued and we were offered, for 3000 cedis, bottles of coke. And then the music abruptly changed to a rousing anthem. The other people on stage stood at attention and saluted, holding up their coke bottles proudly. And then everybody began singing along. From what I gather, they were swearing allegiance to Coca-cola. It's never comfortable being the only atheist at a religious ceremony, but it's even worse being the only atheist and the only white guy. If the disabled acrobat got up and walked, I'd have converted to Coca-Cola too. Instead I stared at my feet until it was all over.

Finally we descended the stairs and joined the audience to watch the next performance. It was a guy juggling and eating fire. Of course, I couldn't have 10 minutes of peace, could I? Part way through his act, he left the stage, ran towards the audience and grabbed - guess who? 'Mister White Man' again. He tried to convince me to eat his spear of fire. What are the odds he'd kill me in front of 2000 people? I opened wide, he held my head, I held my breath and...

He laughed, stopped short of my mouth, and moved on to the petrified German woman. Score one for Mister White Man.

Here's the fire guy on stage:

















That was my very first and very last trip to the church of Coca-Cola.

This post is much longer than I expected. I'll fill you in next time on how an African man with a PHD listed the benefits of slavery to me (including Mike Tyson. What?!?!) and how I can break rocks in a quarry better than a 7 year old who does it professionally and wayyyyy better than the 2 year old. Honestly, I watched her with the hammer and I don't think she managed to break a single rock the whole time. That in itself should be enough to convince people that child labour isn't a good thing. But good for me, it's the only strong man competition I ever won.


Any questions or fire-eating challenges, let me know at dennisinghana@gmail.com

-----------------------

Ghana in 60 Seconds

Many people have expressed concern for my safety. Really, Ghana is probably the safest country in Africa. I'd say I'm even safer here than in Toronto or Vancouver. Still, my house has a night security guard. His name is Yao. He's from the far north of Ghana and he's been teaching me a few words of his native Frah-Frah.

There are 3 interesting things about Yao:

1) He sleeps a lot. It's a wonderful job if you can get it.

2) Guns are illegal here, but Yao is supposedly armed with a bow and arrow. He's the Robin Hood of security guards.

3) He's actually more like a ninja than Robin Hood. I'm usually sweating in a t-shirt and shorts, but here's how he's dressed each and every night. Perhaps because of the mosquitoes. You can see I'm nearly sweating:

















Oh and here's me standing on a rock by the ocean:

Trek to deepest Africa

First, as I write this, I'm crouching at a desk at the TV station. There were not enough computers, so I now bring in my laptop. There were not enough tapes, so i donated some of my own. There's no drinking water at the station, so I often supply the newsroom myself. But now there aren't enough chairs. That's where I draw the line. I'll just sit on the ground.
----------

Also as I write this, there's a discussion on the radio that the host began with "We're having a discussion today on gay rights. Do they have rights?"

This is very brave for a radio station in Ghana. People here are very religious. Being gay is illegal and there's no open gay movement. It makes for the crappiest Pride Day ever.

They had someone from the Gay and Lesbian Association of Ghana, who withstood a barrage of questions and insults. Being gay was being compared to kleptomania and sleeping with animals. Clearly the guest had heard this before and put some thought into his answer: "I wouldn't subscribe to a man sleeping with an animal, but if two male animals want to have sex, that is ok"

Then they spoke to a Pentecostal Minister. "Minister, I hope you have been listening to the show" began the host

"No, not really. I was busy" replied the minister.

Ghanaians are sometimes just too honest.

------------

But on to my adventure into deepest Ghana, on a trip to Bolgatanga.

I've watched many African National Geographic specials over the years. Based on my first month here, it seemed that everything I'd seen on TV was a lie. People lived in houses, not huts. There was electricity, usually. And the streets were lined with convenience stores, open sewers and bars. But that's because I stayed entirely in the capital city. So last week I travelled far, far outside the city. Another JHR person was going up north, just a few miles from the border with Burkina Faso. He was doing a radio story about spirit children for CBC radio.

The story of spirit children confirms every negative African stereotype from every ridiculous movie ever made. Unfortunately, in northern Ghana, it actually happens.

When something is different about a child - a physical deformity, a death in the family shortly after they're born, or if they show very high intelligence - then people will send for a soothsayer. The soothsayer will do whatever scientific tests it is that they do and then pronounce whether or not the kid is a spirit child. A spirit child is not considered human, so they kill it. Usually it happens at birth, but one story we heard was about a kid that was murdered when he was 5 years old. The expert we met said that about 1 out of 20 child deaths in the area are thought to be spirit children. That means it's probably a couple hundred kids a year.

So, why not take lemons and make lemonade? I used this tragedy as an excuse to go on a cross Ghana adventure!

First, I went to the towns of Cape Coast and Elmina. They have this horrific castle that was originally used as a Portuguese fort to transport slaves. Below is a picture I took of the courtyard where the female slaves were kept. The governor of the fort would walk above and point at the woman he wanted. Then they'd throw her 20 feet down the hole into a pit of water to wash her off. It was the most barbaric place I've ever seen.

















The castle gets much, much worse. I'm going back next week and I'll post more pictures after.





Next is the hotel room I stayed at in Cape Coast. Not bad for $6.25 a night.



















In Canada, if you can't afford tiles, linoleum is a decent substitute. In Ghana, if you can't afford linoleum, you use paper with pictures of tiles on it, like in my hotel room. Not surprisingly, it's peeling off in almost every room:


















Here's a sign I could see from the balcony of my hotel. Since 40% of Ghanaians can't read, notice the helpful diagram:




















And here we are, about to set off from Cape Coast on a 12-16 hour journey up to the northern edge of Ghana:


















It was a lovely drive:


















the farther north we went, the more prominent the AIDS messages got. Here's one on the back of a car. It says:

DRIVE PROTECTED. If it's not on, it's not in. Stop AIDS, Love Life.



















The drive up to Bolgatanga was incredible. The roads often had huge potholes that we had to dodge at 120 km/hour. We'd go through all these beautiful small traditional villages. When it got dark, you could see they had no electricity. Every so often there were toll booths (charging us 10 cents) or police checkpoints. We had official government plates, so we didn't have to stop for the police, they just waved us through.

For much of the trip, I was sitting in the back of the pickup. At one point I woke up as we were slowing down for a tollbooth. 4 girls, about 12 years old saw me and ran over to the truck. They were thrilled to see me. Now, you'd think they'd ask me for money, since they're so poor and I'm so obviously rich. But instead, they just wanted to say hi. And one of them did the sweetest thing I've ever seen in my whole darn life: she took her lollipop out of her mouth and offered it to me. I didn't know what to say. It might have been her dinner and she was offering it to me, the rich white guy. When somebody with almost nothing offers you one of the only things she has, it's very humbling. I thanked her very much, but turned it away (there wasn't much left of it anyway. If it was a full lollipop, maybe I would've taken it). After driving the full length of Ghana, and meeting all different tribes and religions, I can honestly say they're the most genuine people I've ever encountered. Just a fantastic place.

So finally we arrived in the far north and visited the house that belonged to the family of Joseph, our housekeeper. Here are his nephews, thrilled to see us:



















And here's his house. Originally I thought it had been damaged, but this is the way it's actually built:


















The living room:



















And here's the living room after they set it up for the guests. The only piece of furniture they owned is a couch without cushions. But then they went into a back room and brought out a stack of foam. The foam was cut up into the shape of cushions. You can see our driver sitting on them. It's not beautiful, but it is surprisingly comfortable:


















Here are Joseph's nephews, who stared at the camera for about half an hour

















There are some universal truths in the world. I always believed one was "You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friends nose". Well, to the delight of young boys everywhere, in Africa you can pick your friends nose






















One of our last stops in our action packed day in Bolgatanga was to a local orphanage. They take kids that are true orphans, but they also rescue spirit children, who would otherwise be murdered. At least 2 of these kids were rescued from death by the orphanage. It was really heartwarming, and a chance to finally see with my own eyes all those things that I've been watching on infomercials all these years.

When we arrived, the people that worked there were very accommodating. They know how the media works. They went around to each of the rooms, gathered up all of the children, and sat them down on a coloured mat in front of us as a perfect photo op.

The big kid in the red pants is Francis, who was a rescued spirit child. As soon as we arrived, he walked over and took my hand, then we hung out for a while. Really a great kid.


















And this little girl is a rescued spirit child too. After I took this shot, she stared at me for a bit. Then she crawled over and lay down in my lap. From the fact that the kids are so trusting, I hope this means that they're accustomed to adults at the orphanage treating them really well. It certainly seemed that way.



















So a fabulous trip. It was like a Disney ride through rural Africa. Here were all these people who lived in huts with thatched roofs (or no roofs), couldn't read, didn't speak english, believed in spirits, had no electricity, had never spoken to a white person before and occasionally murdered their own children. Yet they seemed just like us. Maybe a bit friendlier. And seemingly happier.

The biggest differences seem to be our broadband internet, our couch cushions and all-u-can-eat sushi. Flimsy reasons for 400 years of slavery.

We were exhausted on the 16 hour drive back. The conversation turned to the ridiculous, as Joseph filled us in on the various dangerous animals up north. My favourite are the poisonous frogs that only attack "if you shit on top of them". There was also some debate about whether fire breathing dragons are real. Even the guy with the PHD sitting in the front seat wasn't too sure.

As I've said before, nothing in Ghana is very bad, but a whole lot is ridiculous.

-----------------
Ghana in 60 Seconds

One of the Ghanaian editors at my TV station has asked me to find him a Canadian woman. I agreed to post this personal ad for him:

He would like someone "slim and tall and beautiful...and very intelligent."

He describes himself as "a video editor. That's it".

He'd like to be friends, and "probably it'll lead to marriage".

If there are any takers, contact me at dennisinghana@gmail.com and I'll give you his info. Here's his picture:

Another day at the office

I just made an amazing trip far up north to Bolgatanga. I saw incredible stuff and have lots of pictures to post, but first, an odd incident here about an hour ago:

I was sitting at a desk in the newsroom, when I noticed the lobby sounded a bit loud. I looked over and saw a couple people peering down the stairs. Before long, the entire newsroom had emptied and everybody had gone to see what was happening.

I assumed it was just a loud argument. Those are common in Ghana, and rarely lead to anything more. Ghanaians are passionate, but peaceful.

Then I saw the police, in their blue uniforms and carrying their rifles. Before long the shouting match had moved into the parking lot, where half a dozen well dressed men were milling around.

Almost the entire network staff was out there, either yelling or watching. The CEO was shouting furiously at one of the well dressed men. Finally, he had to be restrained by some of his employees.

Then I saw 'VAT' on a badge around one of the visitor's necks. This is like a sales tax in Ghana. I realized it probably has something to do with unpaid taxes.

After about half an hour of shouting, mocking and taunting, everybody finally went inside. From what I was told, the station's monthly taxes are late, so the tax people came to shut the station down. I don't know why they couldn't just add on a penalty or go to court, but things are different in Ghana.

All the VAT people eventually left without padlocking the doors, so we're still here. But nobody seems to know how it was resolved, or if they'll be back tomorrow.

There are competing suspicions about what led to this. One theory is that a handful of people that were fired 2 months ago wanted revenge, so they told the tax people that the network had a lot of money.

Another theory is that the other local stations are upset that we're now broadcasting a full day and taking away their advertisers. So one of the stations bribed the tax people to shut us down. As one of our employees told me "That's Africa for you".

As we were talking, someone else interrupted to ask me "Do you think that my shoe looks like a baby coffin?"

I looked down at her shoe.

"It's too small for a baby coffin, right?" she persisted. "In Canada, could a baby fit in a coffin that size?". I surmised that perhaps if the baby was premature, it could be buried in one of her shoes. "That is not true" someone else interjected "My sons were premature, but they wouldn't have fit in that shoe".

"How premature?" I asked

"2 months"

"Well if they were 4 months premature, maybe they could fit inside one of her shoes".

She agreed. Case closed. I think it's the first argument I've won during my entire trip to Ghana

So I don't understand what happened with the tax incident and I don't understand Ghanaian humour. But at least I'm not bored today.

I'll post a rundown of my Bolgatanga trip tomorrow.


-Dennis
dennisinghana@gmail.com

Will Work For Food

First, sorry for not updating the site sooner. I worked on it for about an hour and a half last weekend, then the computer at the internet cafe crashed when I hit "upload". But I shouldn't be naive enough to come all the way to Africa and complain their internet is too slow and their computers too old. There are people starving here.

I've now been working at the TV station for 2 weeks. It was everything I was told to expect: No air conditioning, a lack of professional equipment, and everything always running just a bit late. However, the people are wonderful.

My first day, we went out to cover a press conference. It was somewhat easier than the stories I'd put together in Canada. We showed up, a little bit late. But then the press conference was delayed by an hour anyway. As I'm learning, one hour late is practically on time here.

It turns out that being a reporter in Ghana may be the perfect job for me. I slept through most of the event. When I awoke, they gave me food and beer. And to top it all off, I was offered a handful of cash for covering the event. I couldn't imagine a better job. The press conference itself was a non-event. The local branch of a British bank was announcing their program to help small businesses. So why was this a news story? Because that's practically every news story we do at the station: press conferences. One day, I attended 2 press conferences in the same day and was given 3 meals. So it makes me wonder if I can do the reverse of what I was sent here for: take Ghanian news standards and bring them to Canada. It's the promised land for TV reporters.

The people at the station are fantastic. They are quite amused to have a white person here. By the end of the first day, everybody from the news anchors to the sound people to the security guards to the drivers all knew my name.

No such thing as a free lunch? There is here. There's a canteen outside the station, pretty much in the back of the garage. Everybody eats there for free. Most of the food is eaten with your hands, which is fun. Sometimes I have trouble eating some of the food, such as the fish heads. But it never goes to waste. Instead, it's fed to the family of stray cats that lives inside the kitchen. Apparently they came in one day and never left. Despite living in a kitchen, they're really scrawny. While I'm eating, one of them sometimes scratches my leg, trying to get food. I think they all know that the white guy won't eat fish heads.

One odd thing about the news here is that they cover almost exclusively press conferences. The stories are about 4 minutes long, so most of the news ends up being shots of bored audiences in press conferences. Almost without exception, there's at least one abruni, or white man, at each event. The first press conference I was at, I was that abruni. In fact, they showed me a total of 10 different times:





















And here's what our evening newscast looks like:

















And much to my amusement, they consider me an intern here. This is not what I thought I was doing when left a good TV job in Canada (look at the very bottom):

















I've got to run, tonight's newscast starts in less than an hour. There are about 4 stories tonight. 2 of them are about anniversaries of graduating classes at local schools. This is in a city with up to 5 million people, yet those are the stories we do.

And don't anybody worry about me. I should be well protected here, since we pray every day, at every press conference and at every meeting at work. So clearly it was a waste of money for me to buy medical insurance on top of that.

------------------
Ghana in 60 Seconds

I'm getting to know the people in the neighbourhood pretty well. There are 3 stores at the bottom of my driveway and every time I leave my house, they all greet me by name. There's also a guy down the street I see every so often. The first time we hung out, he brought me to his house and showed me his pet cat. The second time, he recommended I come over one of these days, we'll go to the beach and eat his pet cat. I've asked around and apparently some people here do eat cats. It led to a discussion at a JHR meeting about what tastes better, cat or dog (most people aren't such big fans of cat, but everybody agreed that dog falls right off the bone). So I know some people in Toronto are trying to find someone to take their cats. Why not freeze them and send them out here? If you don't want to bother with all the postage, I can ask my neighbour for some recipes and you can cook them up yourself. Send me your emails and I'll get the recipes. For those of you who are concerned, don't worry, I believe it's Atkins friendly.

First off, here are the pictures it wouldn't let me upload last time:


Here's my closet. See the black thing on the right? Whoever was here before me was kind enough to leave me a single dirty sock, just in case I run out.























Here's my office. It should keep me from slouching.

















And finally, my castle is set up. Gorgeous.

















---------------------------

I've been in Ghana now for almost a week. Day by day, things are improving. I've now got a top sheet for my bed, a functioning fan and I'm getting to know some of the neighbours.

Things weren't going so well on Friday. I was supposed to go to the TV station that I'll be working at. When we arrived, we found out that the news editor who had agreed to have me in the newsroom had quit. Nobody else seemed to know anything about me, and nobody would even meet with us. As Ato, the JHR Country Director, explained "New King, new laws", meaning the current news editor might not want me there after all.

So we ran off to address the next crisis: One of the JHR people who took the bus up north discovered on his arrival that his bags never made it onto the bus. We headed over to the bus station, where his bags were sitting safely in the office. They agreed to put them on the next bus heading north. Ato didn't want to take any chances, he wanted to see them loaded onto the bus. We waited around for about 2 hours for the bus to leave. It finally boarded an hour late, which I'm told is "very good. Practically on time". We watched and just as Ato had expected, they forgot to load the bags onto the bus again. After a gentle reminder, they loaded them up and we headed off, back to my TV station. This time they let us in and after a 5 minute meeting with someone who didn't know anything about me, they told me to come in Monday. So it seems that some things can be done quickly around here.

One thing that's stuck me about Ghanaians: they work awfully long hours. I was told that the work ethic here wasn't so great. It's true that they're often doing nothing, but people work at their stalls for up to 12 hours. We saw a girl about 10 years old selling newspapers on a corner late Friday afternoon. Ato mentioned she'd been there since 6 am. And all my neighbours wake me up at the crack of dawn as I hear them do their housework and tend to their children. I've never seen such poor people work so much.

Getting back to Friday, I was a wee bit concerned that there was still no water in the house. The housekeeper told me it may be permanent, that I may have to bring all the water in from a tap outside instead. Clearly my fantasy about living in a palace in Ghana had evaporated.

BUT, then on Saturday, we not only had water, but I found that in one of the bathrooms the toilet flushed and the shower worked. This is true luxury. Joseph, the housekeeper, came over. We watched some TV and then he napped for a few hours. I got some pillowcases for my bed and relaxed all day. I never had this much free time in Toronto.

Then today, on my way to the internet cafe, I heard a bunch of singing coming from behind a big concrete wall. I searched around for the entrance, walked through the gate and ended up in an empty school. By school I mean rows and rows of desks under a tin roof with no walls. I kept walking past all the different classrooms until a lady asked me who I was looking for. I told her I liked the singing and she told me to come in. I followed her to the end of the row of classrooms. In the very last one, it was packed with all sorts of people in their Sunday best. They converted the last classroom into a makeshift church. There were about 50 people all crammed together. All the kids laughed. (Apparently seeing white people is very funny for African kids.) Everybody in the church stopped and looked at me. I told them I liked the music. Then EVERYBODY laughed really loudly, grabbed me and ushered me to a chair at the very front. It was like one of those churches that you see on National Geographic, really weird, really African. Everyone was singing, one lady was collapsed on the ground, people came up to the front, had water thrown on them and fell backwards. Nuts. They tried to get me to go up and dance, but I told them I'd dance next week. As everyone sang and danced, all the people in charge came over and shook my hand. Apparently not that many Obruni (white people) come to this church.

After 5 minutes I left and promised to come back next week, when I was dressed up more. It was a blast. Next time, I'll try to post pictures.

And on Monday, things should get even better as Joseph has agreed to wash the floor and I start my new job. Onwards and upwards!
-----

Brief update: As I was updating the blog, Joseph, the housekeeper called my cell. He wanted to let me know he's coming over to watch the soccer game. Clearly housekeeping is a much different job in Ghana than in Canada. I told him it's no problem. But if I could just get him into baseball, Ghana would be wonderful.
----------------------------

Ghana in 60 Seconds:

As of Friday, all the other JHR people had left the house for their postings in other cities. I was the only one left, until this morning when I saw my new roommate.

Here he is before I met him:














And here he is after I met him:





















I think when he saw me, he freaked out, tried to run up the wall, fell off and landed on his back. Then he was stuck and I watched him squirm for a while before squishing him. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but he was a little over 2 inches long, maybe twice as big as a Canadian cockroach. Any other roommates wanna mess with me?

-Dennis

----------------------------

2 quick blog notes:

1) I've changed the settings so you can post comments without logging in. Feel free to go ahead and do so.

2) If you want to be alerted whenever the blog is updated, just send me an email at dennisinghana@gmail.com

I'm not normally the most perceptive person, not the most conscious that I may be making a bad decision. But as I stood in the drug store, receiving my assortment of pills from the pharmacist, I realized that it's possible my trip to Africa may be a mistake.

"These aren't for diarrhea" she explained "They're only for persistent, bloody diarrhea".

If there's ever a sign that maybe you're making the wrong decision, it's persistent, bloody diarrhea.

But I've made bad decisions in the past, why not try one more?

So now I've arrived in Accra, moved in, and been show around the city. I'm staying at a house that was arranged by JHR. I was told it's a palace by Ghanaian standards. It comes with a housekeeper and a security guard. Below are some pictures I took of my room the first night in my palace.


Here's the palace bed.

















Take a good look at the pillow. It appears that it was used in village massacre recently.
















Notice anything about the ceiling fan? Yes, it's filthy. But what's worse is that the bare bulb hangs above it. If the fan is turned on, it creates a terrible strobe effect throughout the whole room. I guess I'll find out if I'm epileptic
















[THERE ARE MORE IMAGES, BUT THE COMPUTER WOULDN'T LET ME UPLOAD THEM FOR SOME REASON. NEXT TIME I GUESS]
---------------------

Heck of a place. As you can see, Joseph the housekeeper isn't such a big fan of cleaning. I'm told it's filthy even by Ghanaian standards. So hopefully I can convince him to wash a layer of dirt off the floors. Worst case scenario, I'll do it myself. He's a lovely person and invited me to the beach this weekend. He also told me he liked my phone and I should give it to him when I leave.

And I don't know where my security guard is. He was here when we arrived, but I've only seen him once since then. Both times it was about 30 degrees celsius, yet he was wearing a winter jacket. Our gate is usually left open and anyone who wants seems to be able to walk right into the house. Still, Ghanaians are wonderful people and it seems very safe here.



During my stopover in London, a Ghanaian girl, about 5 years old was watching me type on my laptop. I showed her how to take her picture with the webcam. Shortly afterward she became a real devil, trying to grab the computer out of my hands, pushing on the screen and then hitting the keyboard. When I put the laptop away, she started climbing on me, tried to put stickers on my face, and then persistently used her nails to try to scratch "a mistake" off my arm, by which she meant a freckle. We were on the same flight, so on the other end when she saw me waiting for my luggage, she convinced me to use my laptop to take one more picture of her. Then she tried to scratch the same freckle off my arm. Here's one of the numerous photos she took of herself and her little sister:
















------------------------


I don't know what I was thinking, but I didn't expect it to be this tough here. It's Thursday afternoon and I just took my first shower since leaving Toronto 4 days ago. The shower consisted of me dumping small buckets of cold water over my head as I stood in the bathtub. We've only had water for a few hours in the 3 days I've been here. That means we often can't even flush the toilets. I knew about all this, but somehow expected everything to be easier. I think I'll be able to stick with it for the next 6 months, but my outlook changes hour to hour.

This afternoon I got a call from Johnny down the street. It was 4:30 and he wanted to get hammered with me. So in many ways, it's really my kind of town.

------------------------

Ghana in 60 seconds:

Now, Africa is far away and many Canadians have never travelled here. Let me briefly address some of the misconceptions:

-"Are the women still topless there?" I believe those National Geographic magazines may have lied to us. It appears all women wear shirts. But I'll keep my camera ready just in case
-"They're going to drag your dead body behind a truck" say some of my friends. Not only is Ghana very peaceful and the people very friendly, but the gas prices have just shot up here, so they couldn't afford to drag my body through the streets.
-According to Eric Cartman on South Park "My mom says there's a lot of black people in Africa". Yes, that one's true. There are a lot of black people in Africa.

Any other questions?
-----------------------



I'd be thrilled to hear everyone's comments or questions. If you want me to put you on a list so that you receive updates of either the full postings, or just the Ghana in 60 seconds postings, send a note to dennisinghana@gmail.com

Hope all is well in Canada. I'll post again soon.

-Dennis

first post

Nothin to say yet. I'll be arriving in Ghana on July 17 and expect lots of updates starting then!