Accra in more detail
Ok, I have a bit more time now, so will try and give yous a bit more detail about my time in Ghana so far.
I forgot to tell you that i was upgraded on the flight over! woohoo, have absolutely no idea why but the plane was really busy. result. I was sat next to a nice girl who was a consultant for an NGO which builds roads and she gave me the names of some friends of hers in Tamale. Apparently there are lots of Cuban doctors and she has Lebanese friends too - so quite multicultural.
There are 10 VSO volunteers here doing in country training. 5 from UK, 2 Indian, 1 Canadain, 1 Kenyan and 1 Phillipino. We are staying in a pretty swanky hotel in Accra and the schedule has been pretty relaxed. We start early, about 8am, but usually finished by 3 ish and theres always lots of waiting around for people or whatever. Been told we need to get used to this - it’s Ghana Maybe Time (GMT - get it?!) We’ve been having classes in the local language appropriate to our area - there are over 70 local languages in Ghana. Mine is Dagbani. Greetings are the most important thing and apparently if you don’t greet someone they will really hold it against you. There are about 10 different ways of saying HI, depending on the time of day, weather, their sex, age etc… arrrghh! In Dagbani, the word of "white person", which we will be called alot, it’s not insulting or anything, is Siliminga. ho ho, that amused me! So I’ll get to Tamale and everyone will be calling me a Silly Minger!
Before I came to Ghana everyone told me that the Ghanaian people are so friendly and my experiece so far is that they are. Walking down the street in Accra you don’t get any hassel really, hardly anyone harassing you to buy things which I have found in many other countries. If you speak to someone they seem to go out of their way to help you in anyway you can. For example we stopped a lady selling stuff by the side of the road for directions and she actually got someone else to watch her stuff and took us to the place we wanted to go.
The food is grand too. No chance of me losing any weight here!
All the VSO’s were invited to a reception at the British high commissioner’s house on Wednesday - free beer and wine in a ridiculously fancy house with armed guards, barbed wire round the 10ft walls etc. Fair play to him, but I felt a wee bit uneasy.
We travel up to Tamale tomorrow. I cant wait to get there now. I think we start work on Tuesday. I got told yesterday that their funding runs out in March - no pressure for me then!! I’m looking forward to acutally doing some work now and the project sounds really exciting. Apparently they have been doing a project educating people about witches, cos a lot of elderly women are considered to be witches, if the "lesser gods" indicate that, and they get kicked out of their villages.
anyway, my time is almost up. over and out.
