Salsa Dancing

“Barack Obama.. Barack Obama.. Barack Obama!!” The radio in the tro-tro is blaring and the Barack Obama song by Blakk Rasta is on. The next song is in Japanese, Maiko tells me. We’re on our way to the Madena Market and I look out the window, take in all my senses, and just smile.

I can’t even explain how happy I am right now. I just absolutely love being in Africa. We’ve only been here for about a week and a half, and all of us are already dreading the day we have to leave. There are parts that are just so different from what I’m used to, yet there are times when I feel like I’m at home.

I met a large group of U.S. students coming to Ghana also on the plane from Chicago to Heathrow. I met my good friend Mike, whom I met in Tanzania last year, at Heathrow and it seemed so surreal. We both couldn’t believe we were going to Africa again.

We landed in Accra (pronounced with an emphasis on the last a) and after being ripped off by the Bureau de Change we got outside and there was that smell. Tanzania smelled the same. I don’t know how to describe it, but a friend said it smells like “burning sage.” It felt like déjà vu.

We spent our first few nights in a hotel called the Coconut Grove Hotel. It’s actually owned by a man running for president. He’s part of a third party so he will probably not win, but from what I’ve heard he has a large portion of the youth vote. He just leisurely walked around the grounds. Our last night there, there was actually a salsa dancing night. Apparently salsa dancing has become really popular here. I never expected to learn salsa dancing in Ghana.

After two nights in the hotel we finally moved into the dorms. Where I’m staying is called the International Student Hostel and there are students here from the U.S., China, Nigeria, Benin, Germany, Ghana, and probably other places. The living isn’t as sterile as we’re used to, but it’s more than sufficient. We don’t have hot water, but in the heat it actually feels good to take a cold shower. We have to wash our laundry by hand, and it’s kind of a pain, but it’s manageable. Probably the biggest inconvenience will be next week, when starting on Tuesday there will be a water shortage for 10 days on campus. A lot of people are complaining (and I’m not going to lie, I did too), but I think it will show us a side of life we wouldn’t experience otherwise. And it’s not like we’re going to die or anything.

So the last week that we’ve been in the dorms has been filled with getting adjusted and figuring out campus. Campus is really quite big. I think it’s probably about the same size as U of Minnesota as far as walking distances goes, if not bigger. To go from one side to another it takes at least a half an hour. My dorm has a market we call the “Night Market” really close by, where we can get food and drinks and such. And there’s also another market called the Bush Canteen on campus that has just about anything you’d need.

After moving in we registered for classes. This proved to be a bit of a headache. We didn’t realize how nice and easy it is to register online. First we had to go to each department to find class listings and then go into their office and fill out a form and give them a passport picture. Sounds easy, but with thousands of other students doing it, it was pretty crazy.

So this was supposed to be the end of the first week of our classes, however, there were no classes Monday through Wednesday because the teachers were on strike. It was really interesting because the news of no classes was just spread by word of mouth.. no email alerts or anything.

While I’m here I have an internship with an NGO called FIDA (Federacion Internacionale de Abogadas). It was started in Mexico in the ‘40s, but has since spread worldwide. They provide legal services for those who cannot afford it. It used to be that they only helped women and children, but they have just opened up their services to men, also. I start there next week and I’m really excited. They provide a lot of legal aid clinics in and out of Accra, and the woman there said that they will take me out to rural areas when we do clinics outside of the city. Walking around their offices, there were many posters addressing problems of domestic violence, so I’m assuming that a lot of the work being done will be centered on such cases. Plus they are currently working towards legislation that will give women the rights to property they shared with a significant other for more than two years. I’m really excited to learn about the process of fighting for women’s rights in a developing country.

Well, daily life here is always an adventure. Of course if we drink the tap water we’d probably get really sick so we have to stay to packaged water. Bottled water is okay, but the cheapest water you can buy, and the most popular water to buy, is water that comes in a small plastic bag. The size of the bags is about 5x5 inches, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it always seems to satisfy. We can get a “sachet” of about 25 of those bags for only 90 pesewas, which is about 90 cents in USD. To drink out of them you bite a small piece off of a corner and then just drink from it.

The food here is really good. Some of it, though, seems to be for an acquired taste. There are two traditional meals in particular, called fufu and banku. They are somewhat similar in their texture, in that they are basically doughy balls that you dunk in a soup. Banku is bitterer though because it is slightly fermented and made of corn millet, whereas fufu is made of potatoes (I think). Unfortunately, I really don’t like either of these. My favorite food I’ve tried here so far is beans and plantains. The beans are black-eyed peas and they’re mixed with palm oil, spice, and this grainy stuff and then the plantains I think are either fried or boiled. The bread here is phenomenal. There’s this kind they call sugar bread and it’s really fluffy and moist and tastes like there’s spices like nutmeg or cinnamon in it. For a lot of breakfasts we get this bread with a veggie omelet inside of it. Now the chocolate here is the best. I’ve heard that Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana provide the world with 90% of its cocoa. This could be wrong, but it is true that the northern regions here produce a TON of cocoa. The chocolate we get here that is locally made is not as creamy as American or European chocolate, but the flavor is perfect. They put a few less ingredients in it, so it’s a bit more natural than the chocolate we’re used to in our candy bars. It’s definitely worth the taste.

Transportation here is not for the weak. There are taxis which are really widely used, but you have to haggle for a price before you get in. The cheapest way to get around is in tro-tros. Tro-tros are their version of a bus system. They are basically big vans that drive routes like buses. To find out where the tro-tro is going, you have to listen to the driver’s assistant (they call him “mate”) who is hanging out the sliding door as it pulls up to the stop. He yells where their final destination is and that’s how you know where it’s going. I love how interactive everything here is.

This last week I registered for three classes through the university. I am taking a Political Science class called Identities and Conflicts in Africa, an African drumming class, and African Traditional Religion. Along with these classes I have the internship, a 7-week Twi class, and a course to supplement the internship called Sociological Foundations of Development Studies. Although it sounds like a lot, I still have Fridays off, and the courses through the university are only once a week for two hours. Once the Twi class is over I’ll also have a lot more time on my hands.

So to explain my opening quote, Barack Obama is a big hit here. There is that song called Barack Obama by Blakk Rasta (you can youtube it), and a lot of times when I tell people that I’m from America they’ll immediately ask about Barack Obama. The excitement of our upcoming election is affecting both us Americans and the Ghanaian population. Ghana actually has their presidential elections a month after ours, so it will be interesting to see if it affects their elections. We found out recently that we can vote in-person at the U.S. Embassy instead of doing an absentee ballot which may or may not arrive. The last few days has been filled with all of us scrambling to find out whether or not Obama picked his VP yet. Looks like it’s Biden.

It looks like I’ve written enough for now (sorry it’s so long!). I figured I could just give you guys a rundown of my life here and then in future entries elaborate on things. Hope you enjoy!