Accra

So, turns out by “two days,” Calvin really meant “one day then we’re leaving at 4 am the next day.” But we did have one day, I guess. I’m going to try to paint a picture of Ghana for you, but I really don’t think it’s going to do it much justice. In general terms, it’s a combination of Disney World’s Animal Kingdom, central Texas, and everything that possibly comes to mind when someone says the word “Africa.”

The first thing you see when you walk out of our hotel is a wooden plank sidewalk, with periodic gaping holes that reveal the open sewers beneath. There’s also a massive highway-- it’s hard to say how many lanes, because no one seems to really care. People and cars just kind of go the way they want. To walk to the bank, you run across the highway and follow one of the sidewalks pass street vendors selling everything. LITERALLY everything. There’s food, there’s clothes, there’s phones, there’s motorcycles, there’s leather sofas. There’s also a fair number of goats milling around, and we even saw some chickens today pecking around old parked cars.

On our way home, Ceci pointed out that, besides one or two billboards, you can’t really tell what year it is here. Sure, people are walking around with iPhones and Blackberries, but all of the cars (including tro-tros, which you’ll hear more about soon, I’m sure) look like they’re from the 90’s, or before. Most of the stores look like lean-tos, or kind of huts, but even the actual buildings all have a faded, dusty appearance. I would say probably about half of the people are dressed in Western clothes, but we also saw a ton of women in traditional African clothing with huge baskets balanced on their heads. They would weave in and out of stalled traffic selling everything from Mentos to bags of water.  OH. And there are men with AK47s (or some other big gun, not really an expert here) outside of all of the banks. I guess this is supposed to make me feel safe, but it backfired. On the other end of the comfort spectrum, Beyonce is apparently a national hero. She’s on the radio everywhere, and this really does make me feel safe.

We’re leaving the hotel at 4 am to travel up to Navrongo, so I should be able to tell you more about where I’m living tomorrow!