T.I.A This Is Africa

Feb. 10

So we are set to leave the port of Takoradi in several hours, and before I catch up on all the sleep I have skipped the past several days, I wanted to tell the blogosphere what I did in Ghana.  Unfortunately, I feel as though the minimal creative narrative skills I have won’t be on display tonight, so I’ll probably just do a chronological account of my travels, with perhaps an occasional display of wisdom and profoundness. 

Monday:
If we want to get technical, Monday started just after 23:59 on Sunday night, which meant it was 6 o clock back in the states, which meant the Super Bowl was just starting.  The ship had turned off everyone’s internet access in order to save enough bandwidth to be able to stream the game live, but I had told myself before that the last thing I wanted to do was watch the Super Bowl on the ship instead of out in the city with the locals.  Of course after a long draining day exploring the slaves dungeons (see prior post), getting a taxi into the city to check out the bar scene and find an internet café, I found myself sitting in the Union with some friends eating popcorn and watching the game on the ship.  After about a month of no TV, and very limited access to US news, especially sports, it was really strange to, in a sense, be thrust back into American culture so rapidly.  I was sitting with a group of about 300 students, eating popcorn, laughing at the commercials and watching the Super Bowl.  Not that unusual until you consider that we were on the Western Coast of Africa, docked in one of the largest cocoa ports in the world, in a country void of almost any western tourists except the SAS kids.  Regardless it was a fun experience and I am proud to say that I watched up into the fourth quarter, until I passed out asleep (I think it was around 3 or 4 in the morning at this point).  I was told the Packers won, but honestly have had no confirmation of this and really don’t know what happened in the game.  Perhaps this is why it was so important for me to go during the spring semester, so I wouldn’t miss any Nebraska games.
        Monday morning, or I should say later Monday morning; I was up at 6 o clock to try to find a spot on the Habitat for Humanity trip.  I hadn’t bought a ticket for the program, but with the hope that some kids wouldn’t show up due to Super Bowl related consumption activities, I decided it might be worth it to show up early and try to get on.  Sure enough there were four open seats on the bus, and three SAS kids, including myself, wanting spots, so everything worked out.  I think it was a three or four hour bus ride to our build location (I honestly don’t have the slightest clue where we were on the map) during which I slept in an awkward and cramped position.  As we got closer to the site, the roads turned into dirt, which turned into narrow paths with tons of holes.  On one particularly tight turn our bus managed to clip the roof of this rural school building.  We didn’t make the turn, and so of course backed up and ran into the school again.  This entire time the bus was literally rocking several feet side to side, and some of the less adventurous students were close to running off the bus out of fear of tipping.  I was absolutely loving it, and thought it was hilarious that we kept backing up and running into this building.  We finally managed to make the turn and everyone started cheering and clapping, until we immediately hit this giant rut and the bus tipped so far to one side that all the bags fell out of the overhead bins and landed on top of people.  No one was hurt, and the school was still standing at the end, so I think I am allowed to remember this experience as being a lot of fun. 
        After a short hike through the jungle (although it wasn’t really a jungle, but for lack of a better word for a hot forest in Africa, I’ll stick with jungle) we arrived at the build site, which consisted of a compound of about half a dozen partially constructed concrete buildings.  Just like my service project in Brazil, the logistics of the trip were not clearly understood by SAS, but instead of waiting around for directions, a group of us just found the closest Ghanaian worker, and started helping him.  I spent the morning basically pick axing, shoveling and then wheel barrow(ing?) about 2 feet of dirt that had accumulated on the floors of one of the buildings.  It was tiring and hot work, and when I went for a lunch break I realized they hadn’t provided enough water, so I immediately had to sit down and cool off before getting dehydrated.  Finally, some water bottles and lunch arrived and I hydrated quickly and went back to work.  In the afternoon, I helped to move cinder blocks from one location to another location about ten feet away.  Now that I think about it, it was actually pretty ridiculous that we spent hours moving these hundreds, perhaps a thousand cinder blocks just a few feet.  I also spent a bit of time perfecting my pick axing and shoveling techniques by helping dig this eight-foot deep hole that was going to serve as a septic system.  I was exhausted at the end of the day, and so covered in sweat and dirt that my clothes were literally stiff when I took them off back at the ship, but it felt great to labor for a cause and help this community.
        We made it back to the ship a little before 2100 and I was probably asleep within the hour.

Tuesday:
        I was up early again Tuesday to leave for the capitol of Ghana, Accra, with a group of students involved with Andrew Briggs’ organization Freedom in Creation.  I think about 30 of us left the ship at around 7:30 to walk to the end of the dock, to take a cab to the bus station, to take a bus to Accra, to take another cab and then another bus to the hotel and then to the school we were going to work at.  I guess I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the harbor in Takoradi is an industrial one, which means that to get to the city you have to walk about 15 minutes past warehouses full of cocoa and other exports, trains, shipping containers, conveyor belts, and a whole host of other machinery (I really wanted to play hide and go seek here) in order to reach the end of the dock, which is really tiny and basically only has taxi drivers yelling at you.  Then you have to take a taxi (or walk for about an hour) to get into the city.  Anyways, the thirty of us managed to all arrange taxis to the bus station and then we somehow were able to essentially charter this really nice bus all the way into the city, for a very reasonable price.  The bus had huge seats and tons of legroom, which meant I was barely awake for any of the 4-maybe 5-hour trip.  The bus also took us right up to our hotel in Accra, which again was somehow arranged by students the day before.   I think it is actually pretty incredible how successful us SAS kids have been in traveling.  We have overcome language barriers, negotiated taxi prices, visited places never seen before, found lodging, stayed healthy (relatively) and all made it back before on ship time the days we leave port.  The hotel was sorta of nice in that it had air conditioning and fancy furniture and not sorta nice in that it didn’t have working showers.  Regardless, we were the only people there, which meant that some of us slept outside, some slept on the roof, and some didn’t sleep at all, and we could be as loud as we wanted.  After dropping our bags off, we boarded another bus, which took us through Accra to one of the few government run schools in the country, a compound with probably around 1,000 students.  When we arrived we were immediately mobbed by the younger students, who were literally climbing over one another just to touch us.  It was fun being with the kids, who were so excited to see white people, and I got some good photos of about a dozen kids climbing all over me. 
After the initial mob, we divided up into 4 groups and helped the kids paint these giant banners, which will travel around the world with us and be enhanced with the artwork of other kids from different countries before being sent to Uganda with Freedom in Creation.  We left the school after a few hours and headed back to the hotel, stopping at an ATM to get some local currency, the cedi, on the way.  Back at the hotel we met up with even more SAS kids who had other travel plans for that day and spent the rest of the night hanging around the hotel and talking to some of the locals.

Wednesday:
        After a pretty solid sleep sharing a bed with my 6’4” friend, I woke up to the drama of trying to locate the students who didn’t return from dinner the night before.  I wasn’t too worried about them because, 1) I knew they weren’t drinking 2) they all had international cell phones and 3) I was slightly envious that they would have a cool story to tell about getting lost for an entire night in a foreign city.  We were somehow able to find them by first calling the ship, which they had contacted, and found out that they had just stayed at another hotel in the city.  At this point it was around 9 and I was restless to get into Accra to explore, so four of us grabbed a taxi and left the hotel.  It was about a 45min ride into central Accra, and we eventually made it to the art center.  The art center is basically this huge area full of vendors and artists selling these beautiful sculptures, fabrics, paintings and other crafts.  Being white (which is like being a celebrity because they think we are all rich, which I guess is true compared to the economic status of most Africans), we were immediately greeted by a large Ghanaian named Jaguar, who took us to his shop and showed us his wares.  After beating him in a game of Mancala, and doing some haggling, I was able to get a medium and small size mask for 20 cedi, or roughly about 14 US.  He also took us to his “brother’s” shop where they were making elephant sculptures.  I told Jaguar that I wanted to make my own elephant, so he brought me an ebony piece of wood roughly shaped into an elephant.  After about 20mins of learning the proper sanding and finishing techniques, I was able to negotiate a pretty reasonable price for the elephant and some sand paper.  It’ll probably take me about 15-20 hours to finish sanding it, and when I get back to the states I’ll have to stain and finish it.  I’m pretty excited to have a project to work on and can’t wait until I finish.  After the sculpture lesson, we went to another one of Jaguar’s “brother’s” shops were we played drums and sang together with the Ghanaian artists.  One of my friends got this awesome beaded mask by trading deodorant, pens, toothpaste and some headphone buds.  I guess its tough to say if we got ripped off or not, but everything we bought was at least 50% below their initial price, and at least we were able to support some really talented crafts people, even if they did start acting a little strange towards the girls near the end. 
        After the art center, we walked around the city for a while and found a local lunch place.  We ate chicken and rice (what else is new) and I was able to get this awesome African soda called Alvaro, which I discovered the night before.  We found a taxi and headed for the school we were set to visit for the day, called Mother’s Nest Montessori School.  We left pretty early for the school, expecting the usual process of getting loss and having to pull over every few blocks to ask the locals for directions, but we were able to spot the sign for the school rather easily and got their about an hour before the rest of the group, so we walked around the neighborhood for a while.  The neighborhood was much more affluent than other parts of Accra, and was located just a block or two from some of the international embassies.  The environment at the Montessori school was completely different than the public school we had visited the other day.  The school was well stocked with supplies and teachers, and all the students were incredibly polite, well behaved, and spoke great English.  Obviously these students came from affluent families, and it was very apparent the difference that money makes in an education, a trend that is just as visible in the US.  We spent a few hours at the school creating more banners and art pieces with the students.  I was very impressed with the way Andrew Briggs interacted with the kids and how passionate he became as soon as he arrived at the school.  I respected him a tremendous amount before, but it was cool to see him in his element.
        We left the school around 1600.  26 SAS students boarded a “troo-troo,” which is basically a public bus designed for about 12 people.  I was fortunate enough to get a taxi with three others, and we headed to the Accra bus station to eventually find our way back to Takoradi.  The traffic in Accra, and all of Ghana for that matter, is literally the worse I have ever seen in my life.  About 70% of the vehicles are taxis or buses, and instead of having designated lanes, it is pretty much just wide roads with constant merges.  This adds up to a lot of honking and angry taxi drivers.  Perhaps even more intense are the thousands of street vendors who weave in and out of the cars selling their wares.  It is fair to say that the streets of Accra are basically a giant Costco store.  Everything from underwear, to watches, to hatchets and axes, to pieces of foam, to Kenny Rodgers CDs where displayed in front of our taxi.  You would think that this would cause a lot of accidents, but it is literally impossible to drive faster than 15mph because you have to stop all the time, so it isn’t as dangerous as it appears.  The bus station at Accra was wild; literally so crowded that you couldn’t move.  After some heated negotiations with the bus driver, we thought we had a bus back to Takoradi to ourselves, but about 4 more people were added, meaning that four of us didn’t have seats.  I volunteered to sit in the staircase with another Ghanaian next to the driver, and two other Ghanaians sat on the floor in the aisle next to us.  It was cramped but I had some great conversations with the Ghanaians, and had about six hours to sand my elephant.  We got back to the ship around 1 Thursday morning, pretty tired and in need of showers.  It was just our luck that the water to the ship had been shut off for conservation purposes so I had to go to sleep dirty, but was up extra early just so I could shower as soon as the water came back on. 

Thursday:
        Today the plan was to hangout on the beach about 40mins away but the weather was rainy this morning.  We headed into the city to an Internet café, where I was able to upload some pictures to Facebook and look into plans for other countries.  It would have been nice to chat with some friends, but it was 5am east coast, and none of my friends were online.  After the Internet, we went to Market Circle, which is a big circular open-air market.  The outer perimeter is surrounded by a road and filled with tiny shacks and small stores, again reinforcing the notion that the streets of Ghana are a big Costco store.  Inside the circle was a completely different experience.  When my friend and I walked in, we were the only white people in eyesight.  The different vendors were crammed together on these convoluted paths that were maybe 2 ft wide, forcing us to shuffle past one another just to make it through to the other side.  The booths were so close together that the roofs almost blocked out the sun.  This market was not at all designed for tourists.  Most of the items were spices, vegetables or meat, and catered exclusively for the local taste buds.  We made the unfortunate decision of walking in the butcher section of Market Circle, where we were confronted with the sights and smells of raw, and possibly rotting bush meat and fish.  It was almost a little nauseating seeing so much meat in this dirty place.  There were whole heads of cows, and live snails and crabs, and meat with fur still on it, and whole fish of every shape and size.  I don’t know if the meat had been smoked or not, but it appeared to be old and decaying and certainly smelled like it was.  My senses were definitely being challenged, and it didn’t help that I had sandals on because of the beach plans, which meant I kept getting sewage water splashed on my exposed feet.   It was a lot of fun though, and I really got a sense of the local culture.  We returned to the ship around 1400, grabbed lunch, and went back out to the street vendors at the end of the dock.  I got some more merchandise (I’ll keep it a surprise so I won’t have to buy anymore xmas gifts for a few years) and practiced my bargaining skills.  We left the dock about 20 mins ago, and tomorrow I’ll again have to adjust to being a student and attending classes. 

        I'm sorry if this post is dry and long, but this is a pretty basic description of what happened in Ghana.  In the next couple of days ill try to find time to blog about some of the things I have learned about traveling so far, and maybe some cool stories about the people I have met.  In the mean time, I need to sand my elephant up on the deck for a bit.

Respect,

-Ben