racecourse station

a couple weeks ago i traveled for some conferences. i had to go through kumasi on the way there and on the way back. i think i have mentioned that i don't like traveling, and i think i have mentioned that i really don't like kumasi either.

racecourse is the station that buses to the north leave from. i don't like racecourse station either. there are at least four separate "wa stations" in racecourse, each with a different bus at a different price leaving once filled with different passengers. the trick is finding which one is leaving soonest. that would be easy if the station managers were honest, but when you ask how many tickets are left on their bus, they always lie and say maybe 2, when in actuality it is 20 and you'll be waiting 5 hours if you buy a ticket on their bus.

anyway.

that wasn't going the be the point of this post.

while i was waiting for my bus to fill, a guy came around with a loudspeaker, advertising the ointments that he was selling. this is normal: sometimes they are trying to sell cassettes or cd's, sometimes it's just preachers or whatever.

this man met a little boy who was just wandering around, and he started interviewing him. they were speaking in twi, so i couldn't understand the actual conversation, but it was pretty cute.

rainy season

i am thankful the rainy season has begun, but i wish it didn't make its entrance with quite so much enthusiasm.

friday i returned home from nearly two weeks of back-to-back peace corps conferences. having been in the south, where the rains come earlier, i was dreading returning to the sweltering heat of almost-but-not-quite-rainy-season in the north. i was wishing for rain, but doubting it would come.

well, no more than two hours after i arrived home on friday evening, we got that rain. ghana doesn't have tornadoes, but i would say this rainstorm was just about the closest thing you could get to tornadoes without actually having a funnel cloud. first rain, then hail, lots of thunder and lightning. the power went out. the rain started coming in the windows. the windows were closed. rain was gushing in the windows, through the cracks on the sides of the louvers. some areas of my house had up to an inch of water on the floor. that began the frantic effort of raising things off the floor, IN THE DARK. it involved lifting my spare mattress off the floor and finding every electrical cord (and there are a lot) that was anywhere near floor level.

when the lightning flashed, i could see that the outside of the house was faring as badly as the inside. the tree right outside my bedroom window was knocked over from the roots. the fence surrounding the chicken coop was completely blown off.

it wasn't until morning that i saw that my house was not the worst hit: the entire roof was blown off the boys' dormitory at my school. the kids' rooms were completely flooded and all their belongings soaked. the zinc from the roof is in twisted shreds about a hundred feet from the building, so who knows how long it will take to repair that damage. 

the dormitory was only a year and a half old.

mango gardens

the other day i went to a spot for the afternoon to read a book by myself for a while. the place i went is my favorite spot in wa, a place we call mango gardens because it is, indeed, a spot under a bunch of mango trees.

there is a playground nearby, which is one of the few playgrounds i've ever seen in ghana. the spot is usually fairly quiet, or at least not too many adults around. kids swarm the place, obviously.

so i spent a lovely afternoon, just me and my book (and some staring children).

and, as i've mentioned before, it is mango season. so every so often, i'd hear a THUNK and see a ripe mango fall from the tree. 

then the children would race over to it to try to be the lucky one to claim it. i guess it's the closest thing in ghana to an easter egg hunt.

i was just hoping the whole time that one wouldn't THUNK on my head!

school's out, school's out...

today the kids went home! only one more term for me. wow.

ivory coast troubles

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/04/06/ivory.coast.unrest/index.html?hpt=T1

it looks like the end of the standoff in cote d'ivoire is near. yesterday, gbabgo was supposedly negotiating a surrender. however, it seems as those maybe he changed his mind. but either way, it looks like ouattara is soon going to have control of the country. 

hundreds or thousands of people have died in this conflict. i hope it can be resolved soon.

happiness

my students just brought me my first mangoes of the season.

road construction?

after living in ghana for two years, i would actually be relieved to get stuck in some orange cones and traffic barriers.

road construction in ghana is completely different than in america. in america, roads are clearly marked, lanes indicated, and construction is completed as quickly as possible. sometimes, before one road is demolished, a temporary road is even built to ease the flow of traffic.

not so in ghana.

i have lived here now for almost two full years, and the same stretch of road between accra and kumasi is still at the same stage in its construction. it's close to a two-hour stretch of road that is being repaired: a dusty dirt road filled with potholes that could easily swallow a car. no lanes are indicated, so it is a free-for-all with traffic from both directions. cars weave back and forth in an effort to avoid the worst holes and bumps, coming within inches of hitting each other...or falling off a cliff.

on occasion i have seen a few people working. more often, i just see people standing there. more often than that, not a person is in sight, as endless lanes of buses and cars pick their way over the awful terrain.

i live in a regional capital. i am very lucky; most of the roads in my town are paved. also, i don't travel very often, so i don't often experience the dusty bumpy awful dirt roads common throughout ghana.

this section of construction between accra and kumasi is just too much. these are the two biggest cities in ghana. so much of ghana travels between them every day. to put it as best i can into american terms, it would be like if half the road between new york city and washington dc was under construction, all at once, for a duration of over two years.

n-pelpuo

this is n-pelpuo. he is a fantastic artist. this boy never ceases to amaze me with the magic he is able to produce. just give him a piece of paper and a pencil, and no guidance whatsoever, and he will make a masterpiece.

n-pelpuo is a little bit shy. he's not one of those children who shadow me everywhere i go (and i am appreciative of that). he hovers in the background, and when you talk to him he kind of looks away timidly. it's sweet. he's in p6, which is a notoriously truant class, but he loves art, so he's always there as soon as he sees me coming.

i'm trying to encourage his natural talent by helping him with the resources he needs. at the end of last term, i gave him a small sketchbook and box of crayons to take home so he could keep drawing.

he's one of my favorites.

things have changed

in america.

and this will be very evident to me when i return (in five months!). but i am curious as to exactly what has changed. some things i guess i'll expect (i've heard about a singer named lady gaga?) but others will certainly surprise me.

so i've been asking some friends lately what they think will be the biggest surprises to me when i return. their answers have been funny.

my friend janet says that the phones will be the surprise to me. that they have become very high-tech and that people are overly dependent on them. she says she can even deposit checks using her phone!

my friend jessi told me that the economy/job market will be a noticeable change. she says it's still really hard to get jobs and that people spend a lot less money now than what they used to.

and she said the other thing that would surprise me is the curly lightbulbs that congress has mandated everyone to use.

the curly lightbulbs are also popular here, but they are not required by the government. and jessi told me about the special instructions in case one breaks, that you should evacuate the room, don't vacuum it, etc.

this was funny to me, because when one burns out in ghana, you just throw it as hard as you can into the adjoining field, so it WILL break. and then the little barefoot children walk through that field...

so perhaps the surprise to me will be just how regulatory america is, at least in comparison to ghana.

anyway, this is a topic that's very interesting and entertaining to me. what do YOU think will be the most surprising way that i will notice america has changed?

it's not possible to exit a trotro gracefully

i used to feel self conscious getting on and off trotros. trotros are the main source of transportation in ghana, old beat up vans packed to the max with people, chickens, yams, babies, goats, etc.

in the south, a seat that is meant to hold three people actually holds three people. but in the north, a seat meant to hold three people sometimes holds five or six. so this, combined with all the market purchases and other random everything that people carry, makes it difficult to get on or off without sitting on top of someone, sticking your butt in their face, an elbow on their side, or stepping on feet.

i used to feel bad about this, but then i realized that they all do it to me too. oh well!