First Days

Arriving in Accra two things compete for your attention that are impossible to ignore—the humidity and the smell. The air is so heavy one begins to wonder if it wouldn’t be possible to swim from A to B. The heat is not unbearable, and if you can catch a breeze—or an open window in the tro-tro—it’s not too bad. As soon as you stand still, however, you are immediately soaked. The smell results from the combination of open sewers that run along all the roads and the poor state of operation of most of the cars and trucks that jam every paved street of Accra. Walking past some of the vendors you might be lucky enough to catch a whiff of something cooking and gain temporary reprieve. The smell is something you adjust too, but I’m not sure the humidity is.

On Friday morning, Yusif met me at he hostel and we traveled to the airport to meet another of the incoming interns who was arriving. Her flight was delayed, so we took a tro-tro into the “circle” where I could buy a cell phone. The circle is a large open market that is at the center of Accra and also is the major hub for tro-tro service. We returned to the airport as the plane was landing, but waited over another hour as the incoming intern, Casey, was held up at immigration. An officer was apparently attempting to extort a bribe from her before he would stamp her entry visa. She refused, but he insisted that unless she knew her address in Accra, she would have to pay the “fine.” The catch is that no one really uses a street address in Accra, the city just is not organized or laid out in a deliberate enough manner for that to be practical. When I entered, for example, I just wrote the name of the hostel as my address, and luckily was not stopped. The immigration officer let Casey use his phone to call the LRC office and get some address, but after she gave him the address, he insisted that the phone call cost ten dollars. Casey relented, as all the other passengers from the plane had been let through, and ten dollars lighter, she emerged from the airport.

We took a taxi to where Casey is staying in an apartment with another intern. The apartment looked very nice, on par even with what you might expect in a European flat. I found out later that the apartments in that building are exorbitantly expensive—considerably more than my apartment in Boston even. Yusif then took us to the LRC office where I will be working, and I got to meet some of the people there. The office and everyone in it seems very nice. The internship coordinator said there were 9 interns. We have orientation Monday morning, and I am excited to meet all the others.

Yusif and I then left and returned to my hostel where we had lunch. I asked Yusif what “fufu” was when I saw it on the menu, and he laughed quite hardily, so I played it safe with rice and fish. Yusif ordered the fufu, however, and let me try it. It consists of a large ball of dough, like a giant dumpling, at the bottom of a bowl of a spicy soup or broth, and came with a piece of goat meat. You eat it by hand, but sticking your hand right in the bowl and tearing off pieces of the dough. Yusif then left, and I got to rest for a bit.

Around 10 o’clock I got a new roommate in the hostel, just as I was preparing to give up for the night and catch some sleep. His name is Decklin, he’s from Dublin, and if you know anything about the Irish, you know I did not get to sleep until some many hours later. After the meet-and-greet in the room, Decklin got right to the point and wanted to know where to go to get a beer. Steven, a student from the U.S. said he had been to a hotel down the street earlier that had a decent bar, so we set out. At the hotel we sat out on the patio and had a couple beers. The local beer is Star Lager, and is actually fairly decent. It reminds me of a mass-market Dutch beer like Amstel or Heineken, but at a cost of between one and two dollars for a 20-ounce bomber, is much more “drinkable.” The hotel looks like an expensive resort-style hotel, and there were many foreigners there.

Decklin noticed that groups of people were continually walking by us toward the back of the hotel, but not returning; the waitress told us that there was a sports bar connected to the hotel, so naturally, we had to check it out. Lucky for us, it was karaoke night and the place was jam packed—it is obviously a popular haunt for foreigners. We watched a few renditions of old American songs performed badly, but something was drawing me closer and closer to the other side of the room, as if I had some sense that my destiny lie just around the bar. Sure enough, I discovered a foosball table had been beckoning me. There were a couple Ghanaians on the table when I found it, but they were more than happy to play teams, and after a few rounds, I had earned the respect of my peers. When I lived in Italy I discovered that Europeans, devoted as they were to soccer, were particularly serious about their foosball as well; the Africans, it would seem, are no less dedicated to either sport (yes, I called foosball a sport). Anyway, sometime between midnight and one, I decided that I had probably call it a night, and headed back to the hostel, while Decklin headed out for a night on the town with the American girl he had met while I was playing foos.

Yesterday I met up with Atsu, who I had been put in contact with through a friend back in Boston. Atsu has been looking for a room I can rent for cheap close to where I will be working. He rode his bike to my hostel to meet me and then took me to his place. He rents a single room that I imagine is typical in Accra. He has no running water, but there is a public tap outside where he draws what he needs to do any washing. He has a small range top in one corner that he can use to cook, but generally eats food from the street vendors. There is no bathroom in his room, instead there is a large public bath house that he shares with his neighbors. Atsu had taken classes as an electrician but, as he explains it, discovered he was too “sensitive” to being shocked, so prefers to work on computers. He had an old computer that looked like a 486, possibly a Pentium I, the type of computer I remember from when I was a kid, but it was not hooked up to anything. Despite the lack of running water, Atsu’s home is very clean and comfortable, and he went out of his way to be hospitable.

The neighborhood where I will be working is called “Dzorwulu” (pronounced Jor-woó-loo). Atsu and I went there to look at a room, but it was not my lucky day. Atsu has a friend who lives in the same building, so we went to his place to wait for the agent. Atsu’s friend invited me in and showed me his room, as they were all the same in the building. It was a single room, about the same size as Atsu’s, but had a small kitchen and bathroom with running water. It had no AC, but at the price and location, it would have been perfect. It was walking distance from work and about $80 per month. Since I am now paying $20 a night, I was excited. After a while, the agent met us and told us that he had rented out the empty room the day before. I was one day late. Atsu and I went back to his house and got some lunch from a stand nearby. The stand served plain white rice, with some spaghetti noodles on top, coleslaw, a chicken wing, and a spoon of some spicy sauce. For such a strange combination of foods, it was actually quite delicious, and at $1.50, was enough food to feed me all day. Atsu helped me get back to my hostel, where I crashed for a few hours. I called Yusif, and he, Decklin, and I went out for a drink down the street. My night ended a little earlier last night, but I don’t think Decklin’s did. He met up with a waitress he had met the night before and went out; I met up with my hostel and went to bed.

The learning cvurve here is steep, but I am settling in and excited to start work tomorrow and meet the other interns. I am still waking up every morning at 6 and napping in teh afternoons, but that's probably ok, as I will be getting up early for work anyway. Not sure what I'm up to today, but will hopefully get a chance to take some pictures, which I will post as soon as I can.