Day in Accra

Written on the 30^th of June

Yesterday morning I met up with the Australian friend, it was really nice to see them again although it was for a very short time. We went to a cafe and had a nice catch up. I then got a tube and train to London Heathrow and got there within plenty of time and dropped off my bag (which was 22.4kg, maximum of a bag can be 23kg) and went through security. A while later I sat down in my seat on the plane and started, as I do, chatting to the two men next to me. They were both from Ghana and so gave me some insight information, but both hadn’t been to Tamale, which is where I’m staying throughout my program. The flight went smoothly, but the passport control took about 1.5 hours as it was a bit of a chaos. Everyone has to give their finger prints and I could see that you first have to do your four fingers on your right hand then your thumb then your other hand, so I’d decided to do it properly straight away but ended up being too keen and got told I was pressing way too hard woops.. When I finally got the luggage hall I looked for my bag for ages and couldn’t find it and I’m not a person to think the worst straight away so was just looking around and after 20 minutes realised an airport person had taken it off the belt and put it in some corner.

When I saw my program coordinator he gave me a hug and we walked straight outside to the taxis which are, by the way, all colourful. Some parts of the taxis are yellow, some green, some blue, amazing! I was about to put my seatbelt on when I realised I couldn’t plug it into anything and my coordinator just said something along the lines of oh no you’re safe don’t worry. So okay fair enough haha! When I got to the hotel I’m staying at I got told that I’m not doing the 12 hours (no not 10 hours as I thought) bus drive the next day but that I’m doing it tomorrow. He gave me a volunteering t-shirt and said I should get a good sleep and rest and asked what time I’d like to get up tomorrow. He said well you need a lot of rest so I’ll pick you up about 8am. Which means breakfast, shower etc beforehand. I don’t know what time he normally gets up, but I guess that’s a sleep in in his books...

Today I was ready to go at 8am and as I was warned beforehand, Ghanaians have their own time called ‘Ghanaian time’, so my coordinator turned up at 9.30am. I got told some more information, got given a Ghanaian sim card and some cedis he’d changed for me. I don’t think it all worked out in my favour at all as somehow a 150 USD had turned into 135 cedis, where some had been used for my sim card but apparently it should be worth about 190ish cedis but I didn’t want to doubt him on the first day and I just thought I’ll be in control of my own money after this anyway. I just needed him to change some to use for my day out in Accra today. Nene, my coordinator, and I got a tro-tro to a different hotel where another volunteer was staying. A tro tro is a van where they squeeze as many people into one car as possible and you can get in at any point along their route. This is definitely an experience as the van was sooo badly off, as it the doors don’t close, the seats have holes in them etc, so it’s definitely an experience.  Also I realised that there are no traffic rules, to warn a car around them that they are there, they beep the horn, so the cars don’t end up using their mirrors, just swerve right to left by the sound of horns. Made me feel so safe...

When I got to the hotel, Fanny, a French Canadian girl was with another coordinator and I was able to ask her lots of questions as she just came back from 3 weeks in Tamale and is flying back tonight. Nene had a day planned for both of us, but as it’s not included in the program, Fanny and I ended up paying for both of our volunteers as well. I’m not quite sure if I agree with this system, or they should have at least warned us but anyways, we ended up going to the markets in Accra. What I didn’t realise when I entered is that you’re expected to look at every single shelf that was on display. Now I loved looking at the first 5, but honestly I’m not the kind of person that takes a lot of interest in art. I appreciate it and realised that you need to have real talent for it, but after realising that every shelf, although it was made by a different person was the same, it was hard to still act interested after about a hundred. But of course I put on a smile and said that sure  I’d love to look at their shelf, but no I’m only. Am I sure I don’t want this in another colour? Yes thank you. Do you want to touch this? Oh wow, it’s really well done. So do you want it? No thank you. That’s what happened with nearly every shelf. One thing I did like, though, was that If you made clear you didn’t want anything, they just appreciated you having looked at their shelf and left you to it instead of pressing on. I also got taught how to play their drums (forgot their name) and I think I’ve found my talent! Haha, I loved it and apparently I’ll be doing it a lot in Tamale as well, so I’m looking forward to it.

After the markets, we went to get some lunch and then got a taxi to the beach. The entrance to the beach was 3 cedis each, but we were also paying for the coordinators, and keeping in mind we kept paying for taxis as well, I slowly started to doubt I had brought enough money for this trip. We just relaxed on the beach, me with my beautiful kindle, and they with their ipods. After getting some dinner on the beach, I got a chicken sandwich which was so fresh and good, we all hadded back to Fanny’s hotel for her to get her things to get to the airport. At the airport we also collected two new volunteers who will be joining me on the bus ride tomorrow with Fanny’s coordinator Hudu.

Oh guess what, I got told by a taxi driver and a man I met in a lift that they love me. My answer was just: thank you, haha what else can I say?

Some impressions:

Well I think you can tell quite a few of my impressions in what I’ve written, but some things that shocked me are that it’s so similar to the things you see about Africa on tv. You see women with big baskets of food, laundry, drinks etc on their head, you see animals walking around everywhere, the traffic is a chaos and the streets are in bad condition.

Impressions on the organisation so far are that they really do have your best interest at heart. They make you feel safe and welcome, which is definitely a good thing when you arrive in a country you’ve never been in before. Some down points though are that they don’t seem very organised. I can still decide where I’m staying in Tamale, in a host family or in a volunteering house. I was shocked at that as I thought they’d organised a host family for me, but apparently I can choose that when I get there. I think I’ll go for a host family but Fanny said that you usually aren’t allowed to bring people back and you can’t just go and do whatever, whenever you want. I’ll see what the other volunteers are doing I think.. Also I feel it’s unfair that we’ve been paying for the coordinator all day, but maybe that’s just a selfish thought of me. Hudu doesn’t even get paid by Volunteering Solutions, the organisation, so you don’t have a choice but pay for him as he has no money. Also the bus ride back to Tamale, where he lives, does not get paid by them, so Fanny gave him the money for that. This isn’t right surely?

Anyways, I’m off to bed for a 4.5 hours sleep as I have to be at the bus stop at 6am.