If you go down to the beach today…

With the boy away in Niger for 5 days and an empty weekend, empty house and the offer of a girls trip to the beach, I hopped on a trotro early on Saturday morning to visit one of Ghana’s main tourist attractions, Cape Coast.  While it is big for its Castle (one of the largest slave holding sites in the world, back in the day), I spent most of my weekend people watching on the beach.

The main beach attraction is the resident pig family!  Who knew, pigs seem to like the beach for the opportunities for foraging among the piles of litter, as well as taking a quick dip in the sea.  Well I enjoyed it, so I guess why not!

Second on the amusement list had to be the large number of American kids in town.  There is a cruise ship that does a ‘Semester at Sea’, which seemed to be large groups of young adults getting very drunk on cheap alcohol and playing drinking games that were probably only just acceptable in college bars.  Against the back drop of the cultural dancers at the bar, it was a total assault on eyes and ears.

Third on the list has to be the fishing boats battling their way out to sea.  The waves along this coast, and the subsequent under tow, and pretty big and getting one of these boats out there looks like a lot of work.  I am surprised we didn’t see any go over.  By late morning they were coming back with hauls of fish to be sold straight from the beach.

 Lastly part of the charm and beauty of Cape Coast is in the colonial buildings, now mostly run down and shabby, many painted in the bright colours of various mobile phone companies. 

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom, Confucius

Three months after touch down in Accra and it was time to set myself a new challenge – new job!  The first day was like being the new kid at school, dressed smartly, hair brushed (only big days see the hairbrush come out) and nerves if I would be able to find my way to the office and be there on time.  I had gotten horribly lost on my way to the interview and had arrived 30 minutes late, dusty and sweaty – not a mistake to be repeated again.

So what can I say of week one?  Well, it has been a fast introduction, but so far so good.

A couple of days have been spent planning for some research with female sex workers, who we have a project with in James Town.  James Town is the oldest part of Accra, a fishing community filled with crumbling old colonial buildings, in between the many markets, makeshift houses and open sewers.  Just a 20 minute minibus ride away and you can be in the newly built shopping mall in the centre of town, but it feels as if you could be hundreds of miles away. 

The community centre on the beach front in James Town where a lot of activities with the community here take place.  Drop in and you will find women with babies on their back playing ball, teenagers practicing a drama or young guys drumming and singing.

James Town lighthouse - a beacon for lost boats and lost foreigners!

 I also had the opportunity to travel to Suhum, in Eastern region, about 2 hours away on a very bumpy half-built road squished on a trotro.  It is a small town whose economy is mainly centred on quarrying and cocoa, and the small town centre has the feel of nothing much happening apart from the dusty wind.  In the (as always) grand local government building, my new colleague was leading a training sessions for peer educators from community organisations.  The aim is to train up community peer educators who will then go back to their communities armed with knowledge, the ability to refer people to health services in their area and condoms to sell.  Although the HIV rate is low compared to many sub-Saharan African countries (1.5% in Ghana, compared to 4.9% across sub-Saharan Africa), rates of other STIs is high, as is teenage pregnancy.

The road to Suhum

Here is a link if you want to find out more about where I am working now (as I am also just really getting to grips with it!)

Mid-week football at our local - some things never change

 

Loving the coke bottles here - much better than the UK versions!

The 8th Task of Asterix

A week or so ago I was sent a link which perfectly accurately describes dealing with any kind of bureaucracy here in Ghana.  In the ‘Les Douze travaus d’Astérix’ (The Twelve Tasks of Asterix), Asterix and Obelix are set twelve arduous deeds.  While some of them sound more fun, such as running, javelin throwing, crossing a lake and eating, number 8 is by far the worst: ‘Find permit A38 in ‘The place that sends you mad’.  As all good information comes from Wikipedia – which describes this place as ‘a mind-numbing multi-storey building founded on bureaucracy and staffed by clinically unhelpful people who direct all their clients to other similarly unhelpful people elsewhere’.  If you are better than French than me, or like me don’t mind watching cartoons where you don’t understand what is being said, there is a great little clip from the movie here.

Apart from the multi-storey aspect, this is a pretty everyday reality of dealing with the realm of officialdom in Ghana.  After being in the country 60 days you need to either leave or get an extension – for me my time is up on 9 April, so cue a trip to Immigration to bargain with my passport and cash to be able to stay in Ghana.

Step 1 – Get someone to give you an official looking letter, original signed copies only.  Headed paper goes down especially well.  Check thoroughly for the smallest of mistakes as these will be thrown out immediately.  

Step 2 – Make friends with as many people as possible at the Immigration office.  They will probably only be friendly because they think you will give them dash, but it is totally worth it to have someone to tell you exactly what to do.  Learn some names, crack a few jokes and try you Twi out – if you get a smile in return you’re winning.

Step 3 – Since January, Ghana has introduced a mandatory ‘Non-Citizen ID Card’ for all foreign nationals staying for a period of more than 90 days in Ghana.  Without this card, pretty much everything else is impossible.  So every year that’s $120 for a piece of plastic bearing my grinning mug and date of birth.  To make the experience better, the interviewer asked me out on a date and the data entry guy did the classic ‘sex – yes’ joke.

Step 4 – Fill out all of the same information again, on a different form, and hand it over to your new friend, again with another mug shot and more cash.  Your new friend will then ask more lunch/dinner/water etc. money.  Depending on how soon you want your passport back pretty much depends on how much to give.  When I needed in back in 2 days, I think I probably fed him and his family for a week.

Step 5 – Pray you get your passport back, and in the meantime don’t need it for anything.  I am at this stage, so if you have any spare room in your prayers please think of my little passport floating around somewhere in the world of red tape.  Here’s to hoping it will be out in a month!

 

Training Camp Ghana Style

So while everyone else’s Facebook pages seem to be jam packed with pictures of triathlon training camps, with big climbs, sunny days and sea views, I have been feeling pretty jealous.  

But no need to despair – training camp Ghana style is pretty much underway ; )

50m pool, sun every day - no excuse not to clock up some kms in there.  Not that I have done much more than splash around, but the opportunity it there.

Bike action!  Accra is a little bit like cycling in central London, expect with no road rules and added obstacles of trotros, carts and wandering goats.  But once you have negotiated your way out of the city and the busy roads the next challenge is to get through the roads - either potholled or dirt.  Going to Mallorca is just being spoilt, come to Ghana and you will appreciate the roads of Surrey next time.

 

 If I get kicked out of bed early enough there is a time for a morning run before work - along the train tracks that run through the area where we live.  The early morning (6am) wake up call is worth it, sleepy puppies, chickens running wild, children bathing ready for school and women cooking the first meal of the day all along the side of the railway.

 And for the keen beans there is Boot Camp on Thuesday evenings (sweat feast in a car park) and office 'training' on Friday afternoons, which seems to mainly be dancing around while throwing some punches.  Much better than clock watching until 5.30.

All of that deserves some good food - one of the joys of being in Ghana is the easy supply of local fruit, totally dependent on the season.  Right now pawpapw, mango and avocadoes are in ready supply, and coconut sellers are on almost every street.

Anyone for a training camp in Ghana?