Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
Last month, with three friends we decided to tour the south of Eastern Germany for a couple of days. Visiting 8 cities.
Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
Portreat.com was a project where photographers took portrait pictures at, mostly, street festivals in, mostly, the Netherlands. The photographs were made available online afterwards. The images were free to download, and printed copies were available for sale.
On Monday, after having the difficult run on Saturday, Tomas and I were organizing the Accra run. Since we figured the Accra hashers should be up to a longer than normal run, we made it a more difficult challenge than normal. But to keep everyone happy, we included a beer stop, meaning Tomas and I DIDN’T get lynched afterwards.
Of the party we had afterwards, I barely remember anything. I woke up the next day with five bite marks in my shoulder and somebody told me that at the restaurant we went to afterwards I had been banging my head on the table vigorously. Why is anybody’s guess. However, since I had stopped drinking at ten in the evening, by the time I went to bed at 4am I was almost sober again.
Only one night to go…
One day
And then it was my last day in Ghana. Due to unforeseen financial difficulties, I wasn’t going to travel back to Europe overland, nor was I going to fly back to America. In no less then 24 hours after waking up on Tuesday, I would be welcomed at Schiphol airport by both my girlfriend and my mother. It was finally over.
I spent the last day saying good-bye to several people, buying some presents for the folks back home and finishing all the cash I still had left, which wasn’t much, for that matter. I had lunch with a group of people from JoyFM, who gave me a very nice shirt as a present. With JoyFM, most of it had worked out reasonably well, in the end. Although their SRP still hadn’t really taken off, the system I had built for them was very positively received by their journalists, who now could upload news items as soon as they had them on paper. And they were actually using it by the time I left for Holland.
We finished the day at the ‘Aerostar’, a not-so-decent bar next to the airport, however convenient, since you can hear the airport announcements when waiting at the bar. Quite a couple of the friends we had gained during our stay in Accra had showed up and, when the final call for our flight finally came, it was very hard saying good-bye. If I would have had a choice, I think I would have stayed. Our plane was waiting.
3… 2… 1…
The trip was rather uneventful. The extra adrenaline in my body made it very easy to stay awake during the nightly flight, so not only did I get to see ‘The Family Man’, with Nicholas Cage, also did we get to watch the terrible ‘Charlies Angels’. After a mediocre breakfast, at 6.02am, we left the airplane. After saying good-bye to the geeks too, for a mere five minutes I felt pleasantly cool. Then I realized it was downright cold! Just 15 minutes after leaving the plane, I had already picked up my luggage and was hugging my girlfriend. Four months of traveling had just ended.
0
The three things that struck me the most on my first day back in Holland were the cold, the quiet on the streets (Accra is very noisy) and the colors on the streets and in the buildings (buildings in Ghana are generally brown, gray and dust-covered, where as people wear very colorful clothes, as opposed to Holland).
Readjusting was relatively easy, although I was being helped by my first four evenings back in Holland being parties with friends. It is difficult to make a good assessment of what changed in me, so shortly after returning from such an eventful trip and wonderful learning experience. For sure, I matured, am able to view things in a much better perspective and am wiser. What, however, it means for my near and far future, I do not yet know. What should I start doing? What, shall I choose, should my future consist of. What, as a matter of fact, do I want…?
Although unsuccessful the previous weekend, this weekend, although with some difficulties, I did end up in Cote d'Ivoire. Not in the capital however, but in Abidjan, the venue of the 1000th Abidjan Hash.
This trip, too, didn't happen without some issues, the last before take off being Theo, one of the Accra hashers, not coming along on the trip since he couldn't find his passport. The was supposed to arrange the van that would drive us to Abidjan. We were to leave Friday morning 7:30am. The van arrived 8:30, we left 9:30. Without, as it turned out at the border with Cote d'Ivoire, the right papers to cross the border. Luckily, last minute, Vassilis had decided to come along and his diplomat's passport truly opened doors for us at the border and at several police checks in Cote d'Ivoire. Although still it took us more than two hours to actually get across the border.
Abidjan is a city that doesn't fit in West Africa, at all. Driving into the city, coming from the motorway along the coast, you are welcomed by a skyline, not unlike a skyline you might expect from Munich or Frankfurt or, for that matter, any mid-sized North American city. Many large, seemingly well-maintained sky scrapers. The cars on the roads are of exceptionally good quality, as opposed to the cars in Ghana that, for ninety percent or more, are second hand cars from Europe. And, to top it off, the city is filled with good quality restaurants with continental cuisine. This is one nice city. Of course, prices are also much higher.
The only bummer with Abidjan was that we arrived after ten in the evening. It meant it had taken us more than thirteen hours since our planned time of departure. If you consider that the actual distance between Accra and Abidjan is a mere 550km, it implies the actual connection is pretty bad.
Get set
Since we had arrived so late after such a less-then-enjoyable trip, there wasn't really any time left to go out on the town. Still, together with Ina, from the Abidjan Hash and Lura, who also had decided, last-minute, to tag along, we had a very nice bite to eat in one of the typical expat bars in the city.
We started talking about the difference between our two hashers and we learned that the next days hash was going to be a short one. Short, for Abidjan standards, would mean eight or nine kilometers. In Accra, we seldom ran over three and never over four kilometers. This, combined with the fact we would start running at three, meant that it was going to be quite an interesting experience for us.
Lura and myself slept at Susanne's. A cheery German lady, working at the German embassy in Abidjan. Since she HAD gone out on Friday night, we didn't have a chance to meet her for breakfast the next morning. We were, however, welcomed to freshly squeezed orange juice, real coffee, croissants, baguettes, confiture, real butter and, to make the experience complete, five different types of cheeses! This was one city I could learn to love.
We got out of bed fairly early to be able to see the 'Fanicos', which means nothing but 'laundryman'. In the Parco de Banco, only a couple of kilometers from downtown Abidjan, every morning more than 400 men and women come together, after collecting their days work from houses in the city, to wash their collected clothes. Each laundryman's position in the river Banco is predetermined and always the same, next to one particular set of rocks kept together by a rubber tire.
It is quite a spectacle to watch, although you could argue the cleanliness of the situation. At some point, we experienced a baby shitting all over her mother, who was doing laundry in the river. The mother picked up the baby from her back, held her at arms length, and let her shit in the river. One interesting detail is that none of the men are from Cote d'Ivoire. Most are from Mali or Burkina Faso.
Go!
The run on Saturday afternoon was very difficult. As said before, in Accra we never ran more than 4km. And then, about every 500 meters, there's a check, were everyone has to wait for the whole group to come together again. The Abidjan run was 8km, if you were so lucky as to not get trapped in the checkback, a detour to fool the fastest runners. I got stuck in the detour and had to do an extra 3 kilometers. The first, and only, check, luckily a beerstop, came after a massive 7 kilometers. There was pain.
The party, in the evening, was truly magnificent. In the lobby of the most famous hotel in West Africa, the Hotel Ivoire, until dawn more than 200 people were partying. A wonderful banquet, expensive French wine, real Champagne made the dinner. Performances by local artists, a catwalk and a lot of disco made for great festivities. Why is the hotel so famous? It has a swimming pool, 200 meters in length, 7 tennis courts, a bowling alley and an ice skating rink. Yes, an ice skating rink.
*smile*
The trip back on Sunday still took more than 10 hours, but I couldn't really care, this weekend had been really, really nice. In addition, I had to share the back seat with three women. Everyone asleep, I had nice cushions on both sides of me.
The course of finding my destination for this weekend is more proof of the sheer impossibility of planning ahead, in Ghana. Something the locals have, a long time ago, already resigned to. This weekend, Easter weekend, I had originally planned to go to the capital of La Cote d’Ivoire, Yamoussoukro. The trip would take around 15 hours, from Accra, but should be well worth it. In Yamoussoukro, you can find the biggest basilica in the world, after the St. Peter in Rome. Although only 12% of the population of Cote d’Ivoire is, in fact, Christian, the city is an important destination for Christians in West Africa. This weekend being Eater Weekend, it was going to be big.
Originally, I had taken up the plan to go to the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou. Although overland, for Cote d’Voire is barely passable, for ‘Ouga’ as it is normally called, it is not. Burkina Faso is to the north of Ghana and the capital of the country about twice as far from Accra as Tamale is. Remembering the terror driving up to Mole and back was, I did not want to take a bus to Ouga. However, as it turned out, the cheapest plain ticket to Ouga was a hefty $238. I had to come up with some other option. Yamoussoukro would be it.
It was already determined that in our last week in Ghana, I would also go to Cote d’Ivoire. The Abidjan hash would then be celebrating its 1000th Hash, but the chances of me, during that weekend, visiting the basilica were close to nonexistent. Therefore, going there this weekend didn’t seem like a very bad option.
The visa for Cote d’Ivoire wasn’t just dirt cheap, I also could get it in 24 hours. Trying to find a bus that would go there, turned out to be much more problematic. There are two bus companies shuttling between Accra and Abidjan, where you have to go to first, before heading of to Yamoussoukro. The first is the Francophone one, STIF, only operating once a week, leaving Accra on Wednesday evenings. The second is the Ghanaian State Transport Company (STC), leaving every weekday at 6am. I visited both offices on Wednesday to get the information from the horses mouth. Then on Thursday, armed with my passport and visa, I went back to the STC bus station to get my ticket, leaving the next day, I was told there was no bus going this Friday. Or anytime soon. It was not going to be Cote d’Ivoire this weekend.
Sun at the seaside
So I ended up at the beach of Anemabu. Lura and Holly, the two Peacecorps volunteers that had set up Peter’s birthday party the week before, were going to a beach resort in Anemabu, a small village some two hours West from Accra, shortly before Cape Coast. Although they had left before I knew I wasn’t going to Cote d’Ivoire, I decided to try my luck and follow them.
With success. I met them in Anemabu and had a very enjoyable weekend. The waives, the see, the food, the beach, everything was very, very nice. With, on Saturday evening, a bonfire and a large group of locals performing live music, the weekend was a success. And things were even better. Saturday afternoon, Tomas (a geek), together with his girlfriend The Warrior Princess (Tomas’ girlfriend) and Val Kilmer (Jens, a friend of Tomas), also stopped by for the weekend.
More trivia
The Thursday before Anemabu, it was our weekly Trivia night at Champs and, although we hadn’t planned on playing that night, since winning the game every week does become quite boring after a while (we had won 7 out of the 8 times we had been there), we won again. Out of pure arrogance, we had called our team ‘The guys that always win’, so maybe it was just that we didn’t really have a choice.
It implied that the next week, our last Thursday in Accra, we were to host the quiz, making up the questions once more. We decided to make it a very difficult quiz, among others with a very hard David Hasselhoff round. To our surprise, the winners (a group that most often came in second with the quizzes, right after us) obtained a very respectable 45 out of 77 points.
One week after our physical exercise in Lome, the geeks were back on the road. This time, for the last of three by Geekcorps organized tours. After Cape Coast and then Mole, now it was just a day trip to the Volta region, were we would spend a day on the 'Dodi princess', a boat going some 30km up the largest man-made lake in the world to the island of Dodi, from where, after an hour or so, we would leave again, heading back to our point of origin, the Akosombo dam.
The trip, by far, was the least interesting of the three. Of course, this was partially instilled by the fact that everyone, at every opportunity, took a nap when possible. This, since the previous night, we had celebrated Peter's birthday to the fullest. Originally, the Volta cruise was scheduled for the next weekend, Easter weekend. Therefore, we had rescheduled celebrating Peter's birthday from his actual birth date, the day before the scheduled trip up the Volta, to one week earlier. Such that everyone would be fresh and fit when going up the river. Because, as it turned out, on Easter Sunday the Dodi princess would not leave its port, Stophe had no choice but to prepone the trip one week, to the day directly following Peter's rescheduled birthday party. So close before the actual party, invitations already gone out, we had no possibility to reschedule the party again. I went to bed at 4am. 6:15am, we had to get up to leave for Akosombo.
Around the same time as Peter's birthday, Lura had planned to give a party too. Sensibly, these events were combined and now, could it be any better, three women, Lura, Holly, another Peacecorps volunteer, and Shawn, Stophe's wife, went all out to prepare a really great party for our birthday boy. Clearly, some of the games, passing on cucumbers and oranges made for a hilarious night.
And the Volta lake? Well, if you don't have the tendency to constantly fall asleep, the thing is very much worth it. However, you might also want to consider going all the way up the lake, instead of the short trip and back that we did.
The future
Although it took a while, my near future is also starting to get more and more clear. Originally, I had to choose between two equally interesting options. One was flying back to the States on the ticket that Geekcorps had supplied me with, then travel to Miami, where I would board a sailing boat of a friend of mine after which we would sail back to Europe. The second option was traveling back, overland, to Europe from Ghana.
At first, traveling back overland was the option favored by me and since the South-to-North border between Mauritania and Morocco had very recently opened up, this truly seemed like a possible solution. However, although the costs of traveling around in West Africa are reasonably acceptable, the actual time and difficulties involved make for a grueling trip. The quality of the roads, the 'friendly' border guards, the long trips between cities and the geographical dispersed places of interested make a trip back to Europe, overland, only interesting if you have several months at your disposal. That seemed to much to handle for me, at least for now.
So I had slowly drifted in favor for the other option, sailing back to Europe from the US. Then, I received a phone call from my mum, saying she had received a letter from my bank, threatening to close my account amongst other things. It was clear, I had made a mistake in my financial calculations before leaving. I was out of money. No more traveling, after Ghana it was straight back to Holland, to find a job.
And my friend, who needed the extra crew on board to sail back to Europe? Well, the setup was this; the boat is his father's, but he doesn't feel like crossing the Atlantic with it. Them both sailing around in the Caribbean, his father had come across some local babe with whom he had decided to stick around with for a while. The boat was going to stay in the Caribbean with my friends father, my friend was going to fly back to Europe.
15 seconds
During our first week in Ghana, CNN visited us for some IT show on the digital divide. For some reason, they very much liked the idea of my working at a radio station and, just like the people from PBS that stopped by some weeks later, CNN came to JoyFM and interviewed myself and some of the employees there. Including Cyril, the manager of JoyOnline who left after my first day at work.
I later found out that Geekcorps (and me working at JoyFM) had been on CNN in two different shows, the second one, called Business Unusual only airing the 22nd of April. The first show I never tracked down, although many of the whites in Accra told me during this week they had seen my face and me being interviewed a number of times on CNN. My 15 seconds.
After a week in which I visited an AIDS clinic in downtown Accra, the weekly hash on Monday resulted in the first of two trips to other countries during my stay in Ghana. This week, it was a trip to the capital of Togo, Lome, with some 20 other hashers and in our last weekend in Ghana, I would also go on a trip to Cote d'Ivoire. The trip to Lome would be for the 500th Lome Hash.
One week before we, Tim, Peter, Lura and myself, would leave for Lome, Stophe had asked us to fill in some piece of paper for immigrations. Although all of us had a visa, you have to renew it after the first 60 days in the country. The procedure should be no more than a formality, taking no longer than 24 hours. This time, however, the passports that were brought to the immigration office on March 23, weren't back one week later, when we had to leave for Lome.
The procedure goes something like this: Stophe gave all our passports to a middle man. This guy went to immigration for us, knowing the right people, knowing the right hands to grease with the right amounts of cedis, which stamps to get from which people, etc.
Unfortunately, communication between Stophe and our middle man had been very difficult in the week leading up to our trip to Lome. Although the guy had a GSM, the mobile networks that are available in Ghana are, although by far superior to the land line system in the country, still far away, quality wise, from the systems we are used to in the west. So when, at 12pm on Friday, two hours before we were supposed to leave with the rest of the group for Lome, we took our destiny in our own hands, our primary reason for eventually succeeding in obtaining our passports was due to nothing but actually being able to reach Fred Dotse, our middle man. We were going to meet him at the immigration office, were he welcomed us with our passports. It was three o'clock by the time we left for Lome. We had missed the rest of the group, but we were on our way. We took a taxi to the border with Togo, were we met the other hashers. Lome is just on the other side of it, the border crossing being virtually downtown Lome.
Apparently, the main reason for the delay with our passports was the change in government in January. Our visas were all issued by the previous government. Now, with a new government in place, there was talk of all visas having to be reissued. Needless to say, during this discussion, all processing of visa was postponed until further order. Only Fred pulled us through.
Change
The Francophone is a welcome change from the, by know, well know city of Accra. Not only was the food in general and the bread in particular much, much better than in Ghana, people seemed to be more relaxed towards us whites and the city was much better taken care of. For one, the streets have no open sewers on both sides of the roads and most roads actually have a sidewalk for pedestrians. Something that only barely is in use in Accra.
The two things that where the most intriguing, however, were the way the beach is incorporated into the city, with it being freely available from any point in the city along the beach, and it not being used as a public toilet, and the fact that FanIce is being sold in four additional flavors.
FanIce, frozen creamy ice-cream sold in plastic bags, where you bite off a corner, to suck up the contents, is sold on every street corner in Ghana, either by young people on bikes, having a large container with the different flavors on the front of the bike, or by people with large cardboard containers on their head, filled with the small packets of ice.
In Ghana, four flavors are available: Chocolate, strawberry, plain and orange. In Togo, particularly the tropical and yogurt flavors are a really joy. And for the $0.15 per ice-cream, can you ever stop eating them?
Drink!
The hash was a lot of fun. The five times or so we had to stop during the run, were we all had to pose in front of the buildings of one of the head sponsors of the event were welcome breaks from the walk in the burning sun. The diner and 'bash' were close to absurd, so a major success.
After the festivities, we went and explored Lome with part of the Accra group. For one, almost everything in Togo, and in most Francophone countries at that, is more expensive than in Ghana. So it wasn't much of a surprise that for the one nightclub we wanted to enter, Byblos, we had to pay $7 per head to get in. If you consider the highest entry fee in Accra is about $2.50, it makes for quite a difference.
Since it took a while before we actually went in, there was time to hang around near the front door and study the list of prices of the club, posted next to the door. It took a while before it became clear that I understood that the prices really didn't make any sense to me. I asked the bouncer, standing next to the price list, what a beer in his club would cost and when he answered, I had to ask the question again, since what he told me seemed unbelievable. One regular draft beer, no joke, cost $10. Ten US dollars, for one beer. In Accra, in a similar place, you would pay no more than $1.50. It was a good thing we hadn't yet gone in.
So we ended up in a simple 'spot', an outside bar with glaring speakers enlivening the night life in the city that goes to bed early (at those prices, what a surprise). I was very happy to be able to get a whole bottle of whiskey there, for less than a price of a beer at Byblos. And to make the party complete, the place was being run by a Dutch guy…
And back
Another thing that was reasonably expensive, was the hotel we were staying in. At $10 a head a night, a hefty investment. Good, the beds were nice, the pool was enjoyable and the view of the lagoon was good, but still. To keep the actual cost at a minimum, us Geeks and Lura had decided to share one two-bedded room. Only when we actually went in the room did we learn that the place was so small that the double bed was basically the only thing that COULD fit in it. No couches, only one chair. We had to borrow the cushions from the luxury chairs on the veranda of the hotel to have two people sleep, only reasonably uncomfortable, on the floor.
Traveling back to Accra went much smoother than going in the other direction. When going into Lome, we had to wait at the border for more than two hours. Since one Lome hasher was high in government, we had been promised that for the non-Ghanaians in the group, visa would be arranged at the border by the Lome hashers. Due to some circumstances, however, this wasn't possible and the whole procedure of getting us into the country took quite a while. Now, going back, the big boss at the Togolese side of the border turned out to be one of the hashers (probably he was missing when going into the country) and we were waived through.
Until, that is, we got to the Ghanaian side of the border. Yolanda, Vassilis' girlfriend and from Lithuania, turned out to only have a single entry visa for Ghana. Now, her options were to wait in Togo until the next day and get a visa at the Ghanaian embassy, or get a visa at the border and pay $100 for it. Vassilis, working for the EU in Accra, paid.
The second of the organized trips brought us to Mole, Ghana's biggest national park, still filled with elephants, monkeys, deer, lions and more. Although this sounds quite interesting, the whole trip needed to visit the place makes the visit a bit less then worthwile. Although combined with the nearby town of Larabonga, with its amazing mosque, it can be enough to justify the difficult journey.
There
The park is located in the north of Ghana and, traveling from Accra, it takes some twelve to fourteen hours to get there. On the less then reasonable roads of Ghana, a trip like that is as close to torture you can get, before it becoming illegal in most western European countries. When traveling back to Accra, we were so lucky as to travel for a total of 19 hours. That is bad.
And back
And not just the roads are in bad condition. So are the cars. For one, about 95% of all motorized vehicles have embarked on a second life in West Africa, after being left for dead by their former European owners, back in Holland, Germany, France or Denmark, proof being the country stickers on the back bumpers of most cars. One characteristic being the almost always cracked windscreens of cars. Then, they always manage to stuff about twice the legally allowed amount of people into any vehicle. Of course, most probably, this helps wen getting into an accident. The lack of airbags is made up by the existence of people-bags.
Traveling back from Mole we had quite a hard time. As with the previous group of Geeks, with whom Stophe had also gone to Mole, we all had round trip tickets for a state bus traveling between Accra and Tamale, Ghana's third city, some miles above Mole. However last time, when the Geeks wanted to get on the bus coming from Tamale when it past Mole, it turned out that their seats had been sold to other contenders back in Tamale. This meant that Stophe had decided that we would travel to Tamale first, and get on the bus there, to minimize the chances of our tickets being sold. We had to leave at 3am to get to Tamale in time for catching our bus. When in Tamale, it turned out that our seats still had been sold to other people. Using several different services between Tamale and Accra, we eventually arrived home some 19hours after leaving Mole. Mole is nice, but it is not THAT nice.
The leg of the trip from Kumasi to Accra was enlivened by two preachers IN the bus, trying to preach two different gospels, at the same time. None of the passengers seemed to notice. For us, all sitting at the back of a long bus, it was very, very annoying to listen to their constant shouting. This annoyance, probably being increased by the fact that in Mole, since there is not that much to do over there, some of us had embarked on a whiskey-beer-vodka binge the previous evening.
Holland, supposedly, is the religious melting pot of the world. This probably is being considered as such, since few westerners ever come to Western Africa. Some 99% of all Ghanaians are devout religious. Almost none, however, belong to the same church. In the north, through Arabic influences, many Ghanaians are Muslim. In the south, many are Christian, although to Western standards, Heathen would be a better description. Besides the only few forms of classic Christianism, most people belong to a church that, in some way, combines Christianism with Muslim and Animist (Voodoo or Juju) faiths.
One nice side effect is that nobody really cares what church you exactly belong to, just that you believe in God. Since everyone, at least up to some degree, seems to agree that all gods are one.
Larthe
Roughly an hours drive away from Accra, the town of Larthe is the Juju capital of Ghana, and houses the most prominent Juju temple in the country. Since Peter's shadow partner is from Larthe, it was easy enough to visit the town and check out the temple. When we went there, it turned out that the keeper of the temple, some woman, had died a few months before and that the spirits had not yet appointed a replacement for her. This meant that no one was allowed to enter the actual temple. We got to see it from the outside.
Aburi
The town of Larthe is located on the top of one series of hills and, because of that, suffers from a much wetter climate than Acrra. Half of our time in Larthe, therefore, it rained heavily. On the same stretch of hills, a little bit to the west, the British at the end of the 19th century, constructed a botanical garden to benefit from the much wetter climate. The place, Aburi gardens, were I went with Peter and Jean two weeks later, is a very relaxed place and a very pleasant escape from the crowded and dusty streets of Acrra.
And then, four weeks had passed, working at JoyFM. Although these were not totally regular weeks, they were also not annoying at all. Anyway, I was enjoying myself and, after fooling around quite a bit with ASP and VB, I had managed to create a fully working content management system for the new website of JoyFM. At a meager 2MB, it still took more than two hours to upload the thing. A pity that the idea had been to make it together with some of the people working at JoyFM and that the end result was that I was the one, and the only one, who had any part in creating the thing. What I, personally, find more scary is that the programmer in me has awakened again, where I had been trying, successfully to let him sleep over the past three years or so. Now, people only had to start using the new system.
Meanwhile, I shot a bunch of pictures at the hash.
Clothing
I expected to be able to buy cheap clothing in Ghana, and maybe even get clothes custom made for a fair price here. That was the main reason why I brought two old pairs of pants and some old shirts with me to Ghana. Indeed, clothes are relatively inexpensive, but the price of custom made clothes is the best. Although, when you decide to have a tailor work for you, you have to accept the facts that the first items of clothing he will make will be quite unlike what you want and all clothes will take weeks more to produce than what the tailor claims it will take.
All that made it inconvenient that both pairs of pants that I brought didn't even survive the first couple of weeks of my trip. In my first pair of pants, the first holes appeared the day I left for the States and in my first week in Ghana, the crotch of the second pair of pants was ripped open completely. Thank God for ducktape that somebody had taken with him to Ghana and was lying around in the house. It repaired the crotch of the second pants and the holes in the other.
I had asked Ebenezer in our first week in Ghana, to get his tailor to stop by at Geekhalla. It took Ebenezer a week to talk to his tailor, who claimed he would be able to stop by the week after, but he finally appeared two weeks after that. All that time I only had those two pants, covered in ducktape. Those were some pretty tough weeks.
The extra time, before the tailor would arrive, did give us a reasonable amount of time to get cloth for the stuff we needed and in one weekend Tomas, Jason, Peter and myself went downtown and literally spent millions of cedis on cloth and clothing.
Independence
March 6 is independence day in Ghana. In 1956, Ghana gained Independence as the first country in sub-Saharan Africa and in 1960 it became a republic. The exact same year that Ghana's most popular beer was born, 'Star'.
In the semi-dictatorial setup that Ghana had been in for the more than forty years since 1956, celebrating Independence always was quite a party. Now, however, after twenty years of Jerry Rawlings, twelve of which as a dictator, the expectation was that the celebrations would be less elaborate.
Accra doesn't have much impressive architecture. Probably the most intriguing is the National Theater, built a couple of years ago by a bunch of Chinese. Another interesting construction is Independence square. A concrete field with a large arch on the side of the sea, capable of holding some 30.000 people, a part from the people that can sit on the benches around the square itself.
The most important part of the March 6 celebrations are the marches that occur throughout the whole country, in every city, in every village. Months before the actual celebrations, children at every school or institution, are selected to march on March 6. The most important marches, or parades, are at Independence square in Accra.
Since daytime temperatures seldom drop below 25 degrees in Ghana, it is no surprise that, on March 6th, before the start of the actual parade, when thousands of children are waiting on the square to start marching, many faint because of the heat. Even though all activities are held early in the day, starting before nine in the morning. Then again, many of the children are standing around since 7am.
In the end, the whole parade, march and speech of Kuffour turned out to be rather boring and way to long, the marches being less of a spectacle as I expected. The most interesting, probably, was Kuffour, the newly elected president of Ghana, being escorted onto the square by a police squad and, later, lighting the 'eternal' flame.
Slowly, life has become more of the same. After the initial few weeks, were every day would bring new surprises, it had to come to a point were you do the same things, the same time of the week, meeting the exact same people. Not that everything is now going smoothly, it is more like you accept the situation as it is, whether you like it or not. Here, it means that all geeks resign to the unorganized, chaotic style of the locals.
Thursday night, we almost always visit Champs, where they have their weekly trivia night. One group makes up questions, not totally unlike typical Trivial Pursuit questions, that other groups try to answer. The group with the best score gets a massive 100.000cedis. Okay, this doesn't sound as good in US$, where it is only $15. In our first week, we took top spot, to take third place the week after, after which we regained the primary position the week after that again. Third place isn't all that bad, where you get two pitchers of beer to entertain the group with. Second place, however, might hold the best price altogether, though: A pitcher of cocktails. Although first prize is worth more, the money is always used to partially settle the bill. So you never get to see anything of your prize.
The first two times we went in for the quiz, with Jean-Luc in our midst, he tried to push the group to answer as many questions with either 'Eddy Murphy' or 'Richard Pryor', which we did for all questions we were unable to answer. The second Thursday in March, we set the questions. And we already decided that we are going to have one round fully dedicated to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Millions
The biweekly stipend we receive from Geekcorps each time makes us briefly millionaires in Ghana. The $200 we get each two weeks equals a cool c1.400.000. Not bad at all! The only prerequisite for actually receiving the cash is filling in an evaluation form on our job and partner business. For me, last week, that meant having the dubious honor to mention that, for the first time, I was able to work with my shadow partner for more than 30 minutes in a row. Or, actually, it wasn't with my shadow partner Chico, but with the other student at the JoyOnline office, Michael. Although Michael takes more time to actually solve the problems I give him, he has the same amount of difficulty to actually getting to results, meaning that I have to come up with most solutions to the problems to avoid nobody doing anything.
There is the potential of a third person also taking up the role as shadow partner. Bijou, for one no longer studying, is a very quiet individual who tries much harder to understand problems he encounters in his work. The guy started only recently at Joy, in fact after I got there, but he seemed destined to become the new manager of JoyOnline. However, only the future will tell what will happen, since all the assignments I gave Bijou upto now he hasn't taken the time to try and solve them.
Kumasi
This weekend, I went on another trip. Together with Tomas and Tim we left for Kumasi, the biggest city in Ghana after Accra, nicknamed the 'Garden City'. The town holds the largest market in West Africa but the first question that came to my mind when I heard that was where, then, the largest market in Africa could be found, and how they measured the difference. And, then, where is the largest market in the world?
The market itself is quite unbelievable. We went to Kumasi together with Akwesi, a Ghanaian guy Tim met after Akwesi had posted something on the Geekhalla.org message board. Luckily, the guy knew his way around in Kumasi, mainly because he was studying there. Akwesi guided us through the market, helping us out all the time by being able to speak two of the most common local languages in Ghana, Twi and Ga.
The primary reason for us visiting Kumasi was Lumas Kendrick. An African-American, working for USAID in Kumasi, helping out a micro-credit organization, going by the name of Sinapi ABA. Quite an interesting organization, with 15 offices throughout Ghana and, altogether, some 20.000 customers. It was Lumas' plan to bring the organization into the Internet age by starting up some e-commerce strategy, where customers would be able to manage their funds online, apply for loans and, in the longer run, use the system as a tool for micro payments across the Internet. Lumas needed us to give some input on the validity and the actual possibilities of the system. After understanding the extent of his plans, we basically told him to, first, take the time to write down a very decent proposal and take his ideas one step at a time. One example; typically Ghanaian style he figured that his organization should also start Internet cafes cross country…
Meanwhile, the Kumasi market consists of small, permanent, stalls, no more than 2.5 meters high with a walking area in-between the stalls of, maybe, 40cm in width. One of the things it implies is that, once you are inside the market, you have no idea where the exit is. And since all walkways are constantly winding in all directions, without a guide, it takes hours to get out. Lucky for us, when we went into the market, Akwesi was leading and Lumas was following us three white people. That meant we were reasonably safe and, a wonder, got out after only 30minutes of coming in.
Saturday night, by far, was the most surreal nigh in Ghana yet. For one, Ghanaians are known to be very friendly, up to the point of being annoying. Then, the number of whites in Kumasi is very small. On our Saturday night on the town, we didn't meet more than 10 other whites. Now, whites, in Ghana, are already put up on a pedestal, but when there are less around, they can be almost revered. This all resulted in the locals, on Saturday night, being aggressively friendly, making Tomas coin the phrase "Nobody expects the Ashanti inquisition", where Kumasi is in the Ashanti region (one of the regions or provinces of Ghana). Men, literally, wanted to kiss you for just being there, wanting to show you their house and more. Women, shaking their butts against your crotch to see how much you're worth. And many people, even inside the nightclubs, wearing funeral costumes since, most weekends, for everyone, is the time to remember the dead with three day funerals. However, funerals are also to party, so it all comes together at night anyway.
The evening was sealed when, with Akwesi putting pressure on us, we took home one of the local girls, supposedly for a massage. She spent the night with Akwesi, Tomas, Tim and myself in one double bed, so I have no idea what exactly happened. However, the more interesting part happened before arriving. We had taken a taxi back to Lumas' house and, before finally going home, picked up a bottle of Akpateshi (local spirit) to keep on partying at home. However, since gasoline prices had increased significantly very recently, it turned out that our driver wasn't packing enough to get us home. We ended up pushing the taxi uphill for more than a mile, expecting our house to be on the other side of it. When it turned out it wasn't, we left the car, and its driver, at some roundabout, where the driver even had the nerve to ask for money for the trip! Then, it turned out the lady we had taken home didn't even speak English.
Sunday was a day of relaxation. After a very nice breakfast on the porch of Lumas' place, we went walking in the heat for some two hours, in search of the 'world famous' hat museum of Kumasi. Collected by the owner of some faraway hotel since 1928, the place is quite interesting. On the topmost floor of the hotel, in a room barely 10square meters in size, some 2000 hats are lying around in semi darkness. Because the Lonely Planet gave a completely wrong location for the hotel and the museum, we spent way to long walking around the city in search for the place.
Then there was the Ashanti sword, stuck in the ground a couple of hundred years ago by some Ashanti warlord, with the promise that if the sword was ever pulled from the ground, the Ashanti kingdom would fall. The sword is still there and even Mohammed Ali tried to pull it from the ground shortly before his Rumble in the Jungle. The sword is still there, but the Ashanti kingdom is now nothing more but a region in Ghana, so apparently something has gone wrong somewhere.
However, we didn't get to see the sword. They built a house around the place, which is closed on Sundays.
During our stay in Ghana, Geekcorps, being Stophe, organizes three trips up country. The first being a trip to Kakum National Park, where they have a canopy walk, suspended bridges hanging from treetops and one of only three in the world. The park is very close to both El Mina castle, one of the very first colonial forts in Ghana held by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the Danes and Cape Coast, also the location of a famous fort.
Our next trip, which would bring us to Mole National Park, way in the North of Ghana, would take us one a trip of more then 12 hours, each way. This one, to Kakum, was going to be a short one. Only four hours in a run down tro-tro. Basically a minican in which, in the western world, a maximum of nine people are allowed. Here, the minimum is 15.
Walk
The whole canopy walk thing sounds much more spectacular than it actually is. Although the bridges are between 15 and 40meters up in the air, the forest is much less dense as what you would expect with a tropical rain forest. Not only can you see the floor of the forest along the whole trip, you can also see for miles and miles, making it a rather awkward tropical rain forest. For the girls it was more of an experience than for the boys. Jean, a geek, and Gladys, the Geekcorps secretary both had something of a difficult time trying to navigate the swaying bridges. As for the men, even Tomas, suffering from a mild form of fear of heights had no problem whatsoever to navigate through the woods and come back home again.
Probably the most intriguing of the whole park was the fact that it was initiated by a Canadian, with minor help of some Ghanaians. This, however, is very typical of anything that actually is 'working' in Ghana. It is foreigners that achieve success in this country.
That situation is very similar to what I experience at JoyFM and also resembles what I hear from other Geeks. The 'frame of mind' of Ghanaians does not seem to match that what is necessary to be successful according to western standards. That, in itself, is not a problem. However, if people or more specific, companies actually try to measure up to western standards, they would have no choice but to play according to the same rules. They don't seem to be able to do such a thing.
Not that people are stupid. My shadow partner, Chico, has got a good feeling for graphical design. For one, he has created two proposals for the design of two different sites that, according to JoyFM management should be up and running in a matter of days. One should cover everything related to the government, one should be an entertainment site. The entertainment site would be at the same level as Launch.com, that is, based on what Chico put forward for graphical design. However, in no way is there any consultation with anyone who would know what. Technically, these suggestions would entail. In addition, there is no eye, whatsoever, for detail, The ideas are there, but there is no one working them out.
Anyway
Besides Kakum, we also visited Cape Coast and El Mina. Two castles built during colonial times. From El Mina, many slaves were deported to the new worlds of North- and South America and the experience of walking through the place is kind of unsettling although interesting.
The one night we were away, we staid at Hans' Cottage Botel. Run by a German and his Ghanaian wife, the place consists of a number of cottages next to a small lake and a reception cum restaurant cum nightclub on top of the small lake. Crocodiles freely move about, trying to scare the visitors, not really succeeding with their 45cm in length.
After forgetting to bring my credit card to the office on three occasions, on Valentine's day itself I finally brought it with me, so that I could order something through the Internet, for my loved one back home. I chose a nice heart, made out of chocolate. And, keeping the damage to a minimum, it would be delivered already the next day. A pity that the cost of delivering the present was about the same as the cost of the chocolate heart itself. And it wasn't a cheap heart.
But, of course, it wasn't the only thing I praised my girlfriend with for Valentine's day. After having run the Hash on Monday, start and finish at @theoffice, where reasonably unfriendly people serve half-priced, reasonably bad, cocktails on Wednesday evenings, we left for Champs. There, to be confronted by a camera crew from one of the National television stations, TV3, who were taping a Valentine's day show. Not only were we strange birds on their show because of the color of our skin, we were also the only ones that actually named our girlfriends by name. No Ghanaian was able, or dared, to do just that, evading questions for the names of their loved ones, who they wished a happy Valentine.
Awkward entertainment
A reasonably interesting concept for entertainment that, as yet, hasn't really made it to West Africa is the cinema. There are, to be exact, two actual cinemas in Accra, where more than two million people live. A cinema being where the audience does not hold any influence over what movies will be shown during the evening. Besides these two cinemas, the city is almost littered with houses, split up in multiple rooms with large screen TVs, where you select a DVD or VCD over the counter, to be played in the room of your choice, seating three to 25 people. Needless to say, all recent theater releases can be obtained at these places.
One reasonable video-hut is the Video Nut Plaza. Five air-conditioned rooms, ranging from three to fifteen seats, bed optional. A third way of getting your weekly dose of Western cinema is checking out some of the western bars on Sunday evening. Champs, Fusion and Chesters all serve one or two movies each week, sometimes for free, sometimes for a small cover charge. A couple of the movies that graced the screens have been the remake of Get Carter with Sylvester Stallone, truly taking the movie to the 'next level', Hurricane with Denzel Washington and The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez; a really crappy movie with qutie a babe. "Ehm, we have some nice screen effects and Jennifer Lopez. let's see if we can construct a movie around this."
A visitor
Most of our third week in Accra, Ethan, one of the two founders of Geekcorps, was visiting the city. If anything, it meant lots of opportunities at socializing. For him, but also for us geeks, with the highpoint of the week the celebration of Tomas' birthday on Saturday, at Geekhalla. Ethan had, during the week he was there, invited basically everyone he had come across. Having a party isn't a bad idea in itself. The problem, however, is obtaining bottled drinks. Since there is a shortage of glass bottles, you can only get a collection of bottled drinks if you hand in empty bottles. Needless to say, we did not have any when we arrived in Accra.
Tomas was quite lucky that the week before, in Aquarius, he was unable to get rid of a working girl who was really, really, interested in him, resulting in her being virtually a Siamese twin of Tomas for the following two weeks. Although that might seem inconvenient, it also meant that Tomas was able to get bottled drinks without having to supply empty bottles. The working girl had her contacts. Destina, as her name was, was a gift from heaven. A great party, ending in Aquarius after the beer had run dry. Destina, who had to leave early to go to work, was lucky enough to be found again by Tomas, when we entered Aquarius
Besides the crowd that we ourselves (or Ethan) had invited, some guests no one had ever seen before also had shown up. Mainly because Tomas had put up an invitation on Geekhalla.org, shortly after Jason had sent a mail to Slashdot.org, who had referred to our site, increasing the amount of traffic by 1600% in one week. Most of the unknown guests were Danes, making it no surprise that our supply of beer dried out way before expected.
To supply the crowd with some entertainment, Francois, Tim and myself had used up part of our monthly $100 to buy stuff for inside Geekhalla to get ourselves a Ghettoblaster. When in the electronics store, ready to buy the music machine, there was a lights out. So we got batteries, just in case. Only seconds before arriving at the house, the lights came back on again.
After visiting Aquarius, together with Richard, a Dutch guy I met at Aquarius and two interesting ladies, we went to Makumba. One of the few real discos in Accra, where for every man, roughly seven woman are available to go home with. Needless to say, these woman all need to be paid. It was my second visit to the place and much more enjoyable at that, since now I was protected by the presence of two ladies, entering the club with me. The previous time, I had gone in with Francois alone, resulting in us being harassed by more then 5 women after only setting one foot, each, in the club. Now, we danced into the small hours of the night, without ever encountering oppressive women.
Soccer
During the day of Tomas' birthday party, together with three Dutch people working for ExplainerDC, who I met during one of the socializing events set up by Ethan the previous week, I visited the Feijenoord soccer training camp an hours drive away from Accra. Run by a Belgian guy, the place, with Dutch flags, jerseys and more, seems mildly out of place but is kind of fun to visit. Afterwards, we had a very nice, but expensive, time at White Sands, a very nice beach club in the neighborhood of the soccer camp.
More Joy
Meanwhile, the relationship between JoyFM and Geekcorps hadn't really normalized yet. Although I was very much enjoying myself at the radio station, it turned out that the SRP, the Social Responsibility Project which Joy was committed to do, wasn't really happening. The SRP basically is Joy's payment for my services. Geekcorps helps them, they help the community by doing a Social Responsibility Project.
Cyril, Geekcorps' contact at Joy, who quit the first day I was there, had great ideas about airing some technology show. However, on my first day I was at Joy, I heard Cyril talk to a guy at programming about this technology show, as if it was the first time he had every mentioned it to him. After some weeks, it was decided that Joy would do a total of thirteen shows and although they claimed they did a number of them, no one ever heard one show on technology sent through the airwaves by Joy…
Church
When, at some point during the week, I went into the Geekcorps office and started talking to Tom, a friend of Ebenezer's, I was almost jumped by him when I said that my mother was a Christian and my father a Muslim. Although this is not completely true, since my father, although born and raised in Iran, never was brought up a Muslim. However, in such a religious society as Ghana is, it is difficult to explain one does not believe in God. You can try to explain the concept, but you might as well not bother since you will only receive blank stairs when trying.
Anyway, Tom was part of a church called Zetaheal. Only some 30 years old, it was a church where Muslim and Christian people came together to pray and he insisted on my coming over the same weekend. Luckily I could convince Jason to come with me, but I have to admit that the service, held in English, Twi, Ewe and Ga was quite impressive, but mainly very 'happy'. Being shown around by some sort of PR manager, we were told one thing: "We have a couple of rules here. The first one is that you can take as many pictures as you want." It was a very relaxing church with very open minded people.
The experiences I had in the first week I was in Ghana, seemed to confirm my point of view in a discussion I had with Ana Maria, back in North Adams. The point was in what way, if at all, African culture could accommodate the possibility of being a primary force in the IT industry, such as Bangalore is doing in India, becoming something of the Silicon Valley of Africa, for the 750 million people on the African continent. However, it seems that African business ethics stand no chance when having to compete with western-run businesses. For one, just that will make it reasonably hard for us geeks to achieve anything in our three months in Ghana.
One of the first things that was easily noticeable, was that all businesses we came in contact with that were, in any way, successful, were either foreign-owned and run, or run by Ghanaians who had worked or studied abroad for a considerable amount of time. Basically, this meant that the successful businesses in Ghana were operated in a Western fashion. So much for African business culture. In fact, in archetypal African culture, there is no room for private enterprise. African culture is based on the commune, the group, were hardships and obtained benefits are shared with the whole group. This also implies that, for no-one in such a society, there is an incentive to work extra hard to obtain any benefit, since any obtained results have to be shared with family and friends. Therefore, it is better to go no further than what is minimally required. Totally the opposite of western style competition between individuals.
Probably the most African company among our partner businesses is ‘Sambus’, the company where Francois is going to spent his three months. On his three month schedule, room was made for settling in. Time for doing so? Three weeks. After just one day, Francois figured he had settled in. In Peter’s company, Company Data, it is not uncommon to take a nap, on your desk, in the middle of the day, or to stand in front of the air conditioning for half an hour to cool off.
JoyFM, my company, at first seemed to be a positive exception to the rule. Employees make quite long days and a significant part of management seems to act according to a western business ethic.
A second impression reveals the underlying structures, however, and makes it clear that Joy, too, very much resembles the other African businesses in the group. For one, constantly, people are walking in and out of the offices of JoyOnline, the actual devision of JoyFM where I have been put to work. In itself not very remarkable. However, most of the people that stop by are ex-employees, making use of the ‘high-speed’ internet connection that sometimes is available. Further, these ex-employees walking in and out isn’t totally inconvenient. On the 6 PCs or so that stand around the office, many of the programs and operating systems are password protected. With passwords only known to specific ex-employees…
Without a doubt, Joy also takes home the award for most eye-catching experience. The primary contact at Joy for Geekcorps, Cyril, manager of JoyOnline, welcomed us heartily in our first week in Ghana, when we were doing the rounds of all the businesses. On Monday, my first day at work, Cyril announced to me that that day would be his last day at work. Even more of a delicate issue, since his enthusiasm towards Geekcorps had landed JoyFM the geek they eventually got, where as at first, they were only a second choice business.
The whole thing got even more delicate when, on Monday, before anyone except Cyril knew he was going to quit, CNN stopped by my office to do an interview with myself and Cyril. Beautiful stories about how the geeks’ presence could bridge the digital divide between Africa and the western world, where this person would no longer work for Joy even the next day.
And, only one week after this, on my second day at work, the acting manger was fired. Life is full of surprises.
Speed, or lack of
One of the primary objectives of the whole Geekcorps process is that every geek has one shadow partner at his company, with whom he tries to establish a skills transfer. At my company, some confusion had arisen when it turned out that my appointed shadow partner had a different name from the shadow partner that was listed in the original contract. Only later did it turn out to be the same guy, with two different names…
What was more of a problem, however, was that this guy, Chico, was still at university, meaning that most of the week, he wasn’t in, but studying, only coming in during the weekends or in the evenings. Not really times of the week where I felt like being at the office.
Besides Cyril and Chico, other players are Walter and Michael. Walter a journalist and the acting manager during my first week at Joy, after which he got fired on the next Monday. Michael, also still a student at some college, who is almost less at the office as Chico is.
The African style of work, only hinted at, at first, most definitely turns out to be there at Joy. On Tuesday, my second day at Joy, I compiled a schedule for the next three months. Three months is a short period of time, for designing, building and testing a database driven website, while doing a skills transfer in the process, so the schedule was very tight. Everyone agreed with the schedule, which made me very happy. Wednesday, the next day, Walter came back from a meeting with the radio station’s program manager. Immediately, we had to start an online promotion campaign in relation to Valentines day. It took myself and Michael almost two days to create the campaign. Two days that had already been appointed to other tasks, based on the schedule I had made the previous day. The lesson learned? Forget about planning anything.
Characteristics
Two aspects seem to be typically characterizing African conduct. The sense of time and interpersonal relationships. African people don’t experience time as ‘we’ do in the west. In the west, time is continuous. You set an appointment for a specific time. If you are fifteen minutes late, you are fifteen minutes late and you will try to make up for that lost time later in the day. In Africa, one lives from event to event. That events take up a certain amount of conventional time is only secondary, since each event takes up the time of one event. Therefore, for example, traveling from A to B goes faster when taking no break (even though you might be moving at a snails pace), since taking a break when driving turns the trip from a one-event trip into a three-event trip.
As far as interpersonal relationships are concerned, it is of primary concern to be good friends with everyone. If, in the process of being good friends, you also achieve something, that’s nice, but not necessary.
Both these things combined result in, what is called, a polychromatic world view. Someone from the west, in general, is monochromatic. This basically means that he does one thing at a time, continuing with the next thing on his list only after finishing the first item. An African does many things at one, very often not finishing the things he had been working on previously since something else has started to take up his time. This also means that an African is continuously distracted from what he is doing, without that being considered as a fault. However, it also means that Africans have a hard time concentrating on anything for longer periods of time.
During the first week, Stophe made a comment about some expat he know, he remarked that, if you have housemaids in Ghana (as we did in Geekhalla), you can only tell them to do one thing and, after completing the one thing, tell them to do the next thing. This, since if you give them two assignments simultaneously, they will neglect to do one (or both) of the assignments. Working at JoyFM, how terrible this may sound, seems to confirm this world view.
Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be a drive to understand the ‘why’ of things. Employees seem to be much more interested in the ‘how (do I make this work now)’ as opposed to the ‘why (can I solve it like this)’. Needless to say, this process might work for getting to know all countries of the world and their capital cities, but is hardly useful for learning how to program computers. With computers, each new programming issue is a new issues. Problems that were solved in the past only partially apply with each new problem and insight is needed to be able to solve newly encountered problems. This implies that Africans are bad programmers. My being at Joy confirms this.
However, there is one small light at the end of the tunnel. The quality of the Internet connection at Joy is quite reasonable.
Sports, or lack of
With CNN stopping by on Monday, sadly I had to miss the Hash. A pity, since a bit of change from my life void of physical activity would have been very welcome. The Friday before I had stopped by at the Aviation Social Club, the only fitness club in Accra with mildly reasonable prices, meaning a monhtly fee of less then $40, still about twice as much what I pay back in Rotterdam, my home town in the Netherlands. However, the place is so far away from the city center that you are obliged to take a cab to get there and the machines are, to put it mildly, not of the best quality.
On Sunday, I tried to find an alternative solution. A sports club where one of the previous geeks had worked out now turned out to be closed. When asking around for another solution, when being in the neighborhood of the closed club, a local kid took me through narrow passageways and stinking garbage dumps, before arriving at a very small shack where, in the opening of the door, a big bad-looking Nubian was blocking the way. “So, you want to train with me?”, he said. I said I was going to think it over a bit.
Monday was the first of a series of relaxing days before the start of the real work, the next Monday. During the day, there was nothing much to do but stroll around Accra and try and understand the buildup of the city. In the evening, some of us went with Stophe to the weekly Hash House Harrier run. As they call themselves, a drinking club with a running problem. At least every mid-sized city in the world has at least one weekly Hash and Accra is no exception. What it comes down to is a group of expats who come together once a week to do something of a run/trailseeker thing whitch is followed by an elaborate drinking ritual, not totally dissimilar to your average fraternity experience. If anything, the weekly meeting is a very good excuse for getting drunk and socializing with fellow expats caught up in the same situation as you are.
Although the actual course not that difficult to complete is, since every 500meters or so there's a checkpoint where everyone has to wait until the whole group has assembled again, it mostly was the humid 30degrees centigrade and the month of virtually no exercise what soever that made it a mild challenge for myself. The next week, Stophe was going to be a 'living hare', which would mean that he would set the course only minutes before the whole group would take off. If the group would succeed in taking over Stophe, he would be under the obligation to undress. And all this for the sake of creating stronger friendships.
After the race, but before the start of the ritual, I was almost harassed by one of the local girls also running the Hash. Her sister, who also ran the Hash, was married to one of the expat hashers: Mick, 50+, beer belly, pony tail and a total of more then 10 kids. It seemed like this woman saw in me the perfect opportunity for starting a similar love nest. Most probably, since unlike Tim and Francois I confessed to not being married.
The way in which Helena, as her name was, tried to lure my into her little ploy almost was too embarrassing for words. In every sentence she needed to put in some reference to her being interested in having sex with me and marrying me. Each time I tried to move the conversation to a more casual topic, she got the conversation back to her topics of love and marriage almost immediately. My hints, growing less and less subtle, only made her fanaticism grow for 'succeeding' with me that night. Only after consulting with Stophe and then telling Helena that I was already engaged and that her parents had approved of the marriage made her back down. Although sex does not mean much in Ghana, marriage is sacred.
Work related
On Tuesday, we toured the city for more than eight hours to visit all companies us geeks were going to work with. Since the eight different businesses are quite dispersed across Accra, although Francois and Peter work a mere five minute walk from Geekhalla. Tomas, for one, has to commute for almost two hours every day.
The collection of companies we work with is quite diverse. My company, JoyFM, everyone sees as the coolest of the crowd and most probably is. The company, Ghana's most important radio station is being run by a bunch of very young guys and some, what seem to be, whiz kids. The web site of the radio station primarily delivers Ghanaian news and acts, because of that, as a source of Ghanaian news for Ghanaians abroad.
On the other end of the spectrum of 'coolness', you can find TSS. TSS is a former devision of Deloitte & Touche and Jean is the one who has to make a daily trip to the Unilever building in the heart of Accra, right next to Rawlings Park (a small brownish grass court and a memorial) and Makola market (if you can't find what you're looking for there, you can not find it in Ghana). TSS was the company that came closest to what was described to us as the stereotypical way of doing business in Africa, with its short working days, its lack of sense of time and the general atmosphere at the office. Only time will tell if this impression is correct or not. Tomas also has something of a challenge, where his 'boss' the reverend Frim Pong, a pastor and visionair, who tries to deliver wireless internet access to the rich for wads of cash, while giving it to the poor for free.
A girl
Tuesday evening, some of the geeks bumped into Ali Michael. An American girl of 22, who won a scholarship to do research in some field, proposed by herself and being the role of Christian womens organizations in developing countries. The sponsor of the whole affair, an organization set up by some former head of IBM, sends some 30 recent graduates all around the world every year, after them having supplied their proposal for research to the organization. To make it even more interesting, each individual is sponsored with a cool $22.000 to last the year. This comes down to this little girl having the opportunity to spend a massive four times as much as us geeks, each month. Remarkably, and probably not related to her financial freedom, after that first Tuesday, Ali is now walking in and out of the office where everyone seems to be totally enlightened every time she sticks here nose in the door.
On Wednesday, Ali and most of the Geeks went to Lalibella. A very good and very affordable Ethiopian restaurant where some of the dishes were even more spicy than the Ghanaian food we had had until then. Maybe it was the spicy coffee we had afterwards, maybe it was the food itself, quite a large part of the group that had dinner at Lalibella had the runs the next morning.
Party on, dude
After having a drink and some snacks at the Country Kitchen on Thursday, organized by Sambas, Francois' employer, on Friday there was quite a feast at Geekhalla. Native dancers and musicians, good food and a multitude of drinks made the evening a joy for us geeks and the people from the partner businesses that had made the effort to come down. Gladys, the secretary for Geekcorps in Ghana, introduced us to Ama, a friend of hers, who was going to accompany us to Kokrobite since Gladys could not make it, a beach we were going to the very next day and about a 50minute drive from Accra. A trip organized by Stophe.
The drive, although quite annoying and very tiring, was quite worth it. The beach we drove to was beautiful, the water was great, the setting superb but the fest of shrimp, crab, lobster and fish truly made our day. Jean-Luc, the only Geek not taking a dive was, in the end, persuaded by Stophe to take a tour by canoe at sea. Tim and myself were going to join him. Then Tomas and later Ama, a friend of Ama's and Francois also wanted to join. After we all got into the boat, with an additional three locals who would paddle us around, one of which had elaborate markings on his face, and we lost touch with the ground, we hopelessly sank for being to much people in one small canoe. We had to get back to the original three people going in the canoe to make it possible to actually get into open waters.
Although, at the end of the day, everyone was pretty much exhausted from a day of sun, sea and beach, of course the evening was there purely to get drunk. After I had a very nice Nigerian meal at Nukucafe, where a fantastic reggae band was playing for several hours, almost spontaneously grouped at Nuku's, shortly before Patrick, some volunteer working for some Christian NGO, just had to take us to Biwells, were, earlier in the week, we already had ended our night before. And of which I hadn't been very impressed. This time, the music was even worse than last time, although, luckily, it was much quieter than lat time.
After Patrick had decided to leave, we had no option but to go to the Ukrainian run 'Aquarius', where, for about 5000cedis you buy one German Mark to play pool with, on one of the four pool tables available in the club. Although the place is not totally free from prostitutes, the place is not at all inconvenient. One of the ladies asked me if I could arrange a meeting between her and the 1.95m long Tomas, after she had asked me what was wrong with him, since he was walking around on flip flops. The lady, who went by the name of Naomi, was very pleasant to the eye, but Tomas wouldn't even come close to agreeing on a conversation. Only, after trying for more than an hour, when I suggested the best option was for her to talk to Tomas directly, dis something evolve. However, only minutes later, the club decided to close. Tomas, not very talkative at all, was saved by the bell. It was time for Fusion, a night club very close to Geekhalla.
It's possible to find a club such as Fusion's in every Eastern European city and in many a Western European town. The combination of locals, Western European expats and a crowd of Lebaneze makes for a remarkable but very remarkable mix of cultures that could possible be part of any culture in any country. One of the attendants was Lura, the lady who still owed me a bottle of wine after our betting on the name of the movie 'Asteroid'. The evening, finished of with Lura, Tim, Francois and Doug, one of the two volunteers from the first group of Geeks who was still around, made me believe that I was going to be able to manage here in Accra.