Monday, January 23, 2012

Kumasi Part 1: Revisiting Ghana

(May 27, 2011)
After spending the night in Takoradi, we caught an early bus (like 5am-ish) to Kumasi.  Once we were in the city we got off the bus into… chaos.

                           This is actually downtown Accra near the main market, but same idea.


 It’s hard to describe the bustling energy of urban Africa.  Take an urban city in the US like Washington DC, with its traffic and buildings and industy, without a lot of the pavement and street signs, with 50x more people walking- in the street, between cars, next to the streets, add animals- goats, chickens, sometimes sheep and the stray cat or dog, add a lot more exhaust, the smell of animals, sometimes the waft of sewage depending on how close you are to the gigantic drains all over Ghana, and add the noise- beyond the normal engines and conversations- people hawking goods, offering you taxis and buses, selling animals, constant honking from cars, and the bustle of hundreds of people talking in one area. 

                             I took this in traffic in Kumasi- I don't remember why the people on horseback.

  It affects all of your senses at once except taste, unless you choose to partake in some of the goods being offered.  Then you may get rice, beans, stew, cookies that are more like biscuits, various meat on a stick, pastries, etc.  All that I tried were good, and miraculously, almost all seemed to agree with my system.*

After disembarking into the semi-chaos, we needed to find a place to stay for the 2 days we planned on being in Kumasi.  Diana’s methodology of figuring out taxi fares is to ask several people, not necessarily the drivers, what the fare is to various places, to figure out what we should be charged.  In the process of doing this one guy was almost dragging us into (stopped) traffic to get us a taxi.  He wasn’t the driver, but he was going to find us a taxi and expected us to be tipped for it.  So he told us a fare, and we said that’s way too high.  Then a driver said, no, this, and it was half as much.  So we agreed and started to get into the taxi and the first guy is demanding a tip- we apparently picked the taxi he wanted us to, except for half the fare.  And Diana is trying to explain that we don’t owe him anything, he was trying to gyp us, and as we wait to merge into traffic he’s standing next to the taxi yelling at us that we are bad people because we didn’t tip him.  I was really frustrated, and thinking, I want to yell back at you that you are a bad person.  But I didn’t, because that really wouldn’t have helped anything.  And not all taxi drivers are bad at all- we befriended several in various cities throughout Ghana.

Next edition:  Manhiya  Palace, the Kumasi Market, and bedbugs

* Without going into more detail than you probably want, all of us interns got upset stomachs every now and then, but nothing really bad.  My worst experience was a ‘dodgey tummy’ in the words of Angelina who is from the UK, for about 5 days, and then it cleared up.  I never identified anything that made my stomach upset, and considering that when I went to Jamaica for a week in 2001 I wound in the hospital for a couple of hours because I couldn’t keep water down, I consider Ghana a success for my GI system.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

7 Quick Takes

1.  My Christmas/winter break was pretty awesome.  I got to see a lot of people, play with a big goofy black lab, and help my mom start cleaning out our basement.  You might not think that last item is awesome, but trust me, it is.

2. I took a condensed class (read, 2 credits in 1 weeks, class 8:30am-5:30pm) last week and it was really interesting.  Also informtion overload, but still really cool- Environmental Microbiology: Control of Food and Waterborne Diseases.  Now I just need to finish the assignments for the class.

3. My mom is currently in Israel and my cousin is in Antarctica!  I am by far not the only globe trotter in my family.

4. I have this little thing called a thesis to write this semester.  It's more than a little intimidating.  I'm sure I'll blog about it more, because so far I have been very creative in finding ways to avoid working on it.

5.  I'm still applying for the Peace Corps.  I'm currently in the land of a thousand doctor's appointments, to be followed with probably more doctor's appointments, and then hopefully a placement.  So far I've been nominated for a health position- no shock there :)

6. I have recently read several books, and one of my goals is to blog about reading more.  But for now, titles will suffice:  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Ghost Map (for my class, but I already owned it), and 'We Swam the Grand Canyon: A cheap vacation that got a little out of hand'.
Currently reading: King Leopold's Ghost, The Last Taboo: Opening the Door on the Global Sanitation  Crisis, and Generations.  A lot of my Christmas loot was also books, so there's a lovely pile in the non-yet-started category too.

7. My new years resolution is 'To not let the perfect get in the way of the good'.  So, to not let my human imperfections stop me from trying things and doing them imperfectly.  This is for scheduling, dieting, writing, reading, and all other goals that I make and will probably screw up at some point.  Reading 300/365 days of the year is much better than 0/365 days, even though its not a perfect 365/365.  So we'll see how things go :)