My first 7 days..

I have survived my first week in Ghana! And I’m still loving it. It has been a very busy week.. I wish I would have had more time to blog.

DAY 1: I was met at the airport by two of the student guides. They warned us to not let anyone help us with our bags on our way out of the airport. As soon as we got out the doors there were men following us, almost grabbing at our bags wanting to help. You had to forcefully say no. If you allowed them to help you carry your bags they would expect payment for their services. It was defiantly an eye opener to the fact that I wasn’t in the U.S. anymore. Ghana is full of surprises. That first night there was a power outage. We had gone out for dinner and in the middle of dinner the power went out. When I got back to my room I had to search through my bags in the dark to find my flashlight.

DAY 2: On Saturday we toured the city and visited the mall. This was also the first day I experienced the market. It was overwhelming and I feel like I may never get the hang of how to bargain, but then again maybe I will. We went to a market in Osu, which is a tourist area of Accra. We also saw a museum and the monument for Ghana’s most famous leader, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

DAY 3:
On Sunday we went to church with Shadrack, our student guide. It was a very small church, maybe about fifteen people. The power was out in the small building it was located in so the music consisted of just tambourines and drums. It was a great experience and we later found out that the pastor was Shadrack’s father.

We also went to the Lambodi beach that afternoon. It was a cloudy day, but it was still great to see the ocean. They had chairs and umbrella’s set up along the beach to relax in. There was lots of vendors going around trying to sell you things. There are vendors everywhere in Ghana. Another thing that surprised me at the beach was the amount of garbage. There were plastic bags floating in the water, and broken bottles stuck in the sand.

DAY 4:
On Monday we started our orientation. We sat through an informational meeting about registering for classes. Let me tell you, registering for classes is very frustrating. You have to walk to the department and find an informational sheet posted on a bulletin board to find out if the class is being held and at what time. Then you register on a computer for which classes you want, but sometimes the classes that were posted are not on the computer.

We also took a campus tour and this campus is huge! There are 26,000 students that attend this university. That is over 2x the size of UWEC. A lot larger than I was expecting, but as the days go on, and places become recognizable it is not seeming quite as large.

DAY 5:
On Wednesday I took my first trotro ride, which is the public transportation system in Ghana. Trotros are basically large vans that fit about 10 people. There is a man, who is called the maid, that sits buy a window and yells out and gestures where that trotro is going as they pull into a trotro stop. You quickly, and I want to emphasis quickly, get on the trotro. Once on the maid will take your money and you let him know where you would like to get off. We took a trotro to Madina Market which is a very large market. I tried my first fresh coconut here. It was delicious and cost only 70 pasways.. Which is about 50 cents in American money.

DAY 6:
On Thursday we went to a store called Melcom, which is similar to Wal-mart. I was able to get my own bucket so I no longer need to borrow a bucket for my bucket baths. I got silverware, a bowl, a pot, a knife, and a cutting board for cooking. I also got laundry detergent to do my own laundry by hand, which I am a little excited for is that strange?

DAY 7:
Thursday night was the last meal provided by ISEP, the program I came through. So on Friday morning I had a fruit salad that Emma, Kelly, and I made from fresh fruit from the market. Our fruit salad consisted of pineapple, mango, and apples. The pineapple is amazing here. It is so sweet and flavorful. It is also a lighter yellow color, almost a white color on the inside. The mangoes are also delicious. I have never had a mango that I liked, until now. A few people have gotten sick while being here and I have been trying to keep healthy. You can eat cooked meals from the markets for really cheap, about 1 cedi a meal, which is less than 1 American dollar. But food from the market isn’t always safe and you need to be careful. So for now I am sticking to eating from restaurants and cooking on my own, at least for a week or two until my system gets use to the new environment.

It was a busy week and I am in for a busy weekend- We are taking an excursion to Cape Coast. It should be a fun and exciting weekend. Stay tuned, I’ll be posting again when I get back.