As of late

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post!

School has kicked into full gear (aka my professors have been showing up on a regular basis and we had our first assignment). Also, our internet as been out for the last few days.

Our first assignment, a group paper on the history of criminal justice, turned out well. Although we had to have our faculty advisor set up an appointment for us to speak with our professor and the professor showed up an hour late, we finally understood the assignment and turned it in Friday.

My endeavor to volunteer with HIV/AIDS has seen some progress. Catherine and I finally had an appointment to gather information, and I hopefully will be starting next Wednesday volunteering with a woman who counsels patients with HIV/AIDS. I’m very excited about this and I will report more about how my first day goes.

Last Friday, I was in my Human Rights and Social Work Practice class, and the professor started talking about 9/11. He spoke about how terrorism was a real threat, not only to Americans, but to everyone in the world. It was strange to be in Africa and still hear about the effects of terrorism. The professor mentioned that the war in Iraq was a completely different issue, but supported the efforts of the military in Afghanistan. I can’t remember the last time I talked about 9/11 on the anniversary in school, so I guess it was just odd to all of a sudden be experiencing it in a foreign country.

Last Sunday some students from UNC and some students from PennState went to Champs to watch the Panthers vs. Eagles game. Champs is a sports bar in central Accra that shows many American sports games. Although they were only able to find the Dallas Cowboys game on the television, the food was exciting. They had an entire “Texi Mexi” section, which included chimichangas and nachos. Needless to say, I was really pumped about eating Mexican food which I’ve been craving. The bar is obviously tailored to American tourists and has dishes such as apple pie with ice cream and burgers.

On Saturday Catherine, Katy, Michael, Jordan, Matt and I travelled to Accra’s largest open air market, Kanta Mantu (sp?). The market was teeming with vendors selling literally everything you could ever think of. Among the sights was a woman carrying dead roosters in a bowl on her head. We headed into the market and walked through city block after city block of vendors selling shoes, soccer jerseys, clothes, etc. As soon as the vendors saw us (white people) coming, they would grab our arms and not let go until we jerked our arms away. It was kind of a hassle to actually get to the vendors we were interested in, but when we did it was a treasure trove of very inexpensive soccer jerseys and shoes.

Saturday night Catherine, Katy, Michael and I went to Champs for karaoke night. We took a cab ride over in which the driver barreled down the highway tailgating and passing every car we came into contact with. While I thought twenty years of riding on the highway with my father driving would prepare me for anything, we all found ourselves clutching the handles on the doors and gasping as we slid into tiny spaces between cars. Champs turned out to be a lot of fun, we talked to an American in his late forties who was eager to discuss politics (we were too until he revealed Fox news was his primary news source and that it was the least biased of all) and also two men from Lebanon. Catherine and I entertained everyone at the bar with our own rendition of “Ice Ice Baby”, and we also sang hits from Journey and Bon Jovi. The taxi ride home proved to be more eventful than the first. Everything seemed normal until the driver politely asked Michael to pass him a giant liquor bottle from under the seat, and then proceeded to take bottle shots as he drove stick shift. When we arrived at the hostel, Catherine, Katy and I jumped out of the backseat and Michael stayed in the front seat to pay the driver. We waited for Michael inside the front door of the hostel to pay, when suddenly the three guards outside the door yelled and started sprinting towards the taxi. Of course, yet again, the driver had decided to try to charge us more for the ride and yet again Michael had gotten stuck in the taxi. It’s annoying how service people here assume that because we’re Americans it’s okay for them to attempt to rip us off constantly.

Cultural Observation:
Most every day we buy fried egg sandwiches from a small stand in the night market. The stand is run by two young women whom up until this incident I assumed were in their mid twenties. I was waiting for my egg sandwich the other day when the woman asked me what my name was and how old I was. I then asked her the same questions, to which she replied, “how old do you think I am?” I guessed 24, based on the fact that she seemed mature and was always working at the stand. She laughed and revealed to me that she was eighteen, and that the other woman who ran the stand (who is also about six months pregnant) is seventeen. I guess this shouldn’t have been so shocking to me, but it hit me rather hard that these girls were at least two years younger than me, yet running a business and starting a family. While in America these girls would be considered young adults, perhaps graduating from high school, hardly ready to start their “adult careers”, it is perfectly normal here for these girls to be financially independent. Standing at the egg sandwich cart, I made a realization. While it’s easy to say deep down, we’re all human and therefore all the same, it’s difficult to deny the fact that I have a completely different life trajectory than the majority of the women here. Apart from the obvious observation that these women have little access to higher education, they also expect to have certain things: a family, a job, a home, at an age when most American girls are worried about what prom dress to buy. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that Americans’ concept of childhood is completely different from that of the wider world. For examples, what we consider child labor may be an accepted and necessary means of survival for families in less developed countries.

Today, Monday, we have school off because it is the 100th birthday of the first President of Ghana. There is a ceremony taking place at the monument dedicated to him, but not much else going on. We’ve been spending the day doing a bit of homework and relaxing. Not much planned for the upcoming week, but we might travel to Togo, the country to the east of Ghana, this weekend!