a typical week in ghana

Whenever I read people’s blogs, I always wish I had an idea of what they did every day…maybe it’s just the American in me, but I LOVE when things are in chronological order. So…here is a short recap of a typical week here in Ghana throughout the past 3 months – but keep in mind that nothing in Ghana can be called ‘typical’…

Monday: I usually wake up debating whether or not I should go to the Urban Development class that I’m auditing. If I decide to go, I’ll leave the hostel around 8:50am, which gives me enough time to order an egg sandwich at the night market and walk to my 9:30 class. During class, I write notes and look around when the professor makes jokes to try and figure out why everyone is laughing. If I don’t decide to go, which has been the case recently, then I wake up later and head straight to my African-American Literature class that starts at 11:30 (which, unfortunately, is the same time that my first class ends…why they don’t add more time between classes is a mystery to me). But it’s okay because I’ve always made it there before my professor, an African-American, arrives. During this class I have the luxury of being able to stop paying attention periodically because I can easily understand what the professor is saying. I get out of this class at 1:30, and either get lunch at one of the nearby eating places (all of which are inside the individual dorms/hostels) or back at Night Market which is right next to my hostel. I usually arrive at my 3:30 class, Africa and the Global System, only to wait for my professor to show up 30 minutes later. At 5:30 I am very happy to be done with classes for the day, and usually head back with my obruni friends to grab my usual dinner at the Night Market – beans, white rice, and plantains. At night, we’ll hang out, get stuff made by the seamstress, watch movies, go to a movie at the mall, whatever.

Tuesday: Up at 9am, I will usually get oatmeal or waffles at Tasty Treats (the eating place inside of my hostel), which can take from between 10 minutes to an hour to receive. I always bring a book out there to read while I wait, but inevitably I will end up talking with the other international students waiting for their food. Until around 2pm, I will either read for class, go online, write blogs, read one of the many books I brought here and am trying very hard to finish, or hang out with my roommate or other people. I then usually go to meet Rebecca, one of the social workers from Street Girls Aid, at Tema Station – which is right in the middle of Accra. The ride from campus to Tema Station takes about 30 minutes, depending on the traffic and the number of people getting on and off. After meeting Rebecca, we walk to the slum where Comfort, Ata, Afia and Adua live (or lived, since Ata and Afia are already back home trying to start their businesses!) and visit them and the others who lives there. This often ends up in me taking a million pictures of everyone, or in us walking to a nearby (well, nearby according to them, but not really by my standards!) pharmacy or market to get them either medicine for their children or something they need. I always love visiting them and seeing their smiling faces. I then travel back to campus, usually get stuck in a ton of traffic and laugh at the insane drivers until I get back to campus. Back at campus I then grab dinner – you guessed it, rice, beans and plantains from the Night Market – and then eat quickly before heading to our International Students Bible Study, which is held in the hostel right next to mine.

Wednesday: I’ll wake up at 8am to get ready, grab breakfast and go to Street Girls Aid – a process that includes a walk to the tro-tro stop at the nearest junction, a tro-tro ride past the main gate of the university, a wait at the tro-tro stop outside of the main gate for a tro to La Paz, the tro ride to La Paz, and then a few minute walk to the refuge house. I usually arrive there by 10am, and start doing school with the girls. They break for lunch at noon, during which I’ll go and sit with them and ‘be invited’ to all of their meals (Ghanaians say “you are invited” whenever they are eating and are trying to tell you that you can eat their food with them). Afterwards, we usually go upstairs to their room and hang out, talk, dance, be silly, take pictures, whatever  I’m always sad by the time I have to leave at 2:30 to get back to campus for my class at 3:30. I go to my Strategies of Development class where almost half of the students are international. One of my friends re-named the class “International Students against Professor,” which I think is pretty accurate, given that our professor does not always have the strongest or most valid explanations for things. I then trudge to my 5:30-7:30 class, Geography of West Africa with special reference to Ghana, where my friend Maggie from Elon and I sit in the front next to our friend, Pounds Sterling (yes,that is his name). He is really nice and very helpful in decoding the Ghanaian English spoken by our professor to us. By 7:30 I can’t WAIT to eat beans, plantains and rice and so we speed walk back to the hostel to get some food!

Thursday: Nina and I walk to tutorial for our Strategies of Development in Africa class which consists of an hour of discussing the topics covered in class more in-depth (which only sometimes happens since our teaching assistant really likes to hear himself talk), and then usually grab lunch at Tasty Treats or an egg sandwich at the Night Market. Sometimes I would go again (often Nina comes with me) to visit Comfort, Ata, Afia and Adua, or little Jon with Rebecca in the afternoons. At 6:30, I go upstairs to Selma’s room for my Ghanaian Bible Study, which is an outgrowth from a local church. I really enjoyed my time listening to Ghanaian perspectives and getting to know more Ghanaians here. They were all very welcoming and nice.

Friday: On Fridays I try to sleep in as late as the blasting music from the Night Market will permit, hang around doing random things in the morning, and usually leave to head to Street Girls Aid by noon. On Fridays I do different things with the girls, sometimes school, sometimes creative art-type stuff, and once I had my international student friends come in with their laptops so the girls could learn how to use computers! It was awesome watching them – they were so excited.

The weekends really vary, but if I’m not traveling, it will often include a trip to a beach or a pool, a movie or play being showed on campus, going to the mall to get pictures printed of the girls at S.Aid or getting on the super fast internet at the Apple store, watching movies and hanging out, going out to dinner anywhere that does NOT serve Ghanaian food, or exploring Accra.