A Sunday to Unwind

I woke up glad to be alone and in Ghana. I felt incredibly tired. I lay in bed thinking maybe I could just absorb the culture shock by osmosis through the walls. Isaac was going to be at Church all morning so there was no need to move. Really I just couldn’t remember when last I had the luxury of lying in bed with nothing to do and no one to contact.

I lay listening to the drum of air conditioning, motorcycle engines and the far off sawing of wood. Even the tapping, banging and creaking of doors sounded new, enhanced perhaps by the echoes of plastered walls. I plugged in my laptop. One useful side effect of Britain having shockingly invaded over 90% of the world (the remaining 22 countries can be seen on the map) is that the plug sockets were a perfect match.

I stumbled into the bathroom and splashed my face with water. The malaria-filled blighters buzzed around me. As I rubbed my eyes I had a shocking thought- can bacteria and cholera enter the blood stream through the eyes much like people taking vodka shots? I realised it would take a little while yet to wash away my developed country standards and embrace the new surroundings.

Back to bed. After some time I heard the sound of a key in the door and my flatmate returning. He or she went into the room next door and started speaking on the telephone. Through the wall I tried to depict the language being spoken above the noises outside. Later I heard the person in the kitchen. Eventually I went for a shower and returned to my room knowing that my noises would now be audible. Back in my room I could hear the flatmate’s movements again in the kitchen. I wondered how long this tap-dance would continue.

I decided to unpack. My conditioner had performed the classic suitcase explosion, as if to say, that from this moment on, my hair wouldn’t need much conditioning. I hung up all my clothes until the right side of the wardrobe looked like my wardrobe at home: a stream of clashing patterns. The left side was still a mystery since the door handle was missing and I couldn’t open it.

In the kitchen, the fridge had some fast food remnants and a KFC box in it. I wondered if this was more reflective of the purchaser or the local cuisine. I went outside into the bright sunlight now wondering where Isaac might be. I had no way of telling the time. Here I met my first inhabitant. A large fresh faced blonde curly haired youth emerged from one of the rooms in the courtyard wearing long red shorts and a grey t-shirt. I wondered if he was the owner of the KFC. It turned out he was from Denmark and had been teaching at a local school for a few months. He was friendly enough, gave me a few tips and I returned to my room to study the guide book.

At least 2 hours after he said he’d come Isaac still wasn’t there. I was frustrated because I was bored, and more crucially, hungry. Should I open the gate and venture alone into the big wide world?

I briefly met a Scottish girl who said she was here working for IPA (Innovation for Poverty Action); she said she was going to get a smoothie and did I want to come? But I didn’t have a way of calling Isaac to say, so I declined. Eventually Isaac came and we went to a shopping mall and got chicken with chili curry and rice. We also went to see the Black Star Square, which stood stark and bare like a North Korean marching ground but with the backdrop of the ocean with a fresh sea breeze. Isaac said that we could go to his village one weekend and see his family and I spoke to his sister on the phone.

Back in the courtyard of the lodgings that evening I met a German guy who’s working at the Kofi Anan International Peacekeeping Centre and a Canadian girl, Katy, who’d just arrived and would be working in administering development projects for a private agency that deals with Canadian government funding. There are also 4 Senegalese guys in the top apartment who are here opening an Italian restaurant in Accra. Sadly my French isn’t good enough to communicate properly with them. It turned out that the person I’d heard shuffling about in the room next to me earlier had been their driver- a chirpy young Ghanaian guy.

That evening in the bathroom I saw my first cockroach. I decided not to tell Katy about it.