Akwaaaba! Welcome to Financial Republic

This morning the Ghanaian boy in the room next to me drank the tap water. I don’t think I’ll go straight for it, but it gave me confidence to clean my teeth with it and cook noodles in it. If I get cholera I can write books like ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’; except that I’ll be the only one.

When I came to shower the water had stopped so I filled up a bucket from the tub outside. It smelled of urine in the bathroom, not a deep cloudy stench that chokes the rooms but a gentle steady reminder of the human function.

Isaac came to fetch me at 7:30. Initially the fact that Financial Republic provided a driver didn’t seem like a lot, but actually it’s quite a privilege. The others in my block have to get about by tro tros (privately owned mini bus taxis).

At the Santa Maria bank branch, it was quickly apparent to me that I was interrupting mass morning prayer. It was deep and soulful like in the churches in the deep South of America; it was also rhythmic with an intense hum like an exorcism. It involved all the colleagues except me. I sat in the office, which was a small room divided from the main banking area by a wooden separation. As I sat and waited the noise rose with a force the missionaries would have been satisfied with.

… “We thank the Lord that there’s a Financial Republic of liberty… in the name of Jesus” etc. etc.
… “Amen”

I went  outside to buy a coconut. A man wielding a barrow of coconuts and a machete cut it open for me.

Although I arrived at the office at 8:00, by 11:00 still no one had come for me. There were staff milling around the office and getting on with their duties, but the director had not come yet. By 12 I was slightly bored and frustrated. I went outside. The heat of the day had settled in and was scorching everything, but mostly me.

Isaac had left. At least there was internet, though I shouldn’t be on Facebook anyway. I should be going all out and gung-ho, as if it were the time when everything was disconnected and people had to write letters home in their best calligraphy. At least my phone looks like they did in the early 1900s.

Although, to be honest, this isn’t really a fair representation. Most people have the latest smartphones in one version or another, with 3G, but the simcard didn’t work in mine. In some African countries more people have access to mobile phones than clean water.

For lunch I tried my first red red- delicious black eyed beans in a rich orange curry with sticky plantain and a fiery red sauce over white rice. This was got from a little stall down a dirt track off the side of the road and I sat in a wooden shack with some workers on their lunch break.

Something in the air is making me really tired. I really felt like I needed a nap. It might have been nice to have had more than a day to orientate myself before starting full days in the office. I met the director of the office, Menza, who came across instantly as a very smart man. In the afternoon I worked with one of the ladies dealing with walk-in clients. They have a money passport which is stamped when they want to withdraw and all amounts are added to the system online.

I was relieved to be in the car going home. I bought some salted popcorn through the car window from one the kids in the street and watched the streams of cars ignoring red lights, tooting at pedestrians weaving through and bypassing traffic by driving down the wrong side of the road to turn left, and so-on.

My room presented a slightly unappealing escape hole. The musty smell and darkness seemed amplified somehow, and despite the bright sunlight outside, the florescent light needs to be on. The other inhabitants named it “the cell”. It was also smaller and less airy than theirs with a grubbyish plastic floor. The landlady tells us to call her “Mummy”. Mummy says that if another room becomes available I can have it.

I went for some food at a little restaurant-shack just down the road. I thought I was getting African chili beef with plain rice. What I got was a strange take on Chinese food with fried rice and a gloopy gravy, but thankfully with lots of fresh vegetables. Later I went with Leonard the German, Katy the Canadian and Troels the Dane for a much needed beer.