My Life in Accra

My blog so far must sound as if we are constantly travelling restlessly through Ghana. That is not true, however, I have been thoroughly enjoying the past few weeks in Accra and on Legon Campus. In fact, the weeks are passing by so quickly that it scares me sometimes. I'm nowhere near ready to even think about going back home, yet the semester here is drawing closer to its end in mid-December (that is not to say my time in Ghana, though).

I love watching the sunrise at 6am during the crosscountry-training, it's become a routine to visit the seamstress every week to get another Ghanaian dress, I start freezing at 24°C, I know the little bumps and puddles on my ways around campus like the back of my hand, I don't want to stop hearing the lovely sound of Twi around me, leave alone the (less mysterious) Pidgin, I don't want to take my eyes off the colourful clothes, I am still excited putting on my own Ghanaian dresses, Hiplife moves my feet day and night, embarking on a full-blown shopping trip to Makola Market is thrice as strenous but also four times as exciting as walking around in some shopping centre, and … „Obroni, what do you want! Obroni, I love your country“. - ...and „Oh, Obibini, I love your country even more!“

The  Registry on the hill, along my favourite jogging track  on campus

First Ghanaian dress

Fabrics out of which I had the next four dresses made...

Ghanaian Hiplife - this one promoting monogamy...so dance away!

Many of the things that may have seemed inconvenient, strange, or new almost three months ago are now the normalities of daily life:
Dinner wrapped in multiple plastic bags, drinking water in plastic bags, so-called „pure-water“ ([pjɔ^w 'ta:]), washing one's feet three times a day to get off the dust, almost getting run-over by cars, finding a balance between hand-washing and laundry so that one's clothes neither become too big nor too small, taking bucket showers every now and then when the water is off (the latter which gets annoying only when people don't bother flushing the toilets with bucket water), visiting the seamstress every week to get some new clothes made, sitting crammed up in a trotro, bargaining taxis, finding a response to „I-love-yous“ and „I-want-to-marry- yous“ (by total strangers), the lecturers' ringing mobile phones in almost every class, and maaany more things which I don't even remember now since I do not notice them anymore.

All these things that seemed chaotic to me in the beginning turned out to have a system behind it. Finding the right Trotro is easy once you know what the various handsigns and calls of the driver's mate mean, bargaining the taxi price you want, and finding one's way around at the markets – it turned out that most often you don't have to find it, but IT finds you, you just have to keep your eyes open and maybe ask someone and you'll soon find yourself inmidst a shoe-paradise, a heap of Jeans or the some of the nicest Ghanain fabric Makola market has on offer (opposite Rawlings park, in case anyone is interested). Are you looking for belts, leggins, or dresses? Get off the trotro in Accra, walk towards Makola mall (don't think of it as a mall in the Western sense) and there'll be a guy covered in -literally- heaps of belts, a woman with leggins hung over her arms and head and another one with dresses. A lot of the stuff is second hand and/or comes from charity boxes from Europe -the same goes for cars, pigfeet, etc.- but you are very likely to find something nice in there, like the H&M jersey Julia found at the market, that Paula and I bought in Germany just before we left... Yes, I have finally discovered the joy in op-shopping, and even more so, the fun in visiting the markets here :). Despite that, I am not quite sure what to make of German (second-hand) clothes (maybe from a Red Cross Container???) being sold here...

Sports

Something else that would have seemed a little bit insane to me three months ago, has become part of my day. Getting up at 5am to join the crosscountry training. After several people had encouraged me to join the morning training at this, I thought, inhuman time, I wanted to at least give it a try. It is in fact quite motivating to run in a team, to watch the sunrise, to get back from running when the others are still asleep and besides running is evidently one of the best way to wake up :). Although running with the superfast male team of the University of Ghana can be a bit frustrating, it's worth the effort when you can run a personal best time in two races, and because running just makes me happy...
After the Bilateral Games between the University of Ghana and the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, the interhall games were on. All the student halls on campus compete against each other in the various sports: Football, handball, volleyball, basketball, badminton, tennis, swimming, rugby, baseball, crosscountry, etc. I love the sports spirit on campus and I wish we had something remotely similar at home, even though the competition and rivalry between some teams is fierce...The football game between the Mensa Sarbah and Commonwealth guys could not be finished after the first half-time since a fight broke out...Within one minute of a Rugby game, one player dislocated or broke his wrist and another one hit the ground so hard he was unconscious and had to be taken to hospital – in a taxi – ...the crosscountry race also left some people so exhausted they needed treatment, this time in the hospital van. I don't know if I could go that  far but as I said, the spirit is more 'intense' than I know it from back home.

ISH ladies crosscountry - before

After: with the vandals from Commonwealth

Food

Waakye

Despite my high tolerance for all kinds of food, the situation has become slightly disconcerting on days that consist of white bread, rice, noodles and possibly also bananas. Bananas can be eaten in every meal any time of the day: bananas before training, for breakfast, plantain chips for a snack, plantains for dinner, grilled plantains at the busstop. The same goes for pineapple and papaya, which are sold almost everywhere. Although I've always managed to avoid white bread (for taste and health) on former travels, I could impossibly avoid it here since I have found a liking for egg-sandwich and cheese toast (it's not 'real' cheese, it's the laughing cow cheese but even the word 'cheese' has something very tasty about it).

Pineapple and Jollof

I have tried a lot of the local dishes by now. Fufu, known across the boarders of Ghana, a kind of dumpling made of pounded cooked cassava and plantain, is usually eaten with soup (groundnutsoup, light soup, palmnutsoup, etc) and it is not chewed, just swallowed.;

Redred with plantains: beans with palmoil, gari and fried plantain;

Waakye: rice with beans, can be eaten with boiled egg, lettuce (if one dares eating that), stew,etc.

Yam with kontomire (palaver sauce): Boiled yam (tastes similar to potatoes), with a kind of very good spinach stew;

Banku, my favourite!

Jollof rice: rice cooked in tomatoes, can be eaten with fried plantains, noodles, stew, etc.

Fried rice, plain rice;

Kenkey with fish and pepper sauce. Kenkey is made of maize, it has almost the same consistency as sourdough and even tastes similar. It is definitely very filling.
Banku is made of fermented corn dough, it can  be eaten with groundnutsoup or pepper. I prefer it with pepper, gravy and fish. It is my favourite  at the  moment, I can't get enough of it... (It's all eaten with one's fingers by the way).

Then there is also Akple, which are similar to Banku. Hopefully I will be able to add some more photos as it is pretty hard to imagine what the food looks like if you haven't eaten  it before!
It is important not to forget that there is a greater variety of dishes (as well as other things or concepts I regularly describe here) than it appears by my descriptions. During my first two weeks, I almost lived of rice and stew. I simply didn't know what else was there and on top of that, how to order it! What I have realised lately: A lot of things of which I hadn't heard or which I hadn't seen yet were just non-existent to me. So with me knowing only four different dishes, I presumed there WERE only four. It's quite a simplistic logic that probably prevents people's (small?) brains from all the new impressions. It is good to be aware of that fact, though, and to walk around with open eyes and ears, and never stop learning. My advice (to myself and others): See further than the end of your own nose (or "rim of your plate" as the German saying goes).
On the day I look further than my plate of rice, I discovered banku. And a lot more...

Kenkey with fish, pepper and gravy

Fish with fried yam and pepper
from the nightmarket

Do I miss anything?

If there is anything I miss from home at all, it would be big salad (with lettuce) and sometimes a bit of German reliability (Verbindlichkeit). Punctuality becomes less of an issue once you know it does not really exist. But the lack of reliability can be slightly annoying. Ever so often, a meeting is forgotten, schedules are not adhered to, „I'll bring it tomorrow“ means something like „You'll not get it before next week“ and „I call you“ means something along the lines of „You might hear from me sometime in the near future“. As much as I like spontaneity, so much do I miss the way in which I can plan a day or a week, plan a few days ahead that you'll see a friend in four days time and actually see your friend on that day at that time. Vorfreude ist die schönste Freude (Anticipation is the greates joy), I wonder, if this saying exists here. Even though this whole attitude has something relaxed about it, it can be quite frustrating when still thinking in the German order of things. But let me point out that not all Ghanaians are late!!! Quite the opposite, I have heard Ghanaian friends complain about their friends being late, too.

By the way, in Accra it is almost impossible to meet at a certain point in time since it is so hard to predict how long one will take through the traffic. It is not like at home where the underground actually arrives at 10 to 5pm, so you know you will be standing in front of, say, the cinema at 5pm. One (if not the only) exception to this is Legon Campus, where one can walk everywhere in a reasonable amount of time. Julia has found a good way of predicting her arrival time. She usually adds 30 mins to the time she thought she would arrive - and is usually right. It's all about relativity, hey?

In the last two days it has been raining at least once a day and the temperature has fallen considerably. For the first time probably since I arrived I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt the whole day and I wasn't even sweating. I hereby declare that it is cold! 

I cannot even properly describe how I feel about things here but I know I don't want to leave them behind.

Here are two more photos of a traditional Ghanaian ceremony we were kindly invited to by one of our English lecturers. It was an 'Outdooring' or 'Naming Ceremony', at which a newborn is christened.

The family 

The most adorable and recently named  Efia