5:52PM, on a Thursday

Now that I am down to my final two weeks, I’ve made a resolution to blog with the frequency and enthusiasm that I did in the beginning.

I had no plans for New Year’s Eve and thus was reading in bed when the church service started, 15 feet from my window. The building in which it was held is less than half finished; it is missing a roof and several walls, with iron rods and wiring still exposed. But the God-fearing people of Cape Coast don’t let a little thing like structural incompletion stop them from worshipping – which they did for FIVE HOURS. From 8:30PM to 1:30AM, my room literally vibrated with the sounds of their live band blaring through the speakers and their preacher screaming into the microphone. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled.

The next day, I went with Lawrence to the airport in Accra to pick up ProGhana’s new volunteer. We left at 4:30PM and arrived just after 7PM – and had two and a half hours to wait, as her plane was not scheduled to arrive until 9:30PM. So we had dinner and sat in the waiting area watching soccer. Finally just before 10PM, we began to see people filtering through the last stage of customs with bags in tow. We waited...and waited...and pretty soon the entire flight crew had passed and there were no more people. Plus almost everyone who had been waiting with us was still there, looking as confused as we felt. It turned out that the plane had been delayed by almost two hours in Amsterdam because some passengers had changed their minds and demanded to be allowed to disembark and be given their luggage. We learned this from Sarah when she finally got to us around 11:30PM. Then we had to drive the two hours back to Cape Coast! But I shouldn’t complain; the poor girl was coming from British Columbia and had been traveling for 30 hours by the time she hit Accra.

Anyway, Lawrence slept most of the way back and Sarah and I chatted. She will be working on economic development and women’s empowerment projects in the more rural areas surrounding Cape Coast. She is 23, graduated with an undergraduate degree in global studies and a minor in media, and wants to find some direction for her next steps. I’m very happy to have some company again. We went to Anamabo Beach on Sunday, my favorite spot in Ghana, and had a lovely time. Oh, and she has been reading my blog! Now that I know my writing can actually be useful, I have even more incentive to keep going with it.

On that note, I’m going to share some more miscellaneous cultural remarks that I haven’t touched on yet.

-Dress/Appearance: Ghanaian ladies generally wear skirts; the younger women sometimes wear jeans or other pants. You will very rarely see a woman in a skirt above the knee; it’s considered rather slutty and frowned upon. However, you can feel free to wear spaghetti-strap camisoles to your heart’s content. Ghanaian men keep their hair quite short, unless they are “Rasta,” the sort of counter-culture movement here. From what I understand, the connotations generally associated with Rastafarian are also attributed to this group, and they are looked at with disapproval, although they are perfectly nice people. Men also generally wear pants; shorts seem to be mostly reserved for boys and soccer players. Shoes are quite important; men wear dress shoes and women wear dressy sandals almost every time they leave the house.

-Manners: It is considered quite disrespectful to cross your legs in any formal setting (work meetings, church, fancy dinners, etc.) or in front of your elders (like when I go to visit Fred or Peggy’s parents). This also includes crossing your ankles. As I always wear a skirt here, I find it difficult to remember this. Also, it’s impolite to launch into any kind of conversation without the proper greetings of hello and how are you. This applies to any social situation from shopping to phone calls to restaurants, no matter how well you know the other person. Ghanaians will always start with a friendly greeting and asking how you are, and you are expected to do the same. Lastly, and I don’t know how universal this is, but the Ghanaians I have met do not volunteer their names when meeting for the first time. You are required to ask them their names, and I think they consider it rude if you don’t.

-Sanitation: Without coming off as offensive, I want to comment on this because I find it very, very different from what I am used to. Litter, as I mentioned, is everywhere. So are animal urine and feces since livestock roams freely. People spit left and right, and bathrooms are quite unnecessary for urination; any outdoor spot will do. I get the feeling that many people do not wash their hands after passing waste, which is especially disconcerting as they tend to eat exclusively with their hands. Food is left sitting out for hours without concern for hygienic storage or the consequent attraction of a multitude of insects. In short, I think people here simply have a very different concept of what is clean; they are obviously not the germaphobes that many Americans are.

-Children: The attitude towards children is a little confusing for me. The families I have met show nothing but love and kindness to their kids, but I have also seen children being physically abused quite openly on the street. From what I understand, the teachers’ use of physical punishment in the classroom is readily accepted, if not expected. I don’t know quite what to make of it. However, I love the way the women carry their babies. The baby is placed with its belly on the mother’s back and secured in place by a sheet wrapped around her torso. That was, the baby is nice and snug (which they like since it reminds them of being in the womb) and its body is in direct contact with the mother’s while she has her hands free.

That’s all for now. I should have lots more to write in the next couple of weeks as I am planning a visit to Kakum National Park, where they have a 40-meter-high canopy walk, and Nzulezo village, which is “one solid construction raised above the water, consisting of a central wood and raffia walkway with perhaps two dozen individual houses on either side,” according to the Bradt travel guide to Ghana. The only way to get to the village, the guide says, is by taking a canoe for one hour along a river that eventually joins the lake above which the village sits. They both sound awesome and are close enough to Cape Coast to make each into a daytrip.