Stir Fry a la West Africa

Alan and I were invited for a dinner at a Chinese restaurant this weekend to celebrate his British colleague's engagement to a Ghanian man that she has met while working here. We were about 15 people gathered around two large banquet tables in our own private room in the restaurant - half of us were white Westerner corporate expats (or partners of) and the other half were Ghanian rastafarians, one of whom was Alan's colleague's fiance. We all agreed that we would sit black person, white person to encourage mixing and mingling which I thought was a great idea. I found it funny that we predicted we would need to do that because otherwise all the Ghanians would sit together and all the white expats would sit together.





So Alan and I sat next to Easyman and King. We soon learned that the guys were all friends of the fiance because they play music and dance in a group together and perform around Ghana. Over our egg rolls and shrimp appetizer, Easyman pulled a few instruments out of his shoulder bag and sampled them for us which was great...they told us they carry their instruments with them because they never know when they will get the feeling to want to play their music. Easyman and I talked about his music, and his other interests in selling crafts which he gave me his business card for. We're hoping to buy some drums while we're here. Alan and his friend, King, seemed to be getting along well and had a conversation about one of Ghana's major tribes, the Ashanti's, and the way in which they name their children. They are largely named for the day of the week they were born. For example, someone born on Monday is named Kojo whereas someone born on Friday is named Kofi. Our two new friends were trying to guess, based on our temperments, which day of the week we were born on so we could figure out our Ashanti names. They were convinced that Alan was a Monday and that I was a Tuesday. In an attempt to give Alan a Rastafarian-Ashanti name they called him "Kojo Simple Guy" which they found fitting.






Needless to say we laughed a lot with them over our Chinese banquet which honestly all felt a little surreal. Here we were, a few weeks into our stay in Ghana having a Chinese banquet dinner with Ghanian Rastafarian drummers and dancers. The night proved to become even more surreal.

After dinner, the 8 or so Ghanian guys brought out their drums, flutes, and one guy was even just improvising with two knives from the dinner table and they played a full concert of West African music and dancing. It was really amazing and we got front row seats to this impromptu concert. Soon, more guys came in to the restaurant, who were also band members and they switched out players on the drums.




Slowly, the waiters from the restaurant started gathering in our private room to watch and I think they were just as much in awe at what they were seeing as we were. How many times in your life will you hear a West African band break out in a Chinese restaurant? The owner would occasionally peek his head in to observe...he did not seem particularly pleased with what was going on since he had a restaurant full of people whose conversations I'm sure were drowned out by drum beats and singing but he never asked them to stop which I was really impressed with. Soon, the dancing began and they got us white people to carry a beat with clapping our hands which was a small feat!




Alan's colleague's fiance is an acrobat and specializes in dancing so he soon was doing all kinds of wonderful things with his body including picking up one of the serving tables and dancing with it on his forehead! Some of us white people joined in the dancing which was very funny and the waiters definitely got a kick out of watching us dance.





After they finished, Alan quickly took a seat at one of the drums and proved that he actually has some natural drumming talent. The guys took turns giving Alan some pointers and we were all hysterically laughing as Alan showed off his skill.






We ended the night at a local street bar nearby, called Lizzy's. where the people overflowed onto the street dancing and drinking local brews. But we luckily had warmed up our dancing skills at the Chinese restaurant and had a great time partying with our new friends! I'm sure this is only a small taste of what is to come at Alan's colleague's wedding which will be here in June.

The Ghanaian Return Policy

Although it may not seem like a thrilling adventure to include in a blog, but shopping for home furnishings has actually taught me quite a lot about the Ghanaian way of doing business and has supplied me with many laughs along the way. In the last two weeks I have entered many many shops and encountered many shop keepers and sales people and have finally begun to grasp how business is conducted here. I have to admit, my first few shopping experiences were a little intimidating and frustrating because when you enter a store, most of the time, you are not acknowledged and almost never are you asked if you would like some help. It appears that customer service looks different here. The few times someone has approached me to ask me if I needed anything I was stunned and barely knew what to say. I almost took them up on it even though I didn't need any help just because I had the option to. I have learned that if you want something or need help while shopping, you have to be assertive and very very patient. You also have to be prepared to visit the store many many times before you actually walk away with what you want and need. For example, I've been looking for lamps which are not easy to find here and are quite expensive. Finally someone recommended a store that exclusively sells lamps so I was thrilled! I made it to the store and was pretty impressed to have found such a place. I started browsing and casually looked for a salesperson but didn't see anyone out on the floor assisting people. I decided to be patient and to keep looking around in the hopes that one of the employees would notice me and approach me to assist. I found a whole section of floor lamps, which is what I was looking for for the last week, and found them all to be reduced so I was even more excited. But, I couldn't figure out how to turn any of them on and had some questions. So I walk over to what appears to be a sales desk but the salespeople were engaged in a casual conversation with a customer but in a local language I couldn't understand. So I figure I'll wait and eventually they will acknowledge that I'm standing there. So I wait and wait and wait and none of them look at me and I don't want to be rude and interrupt but now it is getting ridiculous because they are laughing and clearly not conducting business with this guy. So finally I get the guts to say "excuse me, can someone assist me with looking at lamps?" The salesperson says to me, "yes, just speak to the salesperson" and goes back to his conversation with the other customer. I'm thinking, "who are you then?" and I don't see a salesperson! So I go wander over to the lamps again and finally the one salesperson comes over to me and I ask him a few questions. He is at this point quite helpful and attentive. So I find a lamp I'm interested in buying but am curious about their return/exchange policy. He laughs at me and says they don't officially have such a policy but he could do me a favor. I'm thinking, "wow, what a nice guy" and he says that in no way would I receive my money back but I could exchange the lamp for a more expensive item! I started laughing out loud and he was smiling too because it was so ridiculous. So basically the policy is that if my lamp was $100, I cannot just exchange it for another item of equal value but must pay for a more expensive item to replace my lamp. Ok...good to know what the "policy" is. So then when I'm ready to make my purchase the salesperson brings me to the check out desk to pay and the woman misread the bill and almost charged me only a fraction of what the lamp cost. Luckily for her, I pointed out her mistake. Then I was guided to another desk which is where you hand them your receipt and they go fetch your lamp for you. One of the guys brings me a dusty old box with what appears to be my lamp inside but the box looks like it has been opened a re-taped numerous times. I had an instinct that this was the last of this kind of lamp they had in stock and was correct. I just had a bad feeling that when I got home, this lamp would not turn on and then I'd be stuck with the Ghanaian Return Policy. So I asked the guy what would happen in that scenario and he just sort of gave me a look like, "then you'd be out of luck." So I asked them nicely to take the lamp out of the box and plug it in for me which they did with a few rolls of the eyes but I was pleasantly surprised when the lamp in fact worked.

Then there was shopping for fabric to have curtains made. I entered one store in which I received an unusual amount of attention and assistance. I had three sales people all pointing to fabric asking me if I liked them. One women pulled out a display book of sample fabrics to look at so I spent some time browsing through them and actually liked a few of them. After about 5 minutes of looking and her showing me what the book had to offer, she told me that their store doesn't actually carry any of the fabrics in that book. Hmmm...I'm not sure why we looked at that book at all but they didn't seem to think it strange to show me products they don't actually carry,

Sometimes the experiences here can be made more frustrating because of communication problems and different concepts of time which we'll probably get accustomed to after some time. We laughed when one of Alan's colleagues told him the story of when he asked his driver to pick up a "large tube of Colgate toothpaste" and the driver came back with two large bottles of Coke...this was clearly a communication issue and I guess the driver somehow heard "large," "tube=two" and "Colgate=Coke."

Alan commissioned a table to be made by a carpenter that works for his company and we were to pick it up yesterday from the man's workshop which he said was a few minutes from Alan's plant. So we borrowed his colleague's truck and driver to pick it up. The carpenter told Alan to call him Saturday morning at 8am to arrange the morning pick up. Alan called him at 8 and asked it we could pick up the table at 9:15am and the carpenter told us no problem. So the driver arrived with the truck promptly at 9am and we called the carpenter to get directions. He told the driver (now we are actually in the car ready to go) that he would not be ready until 10:30! It turns out he was not even in Accra but a few towns over and had no way to come in to Accra quickly. Alan got on the phone with him and flipped out a little and explained we had just spoken to him an hour ago, and he said 9:15 was fine. Apparently, there was a miscommunication. So we drove for an hour outside of Accra to pick him up at the side of the road and then he directed us for another 30 minutes to his workshop which was literally a work bench in the back yard of someone's shack in a little village. We had hoped that the last 30 minutes had gotten us partly back towards Accra given he had said it was only a few minutes away from Alan's plant, but they laughed at us when we made that assumption, and apparently we had gone even further outside of the city! Oh well, all in all it was a bit of an unexpected Saturday morning adventure and we got a perfectly made table and bedframe for $100!

All of these experiences are really great in that we're learning so much about various parts of Ghanaian culture and are just taking everything in stride. There is really very little use in getting frustrated or angry in any of these types of situations (although that is easier said than done) and so we try to laugh when things like this happen. I can already tell that I am becoming a better Ghanaian shopper because I've learned to be assertive, ask a lot of questions, and repeat back what I am told even though we're speaking English, to make sure I understand. Now, I just have to work on my bargaining skills!

St. Patrick's Day

Alan and I joined his colleagues at a St. Patrick’s Day party last Friday that the Irish Society of Ghana put on. There were about 200 expats from all over the world in attendance. Alan’s company was one of the sponsors so there was plenty of beer and liquor. Although we were really looking forward to the party it was a bit of a disappointment mostly because it was unbearably hot! It was unfortunately held at an outside venue with no breeze except for the few ceiling fans that the attendees fought for space under. Everyone, women and men, were soaked in sweat and even the cold beers didn’t help cool us off. It wasn’t really the way you wanted to meet people and make first impressions but we made the most of it and afterwards checked out an Italian owned restaurant/bar were we enjoyed a drink in the much needed air conditioning.

Beads, Beads, and More Beads

Thursday I went on an outing with Liz (from the flight to Accra) and her friend, Ana, who has lived in Accra for 3 years. They invited me to drive with them to a bead market in Koforidua about 1 ½ hours north of Accra. Even though I don’t normally get excited about beads, it sounded very interesting for a few reasons: 1) Ghana is known for their spectacular beads, 2) it’d be a chance for me to see an area outside of Accra, 3) I could use the company, and 4) I would be able to drill Ana with all my questions about what it is like to live in Ghana as an American expat. They picked me up at around 8:30am and we proceeded to battle traffic to get out of Accra for the next hour or so. We went through small villages, almost like shantytowns, that were fascinating. There was a hustle and bustle to each one…people selling their wares on the street, going about their business, school children making their way to school and socializing, etc. One thing about Ghana is that you can buy absolutely anything and everything on the street from world maps, belts, shoes, bags of water, food, games, etc. As I tried to soak the scenery all in on the drive, I was able to learn an incredible amount from Ana about living in Ghana as an expat. I took notes furiously so I could try to remember all that she was telling me. We eventually made it into the beautiful countryside that was green and lush and very hilly. The road was in surprisingly good condition making it easy for their driver, Samuel, to cruise around tight turns and pass slower moving vehicles on the wrong side of the road. When we arrived at the market, there were stands after stands with beautiful colorful beads laid out on the tables. It was extremely hot this day so we were all dripping in sweat but were really fascinated by the variety of glass and metal beads. As I walked around, many of the vendors would try to entice you over to their selection but honestly, after a few strolls down the lanes of vendors, they all started to look the same. We picked a particular vendor that Ana seemed to know about and admired the collection. There were other “obruni’s” (or white people) also looking and buying and clearly this bead market was well known but enough off the beaten track that the obruni’s were sparse. Later, I read that there is a bead factory nearby that supplies many of the beads that make it to the U.S. and Europe and that it is a destination to tour. They recycle glass and bake it into beautifully shaped, colored, and painted beads. I bought some strands even though I have no idea yet what I’ll do with them. I practiced my bargaining skills and crashed and burned at one stand but did fairly well at the next. I’m slowly getting the hang of it.

Afterwards we “lunched” at a little hotel/conference center not too far away that had a beautiful setting. We were surrounded by lush hillside and had a slight breeze that relieved us from the stifling heat. It was a really great day for a lot of reasons one of which was that I learned that Ana has many contacts that she has made in her time living in Ghana that she is willing to share with me. I told her that I was hoping to do some volunteer work with NGO’s in Accra and where my interests were and she immediately was able to rattle off names of people that do work right up my alley. I hope to stay in contact with her throughout my stay here. Who knew that that the cancelled Delta flight at JFK would have resulted in making new friends and contacts in Ghana! It is funny how things work out.

Setting Up House in Ghana

Without Internet at our apartment (we hope to have it in a few weeks), I had given up on being able to update my blog. But, I discovered yesterday that the local mall across a few busy streets from our apartment has a Wi-Fi spot I can connect to for a small fee. Although it is a little cumbersome to trek over to the mall by foot, risking life and limb because traffic here is not pedestrian friendly (pedestrians do not have the right of way it seems), I’ve decided it is worth it to share some of my early experiences in my first week living in Ghana. This entry is fairly long because I’ve been collecting some thoughts and stories from the first week.

After a very long and somewhat stressful journey to Accra, including a cancelled flight due to rain and gail force winds at JFK and making a new friend along the way, Liz, who was visiting her friend Ana who lives in Accra now, I was so overjoyed to see Alan waiting for me at the airport! When we got outside, I was happy that I had already visited Accra because things were at least somewhat familiar to me, which was comforting. The heat hit me immediately. The traffic was heavy (and as I soon realized, traffic is always heavy in Accra) as we drove to our apartment building. When we arrived to the apartment building called Villagio Primavera (it’s an Italian owned building) it is like stepping into another world - immaculate landscaping, paved sidewalks, and balconied highrise apartment buildings all surrounding a resort-like swimming pool area equipped with even a restaurant/bar. Guards sit at the entrance of each building. Fancy cars are parked around the complex and everything is very clean! It appears that almost only expats live here.

The apartment is bigger than I remember from my first trip to Accra in October. It is virtually empty because our furniture has not arrived yet. So the set-up is some borrowed furniture from the realtor and Alan’s colleague and a hard foam mattress (the mattress of choice in Ghana) on the floor in the bedroom. Needless to say I have my work cut out for me to make this place homey and comfortable. So. the first week here has really consisted of figuring out how to set up house in Ghana and luckily, our temporary driver, Assoun, was able to take me from store to store looking for everything from dishes, to towels, to groceries, to curtains. I’ve been frequenting the Accra Mall, which is a modern and fairly Western looking place although very small in comparison to the malls one might find in the U.S. or other Western countries. There are a few basic clothing shops, home goods shops, a pharmacy, gifts shops, and a major grocery store called Shop Rite and a homewares shop called Game (where the motto is “you always win”). All in all, my first shopping trip to Game (which is comparable to Target in the U.S.) cost me almost $200, which is what Assoun makes a month as a driver. Needless to say I felt pretty embarrassed when he met me at the checkout counter to help me carry my things and the bill was totaled. Especially when you consider that the household odds and ends that I bought were not even complete necessities but were just luxuries we are used to having.

Having a driver is common for the expats living in Ghana most likely because driving here takes serious skill and experience. (Side Note: Alan and I decided to take the car out by ourselves this past weekend to just go to the grocery store at the mall and although we successfully made it there, on our way out of the shopping center, we wound up on a toll road that had no exit until the next town so an hour later we finally made it back to our apartment safe and sound!) Luckily for us, Assoun navigates the unmarked roads (both paved and dirt) in Accra like we will likely never be able to do.

Assoun is now aware that Alan is completely scared of mosquitoes…well not really mosquitoes, as much as getting Malaria. And we have discovered that the mosquitos love to congregate in our doorway so that when you open the door to exit or enter the apartment they all fly into the apartment. So Assoun and Alan have devised a system where when Assoun knocks on the door to retrieve Alan in the morning, Alan peaks his head out and sprays insect killer all over the place and Assoun swats the mosquitoes until they feel the coast is clear and then Alan runs out the door. We even tried to rig a mosquito net on the outside of the door but that made it even worse. I think it’s a lost cause and just one of many things we will grow accustomed to.

Another thing to grow accustomed to is having a maid which is also common for expats living here. Rita has come to us via some of Alan’s colleagues who she also works for. She is a very sweet young woman, also soft spoken, who refers to me as “madam.” I attempted to teach her how to use the washing machine that I had spent all morning reading the manual for but she clearly knew more than me about it. I told her there was no need to separate the lights from the darks because all the clothes we were washing were old and had been washed plenty of times and would not bleed. At least they never did when I washed them at home! But apparently, washing clothes on a setting where the water is 90 degrees Celsius makes clothes bleed so due to my insistence that the clothes didn’t need separating, I turned everything pink and purple! I’m sure Rita was laughing to herself especially because I just completely confirmed the stereotype Ghanaians have of white people, which is that we can’t do anything ourselves. She then asked me if I had any ironing for her, which I laughed at because I don’t even have an iron or an ironing board yet. She seemed somewhat disturbed by this and I later learned that the maids here take much pride in outfitting their employers with ironed clothes. I was told by an expat living here much longer than me that Rita may have been quite distressed by not being able to iron our clothes because having us go out with wrinkled shirts makes her look bad. I quickly bought an iron and board! Rita gets paid the equivalent of $11 for the whole day of cleaning our apartment which I can’t really comprehend yet and apparently we pay her more than many other maids get paid here. She did an excellent job though and I’m happy to not have to do all the heavy cleaning. And it turns out she knows how to sew which I really want to learn how to do since the fabrics here are beautiful. She saw me knitting a baby sweater and wants to learn how so maybe we'll trade skills.

A Week and Counting

If all goes as planned, I'll be embarking on my 11 hour plane trip to Ghana in exactly 1 week from right now...this very moment! That thought gives me some butterflies but I'm incredibly excited at the same time. While Alan, my husband, has already been in Accra for the last month getting settled, I have been visiting with my parents in Georgia and am completely removed and unprepared for what life will be like in a short week's time. Luckily my attempts to have regular phone calls with him have begun to get me in the right mind set. For example, I am already frustrated with even just our ability to reach each other via phone or internet, which I've been told to get prepared for in Ghana, as there are constant frustrations with regular daily tasks like this. Alan and I thought we were so smart by buying the Magicjack phone system - maybe you've seen commercials on T.V. - but basically it works by just plugging a regular landline phone into the computer and getting a local U.S. number from which you can call the States. However, we soon realized that you actually have to have a decent internet connection for the thing to be of any use and decent internet connections are not easy to come by in West Africa. So after faithfully trying for several days with the crappy hotel internet connection, we gave that up and figured Skype would definitely work. Well, our Skype conversations went just as terribly because the internet was not strong enough for that either. So, I've resorted to buying phone cards online and needless to say, they also carry their own problems. Usually it takes 3-4 tries before we can hear each other and then midway through the conversation I only hear every other word which makes for a very frustrating conversation. Oh...and this is not to mention that I didn't realize that all my calls on my cell phone to the 1 800 access line were using up all of my minutes so my phone bill is off the charts. But, really all of this frustration is worth it for a few minutes of chat time with my husband even if we can only hear every third word.

So in the meantime as I wait for the days to pass before I board my plane, I've been trying to think of every possible item that I may want but won't be able to find in Africa and buying enough to last me a few months at least. I've also finished my vaccinations and got the dreaded anti-malarial pills. After much wavering back and forth between one pill, Larium, that can cause vivid dreams, paranoia and anxiety and another pill, Malarone, which is $8.50 a day and isn't really meant to be taken long-term, I decided to opt for the vivid dreams, paranoia and anxiety one. Then I made the mistake of reading about it online the same night I took my first pill and realized that now I'm anxious and paranoid and am probably going to have scary dreams about being paranoid and anxious. But, fortunately, I have no vivid dreams to report yet...I'll be sure to include them in my posts though if I have them!

So hopefully my next entry will be post-arrival in Ghana, but as I am prepared to deal with, I probably won't have any internet access for several weeks so I will try to remember all the good stories for reporting once we get some internet in our apartment.