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.