Slow Days

Our days have been fairly slow these last few weeks now that the wedding and wedding cake have finished. We've filled most of our days and nights with World Cup Soccer which ceases to entertain us. I am not sure if it is just that we are surrounded by World Cup enthusiasm here or because we have nothing else to do, but we are glued to the TV most nights and weekends. Especially now that Ghana has forged forward, the matches are that much more exciting. For most of the Ghana matches we've gotten together with friends to watch. So for the last game Ghana vs. U.S. we appropriately went to our American friend, Dyane and her Chilean/British husband's apartment to watch the game with their Czech friend. We were all routing for Ghana and it was great fun as we munched on snacks I made (spicy chicken kebabs, potato salad, and a Moroccan carrot salad!). We were literally on the edges of our seats the whole match and when we (I mean Ghana here) won, we put our ears to the windows to listen to Accra explode in noise and cheers. Then Frank, our driver, called me and just started screaming "Madame!!! We won!!!" and then he hung up. He later told me he was too excited to talk much more than that. See...this is the reason I supported Ghana and not the U.S. I knew that a win for Ghana would mean so much to the Ghanaians and I suspect it would mean much more for them than for Americans. I'm sure there are some Americans who would be overjoyed but since Ghana is the last African country in the tournament, I think Ghanaians feel that they are carrying some heavy weight and responsibility to carry on the dream here.

Otherwise, I've been plugging along at the NGO I'm working with, Chance for Children. I've been putting in about 10 hours a week between meetings with their staff and doing program development work at home. I am working with their Street Outreach Team to tighten up their program and bring some structure to it. This includes making lots of forms for accountability, clarifying the services they provide, and creating systems for doing their work. I find it a mix of excitment and great frustration at times. It has been a huge learning experience to work with Ghanaians and I think this is mostly because the work ethic is somewhat different and also because they've been operating without so many simple procedures and documentation systems for so long. Many of my frustrations have been similar to Alan's at his job and our other friends here and we continue to engage in interesting conversations and debates about why the work ethic differs from ours in the U.S. so much. But, despite the frustrations, I have really enjoyed the staff I'm working with. They seem to appreciate my efforts and are giving my new ideas a try so we'll see how it works out.

On another front, my Mac computer crashed last week so that was a bit of a disaster since I have almost nothing backed up. Of all things, there happens to be an official Apple Store in the mall here so I took it to them and they said the hard drive is likely dead. But, I refuse to give up and will take it home in September to get it checked out again.

And finally, the most exciting bit of news is that Alan and I are headed to Morocco on Thursday for 10 days. We were able to find a little slice of time in Alan's work schedule to get away for the first time and the vacation is much needed (probably more for Alan but it will be great for me too!). And of course, as expected, just even booking the tickets was a unique experience here. The Moroccan airline, Royal Air Moroc, actually has an office here. We tried looking online to check flights times but nothing was listed for Accra. So after 2 visits to the office to get information we finally decided to buy the tickets. Then I found out they don't accept credit cards so we'd have to pay in cash. But this was quite a large purchase and the ATM's only give 10 Cedi bills (the equivalent of about 8 USD) and they only give out a max of 400 Cedis at once so after taking cash out several times and filling my purse with bills I headed to the office where they proceeded to count my wads of cash and handed over the tickets.

So we're packing our bags and preparing for an incredible time. We'll be sure to post pictures and stories on the blog when we return!