Ghana Day 1 - Arrival 03-13-2012

Day 1 13-March 2012

Filled with travel, exhaustion and first impressions

Bottom line, we made it, in doable segments. A two hour uneventful drive to Manhattan to leave our car with our son, Max. A quick cab ride to JFK airport, with the synchronicity of having a West African cabbie, from Guinea, just west of Ghana (our African geography now doubled). Early arrive, fast checkin with Delta (our home scale worked perfectly, nudging in our checked luggage at 49 pounds). We each had packed a large backpack with our clothes for this 21 day adventure, and we realized that we had 30 lbs of clothes for each of us, and an additional 95 lbs of gifts and donations to the orhpanage where we will volunteer, and the Jewish community that we will visit on our last weekend (Shabbat). With the holiday of Passover soon coming, they requested matzah and kosher wine, one bulky, the other heavy. So, when you pass the 5 pack of passover matzah at the supermarket, you can visualize carrying this onto a very crowded aircraft and stowing it away, displacing some nice person's carryon of probably-more-urgent items. Ah well.

Our 11pm flight direct flight to Accra went perfectly, and we arrived, 9 1/2 hours later in Accra, Ghana (Greenwich Mean Time, 4 hours later than EDT). Brand new 757 plane, nice seat neighbors and plenty of inflight movies and distractions.

We met another young woman (18) , arriving from Australia for the same program, named Hannah. This was comforting as we compared notes of our expectations for the weeks ahead. She was taking a holiday between graduating high school and enrolling in a Northern California college in August. Because the seasons are reversed in Australia (southern hemisphere stuff) she had just completed her final spring semester in warm December, giving her six months of transition time before plugging into the US Fall semester.

As promised, we were greeted at the airport about 2pm by a repesentative from the volunteer program (IVHQ). and Hannah, Penny and I gathered our extensive luggage began walking towards our ride to the IVHQ volunteer center. Little did we know that we would have a half mile walk, made more interesting by a growing number of "helpers" seemingly picked up off the street who carried our luggage for us. As this entourage of eight mad our way through construction zones and traffic crossing, I was taken aside and coached that in Ghana it is appropriate to tip for service, but that this gesture also ensured God's blessings to us. $20 was suggested as an appropriate amount, and when I didn't flinch fast enough, the sentence was completed "for each helper", and when met with further silence from me, appended with "and of course an additional $20 for the security crossing guard" that we passed who ensured our safe passage through the street on the ten minute walk. I did offer $20 for the eight helpers and this was readily accepted, although each of the eight came forward as the manager of the others, and we left them to resolve who was getting what in an escalating and lively discussion. (I later learned that gratuities are not expected, and our driver and official greeter later refused money). Gee, my first learning experience.

We visited the Forex currency exchange office along the way, which was a seeming afterthought storage-shed-like addition with a bank counter, appended to a rundown building containg a convenience type store. The "teller" converted our dollars to Cedis (pronounced Ceedee's) and I inherited a wad of unfamiliar currency. Prior to leaving, our program liason implored us to count and recount. In this way, we became familiar with this colorful money, each picturing a group of six serious looking political leaders. In the States, we found that we could not do any currency exchange since the Cedi is too unstable. About 5 years ago the "new Cedi" replaced the previous Cedi at a conversion rate of 10,000 "old" to 1 "new". (Probably not a place to invest your money, unless your are short selling it. At this moment in time, a Cedi is worth about 60 cents.

At the several traffic interchanges leaving the airport, we were accosted in our car with people selling literally everything, much of it carried on their heads. Plaintains, wall clocks, prepaid cell phone cards, picture frames, soda, fried somethings on a stick, drinking water, bags of fried plantains - all being inserted through our open car windows for evaluation. We graciously declined and probably would have just closed our windows save for the 100 degree humid equatorial climate and lack of air conditioning (as well as speedometer).

We arrived at the IVHQ (our program) volunteer center in about ttwenty minutes, which was a large home, probably formerly occupied by some British political presence. The home was simple, very clean, and had elegant details from a time gone by - Tall ceilings, spacious central living room, each adorned with ornate hammered tin ceilings and a beautiful ceiling edging. There was a large table and chairs in a dining area, and a huge stainless steel refrigerator in the middle of the room, as though trying to claim itself as the focal point of the room, in much the same way as a fireplace or hearth might be the central fixture in a living space in New England. We left our shoes at the door, and were introduced to the resident mixed breed dog named Storm, who was acting quite hot, but seemed friendly in a disinterested way.

We met our program director, Edward, who was dressed in an elegant African tunic and commanded the respect of everyone present; our cook, Tina, and several other program staff who lived at the center. Tina prepared a delicious and wonderfully spicy bean dish called redred, which (to Penny's approval) was vegan/vegetarian (and did not contain any honey badger). This was accompanied by fried plantain, which is a taste cross between a banana and a sweet potato. We were hungry and ate this with relish. The central fridge contained a huge number of pint size, bagged purified water, which we also appreciated. It took a bit of logistics to drink from an amorphous water balloon, but we got the hang after a few small drenchings. We met two other volunteers staying at the center, Laura from Minnesota and Charlene from Toronto.

Both Penny and I were looking forward to a shower, and when inquiring about the hot water, we were told that the water comes on and off during the day, always in the cold variety (although it never gets really cold in this tropical climate. We reassessed out expectations to just appreciate running water, and that "cold shower" felt really good, washing off all the travel from the New York to Accra journey.

Charlene offered to take us to an "Internet cafe" so we walked about a half mile in the evening, towards the "cafe", which was a small shack on the main road. The walk involved dodging ditches on the ravine-like shoulder of the busy road, and our trip was co-guided by a young boy named Abu who lived in the Volunteer Center area. He kept himself amused with some Google Internet games while we held the network cable in our laptop port while composing a quick email to let our family know that we arrived safely. The 30 minute Internet bill for two computers was 50p, or about 30 cents. Abu stayed on with us to guide us home, pausing for a quick pee on the side of the road as he led, and dodging potholes, metal debris and small roadside streams in the pitch darkness with the dexterity of a Sherpa as we tripped and struggled to keep up.

Once home, he engaged for an hour with computer games on our laptop and iPhones, we washed up and looked ahead to a nurturing nights sleep in this new place. We hear that everyone here rises early, about 6:30. Goodbye N ew York, Good night, Accra. Hello Moon.