Today was the first day we did work. Our orientation, which I’ve been waiting for for a while now, finnaly happened, although this was after a good 3 hour waiting on our part, and then another hour or so postponement on the Directors part, as I had fallen asleep from the waiting. There’s a lot of Godot in Ghana…
We were eventually, but briskly summonsed to the office, a
sunlight room on the other side of the house, equipped with office chairs,
desks, a fan and nothing else. The plan is to move to bigger premises because
this office is too easy to break into apparently. The security in this country
amuses me, because we are always to ensure that we lock the gate after someone
has left, and at night we have to lock our bedroom door too, but when someone doesn’t
have a key etc they are just supposed to jump the wall… As a South African from
barbed wire culture I cannot get my head around this system…
The work we’re to do seems to involve creating a human
rights website, so right now we’re doing all the research to eventually have a
human rights library both physically and online. Its really interesting
although research isn’t my forte. Apparently we will also do things like field
trips to all sorts of Human Rights places, like to a free-lawyers firm, to the
witch compound (this one freaked me out too, turns out women who could be witches
are imprisoned for their evil doings, like if their husbands die), to the
courts etc. It all sounds incredibly interesting if I could even stomach it,
but luckily I probably have a long wait before it happens, so I can acculturate
a bit.
We spent the afternoon doing research. We didn’t eat lunch,
or move, or anything. The beginning stages of getting into a lifestyle that
belongs to someone else are always somewhat awkward. Eventually at 3.30 our
director came back to the office-room and said that when we felt like it we
should go out to find some lunch. We immediately agreed. At our request he took
us to your average Ghanaian restaurant, and left us there. It was fantastic,
cool, low seating, chilled. The meal (including drinks) came to 2Cedi’s each
(about 10Rand, or 1.4dollars). It was legit however. First we ordered at the
bar counter where huge tubs of all of the dishes sat. Then we sat down and
someone bought us over bowls of water and clean towels, and we soaped our hands
and dried them. Clean and ready. Instantly our food was bought, 2 mounds of
dough called Banku, and a bowl of Groundnut Soup. The Aim of the game is to break
of a piece of Banku, dip it in the Groundnut soup, and devour. Fantastically
filling, amazing flavours, (not yet used to them but I’m sure I soon will be).
And although it’s sticky enough to get stuck on your fingers (kind of like matza-balls, less sticky than pap, but a similar idea) you can always
wash your hands with your personal water bowl after the meal. Also, coke in
glass bottles was a childhood luxury.
The next little adventure of the day was when our new
routine of daily walks took us to the teeniest bookshop, almost like a
tuckshop, or corner spaza, a self-standing building amongst fruit stores,
hidden behind the tro-tro (intercity
kumbi taxi’s). It was a tiny utopia. After an hour or so browsing (this
involved moving shelves, standing on chairs, un-pilling and re-pilling books,
to see all that was on offer in the teeny tiny space) I left with Waiting for
Godot (I couldn’t not) and Brave new World. My friend got a book entirely on
Existentialist Philosophy. See the pattern?
And then we bought toilet paper, and a bag of water sachets,
15kl worth. We carried it home on our heads, only to find that in our absence,
the Director had restocked the fridge with another billion or so of these
sachets.
It’s night time now. The mosquitoes here, don’t play by the
rules.
No comments:
Post a Comment