When It Rains

·        The Rain

I read my guidebook the night before, woke the others up to confirm their attendance, and woke early the next day for our semi improv adventure. This time, it was a Real adventure. We got to Aburi, a small transport crossover town where we negotiated transport and then hopped on the vehicle that was to take us to the wrong place. People were complaining, lets go, come on, lets just get in, and I was debating the Right place and so we ended up in Memfe, an even smaller village, with only one way out. A helpful man’s son took us (six) squished into his tiny taxi to an unmarked path through a corn field. With my weak Twi, and many hand-gestures all ‘round we negotiated for him to wait for us to return (as there were no other taxi’s on the road. At all) And lo and behold, there stood the object of our missioning; the palm tree with 6 heads. It was amazing, we all played, climbed jumped from it, fitted all 6 of us onto it, one person per branch. I spent a little more time then I wanted to being the group photographer, the one who must stay down whilst the others climb up. I tried not to let it make me sad. Because it was very beautiful.

And then back on the road (we were SO pleased to see our driver when we came out from the cornfield) and to the next town North. This one has tons and tons of fruit and vegetable stores, and for some reason, tons of white tourist types. We got out of there and headed to the big town on the region, Koforidua. It was great, bustling with this and that, I love seeing these things through the eyes of the first timers, like our newest housemates. I got to get excited again over the coconut system, and the street mielies, and the beads, and markets. Once satisfied in our tummies and souls it was back on the road for the Boti waterfalls. (We had had to change our mind from the other Falls we were heading to as the only way to get there was from the first city, Aburi which we’de long since left behind. Boti was supposed to be most beautiful, but this title makes in to be flooded with tourists, something that all tourists like myself hope to avoid…) We got there, successfully enough but were greeted by an outrages entrance price. The handy guide-book mentioned another Falls, 2km’s away and we decided to check that out instead. And so we walked, and walked, the tar road on which trucks occasionally sped down was bordered by thick and lush forest, or jungle even. Impenetrable it was so thick. But, out of the corner of our eyes, a mysterious path jutted out. We went to ‘take a look’ which turned into our real adventure. Wound down paths, racing after the promise of the view, which we’d glimpse between patches of thicket. Suddenly the sky growled with thunder (not to be melodramatic or anything) and we all pretended not to hear it. Untill it started to pour down. Because when it rains in Ghana, it pours.  We raced back, and took shelter under a tree 101# not to do in lightning storms. We ate chocolate and planned our lives. It settled down and we voted to head back into adventure land, leaving the prospect of a waterfall behind us, and a quest ahead. We slipped and slided through the mud, saved a bird trapped in a spiders web, found a hidden corn field, a tiny snake, and the most incredible view, layers of mountain above us with clouds coming in to nestle between the valley cleavages. We headed back before it started pouring, which meant ofcourse that we were on our way back,( through mud, above a cliff, and between thorn bushes) when it actually was pouring. Because in Ghana when it rains…. I have no idea how we all made it out of there in one piece (six pieces?) because, thinking back, it was a bit of a silly thing to do, but a successful one, so we can call it an adventure, and not a mistake. We trekked down the tar road, flagging down any vehicle, going any direction. Unsuccessfully. We looked pretty stupid. Eventually we walked past a commune of sorts and were invited to take shelter. We waited out the storm, and I got to help them crush dried mielies to make traditional food like Banku and Kenke. Eventually, they put us into a tro- tro, heading back to Koforidua. We were permitted into the University bathrooms to change out of soaking clothes, and headed back at nightfall.

The Gates

·        The Adventure

4 Hours later and not yet done

The Adventure was to be the trip to Cape Coast, the trip that our Director has been promising to take us on since our arrival. Finally, after 4 weeks of postponement; we were in the car and ready to leave. I fell promptly off to sleep (something I was to regret later), and was awoken 2 hours later as the car came to a stand still. And still in continued to stand… for another 6 hours. I’ll not bore you with the details of the broken engine cover incident (2 hours) or the replacing the battery process (2 hours) or the engine-starter-issue (3 hours, and the problem all along) or the other 5 individuals who came and went to help, and add feedback, and stand around peering into the bonnet, as men do. I tried this out for a while as well, it did make me feel like I was significantly contributing to the repair process until I got sunburned, and returned to my musings in the shade of the vehicle interior. As you’ve probably already got the point, I needn’t continue to mention the treacherous towing journey, or how the tow-truck, too, broke down, or how after arriving in Accra we got lost for a good 50 minutes at the wrong tro tro station.. Cape Coast will continue to be a myth, and aspiration, a mirage

The Obruni's and Ghanains at the wedding

·        The Matrimony

Vul'indlela wemamgobhozi  (Open the gates, Miss Gossip)
He unyana wam (My baby boy)
Helele uyashada namhlanje (Is getting married today)

Vulindlela- by Brenda Fassie

It reminded me of my Matric Dance and I avoided putting my dress on until the very last minute. When we were ready, three of us, in matching fabrics we awkwardly stood around taking pictures to send to family before walking up our road, ducking and dodging the comments from passerbys. Although, Obruni’s in matching traditional attire were no more out of place then those in your average shirts.  The only surprise people expressed was at my bare feet, but this I’m used to. We arrived and looked for the people with whom we’d find camouflage.

This was a traditional Muslim Wedding. In Ghana how the party works is that every person who gets to invite guests gets an amount of fabric, which they offer out, an invitation. Therefore, every group of people at the wedding is identified. The groom’s mother’s guests were extensive in number, 30,40 women decorated in greens and blues with competing headdresses, each ones bigger than the next. The groom’s friends, all young and beautiful men in flowing jalabiyas with shiny brown head coverings. We, along with my colleague who invited us, and all his equally extravagant gay friends were adorned in pinks and greens and sat with the friends of the bride’s mother. The wedding was massive, it took place in a square in town that I think usually funtions as a trade and transport centre, and inbetween the wedding happenings, the usual hawkers with plantain-chips on their heads walked by. The bride sits at one side and the groom at the other and then they are together to walk from the one side to the other, whilst all around them their adoring guests gather with iphones, and cameras and kisses and children to see the beautiful couple. And they were completely gorgeous. And if I thought the guests looked extravagant, the couple looked even more so, 10 times. For each of their walks they change into another amazing outfit, the number depending on their wealth. I reckon these guys were pretty wealthy because we’d left the wedding before they’d gotten close to their tenth. On my side however, it was a little disastrous. I ended up eating a whole load ’a meat hidden in my rice, when I returned to the table after a pee-break and found my housemates having eaten the plates with the plain rice… (This isn’t the first time here that I’ve carnivored it up, and each mishap results in 3 days of sickness). Also, my dress ripped a little when tripping over an elaborate woman on my way to the table, but sitting cautiously and draping my scarf casualty over my shoulder ensured that not too many people saw my ass. That is, until I got into the tro tro, at which point it proceeded to rip from the slit under the butt, all the way to the clasp at my back. That’s right, Fully. I covered myself in scarf, and missi

oned home, but it was the most uncomfortable I’ve been in my life. Obviously. My roommates didn’t seem to care either, or allow me to stop to buy cloth of some sort.

Looking good comes at a price, dahlin’.

·        The Power

We got off work nice an early because the power was off for the first few days of the week. It was great. Finally got a bit of time to sit, and do nothing, and BE, at home.

This is Sowah Unity Rasta. On the way home from some Live Regae

It was so relaxed that I even recruited a mission with my housemates to meet up with my Rasta (from the beach, and the Reggae night) a place called Bywells, an outdoor bar with a dance floor and a nook where live musicians play away the night. Thursday Night Live Jazz had many old school classics (we arrived to a jazzy ‘Lean on Me’) and watched aging expatriates, mixed Ghanaian/European middle-aged couples, a few student types, some hookers, and a few Ghanaian Rasta’s dance together. I even got up to dance with a Jamaican Jew to Brenda Fassie’s Vulindlela!

·        The Asylum

On the only day that I did real work in the office, I interviewed my client, the Liberian Refugee again. On my previous trip on his behalf (to the Refugee Board) I had learned of the holes in his application, how he had had not appealed his rejection of Refugee Status application, how he had not shown up to the interviews, how he had taken years before trying the processes. I was ready to meet a fellow who didn’t put enough effort into his appeal for Refugee Status in Ghana; however this was not the case. All the gaps turned out to be from lack of information, no way of knowing the procedures. It infuriates me how much people can screw with those without any status.

·        The Education

The last 2 days of the week were spent in the conference hall of the Coconut Grove Hotel, for a conference on the role of Community Organisations (NGO’s) in Education. That’s right, two days. It took a lot of time, me and my South African were by far the youngest people there. I learned a lot about NGO’s as a whole, but as Education is something I know very little about, the rest I struggled to remain focused in. However, despite my lack of knowledge, I noticed that I was no further behind any of the older folks in Group Discussions or Partner Discussions. I think I was just lucky enough to be in the weaker groups, but I was a little disappointed by the innovativeness (or lack thereof) in ideas there. But I was impressed with the power that NGO’s seem to have as a whole body. The theme of the day was how the government NEEDS the NGO’s in order to do their work properly, interesting perspective, and would be very inspirational, if I hadn’t been falling asleep..

·        The Additions

 We are one house-mate down, and 2 new additions. My Canadian homo bilingual law student, who was my favourite person with whom to have late night conversations and vent-sessions has departed for his own adventures. But we now have one more girl (I struggle to remember the time when it was just me and 3 burly men) who is an 18year old (the youngest in the house) Californian-Canadian, who reminds me of the Berkeley-ites of my past, with peroxide blond hair, a tattoo on her chest, and a face piercing. She’s cute and quite but also seems to have a big soul. The other morning, to my surprise I was awoken by a phone call to ‘Open the Gate!’. A new gay boy (what is it with Ghana, the homophobic Christian state and all these Western homo boys??). He’s of Japanese origins, but attends Brown University.

This Sunday was the first day since my arrival where we breached the conversation topic on Love Life

Bebesithi angeke ashade vul'indlela -- People said he would never get married but open the gates

Its crazy how after spending a month with some of these people we had all avoided the topic entirely.  I enjoyed the one on one interrogations but when it resulted in the usual debates about open relationships and human social programing, or long distances and the effectiveness thereof I floated in and out. We drank a lot of sweet box wine, and ate pasta which the New Yorkan Social Justice housemate cooked. It was interesting to learn of the rural Ohio doctor boy’s past loveless relationships, how the first person who said “I love you” to him was a man we’d met on the side of the road, who wanted money to buy ice cream. And of Brown, the Japanese kid who spoke for hours on what love feels like, even though we’d only met him two days ago. But I suppose, adventures bond people in amazing ways.

The 6 Headed Palm Tree

 

Walking the Walk

This week tumbled through the wind in a gentle flurry.  The weekend was supposed to be strategic relaxation. We all needed a Weekend In, especially after being away all week after an adventurous weekend out just before that.  Friday night, another where I missed the spirituality of Shabbat Services, even home-made ones, maybe especially those. We spent the evening doing… shopping, in Thema Station. This is the picture; a maze of minibus taxi’s (tro-tros) parked in clumps at various angles, unified chaos. Directions to the places in question responded to by key words and hand signals, the same system that the tro-tros use, is used in the station. The plain white collard shirts, found up the 5^th Aisle on the North-Easter Side of the parking lot is at ‘Circle’*, whilst the belts and boots can be found at ‘37’ or, if that doesn’t meet your needs, also between ‘Teshie’ and ‘Accra’.

*Circle refers to the transport heading towards Kwame Nkrumah Circle, the major transport nucleus of Accra

**37 refers to the tro-tro’s heading towards the “Number 37 Military Hospital”.

However, the products one wants to potentially purchase are not necessarily grouped in categories. Walking down the potholed tar trail toward say, ‘37’, one can step over shirts spread over a sheet in the middle of the road (to me moved when vehicles hoot to pass), glance over to the sugar can sellers, blink and then there is a woman selling chillies and hard boiled eggs. On the other side a man with cellphone accessories and hairdryers. And pegs. And then more clothes, this time socks and men’s suit jackets, around the corner from the woman who had piled soap and ointment onto a table in front of her. I bought 2 smart skirts which I can wear for work; one black and knee length and one black and white and high-waisted. Our fantastic metro-homosexual friend came to join us, and I bought collard shirts to go along with it. We then ran around missioning for a black shirt for my South African, black clothes was the main purpose of this expedition but things in Ghana seem to be that everything is on offer, except the things you really need at that moment.

Getting home exhausted, it was good to sit and catch up with the housemates after a seemingly long period of absence (from our week away) but everyone was dying. We had one heart-burn, one vomiter, a diarrhoea or two, a slight fever, and many mosquito bites.

Saturday morning would have been a day for waking up late and having a long and leisurely breakfast. However, it was not. We had been invited to the funeral of the brother of the lady who cooks for us all, he was in his 20’s when he died. He is her little brother, she is 27ish and it was due to illness. People tried not to cry, funerals here are supposed to be celebrations of peoples lives. Some people have parties with drinking and dancing (my boss, the high profile lawyer even said to me ‘oh I hope you get to go to a funeral during your time in Ghana). But this was a funeral as I know them to be, with sadness seeping out from under the lids. I didn’t know the system with conduct and condolences, but human instinct, wrong or right took the lead; with hugging holding blessing wishing.

After the funeral, 3 of us; me, my South African, and the medical student from Ohio, set off on a mission to Kasoa, where I had planned to meet a woman with whom I’ve been in correspondence but never actually met. Her brother and her and a brother in law were planning to start up an NGO for Health and Education for children under five, and we had offered to help out. She was younger than I expected, and we were certainly younger than she expected, although I’m not sure they worked out exacly how young we really were. Unfortunatly that had had the impression that we were experts in things like Human Rights, Education and Health and whilst we each had a great passion (respectively) for these things; we had expected THEM to be experts, and to tell us what they want from us, what kind of general labour we could do for them. Neither party had a plan; what I’m beginning to learn is that there are so many good hearted people in Ghana, with high hopes and dreams of starting organisations and projects that help people, but they don’t know where to begin. And this both scares and inspires me; echoing my personal plans in a nerve-racking manner. Both the organisation I’m in the program with (under the Director I keep referencing) and now, these pure-hearted people in a rural neighbourhood outside of Accra. We planned to keep in touch, but until they know what they want, we can’t really help them, as much as we would like to. They want us to provide a network of volunteers, start-up advice, legal and business tips. I’d hoped that they had that, and that we can do the ground work. However, the meeting was hopefully not the end of our correspondence; the woman is so lovely and invited me to come visit her home, stay with her one day. I hope we can help, somehow.

Monday, I went to the Human Rights court, to the Registry, to the court to see the Court Clerk, to the documents office. It was really exciting because before that little adventure I had heard of none of the above-mentioned things. I’m learned that Human Rights interns do a lot of missioning to the far-out and complicated places, that the lawyers are too qualified to do. Which works great with me. It involved meeting all the people, wearing posh suits, and making politie demands. But for me it involved seeing the people who are ‘qualified’ enough to make decisions on other people’s lives, seeing how they are as humans.  And how these decisions are made. And seeing how the papers get lost along the way. And how life-affecting cases are adjourned, and people remain in prison, for months, years without even being found guilty or not.

On Tuesday I missioned to the Immigration Office, although this was personal- I needed to extend my visa that the incompetent Embassy in South Africa had issued me. And here I learned the power of power-dressing. High-waisted skirts and well-ironed shirts, got me through the process at 5x the speed of my attempts in South Africa. A bussines-man even sat next to me and discussed things like the slowness of the system, and how if ‘they can do it in the UK, why cant they do it here’ and I was like ‘ehh uhh I’m actually kinda impressed with this’.

See, just because I pretend to walk the walk, I cannot forge the talk-the talk.

Wednesday was back in the human rights court.

On Thursday I missioned, with 2 of my colleagues, also both (unrelatedly), Refugee people(!) to 3 different national news and media centres, each more official than the next -for research on a project of spousal murders.  It seems like we’ll need to return with identity documents, letters of invitation, and the incentive to read through all newspapers of the last 2 years….

But it was fun trying to find these places, with no address, or knowledge about which tro-tro to take, where.  People here are so willing to help. They will walk you to the ends of the earth if you’re lost enough, and then offer to pay your return trip to Mars. (Except for some of course, whom point you to the wrong solar system before demanding a fee. But so far these earthlings are in the minority.)

On Friday I went to the Refugee Board, it involved 6 tro-tros altogether. The biggest of missions, although not unpleasant. These things are pleasant enough if you can be patient and relaxed. I’ve been practising.  However, once I was there, it was really scary. I guess I want prepared, and they gave me all this information that I hadn’t been told of before, basically about how the client is wrong and they are right, and I said what I had come to say but I was shaken. They threatened me, they said “oh, well we should really report him to immigration to be deported” and I tried to be brave, but I was petrified. I left without saying goodbye. 

That night we went to fetch our dresses for the wedding from the weird little town we had them made. On the way back me and the American social-justice-and-dance housemate stopped at a gas-station store. I bought a bottle of wine for Shabbat and chocolate. We didn’t end up doing Shabbat, which brought about the usual unbearable nostalgia, and soon woke up at 4.30 for the adventure of the weekend…

Becomming Ghanaian

How I’ve become Ghanaian.

I now grab other people’s babies on public transport.

I can say “I come and go” in Twi: meKo&Bra

It takes me 2 hours in traffic to get somewhere 20minutes away.

I have attended a Ghanaian funeral.

I will attend a Ghanaian wedding.

I have received a Rasta-necklace, with a little cut-out of Africa, because his ‘heart told him to give it to me’.

I have attended the Ghanaian Human Rights High Court

And visited the Refugee Board of Ghana.

I have learned to mouth along to Ghanaian popular reggae and hip hop songs

And can sing along to the catchy adverts.

I have a Ghanaian name, but have learned to answer to any Ghanaian name, by simply correcting the misplaced name when someone I’ve not ever met begins a conversation. From across the street.

I return my glass bottles to the store I bought them

I casually decline offers of marriage and eternal love, from people I've just met. Or not yet met.

I eat with the fingers on my right hand

And have learned that distance and time are relative, transient. I have learned not to ask “how far it is” because, as a wise aunty said to me last night;

“it depends on how fast you walk”

But

I have not yet mastered Ghanaian sarcasm.

I have trouble remembering to use my Twi.

I have not yet tasted Okra stew, and do not have a pallet for Banku, the local favourite.

I still take offence, when someone says “white man” when we are walking

But I happily answer to shouts of ‘Obruni”, but only until telling my name. 

3-Ply Racial Issues

I’m so weirded out by racial issues in this country. It’s like Actual separation. After a lifetime of stories about segregation I feel confused and uncomfortable by the system that is unofficially in place, which seems to make everyone else more comfortable.

My colleagues and I are currently on a work-trip, staying at the most of snazzy hotels Moduk Royal Hotel, Pepease in the middle of frikken nowhere. We are doing research in the middle of nowhere, a rural setting : Birim North, New Abiram, Eastern Region, Ghana. (hope that clarifies everything!) However, our hotel is a mere one hour from the rural setting in question, which makes it extra-rural. Its all lovely however, although it does seem to be taking a while for my colleagues to warm up to me, and some of the other newbies. This should be a good bonding experience however. This being said, I am beginning to question the interpretation of bonding in Ghana. In my house here, we (the foreign volunteer types) eat by ourselves, we have still not discovered when our Director eats, or the woman who cooks for us (although we did manage to go out for ice cream and an adventure with her). But I had thought that that was just awkward program management avoidance of interpersonal relations with program interns or something….But something is amiss. There seems to be the biggest of divides between ‘obruni’s’ i.e white people in Ghana, or non-Ghanaians and the actual Ghanaians. Not only do we seem to go off for lunch to different places, but we also seem to eat separately when we are in the same restaurant!  And considering that I get unfriendly un-embracive vibes from some of the obruni’s, i.e the Australian interns, I was excitied to get to know the Ghanain staff on this trip (as I don’t see them much in the office because most of them are in the long-term office, not the intern office). But not only was the room-pairing done seemingly according to quasy-racial classification, but the Ghanains always sit on one section of the bus and the Obrunis on the other. And then at lunch today, the obruni’s sat outside, and ate with spoons, whilst the Ghanains sat inside and ate in the normal manner, with bare fingers, right hand. Me and my South African found the only space to be outside with the obruni’s, but we ate with our fingers. South Africans hey, always stuck somewhere in the middle. But it was then I learned that I couldn’t really live here. The divide is too great. There is no antagonism, no hostility, only friendliness and politeness between both sides of the divide. There is no superiority/ inferiority, no ambivalence but the difference between the people, is somehow there. Visible only on the surface, as it is only skin-deep, but after 3 weeks of being smiled at, waved at, pointed at, because I am white (it doesn’t seem to matter where I come from, not the slightest bit) I figured that in a country where race is so out there, I cannot truly be. Because it is impossible to be accepted as part of a community if you are always going to be seen as different. Not just foreign, not even strange, not rude, or sweet, or attractive, or not, but something out of the ordinary, something that is a temporary attraction, that can not belong.

Day 3 of the trip. Actually, the day after this previous post. We went out in the town for din-dins, on the street. After a lovely spree, finding weird and wonderful street food and engaging in a well needed intense discussion, we returned to the bus-area. There I saw the Ghanaians going onto the bus, although many of the obruni’s remained near the food stalls, making party-plans and other such jovial activities. I boarded the stationary bus, after the Ghanaians. My mission for the day was to befriend my colleagues, and I had been trying with the Ausies unsuccessfully for days. The lone Canadian and the Dutchman have both responded well, but the Ausies, not so much. And this time I had some questions for my Ghanaian colleagues. After fantastically easy chit chat (I’m noting this because for some reason it previously had not been easy… All chit-chat with any of my colleagues, seems to require intense amount of effort, misunderstanding and lost humour.) The funny thing was that it started as a gossipsession about my Director!!( As he had gone to school with the friendlier of the two Ghanaian ladies).  When the other Obrunie’s came back from their extended dinner, with plans to go out on the town and party it up, the locals declined and planned to stay in the bus. After I demanded a reason they urged me to go party too, but I resisted the urge to feel unwelcomed and continued to engage in conversation with them. And eventually, as happens with me, the conversation turned in the direction I wanted it… The separation issues. Here are the fascinating points of the discussion:

·         They are well aware of the separation

·         Definite Them and Us complex, enough to make light hearted jokes about it

·         Feel it’s a result of the language barrier

·         i.e they separate themselves so that they can talk vanac (which would be Twi here) without making anyone feel like they’re being gossiped about or left out or something

·         its more comfortable ofcourse to be with ‘ones own people’ and talk ones own language

·         With the back of the bus thing, its because the other people started it; they’de put their bags on the seats and thus there were no empty seats at the beginning

·         Apparently the reason I can get it, and also the girl I’m rooming with who is Korean/American, who the friendly Ghanaian girl gets along with; is because we come from a place where we are aware of the language thing, that people can simply change between languages to be more expressive etc etc.

·         However they did feel that I was incredibly observant. (which weirded me out, as it’s all very obvious)

·         We also talked about the way that the Ausies cant pronounce things, like the name Kofi which they continue to pronounce ‘coffee’ even though its pretty clear to all ears that this is not correct. Apparently when one is not exposed to other languages their tongues cannot fathom that things could be pronounced differently…

The people came back from their party, and we quickly stopped talking. Depressed, I drifted to sleep thoughtfully against the window on the journey home..

Highlights of the week as a whole included; the soccer match, males vs. females and the laughs it brought; getting what I called ‘the party room’, i.e the big cottage where eventually the friendlier of the other volunteers, both local and foreign would come chill in the interim periods; visiting the rural schools and and making the children, who had been so carefully caned and disciplined all their lives, go crazy for a day and teaching them about social activism and diversity (through a presentation on South Africa) and Times Square (the America’s presentation); being out of Accra and in the cool and beautiful Eastern Region was pretty legit too.

We came back to find our roommates, new light fittings, and a broken door handle on the toilet. Every night I am awoken by screaming from a housemate to let them out.

Office Work in the Land of Ghana

Ghana, the land of… A small sized office, a medium sized enterprise, an NGO to be exact. Air conditioned and well lit. A large table along which ‘interns’ the term for short-term (generally foreign) ‘volunteers’ sit with an array of laptops in front of them. Ghana, the land of… Apple Macs, Netbooks, and Dells. The clickey clack of high heels along the shiny tile floor as the higher staff members, called ‘officers’ bustle around the office. This causes the pages ‘facebook’ and ‘farmville’ to instantly vanish from the abovementioned computer screens and pages of jargon text line the screens once again. Ghana the land of the 8hour work day, with the half hour break. The mango-lady who waits outside just next to the entrance where the ‘volunteers/ officers’ rush down to exchange a little cash for sliced mango in a plastic bag, penetrating the sterile office with the sweet scent. Ghana -the land of meetings and ‘assignments’ ‘projects’ and tasks. And of sitting, at the initially introduced desks, and waiting, and sighing, and forcing one’s eyes to stay open. There is a lot of down-time, in the land of Ghana.

I’ve spent the week working in the office of an incredibly functional NGO that advocates for Human Rights. The first day I wondered how I was going to keep it up for the rest of my time here, I could barely stay awake for a half-day. The second day was pulsing with productivity; I received 3 different interesting assignments- an LGBT project, research on ‘spouse-killings’, a case involving a refugee and an unfair drug-sentence and a mission to transcript research previously carried out by the organisation on gender based violence. Yes, it was fascinating and I could feel learn-and grow potential. However, the rest of the week continued with down-time, the transcription was exhausting and I had no other projects to do. It involved a lot of sitting, staring meaninglessly at my screen. However, here I am, in am amazing country in an incredible NGO. It amazes me how effective it is in doing what needs to be done, sooo well run and maintained. And I’m honoured to be a part of it, again underqualified and able to sneak in round the back, (by means of the original NGO I’m supposed to be doing Human Rights work for, which has somewhat bailed on us and has yet to start up. However, this mean that our Director got us into this organisation, which we would otherwise not have gotten into. So all has worked out well.)

In terms of the Director in question, I’ll take you back to the house. There I countinue to live with my roommate, 2 hosuemates, and now one new housemate. She came last week, is from New York and is into ‘SoicalJusticeAndHumanRights’.

I think that I am happy at our little house in Avocado Street. We all get along, and I am learning to love everyone for their differences and appreciate them fully as individuals. It is still strange being in such close contact/living space with so many people after being both alone and hobo-ing in other peoples lives spontaneously for short periods of time, for the last 3 months in Israel. And whilst I still miss being along, and able to walk around by myself, and mission without confirming first with anyone else, it is also quite a blessing to always have access to company, and people to walk with me at night, and people to bounce ideas off. We have countless arguments in the house, one night we redevised the UN and the purpose of a national governing system until 4 in the morning. Another we discussed the issue of Westerner type volunteers in rural Africa. Often it ends in a debate about  refugees, before we all agree to disagree, some of us more vehemently than others…