Saturday, January 22, 2011 at 8:24am
Get up anywhere from 7-9am usually, depending on the plans for the day. Most people here are up at 5am. Too early for me to just do when I don’t have to since I’ve been up till past 2am some nights talking with friends. The sun is up at 6a and down at 6p everyday with little variation. When schools starts the time I get up will likely change but I don’t know what time my classes will be yet.
If there’s water, I’ll shower. If not, well, I won’t or I’ll use a bucket of water to shower. The water from the faucets is not for drinking and comes out yellowish. I had showers in the morning for a few days before more people started showing up. My room is up on the 3rd floor so its even more sporadic because of the pressure or lack of it really. I’ve had showers at night but sometimes it only works around 11p or 12a and then I go to sleep with wet hair which is unpleasant sometimes. It dries pretty quickly in this heat and with the help of the overhead fan in our sitting room and the 1 in our bedroom. When we run out of water we have to carry it up in buckets from the large tanks out front of the dorm. Heavy work but necessary. There are some public showers in the dorm that we haven’t tried yet. Still trying to figure out the best times for these things. I will usually slather on some sunscreen and also bug spray depending on the plan for the day. It’s a new scent I’m going to market.
For breakfast, I’ll eat a granola bar and maybe some fruit like a banana or some pineapple if we have it, maybe a piece of white bread with peanut butter, too. Depends on what we have. We get fresh loaves of bread in the market that are really good. You can get white or wheat and maybe others, too. The fruit here is amazing and I love the bananas and pineapple!! Haven’t tried too many other ones yet. Still trying to get adjusted to being here and trying new things slowly in small doses to see how I react to them. No problems so far. Yay!! Also, we’ve got water and I’ll have some of that or some juice if I have that. There are a variety of juices to be had if you want them. You can buy a carton that’s maybe half a gallon or a quart, not sure, which isn’t bad.
Or, and hang onto your hats people, there is a restaurant here that makes really good omelets with tomatoes that I’ve had a few times with toast that comes with jam and butter that I really like. For that food with a sachet of water, it’s only about 4GHC (Ghana Cedis - pronounced cds, exchange is $1=1.45GHC currently) so it’s pretty cheap and very good. The sachet of water is a little plastic bag sealed on all sides, about 4”x4” of water that fills up a standard size water bottle that you might pay $1 for in a pop machine. You tear off the corner with your mouth and drink out of it or pour it into another bottle. It’s not bad. There are empty bags all over the ground everywhere. People litter everywhere even though there are garbage cans all over. You can buy a bag of about 30 sachets for 1.5GHC which is really good and about 15 liters of water someone said today. Considering how much we drink and use for dishes and everything it’s a good thing its so cheap though paying for all our water is taking some adjusting, as are most things.
If we go out to breakfast its about a 20-25 minute walk if we are going to 1 of the little restaurants on campus. There will be more options when classes finally start as many things aren’t open yet. It will be nice to try some other places after eating at the same 2 places for most meals over the past 2 weeks. I’ve been here 2 weeks!!!!!!! Feels like longer because we do so much everyday. Anywhere we want to go on this spread out and spacious campus is a good half hour of sweaty walking with some reprieve found in the shade of the trees that are all over. If its further, it can take up to an hour or more. There are taxis everywhere and they sure like to overcharge the white people who don’t know better but we are learning and figuring that out, too. Feels great when you know you are getting a fair price. You can take the taxis anywhere on campus or into town if you don’t want to walk.
After breakfast in house, this week we had orientation so we had to walk about 35 mins to the CIE (Centre for International Education) building which is up a hill on the old campus, about 1 mile from our dorm. We are dripping sweat, literally, when we get there. Sometimes they have the a/c and the fans on but didn’t turn them on one day until they saw us fanning ourselves with pamphlets.
We say hi to many people as we are walking. They are staring anyway so we say hi and try and be nice. They are generally nice and many speak some English, though its hard to decipher sometimes and you have to listen carefully. You can tell the people who don’t know English since they say “Fine” to our “Hello” sometimes. The kids will say “Obrunie! Obrunie!” (no idea how to spell it yet) which means foreigner and generally ‘white person’ and they laugh and wave and will often say “how a’ you?” We say fine. They laugh. Or they will chant, “Hello. How are you? I’m fine. Thank you,” which is something they are taught in school. Its pretty stinking cute! They say fine all the time here for that question. I’m still trying to get used to saying that rather than good or something else. It’s the standard response.
We have sat through some fairly boring lectures during orientation with maybe 1/3 of the info pertaining to us in any way. After the lectures or whatever, we have been free to go generally and walk back to our dorms and rest. They are constantly telling us to rest and relax. I kept thinking, “Do I seem tense? Why are you telling me to relax?! I am relaxed!! I’m practically asleep right now!!” haha! So now we joke about going to rest anytime we do something. We do rest some but have been out doing a lot since we are trying to get things done before classes start and we don‘t have time to run around as much. So we might go to lunch or eat something in the room and ‘rest’ or take a taxi into town or go to 1 of the internet cafés on campus or sit around and talk and play cards. Any number of things can happen at this point. We are still finding our way around campus and finding new places to see and things to do.
Around 6pm we will either go out in search of food again or make something. The girls next door, Regina and Jessica, from Michigan, have a hotplate and some pans that we have used to heat up leftovers or to make rice and stuff. We are still trying to figure out what our options are for making food in rather than going out all the time and we‘ll get a hotplate, too. Going out all the time gets spendy after awhile, even here, and I’m not used to going out for everything all the time. Its such a workout which I’ll get used to, of course. Still feeling it on the days we do a lot. . . Which is nearly everyday. Sandwichs will be more common once I get some jam, which is available and so is peanut butter, which is a natural kind and pretty good though different from the kind I brought from home. I had pizza the day after I got here. Haha! They took me to place down the road called Sizzler and they had pizza which I was shocked about so I ordered a pepperoni one. They told me that it wasn’t really pepperoni but like a summer sausage type thing and I said that’s fine. I didn’t actually eat it till I got back to my room cuz I didn’t know what to expect and didn’t want to be rude. I tried a couple pieces and it was fine. I’ll try it again and hopefully a fresh one will be better. They usually are, even over here I think. I was shocked they had pizza though. Happy day for me!! Haha! So I’m not going to starve by any means. Even with all the walking and sweating I feel like I’ll prolly be about the same weight or there abouts when I leave, unless I get sick or something. Fried rice and ‘grilled’ chicken are pretty standard for me. The rice is good though sometimes there are too many peppers or onions in it. The chicken has been ok and even pretty good mostly.
There is also jollof rice which is cooked in a spicy stew type thing I think and comes out flavored like that which is pretty good, too, and not hot-spicy but flavored nicely. There is also plain rice that I’ve not had and often you can order fried fish, too. It comes out on your plate head, eyes, tail, guts and all. Yep. I got 1 once and picked at part of it but didn’t eat much of it. I felt bad but the head there grosses me out and I don’t much like fish anyway. I tried. It didn’t taste bad. You can also order something they call red-red which is fried plantains and some sort of a bean concoction that looks like someone already ate it and then returned it to the plate. People love it though but I can’t bring myself to try that yet. I did try the plantains and those are good. I’ve also had fried plantain chips that taste nearly like potato chips, which I’m craving btw and can’t get here easily. They add a small dab of coleslaw type salad to the meals too. Its pretty much the shredded cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, and onions with some mayo and sometimes ketchup. Odd and not very good, to me, especially with onions and ketchup. I could choke it down without the mayo too but only cuz I feel obligated. One of the guys likes the coleslaw/salad so he usually eats it.
You can order many kinds of beer here, too. They have Guinness, Star, Castle, Club, and who knows what else. Those are the big ones and none of them mean anything to me except the Guinness which I know about but don’t like. I don’t like beer at all so I don’t drink any of it. They have Coca-Cola, Sprite, and Fanta (orange soda) and they are really good. They taste a lot better here cuz the sugar they use here isn’t the high fructose corn syrup. I love the Sprite and get that often. Water is also a standard thing to get.
After dinner, wherever we have it, we are sort of in the habit of hanging out in Regina and Jessica’s room talking and playing cards till late. Sometimes we go out to a local hotspot or club or something and I only say ‘we’ cuz I went once and they have gone out for something nearly every night. I can’t do that nor do I have a desire to so I don’t go usually. I’m cool getting some time by myself so I can type these lengthy letters to you all. Haha! It really is nice to get some me time since I need that quite a lot. I’m not used to being with people all day everyday doing everything together. Its been good being able to and having people to figure things out with and I’m so grateful they are here with me!! We have a lot of fun talking about stuff and telling stories and sharing what we learn all the time.
So at bedtime, whenever that falls, I will usually take my contacts out, brush my teeth with bottled water, shower if there’s water or I feel like using the bucket, put on my full-length yoga-type pants, a tee-shirt, climb into my bottom bunk under the mosquito net, set my alarm if I need to, write in my journal for the day if I’m not too tired, cover up with my coat and maybe put my sweatshirt on and try to go to sleep. As crazy as it seems, I get cold at night and have a hard time sleeping without something covering me. They only use a bottom sheet over the mattress here, it seems, so I’ve been using the coat I brought on the plane and my fleece sweatshirt to cover up with and keep warm. We keep the fans on at night so as not to suffocate and such. Also, Abby, my roommate, and I will often talk back and forth till one of us falls asleep. So weird having a roommate now like this after all this time living on my own pretty much. I never had the dorm experience at home so its odd to have it here, in Africa. So far, I’m enjoying it. Abby is a lot of fun and has lots to say which is fun cuz I like to listen lots to everyone’s stories. Can I add a few more “lots” to that sentence or what?? Sheesh!!
Before I fall asleep, I put in my green earplugs that drown out most of the noise and allow me to sleep fairly soundly. Sounds like bugs-crickets mainly, frogs, birds - moreso in the morning, traffic, people talking, shouting and walking by my window, sometimes all at once, music that plays any hour of the day, fans in the room and any manner of other things that keep me up.
There you have it. That doesn’t encompass all of it but I think I got quite a bit there. That is a typical day in my life here thus far. Thanks for reading and sharing this with me. I’ll get another one written that tells more about some of the trips we’ve taken and such but its nearly midnight and I’m tired!! Hoping to get this sent and some photos uploaded, too. The internet is unreliable and slow so I don’t know if I’ll be able to do much with that yet. So sorry!! I know you are waiting for photos and I can’t wait to share them with you!!
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