Our First Look at Ghana

Testing, testing, one, two...

Hello and akwaaba, everyone. At long last we've been able to find an Internet Cafe at the University of Ghana, where we were able to set up this blog and update you all on our progress so far. There's a lot to cover in these first three days, so take a deep breath.

We landed early in the morning this past Friday and progressed immediately from the airport to the University of Ghana campus. We got ourselves situated in the International Students Hostel (ISH), bought cell phones at the Accra Mall and became acquainted with the leaders of Galaxy Tours. The main tour guides are named Linda and Kate, and they have been charged with the task of keeping all of us in line while showing us around their country. So far, they've done a great job. We didn't see too much of Professor Asibu, because he was feeling ill.

On the second day we visited a museum on the country's history, then went to Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, erected in memory of Ghana's first president following their independence from Britain. Following that we visited a large market selling clothes and other souvineers; the proprietors of the stands were aggressively friendly and eagerly showed us their wares. It is customary in Ghana to barter with merchants over the price of objects, and most of us did a good job with this, though we're still novices: I ended up buying a soccer (football) jersey for 15 cedis when others bought the same for 10. But it's all part of the experience. Many of the vendors were also legitimately friendly with us and chatted with us about their family, football, and Obama. Something we learned quickly is that Ghana is an incredibly friendly country.

That night we took in a performance by a traditional African dancing group, and we were all greatly impressed by their energetic, choreographed movements. Nearly all of us ended up participating in their dances.

On the third day we took a walking tour through old Accra, which included the neighborhood of Ussher and Jamestown. The residents of this densely populated area were clearly not as well-off as those in the main city. We saw kids bathing in the street and many run-down, boarded up buildings. One of the more surreal experiences of this trip so far was driving up to Jamestown in our elevated, air-conditioned bus, as the people in the streets stood in a downpour and watched us through the windows. I personally felt a sense of intrusion on their property, as well as a false aura of entitlement that we didn't ask for. I didn't feel truly at eye level with the people and their culture until we had all exited the bus and started walking around with them in the rain.

For many of us, the best part of the trip so far came later on in the third day when we attended a football game. Some of us arrived sporting our Team Ghana jerseys we had purchased from the market. The game was between two local Ghanaian teams. The home team, Kotoko, scored the first two goals and set the crowd ablaze, which gave us the time to wonder why Michigan football fans never get this excited at their games. But the opposing team, Liberty, came back in the second half, scoring three goals in succession. In the last few seconds of the game, however, Kotoko put one in the net, and the final score was a 3-3 tie. We noticed how the fans would often throw empty water bottles or bags of purified water on the field to express their displeasure at something. It's fairly plausible that none of the bottles were getting properly recycled, and this only strengthened our resolve to help establish a proper recycling program during our stay.

We had an opportunity to begin brainstorming this idea today, during our tour of the University of Ghana. In the initial steps of our plan, we will place recycling bins at various spots around campus and spread the word about their locations and purpose. Throughout the rest of this coming week we will observe the effects of plastics recycling on the campus, and we will also be making trips to recycling plants in Accra to determine the best course of action for these plastics and where to deposit them. We are still in the early planning stages for all of this right now.

Our group is starting to become very closely knit, always a good thing when traveling in unfamiliar land. Kyra, our student fellow, was often the only "authority figure" watching us in the first few days due to Prof. Asibu's illness, but she was great at keeping all of us out of trouble and I think we've all really benefitted as a group because of her. Several of the girls were very excited to get custom-made dresses from a woman at our hostel. They are pressuring us guys to buy matching MC Hammer pants.

We have been staying with the other Ghana-Kumasi group, Maternal Health, though they just left for Kumasi this morning. We will be meeting them again in Cape Coast. When our two groups are together, we total around 24 students, 2 professors and 2 student fellows, and all of us get along great. We wish our fellow student travelers the best of luck in Kumasi- they have a lot of tough stuff to cover in the coming days.

Tomorrow morning and the day after, we will be visiting nearby high schools to educate the students on the values of plastics recycling. We are preparing lesson plans as I type this. It is sure to be an enlightening experience, for both us and them. We will remain at ISH until Friday, when we will progress to Cape Coast. There has been a handful of changes to our initial rough itinerary; for one, we are now only staying with host families during the last leg of our trip, when we return to Accra. We will be in a hotel in Cape Coast, a hostel in Kumasi, and a guest house in the coastal village of Seneh Breku. There was a shortage of volunteers for host families in all other locations, which led to the change.

My apologies for our restricted Internet access at the moment. There was a lack of coordination with laptops before the trip and we're stuck using Internet cafes for the time being, which prevents us from uploading pictures and other files to the main site. Hopefully the epic length of this blog post makes up for it a little.

Be sure to keep checking this site in the coming weeks for more updates on our trip.

-Andrew Lapin (not the other Andrew, though he's also awesome)