Madina Market

My roommate and I just went to purchase fabric and get dresses made at the Madina Market. That place is HUGE.



You can buy anything imaginable here, from fabric, shoes, and vegetables to soaps, scrubs, and fresh meat! Literally, ANYTHING YOU WANT, YOU CAN FIND HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s great. LIke a big flea market super store! :)


And, it’s only a 20 p. ride from Legon, depart at Madina Market. :)

Language is just a finger of speech -Kofi

Ghana is a developing country. I wonder if it would be offensive if I called it a developing country when I reference it in my conversations here. I haven't actually tried doing that yet, but whenever I get into discussions about Ghana versus America, or Ghana versus China (it happens often because it seems that a lot of people think I'm from China), I never refer to Ghana as being a "developing country." Is the word "developing country" or "third world country" a pretty universal term, or is it something that has evolved only in American English? Is it offensive? Would the people of Ghana find it offensive if they knew how the rest of the world classified them?

The illiteracy rate in Ghana is very high. I wonder if many Ghanaians even know how the conditions here compare to living conditions in the rest of the world. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to to try to create sanitation and hygiene programs and enforce them when many don't even understand these concepts.

There are so many issues to tackle to pull Ghana into a more "developed" state, I can't even begin to organize in my mind how I would go about solving these problems. Here is just a short list of what I've noticed so far..

Drinking water - the only water that is guaranteed to be safe is imported and packaged in plastic bottles. Bottled water is expensive here (little less than $1usd), most of the time costing more than an actual meals themselves (which range from 50 cents to $2usd). Most drinking water is sold in plastic sachets (known as pure water). These sachets are claimed to be filtered water, but research in the past has shown that over 70% of these sachets contained parasites. I drink pure water. I've gotten a couple of funny tasting bags but for the most part, it hasn't been anything that my immune system isn't able to handle. And for less than 5 cents a bag, it's completely affordable.

Sanitation and Hygiene - (In my experience...) About 98% of the time, public toilets don't flush. Also, almost 100% of the time, there is no toilet paper in the stalls. If the toilets don't flush, it's usually a good indication that the sink isn't going to work and that there is probably no water to wash your hands with. Once in a blue moon, there is soap available. The worst is when you get your hands all soapy and then you realize the water doesn't work. It's happened to me twice, I had to buy sachet water to rinse my hands and I felt horrible for wasting drinking water like that. But anyways, you can imagine how many diseases can be transmitted as a result of this. Public health officials promote hand washing after toilet use, but how can that even happen if there is no water and soap to wash your hands with? If I had money, that I could either spend on food or on soap and water, I think I would rather spend it on food, yea?

Food - There aren't really anything like grocery stores here. Well, there are, but all the produce and meats inside are ridiculously expensive. Most people do their shopping at the markets. In the markets, you have many ladies selling various vegetables and meats, right on the side of the road. Most of the meats are covered in flies, but no one seems to be bothered by this. I guess they figure that after they cook it, any possible disease or parasite will be killed anyways. Is that true through? I'm not sure. It's very unappetizing to walk through though.

Pollution - As mentioned earlier, everything gets burned. They could reduce plastic consumption, but everything comes in plastic bags here. Everything. When you buy anything from the market, they give it to you in plastic bags. I mentioned this in my last post. How do you even begin to reduce plastic consumption if its literally everywhere? It's so cheap too. In terms of costs, can we really expect Ghana to start purchasing biodegradable bags to pass out? The cars also pollute. All the cars here seem very old. Tro-tros drive down the street emitting black smoke sometimes. Fixing cars and finding mechanics are probably very expensive here. There is also a lack of mechanical equipment and supplies to fix these vehicles. A lot of times, I see cars dumped on the side of the road. It's quite sad.

Alright, time to go! I will write more on this later.

Ghana Time

Hello!

Updating this blog has been more difficult than I imagined. It's been hard finding quick and reliable internet. The servers are down more often than I expected. The free computers rarely world well. I usually have to pay for time, and by the time I check my e-mail and bank account statement, my time is up. I've typed a bunch of entires on my laptop containing my thoughts and reflections on the trip thus far. Hopefully, the wireless internet that supposedly exists in my residence hall will start working soon so I can upload those entires. and pictures too. I have a lot of pictures to upload.

Aside from that, I am well! I've adjusted pretty well to the food, the weather, and the lifestyle here. The water has gone out once since I've been here, and it wasn't so bad. The water reservoir is pretty close to my room so getting buckets of water for my daily needs isn't too bad.

Um, I bet many of you are curious to know about what life is like here. Let me try to sum it up.

I currently live in Volta Hall, the all female dorm on campus. The UC EAP girls are the only non-Ghanaians that live in this hall. Many famous women in Ghana have attended this University, and most of them lived in this Hall while they attended. There's a lot of pride from the ladies of Volta Hall, especially right now, since it is currently going through its 50th year anniversary celebration. Volta is nice, but the wear and tear of the humid weather and rain on the infrastructure is definitely visible. The rooms are cozy, a bit dirty, but very cozy. There are two rooms connected together, with the main door entering into the first room and a second door entering into another room. Three rooms exist on a floor, and the rooms share two showers and a toilet that is located at the end of the hall. The accommodations are simple but adequate.

The food here is cheap and very carb heavy. I'm still getting used to it all. I feel like a lot of stuff here is served in little plastic baggies. The water, the ice cream, the fruit, your to-go orders.. Its very convenient to carry, but it's also very unsustainable. It actually drives me nuts how much plastic is used each day here. At the end of the day, I feel like I'm walking home with a huge carbon footprint. On top of all this plastic waste, I notice that a lot of trash all over campus. There definiatly a waste management problem throughout Accra. People litter everywhere and I assume this is because there isn't really a service where trash can be disposed of. When piles get to big, people just set the trash to fire. I don't think they have landfills here, which is probably another reason why so many people toss and burn their trash. All this burning of trash has resulted in a very gray and polluted sky and a constant stench of burning plastic in the air. It's quite unhealthy. I can imagine my lung tissues dying bit by bit each day. That bothers me a lot too. I want to help develop some kind of recycling program here, but at the same time, there are so many other issues that need to be dealt with first (such as sanitation and proper hygiene) before we start talking about stuff like recycling.

Sigh.

Going to school in Ghana has been quite an experience. I just finished my first week of classes... however, I didn't actually have any class. Apparently, many of the professors (and the students) don't take week one of classes very seriously. I found myself walking to empty lecture halls quite often this week only to find other foreigners that have also showed up expecting a lecture. I spent most of last week trying to enroll of classes. Since online registration is not set up at this university, you are required to travel to all the departments and to fill out paperwork. Also, the final examination times have not been posted yet, and they will not be posted until one month before examinations begin. Thus, I just have to hope that my final exam times don't overlap.. It's actually been quite a stressful experience

On another note, the people are very friendly, as long as you greet them first, and the time schedule Ghanaians run on is very relaxed. According to my Ghanaian education abroad adviser, Americans go by the watch, Ghanaians go by the time. Thus, nothing every really ever starts on time, and there is usually a good twenty minutes of down time before any scheduled event begins. It's good and bad though- it gives you time to get to know the people around you, but gives me little motivation to rush and be ontime anymore!

Alright, its almost 11:30pm here. And I think I shall sleep now. I woke up early this morning so I could travel to the market to buy fabric for a dress I'm getting made. It's been a long, productive, but slow day.

More thought provoking updates to come!

Love,
Alice

Cool Performances by ___ African Dance Troupe

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Obama's Inauguration

The EAP office took us to the W.E.B. DuBois Center today to watch Obama’s inauguration speech live. It was a really cool event- all the U.S. citizens visiting/living in Ghana were there, excited to see America’s first non-full-white president.

Here are some pictures from the event.


The schedule of the event.


Everyone getting ready to watch the event.


Local artists create and sell Obama paraphernalia.


Standing ovation after Obama’s inaugural speech!


After the event, we were all dropped back onto campus. However, as Megan and I were getting ready for bed, we get a call from one of our student leaders asking us to be guests on a student talk radio show. Not sure what to expect, we head down to the radio station, where we are immediately ushered into a recording room and introduced to our listeners. The hour long talk show asked us about our opinions of U.S. democracy, about Obama being elected, and about what this election meant for Ghana and the rest of Africa.

Megan and I are both pretty liberal, so the host was really surprised to hear us being so vocal about our dissatisfaction with Bush, with his policies, and the actions he took during his term. As we described our experiences with democracy and our lifestyles in the US, it felt kinda nice to dispel a lot of ideas our peers at the discussion table had about America and Americans.

Hopefully, this will improve relations between exchange students and Americans in the future, and dispel some stereotypes that have been created.

Akwaaba!

I just had my first Twi (pronounced chwee) class at the university, and all I can remember is akwaaba, which means "welcome." Twi is the main language of the Akan region of Ghana. I'm still a bit rough on the multiple cultural and ethnic groups here, but from what I understand, the Akan group make up 40% of the population of Ghana, mostly in the south. Their main language is Twi.

Anyways, HOLY COW I'm in Ghana. After a 36 hour journey from that began Friday at 4pm GMT-8, I finally arrived in Accra Sunday at 12:40pm GMT time. The flights from LAX to Dubai was pretty turbulent but aside from that, Emirates airline was very very impressive. When we arrived in Dubai, 10 other UC students and I were transported to a hotel where we had an overnight stay at the Millennium Hotel. The place was not bad. Since we arrived in the evening, we didn't do much in Dubai aside from walking around the hotel and sleeping. The 9 hour flight from Dubai to Accra felt much shorter than the 16 hour flight from LA to Dubai. I spent most my time on the plane reading guidebooks and Ghana guides EAP had provided for us.

When we arrived in Accra, the weather was warm and a bit humid, but it was not as bad as I was expecting. I passed immigration smoothly, got my bags within a few minutes and before I knew it, I was exiting the airport. I can't really explain how I felt. All I remember was thinking "what the hell did I just get myself into." I was in Ghana.

As I exited the airport, a bunch of Ghanaian men were trying to get my attention so they could help me with my bags. It was a relief to see students holding UC-EAP signs to greet us. As I approached them, a bunch of guys (who I now realize were complete strangers) insisted to take my luggage for me. When they approached the bus that was there to pick us up, some other students loaded my luggage onto the bus, and the man who had been helping me stuck out his hand to ask for money. Oh no, I has just fallen victim to something that all the UC guides were warning us about. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just got on the bus and my Nigerian friend from UCLA handled it. Whew.

So since my arrival here two days ago, we've been going through orientation. Orientation consists of eating our meals with each other at 7 am, noon and 5:30pm everyday. In between meals, we go on tours of the campus, of the city Accra, we visit museums, and we take classes about Ghana. Today, we had five lectures in a row. They were all very interesting to me- there were discussions about the history, pre and post independence, the culture, politics, about the current democratic situation in Ghana. Today is also the day the fifth president of Ghana will be inaugurated. There has been a lot of struggles with the democratic process in Ghana, and this past term was, I think, the first term where a civilian government was not overthrown by a military coup, so there is much excitement about today's event. We actually visited the location where the inauguration is supposed to happen yesterday. I want to read more about it and comment about it later.

Oo, something else I wanted to write about was what happened yesterday. Yesterday, we took a tour of Accra, the capital of Ghana. Much like Los Angeles, Accra is made up of a bunch of towns. And also much like the 405, there is plenty of bumper to bumper traffic on the roads that pass through it. During our tour of Accra, we stopped at two museums. One was a castle, a castle that was built by either the UK, Holland or the Dutch, and used during the trans-Atlantic slave trade to keep slaves before they were transported in boats to America. The other was a cultural museum that held many artifacts from Ghana.

I want to write a little more about the castle. Basically its this white concrete castle overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It's actually kinda pretty, until you realize what kind of castle it is. As you walk around, you see painting and murals of Africans chained together marching. Seeing it kind of makes you feel uneasy inside. I was lucky and got put in a group that got a tour of the place. As we entered the castle, there's a giant perspective painting of a bunch of black men dressed in loin cloths, chained together. White men are lined along them holding whips. It's a pretty morbid picture. As the tour guide was telling us about this picture, there were other Ghanaian students from a different program there that got put with the UC students. These students basically got in front of the picture and starting posing as if they were the slaves. They were all laughing at each other and calling each other slaves. It was a very interesting and slightly disturbing sight to see. I guess its just how they deal with these serious situations. Anyways, we were then led to a room where 20 of us got closed in a room with a small window for it. It was a replica of the rooms that the slaves were enclosed in before they were transported on a boat to their destination. It got so stuffy after five minutes with just 20 people. I can't imagine how it could have been with 45-50 people for days at a time...

Anyways, my time is almost up. SO much has been going on here. SO many thoughts race through my head everyday and I feel like I have no time to write them all down. Our orientation schedule is pretty packed. Hopefully I will find time to get online again soon.

Well wishes from Ghana!