What's it like?

I’ve now been in Accra for one month. How time flies. I’m not really sure where to start so I’ll try to remember some of my first impressions.

The house: On arrival I thought we were merely passing the Canadian Embassy. It was dark, I was traumatized (as Zig had been lost) and we were passing a residence where both the Canadian and Ghanaian flags were flying. Then I realized that’s where we were turning in. This was our house! While the Canadian flag was a great touch (Paul’s idea) it struck me as kind of odd that here we were in a US Embassy house and we were flying the Canadian flag. It’s almost like Americans who travel around the world with a small Canadian flag stitched on to their packs so people will think they’re Canadians rather than Americans. But somehow we were taking this to a whole new level. Still strikes me as odd, but I must admit, I love looking out and seeing the big red maple leaf.

Also odd is living in a house with blacked out bulletproof windows (we can see out but you can’t see in). And all the windows have these humoungous metal grates for added security. And of course you can’t live as an expat in Africa without the ubiquitous guard. Ours comes every night at 6pm. Also, odd is having two full-time staff people. It’s like being "Beighley-Betz Inc." or something – I mean we actually have people working for us. Very strange, a bit difficult to get used to, but then you get used to it and, I have to admit, it’s wonderful.

Johnson is our gardener who Ziggy has absolutely fallen in love with. He keeps our myriad plants and trees thriving and the garden looking fabulous. Once we get some seeds we’re going to get a little veggie patch going. Apparently we’ve got a couple little groundnut (peanut) plants and he showed us the groundnuts…very cool.

Then there’s Rejoice. She’s our “house manager”. And she’s awesome. She keeps the house neat and clean (no small feat), does our laundry, ironing and has begun to give me cooking lessons! She will also cook for us on occasion and makes a mean apple pie, a great pasta salad and quiche and wonderful salads. She also takes Ziggy over to see his new girlfriends, Mila and Shopska, two rescued Bulgarian street dogs that belong to one of my friends, Becky who works for USAID. Rejoice will also be staying with Ziggy when both Paul and I are out of town as we will be next week. We coordinated a trip to Cotonou, Benin. He’ll do embassy work and I’ll be doing a 3 day election-reporting workshop for a group of broadcast journalists. There is supposed to be a presidential election in Benin in March. We will be driving to Cotonou which should be interesting as we pass through Togo and part of Benin on the way. It will be my first trip thus far, other than our little day trip to the Volta Dam.

I remember growing up and hearing that name – “Volta” and how exotic and African it seemed to me. “Volta” somehow embodied Africa to me as “Congo” does. Maybe it’s the whole river thing, I’m not sure. In any case we were invited a couple weeks ago by one of Paul’s colleague to drive up to the dam and to have lunch riverside. The drive was interesting. The roads are in decent shape and actually go straight (I’m so used to Rwanda’s potholed, mountainous and curvy roads). For me the highlight of the day was taking a little boat trip up the river. It was amazing. Little kids would rush down to the banks of the river and wave at us grinning. Men would canoe by in their fishing pirogues and we scanned the river banks for monkeys and birds; with the hum of the boat’s engine it had an almost meditative effect.

The dam itself was an impressive piece of engineering and its construction left behind the world’s largest man-made lake – Lake Volta. We managed to somehow get in to the actual site (a little bribe, or “dash” as it’s called here definitely helped) and we were able to drive in and take a walk on the dam. Down on the lake side, the “party boat” had just returned from its afternoon revelry complete with lots of booze and music.

We finally decided we should probably hit the road before the drunken partiers did so we left the dam and headed home.