glowing ball of fire

Though I’ve only been in Ghana for 11 days, so much has happened that I don’t even know where to begin. From Philly, we bussed to Newark for our flight to Frankfurt. We spent 6 hrs waiting at the Newark airport playing Uno, card games and eating terrible airport food. I saw snow for the first time in my life in Frankfurt so that is now crossed off the bucket list.

The flight to Ghana was uneventful. Ghana airport in Accra was the most chaotic airport I’ve even been on. It makes the Vietnam airport in Saigon seem like some high class place. The people were chill though. I was the last person to go though custom and the agent dude asked me to marry him after getting my finger prints and taking my head shot. I laughed and told him I’ll think about it.  Definitely didn’t see it coming even though I knew that this type of flirtatious stuff is common in Ghana, I didn’t expect it to happen so early in the game and coming from an official. I guess airport people here don’t worry too much about terrorists so they have more time to fuck around and hit on foreigners.

We were bused to a dorm room at a college a couple of hours away from Accra. It is called Valley View College and we stayed there for 3-4 nights I don’t really remember. I got a new roommate, Sheila, and somehow signed us up for the room with the creepiest location. I’m kicking myself now for not taking a picture of it because my description might not do justice to its creepiness. Adding insult to injury, our room was number 8, and for some reason, on the signup sheet, room number 7 was skipped so while Sheila and I stayed in number 8, no one was in number 7 and the closest people to us were number 6. Our room was in this dark corner that has no hallway light or natural sun light while all the other rooms face the open court yard. And apparently there was a spider living above the door which freaked Sheila out so that was also a negative.

The other volunteers told me that living there felt like living at summer camp, where you’re told when to eat and when to meet up and what activities to do. I’ve never been to camps (growing up in the jungle) so I guess that was pretty fun for me.