I arrived Sunday evening without my luggage, which was expected since I barely made my connection in London. Luckily British Airways was on the ball and had someone literally run me through Heathrow so I could make the second plane. I picked up my bag this morning though, so now I’m set.
I’m staying at a place called Suma Court, which is a small hotel, run like a guest house. My room is small and modest but very comfortable. Here, for the past two mornings I have eaten my breakfast of scrambled eggs with onion, green pepper and hotdogs while watching a hilariously dubbed Mexican telenovela called Pasión. I’ll be sad to miss it for the rest of the time I’m here, as I’ll be starting work at the Girls Education Unit tomorrow.
I first visited the GEU yesterday with Patience, my liaison here (Sectoral Officer for WUSC). She introduced me to the employees, and I briefly spoke to them about what they needed from me. There’s another Uniterra volunteer from Canada there called Akum, who is meeting me at the WUSC office (a 5 minute walk away from Suma) and I imagine he’ll be guiding me through my first trotro experience.
What is trotro? Essentially it’s the most affordable way around Ghana. You can get taxis (‘dropping’, like we are used to, or shared with others) or you can go trotro. Minivans in assorted states of disrepair, filled up with travellers. The driver has a mate, who calls out where they are going. Which is great if you know where “CIRC!CIRC!” or “37” is, and if it’s near where you wanna go. No one uses addresses here, and very few streets have names that people use for navigational purposes. You get around by knowing landmarks. It’s neat but can be confusing as Accra is bloody massive.
OK, that’s all for now. I’m researching places to visit this weekend, this one looks nice (web design could use a little work, maybe I can work out a deal with them).
