Day 3: Half Day on Fridays?! Sweet

Friday June 16th

So on Fridays we have half days. Whichever Ambassador came up with this rule for Accra...bless you!

I began the day attending Core Meeting of senior staff (boss let me sit in for one week...as a intro to Embassy issues). This was the day that the Ambassador returned. She sure knows how to make an entrance, it was like coming to the People's Court. Everyone stood when she entered the room and began with formal briefings. But by the middle of the meeting things had cooled and relaxed and it became much more free-flowing.

Given the half-day, I took the rest of the day to hang with my co-worker in Political section who took me grocery shopping etc. There is a vegetable stand not far from the closest traffic circle near me - the "Togo Circle" (which I later learned Ghanians call unofficially the Prostitution Circle...hmmm...maybe my neighborhood is not as 'bougie' as I thought it was?). I stocked my fridge with veggies, and was especially glad to have bought all the chile peppers and ginger I need to make my favorite mouth-burning stir fry (there is never such a thing as too much ginger friends).

Lynne and I studied our travel guides and made plans to leave town next weekend and explore the grand castles at Cape Coast. These fortifications were used to imprison slaves that were being routed across the Middle Passage to the Americas.

The Sites & China
Luis took us on a grand tour of Accra. We started by going to Independence Square, the national symbol with the great Brandenburg-like gate topped by the Ghanian Black Star. (The Black Stars is the name of the soccer team too.) At the stadium near the gate there was a long line of flag poles with the Ghanian flag. Oh, but there was one other national flag interspersed there - that of the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC). Luis told me that China has had a long relationship with Ghana and has provided lots of foreign aid. The Chinese government also does not put all the conditions (for transparency, efficiency, and buy-American rules) that our government does - so they gain popularity. Then we went to the very impressive memorial park / tomb of President Kwame Nkrumah. I have to find a way to post pictures on this blog, it is a site to behold.

Jamestown
Then he drove us to what he calls "the real Accra" - Jamestown. This waterfront area is full of boats, goats, and people who are barely making it. I've spent 6 months in Asia's poorest country, but no matter what you've seen before - there is still an automatic rich-man's-guilt that I feel. And I'm not even rich (except when I travel to a poorer place). What the heck is going on...I heard that Ghana was on its way to being a middle-income country. I thought Ghana was the Black Star when it came to poverty reduction and development etc etc. Then i remembered that I probably should not judge a whole country by a neighborhood. People were making it, not luxuriously though.

Home Villages for Weekends
Also, near the main road there was an amazingly long traffic back up. For the weekend lots of folks were in their cars, tro-tros and vans heading out of town and out to the countryside. That looked familiar to me. I recall people in capital cities where I've travelled always mention what their home village is. Its like people in DC are rarely from Washington DC, but all over the country. I also read in a USAID (public) report that Ghanians are especially generous with remittances - cash that relatives in the USA send back home to Ghana to help out their families. I can identify with the message to "remember where you came from" and "don't forget your community" that seem to drive some people I've spoken with here.

Embassy gathering (going away party...funny - this guy's departure means that my work load just doubled I think).
Then came the long night that some of the Marines decided to show the new intern a good time in Accra...until 5 in the morning. Wow, just wow. I was afraid that I would never lose some of my grad-school-15 pounds, but I think that with enough dancing I just may do that.