Let's Go, Man!

Two Saturdays ago marked the celebration of the Chale Wote festival of alternative art, brought to life by Accra [dot] alt. There have been some disagreeing voices from local bloggers about the outcome; while Graham at Critical Point proclaimed it a success with some potential to grow into, Holli's Ramblings shot it down as, essentially, whites imposing 'culture' onto the inner city where it was neither appreciated nor welcome.

the cliffs of Jamestown... garbage, oil drums, and the sea

My take on it? As soon as I got to the first “plaza” of events and saw the scale and scope I was in for, I threw any expectations out the window, and had fun.

The maps could have been a lot nicer – a six-piece Venn diagram describing sites that are all along the same street in a line was really confusing!

Roller Boys preparing for a jump - on a busy side street still in use!

Other than that, it was fun to wander around, I didn't feel unwelcome, and I loved seeing all the kids get involved, be it in dancing or face/body painting! We heard that kids were the focus during the day while the evening was the block party for adults.  

friends watching the brass band  (yellow shirts)

Yes, the scope was pretty small - let's say ten vendors, two artists in the "gallery," a gaggle of kids dancing in the plaza.  Yes, I felt that some kids saw it as an opportunity to beg some extra goodies from the rich obronis.  In particular there was one adorable girl who attached herself to my knee as soon as I'd bought my jollof rice, and disappeared as soon as it was finished.  

But there were just as many kids who were happy to get attention, interact with the friendly visitors and play with paint on their arms and on the sidewalks.  Adults wandered past, bemused, or stopped to watch, intrigued, and were all smiles.

"Beware of Mosquito"

My take-away?  I'd do it again!  There's gotta be a first year for everything.  There were glitches, there were sidelong glances, there were doubts.  But now that they've pulled it off once, I think more people will be interested next year.  This thing can grow.  And I'm looking forward to it!

More photos available on my Picasa album.

T. I. A.

No, it's not an ode to my mother.  It stands for This Is Africa - things that really could only happen here.

Yesterday was a day of firsts and a day of TIA.

Yesterday it rained.  It's the dry season, but we heard from a Ghanaian that they get one or two days of rain even in the dry season.  He said it should have already happened, but they hadn't had a day of rain yet this year. Like a prophecy, the next day it rained.

African rain is nothing like Irish drizzle.  African rain is pouring water, booming lightning, and whipping wind.  All this at the same time we tried to get lunch on the half-covered "Lunch City" restaurant on the roof of Jens's building.  The roof flooded with inches of water and we came downstairs soaked.  I was ecstatic.  No photos, though, since I was at lunch.


Yesterday I was stuck in traffic for three hours.  F, a visiting Googler from Germany, and I wanted to go to a market.  Google had a second driver for the day, who we asked to bring us to the art market in front of the cultural museum.  We ended up going to, or rather past, Makola, an everyday-goods market.  Traffic was solid all the way from the office to the market and it took the better part of two hours to get us there.  I think the driver was also taking us past a few of Accra's sights along the way.  We saw Independence Square, where schoolchildren were rehearsing marches in the stadium in preparation for Independence Day, which is March 6th.  I'm bummed I'll miss that!

We also passed by the stadium which was used for the Africa Cup of Nations in 2008.
All this is irrelevant, though, to the sights we saw and the frustration I felt, inching forward with every stoplight but avoiding swerving cars and wandering pedestrians.  Traffic moves, but there is still just such a multitude of cars that even with movement, you never get far.

As I mentioned, street vendors carry their wares on top of their heads...

But the head's just good for transporting anything.  Case in point: television set. 

Another ingenious way people transport things is in wheeled vehicles converted into carts.  Check out this baby stroller:

We had just rounded one corner of the market area when the driver asked us, "Do you want to go in or only look?"  F shared that he really only wanted to buy a couple of bags of plantain chips, and that he wasn't happy to have lost half a working day already.  We asked our driver to skip the market and take us back, but keep his eyes peeled for plantain chips.  Our sharp-eyed driver found a vendor and we bought a dozen bags from her.

carefully choosing the brown ones, made from ripe plantains

We also passed a good few cars with funny, interesting, and many religious slogans printed on them.

 This one reads "You Lie" under a thumbs up.

This truck says, "I engineering Ghana"

Here we have "Still El Shadai" on one taxi, while the other one's plaque with passenger capacity and home company uses a Bible for its background.

I think we can all read what this one says!

Yesterday I saw Ghana's essentially cash-only system in action.  Cash is used to pay for everything.  The currency is the cedi (pronounced seedy), and it's two to the euro, 1.50 to the dollar.  The highest bill we've ever seen is a 20, and those are very rare.  10 is a big bill already, and hard for street vendors to break.  When an American blogger bought a new car here, she took along bagfuls of cash.

Jens is off to a conference in Senegal the week after next, and I'm tagging along for the week.  We had to buy tickets from Air Nigeria.  The online booking is only a reservation of the spot, and you have to go to the office in the airport to pay for your ticket within 24 hours.  Now, you'd think that at an airline's office, in the airport, they'd take credit cards.  That's what Jens thought.  You (and Jens, and I for that matter) were wrong.

We hopped into a taxi outside of the office at 3:45pm.  Traffic was bumper to bumper for a good 45 minutes.  The taxi's fuel gage was showing the orange warning light (a very common sight here) the whole time.  He got out of the car three separate times while traffic was at a standstill to open the hood, look at something in the engine, then come back to the driver's seat.  We get to the airport, argue about the taxi fare, and head inside... for the first time.  There's a security guard checking that all travelers have passports and tickets, and we tell him we're just here to pay for a flight.

At the mercifully line-free Air Nigeria counter, Jens is informed they take cash only.  These are not Ryanair fares; these are high-three- and four-figure flight prices.  Yikes.

We head off in search of ATMs, and checking that we have enough bank cards to do it thinking about daily withdrawal limits.  The ones at the airport don't take mastercards, of which Jens has two that we need to cash in on to get together the full price.  We cash out all the Visas at the airport and that's enough for my less-expensive ticket.  So we head back to the departures level to buy it.  The security guard checking for passports recognizes us from last time and says "I remember you, my brother, my sister.  Come on through."

Then, we hire a taxi to the nearest bank that takes Mastercards (Stanbic, you are our savior) and withdraw money like there's a run on the bank, 500 cedis at a time.  I feel like a bandit with so many wads of money in my purse.  The security guard says, "Oh, back again!" and waves us through.  We fork over the stacks of cash to Air Nigeria, relieved we traveled the 1/2 mile to the airport safely, and get outta there.

Then we moved our stuff to Bridgette's place, where we'll be staying for the rest of our visit in Ghana.  Since it's new and not quiiiite finished yet, we have no curtains in our room.  The security light at the office next door was bright and shiny all night, it was hot, and a chicken started crowing around 4am.

Misconception about chickens: they do not just crow only once.  And they don't only crow when the sun rises.  Those buggers get started early.

Pair that with the garbage trucks coming by every few minutes, starting at 4, blaring a tune that we all thought was either an ice cream truck or a kid's toy, and we can safely conclude that I didn't have a good night's sleep.

Tonight will be better, though!  And now comes the weekend, which means Jens gets to come along while we explore.  Later, I'll tell you about my experience at the crafts market!

Impressions

First things first: I'm posting from a Blogger app on my phone, which I think is fabulous. For that reason I'll try to keep this post short and sweet.

Accra is hot and humid. The streets are full of people walking and lots of cars. Drivers are insane, yet I've never seen an accident- people seem to slow down an instant before the worst happens. I've seen a bit of bad traffic, but only during rush hours and lunchtime. The part I enjoy the most about the roads is the street vendors. They wander between lanes of stopped cars hawking anything from phone credit to paintbrushes to plantain chips. And they carry their stock in plastic baskets or metal tubs, cushioned with a roll of fabric, balanced on the top of their heads. I took some photos but, since I'm on my phone now, can't post them quite yet.

On the home front, Bridgette's place is finally habitable and we're moving all our stuff over today. On our own home front, Jens and I have been house hunting and found a few places we like, though one especially stands out. It's smack in the middle of a neighborhood, so we get lots of mini market and pub and salon stalls but also a lot of winding side streets to get there. Still, it's a 10-minute walk to Oxford Street, which is a main shopping and eating area.

Today, Google's driver - yes, his job is to shuttle Google people around all day - is going to take me and two Googlers to the African art market and then a cultural museum.

I'm getting excited about this now. We met a friend of Jens's friend last night who told me she'd show me around next week when Jens is off in Nigeria. I'll get to know this place; I've already started learning some of the big streets. Onward and upward!