A Recap on the Past Few Days - Part I

Saturday

I was basically stuck at the University all day. I thought I was meeting with an Ec professor in the morning, but we had to keep pushing back the time as he was taking other students around Accra. Oh well...I think I got some work done.

That night a few of us went into Osu to forage for some food. We indulged in some Chicken Inn (Ghana's KFC), and walked around for a bit. However, the real excitement only began when we took a taxi back to the University.

It was one of the sketchiest rides of my life. First off, in Ghana taxis (the dropping kind, not tro-tros like in a previous post) do not have meters or set prices. So you have to agree a price with the driver--who will almost always try to rip off foreigners. We bargained it down to 6 cedis (about 6 dollars), but he tried raising it on us once he started to move. Not cool, dude. Then he stopped for petrol and asked us if we had "big bills" to help pay for gas. Uhhh ... double-sided question? Yeah, I always wanted to get killed by a crazy taxi driver in Africa so that he could traffic/rape/kill the girls I was with.

On the way back he had to keep asking us for directions and even drove down a dead end. Oh man. But the best part was him telling us that he couldn't go inside of the campus. For a taxi to enter the university the driver needs to show his taxi license--but our guy made up some story that criminals had robbed him and stolen his taxi and license so he doesn't carry his license around because apparently taxi drivers frequently get targeted. DUDE, YOU DRIVE A TAXICAB; IT HAS ORANGE FENDER WINGS ON IT LIKE ALL THE OTHER TAXIS.

So we had to walk back to the hostel. In the dark. In Africa. Not sure how we made it.

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning a few of us went with the Ec professor that I was supposed to meet on Saturday to his Methodist church. It was a bit more ... charismatic than Catholic mass. First off, service was about 2.5 hours long. They made the foreigners (us) stand up at the front and introduce ourselves. A bit awkward. There were like 500 people in attendance. But all in all it was really cool--they incorporate a lot of African rhythms in their hymns as well as a good bit of clapping and dancing. However, my favorite part was during the offertory: one of the women of the Church, who belonged to their women's society, had recently lost her barbershop in a fire. So the women's group held a huge drive in the past weeks and presented her with like a dozen boxes of things that she could use to start another salon. They gave her A LOT of stuff. She was crying profusely. It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. Here we are in a ridiculously poor country and each person in that church is probably very poor, and these people do so much to watch out for each other. I think this is something development economists should look at a bit more.

Ahhh I have to cut this post short as I'm running out of time at the internet cafe and have other things to do. Next post will have my Sunday afternoon World Cup adventures as well as my research progress from today! Research is going well and I was able to get to Tema Port to meet a manager. Hopefully pilot surveys will start Wedneday. :)