Wherein I make funny faces for three hours

Greetings from Accra!  I arrived safely after a five-hour bus ride along the beautiful coastline of Ghana (though I was sure we were going to die after overtaking a heavy rig with not much room to spare...), an hour-and-a-half long cab ride through Accra due to ridiculously heavy traffic (at one point we were stuck beside the Accra landfill/sewage treatment plant.  Can cholera be transmitted by air?) and then about an hour of negotiating with the UGhana hostel staff to give me a room.  And I was starving/dehydrated.  But I lived.  And took my malaria pill.  Bring on the lucid dreams!

This bus ride was better than the one outbound from Accra, namely because the driver played the radio  instead of torturing us with a screaming Nigerian film, thus allowing me some sleep.  I have never been so glad to hear American country music, which I don't normally like that much.  I didn't bring anything to read on the bus since I probably, given the state of Ghanaian highways, would have gotten motion sickness and thrown up, thus exacerbating my already starving state, but I was entertained by this baby boy (maybe 2 years old) sitting in front of me.  He was with his mother and grandmother, but, like many other small children, was fascinated by the proximity of an obruni.  Maybe I was the first one he had seen.  But when either his mother or grandmother was holding him he would try and climb up, and make pawing motions and gurgle in my direction.  And thus I made funny faces (well, at least more funny than usual) at him, pretended to hide behind my clip-on sunglasses (which he found especially entertaining) and danced along to the country music in my seat.  I'm sure the people behind me thought I was an idiot.  But his mother thanked me for keeping her son quiet and happy during the trip, which definitely made my day. :)

The other Harvard people are already back at the hostel, so I'm definitely glad to have some people to hang out with.  Emma is near me, composing an epic post on their group's travels over the past couple weeks, and by the looks of her blog, Esther has been having quite a few adventures all over the country, so hopefully I can add some more adventures within the next couple weeks.  This week I'll be doing some research around Accra at the various think tanks and ministries as well as working on the data analysis, but afterwards will be spent travelling the country by tro-tro. 

Oh, I just found out that my 5kg envelope of surveys, which I mailed on Friday, just arrived at home.  Good old UPS.  It was mad expensive--which is why it's on the university's tab, heehee. :)

Addendum: This morning I almost missed the bus because the tailor in charge of making the kente shirts I ordered was late in opening up his business.  But I made friends with the shopkeepers next door, who all knew the guy and were cursing him for being late, lol.  They then tracked down his brother (he owns the business next to the tailor's), who ordered him by mobile phone to come as quickly as possible with the "obruni's shirts".  Oh, the power of social networks.  And so I hung out with the shopkeepers for about half an hour and talked with them about life in the US (it took a bit of time to convince them that I was not Chinese), which was definitely really cool.  Of course, it didn't matter that the guy was late because the bus itself was also running on Ghanaian time. :P