Sunlodge Hotel Accra

... electricity has yet to be a steady addition to life.
I am now understanding why most people chose to cook over fires rather than stoves. And if they do choose the stove option, they are gas stoves.
I have been leaving my phone and my computer plugged in whenever I am in my room so that if the power does decide to grace Ghana with its presence, I am prepared.
And let me say, a ceiling fan makes a world of difference in heat.

But anyway ...

... long-term patients in a separate building.

The ward has 15 beds, about 8 of which are filled. We start our rounds by 10am. a group of about 6 nurses and I go through to each patient to check their vitals. This goes pretty quickly, because rooms are shared, so only 3 rooms of the ward are being used.

There are no machines in this hospital. the most technologically advanced piece of equipment i saw all day was a thermometer. To check vitals, we use a ...

... some of the nicest I have ever met. They call their country "a very peaceful country," which is true in all aspects.

The first day I took the shuttle into Accra with a group of friends from the ship. From there we went shopping, ate, had a beer, and waited to meet up with a student that was on our ship who was from Morocco. After meeting up with Nei (the local student) we were all going to head to Cape Coast to go and visit ...

... winter" since august is the coldest month here, despite the fact that it is in the mid eighties every day. people here--my roommate and one of our tour guides--have been getting colds and chills and blaming it on the weather!)

Even without witnessing a true sunset, i still like walking around here. It's a good way to actually see everything around Legon. I like running for the same reason, i think...even though we have been doing the same loop ...

... out that FINALLY the water is back on. This is after a series of losing it for 4 days, having it on for 1 day, having it off another day or 2, then back on (but brown) for another afternoon, then off 1 day again. A lot of people in our group have decided that we need to complain about the water situation, but i am hesitant to jump on board. It does seem like we are out of water much more often than ISH 2 and jubilee (the other 2 dorms next door to us), but I don't want to ...

... you can pay as little as GH¢4.

But, we all have had to be a little more aware of prices in these situations where we haggle…people will charge us four times as much sometimes just based on the color of our skin. I have a story about that in the posting from Saturday (8/8)

That’s all I can think of now for getting around.

Yesterday (8/9) was one day that people chose to stay here, when I did not.

It was the first morning that I have not ...

... vehicle was from another country. The officer was being very slow and intimidating as while he slowly perused the papers and was suggesting that there was something wrong. All the while he was swinging his machine gun around! Sanga assured him that everything was just fine and that we were just returning to the hotel. They let us go and we were very thankful. We took no pictures! We returned to the hotel and crashed for the night.

... saw a young girl carrying the head of the bull on a big platter on her head. Nasty! Then we hopped back into the car and I took us to the Dagomba compound in the village. Okay…….so the village has one main Chief. Then, for the smaller tribes within each village, there are Chiefs that are appointed. So the Dagomba Chief of Suhum was there to celebrate the new Chief, as well, and he took us back to the Dagomba compound. It was really nice, and the Chief has a gorgeous house ...

... shape of whatever the customer wants. For example, when I was there I sighted a mecedeces benz car, a truck, an airplane, fish and a beer bottle. An owner of one of the coffin shops told me that the customer might be a truck driver and wants a truck coffin, or he might like his favourite beer. Its big business here, just another quirky thing about West Africa.

Soon we will be in leaving Ghana when our visas for the countries of Togo and Benin....

... was quite an honour as he is very well known in the football community and has a wealth of experience. As well as working with a number of teams in the area my host father Joe suggested that I establish a local football team as their was a pitch around the corner from the house I was staying in and their use to be a team but they had collapsed due to disorganisation, this seemed a good idea as it would provide the local guys in the community to have something to look ...