July 3rd - Our first day in the City

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  Kumasi, Ghana
Thursday, July 3, 2008

Currently we are sitting in the lounge because once it is dark out they turn off the power. It starts to get dark out around 6:30 and it is completely dark by 7:00 p.m. which is 3 p.m. Michigan time. This was very unexpected and it kind of shocked us a little.

So as you can tell from the above statement we made it to Kumasi safely and into the dormitories. We started off our day going to the US embassy. It took us an long time to get into the Embassy because of the security was very strict. When we made it through we found out that we just needed to register online. We have never seen so many people turn their heads to look at us. This was probably because we were skipping in front of many of these people in line. Many of these people would wait for many hours to try to get a visa into the US. We then went to go get money from the ATM. We stopped at a bank's ATM and Andrew was able to pull out money but then the ATM shut down. It was probably a good 10 minutes before it rebooted. Mitch then tried to pull out money and he was successful but the ATM then shut down again. Emanuel then said that we should try a different place. We went back to the airport to use their ATM. Cory and Marcie were able to pull out money and get a receipt from the ATM. We had done all this before 11 a.m. which was quite successful .

We then began our long drive. The drive from Accra to Kumasi was quite an interesting experience. It was about a five hour drive with about an hour lunch break.

Us at the hotel

We saw many different parts of the country through this drive. The city of Accra stretches a very long way. We saw many different kinds of houses. Most of the nice houses had gates and a person as a guard. Once we got outside of Accra we hit many interesting villages but the most interesting part of the drive was how the driving was done. In Ghana drivers do not really use turn signals; they use their horns. A horn is not necessarily a bad thing. It can mean anything from that I am passing you, to please get in my taxi, to watch out if you are walking, to please move out of the way. There are really not road rules. Drivers not only pass on the left but also on the right. Sometimes there were three cars abreast all traveling in the same direction on a road that was only meant for two people. The conditions of the roads would make almost all the roads in the States looks great. In many parts of the road there were very large pot holes. These are not pot hole like we drive over every day in the U.S. These are very deep holes that are about 2 ft across and 10 inches deep. They fixed these holes by filling them with dirt. Cars and trucks would then drive over these holes to pat them down. Our drivers were also very eager to get to our destinations. In many places we were flying about 120 km/hour which is about 75 miles/hour when the speed limit was only 50 km/hour but we really never felt unsafe. However, when we did run into construction we were barely crawling. It was during these points that many people tried to sell us different things.

Ghanian Lady

Mitch tried out his Twi and attracted six women who then tried to sell him more local items like dried fish. Andrew who has been there many times said that no one has ever tried to sell him that. There were also snails that were the size of a chipmunk that some women were selling. Emanuel said that we will have to try them later. They boil the snails and then eat them.

We stopped at a pretty famous rest stop for lunch. Cory had fried rice and Marcie and Mitch had red red which is a bean dish with a protein (fish, beef, and chicken) and plantains. It was a very large dish. We also got to see what fufu looked like because Emanuel ordered it. This restaurant had almost everything under the sun. The food was very good and everyone was feeling fine.

We then got on the road again. We were supposed to stop in a little village but about a half hour before that it started raining very hard. Because of this we just continued on our way to Kumasi. We arrived at our destination at our hotel the Royal Basin at about 4:30. We checked into our room and then relaxed for the night. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant which was very nice. Mitch tried another Ghanaian dish: Banku and red snapper. It was quite good and both Cory and Marcie tried some of the banku. Unlike the banku that Dr. Warrington had tried this was not that sour. It tasted very well with the tomato based pepper sauce. Cory and Emanuel had fried rice and chicken, Marcie had pasta, and Andrew had beef with potato chips (potato chips are French fries).

We all slept very well that night because of the long trip.

Walking

We started July 3rd by having a nice breakfast of eggs and toast. We tried to meet with some people from the Peace Corps. However, there was no one in the office at the time. We called Emanuel and had him meet us on KNUST (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology) campus. Andrew, Cory, Marcie, and Mitch went to the main highway and hailed a cab. When Andrew first asked how much it would cost, the driver said 30 (we later found that he was going by the old Ghanaian money system, and meant 3 Cedis). Because of this misunderstanding at the time, Andrew said we'd wait for another cab. The driver went to a turn-a-round and then hailed us from across the highway and told us it would only be three Cedis so we agreed. This driver could only take us to the KNUST taxi station because only KNUST taxis can go into campus. It cost us another two Cedis to go into campus.

Once we arrived on campus we checked out the shops in the center of campus and were interested to find the prices of some of the food. It only costs 30 pesewas (30 cents) to buy a soda. From the shops we went over to the international office and met with the Dean of International Programs. He and his assistants were very excited that we were here in Kumasi and offered their assistance any time that we need it.

From the International Programs office, we decided to walk over to our dormitories. After about twenty minutes of walking around and checking out the sites we met up with Emanuel and finished our trek with him.

Marice in the Truck

Once we got to the dormitories Andrew took care of the time we would be there and the cost. Then Emanuel took us on a tour of the immediate campus (the campus is HUGE) so we could find out where we could go to get food and play basketball. Then we parted ways with Emanuel and hailed another cab so we could go into the center of Kumasi for a little exploration.

We took this cab to Baboo Bazaar for lunch. It cost us five Cedis to take this 30 minute ride into the center of town. There were vendors along the road almost the entire way. You can find anything you need within a three block range. Once we arrived at the bazaar we had some lunch. Marcie had Chinese noodle dish, Cory and Andrew had some fried rice dishes, and Mitch had shrimp fried noodles. The food was great!

After the lunch, we went on a walk around the market for a couple of hours. We needed to pick up some things to cook and eat with and also a cell phone. First we went to a couple of cell phone shops and found a very cheap Motorola. The vendor even went to another vendor for us and purchased some minutes for it and enabled to the phone. After finding the cell phone the next task was to get some cooking utensils for ourselves in case we did not find time to buy ourselves dinner. Andrew wanted to make sure that we could fend for ourselves so he waited while we searched around for the best deals on some silverware, bowls, and a pot. We went t to a few stores in a very small radius and found 6 bowls for about 70 pesewas each and a 36 piece silverware set for 4 Cedis.

Driver going fast

They did not sell individual pots at this store so we asked where we could find some and the owner pointed us across the street. We ran across the insane traffic through downtown and found an electric rice cooker for about 15 Cedis. We figured we could boil water and cook whatever we needed in this. As we said before, we found out that the power goes out at night and it would render our electric rice cooker useless!

After buying everything that we needed we decided it was time for us to get back to our dorms. We wanted to miss the evening traffic jam as well. Cory hailed us a taxi and negotiated the amount of 4 Cedis to get us back to the edge of the University. The taxi brought us to the KNUST taxi station. This time we only paid 1.20 Cedis to get on campus. We picked up some more of the things that we needed from the campus store and walked back to our dorm. At this point Andrew left us to return to his hotel.

After settling in a bit we all decided to go for a walk. We wanted to explore a little bit and get access to internet so we could contact our friends and family. Unfortunately our dorms do not have internet access so we are going to have to walk about a mile and pay for each hour of internet that we use! As we were checking our email we were watching some of the local students play basketball. It was very entertaining. They didn't really ask us to play but they were definitely looking to see if we were watching their game. Cory was lucky enough to get asked if he would call the fouls for the game.

Lunch

As soon as the time turned to 6:30 everyone started leaving. We were not sure why to begin with, because it had just started getting dark. We decided that since everyone else was leaving we should as well. Within the next 10 minutes we knew why everyone left. It was pitch black by the time we got half way back to our dorm. We knew that we wouldn't have internet access while we were at the dorms but we assumed we would have power. Big mistake! As we got to the dorms we could hear a generator running but we never really put two and two together until we reached the hallway to our rooms which was completely dark. Marie went and asked if we could have power in our rooms but they said the generator was running just in case of emergency. So much for cooking dinner in our rice cooker, looks like it's time for Marcie's granola bar stash.

As we all climbed into bed under our mosquito nets the power switched back on! We figured that they don't shut the power off at night, but the first night we were there they had one of their infamous blackouts. As we were learning about Ghana before we left we had heard that the power can go out at any time! We just assumed because it was at night that they shut off the power. We were wrong! We plugged in all our electronics and climbed back into bed. It was probably about 75 degrees and very humid, perfect sleeping weather.
Everything is going great for us so far. We will be having another entry soon as well as some pictures! Please leave comments for us, we really enjoy reading them! Thank you!

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