July 6th and 7th - Sunday and Monday's Crazy Day

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• Entry from Kumasi

  Kumasi, Ghana
Sunday, July 6, 2008

It was an early start for many people in Kumasi this

Sunday morning. At about 6 a.m. there

were some loud drums being played. While

this woke us up this did not stop most of us from falling back asleep. When we

did awake, we did some exploring in our dorm.

We found that there is a kitchen area with a sink and two stoves. Neither of the stoves are actually plugged in

and this is probably because it is summer break. We also found where we can throw garbage

away. There is a little room that has on

large trash container. The most exciting

part of our discovery was two basketball courts and well as a nice area to sit.

After our exciting discovers we ran into Joe, one of the

people who looks after the dorms, to turn in our keys before we left. He had asked us why we did not go to

church. We responded that we did not

know the time. He then said that he was more than willing to help us for next

Sunday. Religion plays a very large role

in the lives of many people in Ghana.

There are many stores that have religious sayings like God Bless Hair

Salon. Also, on the back of many taxis there are religious sayings. Many people

say good bye by saying God bless or I hope God makes your trip fruitful. There is really no distinction between church

and state.

We then went to go use the Internet to send the IRB document

for the hospital to Dr. Warrington and Andrew. It was just after 9:30 and we

found out that the internet cafe does not open until 1:30 on Sunday. In fact many places on campus are not open at

all on Sundays. We then went back to our room to work on some other parts of

the project and to try to organize all the photos and videos. Our main posting

of pictures and videos will be Sunday.

After posting and e-mailing at 1:30 p.m. we decided to try

to head into town to buy some dish soap, laundry detergent, and a

basketball. We found a taxi driver and

asked how much to take us to Baboo's Bazaar.

Andrew had told us everyone knows where this restaurant but this taxi

driver certainly didn't. He told us to

get in and he would ask for directions.

We made it into the taxi circle (a parking lot where many taxis and

driver sit) and he asked some fellow drivers.

Only one person knew where it was at.

We started heading towards the downtown area when we became a little

lost. He pulled over to ask again and

then drove for another two minutes. At

that point we just got out and decided that we would walk. We at first did not

recognize anything because almost all the shops were closed. Because of this we

ended up turning the wrong way and just starting walking. Nothing looked that familiar because there

was no merchandise. There was pretty

much no chance of us buying any of the things that we were planning on getting

so we thought that we should just go and eat some dinner. We started walking and trying to find

Baboo's. Soon we were pretty sure that

we were in the wrong area and we might just have to take a taxi back to the

University. Cory asked a lady on the

streets for directions and she had no idea. So we kept on walking. Not too much later we ran into a police

officer who was able to tell us that Baboo's was just four blocks up. We were going in the right way! We got the restaurant and found out that it

was closed :( and found out that we were

less than a block away from where we were originally dropped off at.

We then decided to walk around to see what else was

happening. We started wandering around

and heard some music. We walked towards

the music and found that it was for a "Get Fit Challenge." Not far away from the music was a bar. Mitch and Marcie sat down to have a drink and

enjoy the music. After finishing their

drinks the group decided to go back and try to look for food closer to the

University. We then found that a few

feet from the bar was a food vendor. We

all bought a rice disk and decided to head back to the dormitories in a

cab. The traffic was very bad heading

back to the University and by the time that we had arrived our food was

cold. We heated in up in our cooker and

all ate very well.

The morning in Kumasi can be pretty similar to morning

in Houghton. You wake up thinking that

it will be a sunny, humid day and all you get is a cloudy humid day. It seems that during the raining season

mornings are usually cloudy but the sun is able to burn off some of those

clouds so in the afternoon the sun is present.

This being the case, many people rise very early with the morning sun to

get as much done while it is still cooler.

July 7th we woke up earlier to begin what was

going to be a pretty long day. First on

our list was to stop by the International Program's (IP) office on campus to

talk about our recruitment event. We

found out that many of the undergraduate student had left a while ago, June 6th

and that the only students left were graduate students or students that had

just recently graduated that were finishing up their community service

requirement. We also learned a little

more about how their study abroad office works.

The IP office was just created a few years ago and because of the

limited resources does not handle the majority of the study abroad cases. Most of the students who study abroad do it

through their specific school. The program director for the IP office said that

she would help us to set up meeting with each of the school's deans once our

MOU goes through. An MOU is a formal

announcement of who we are and what we are doing. If the university accepts the MOU then we

have full accept to everything on their campus.

After finding this out, we told her that we would stop by every few days

to check in and also to see how the progress of the MOU is going.

We then went to go check our e-mail quickly to see if Dr.

Warrington had been able to send us an

endorsed introduction letter for the infant heart monitor and that letter was

sitting in our inbox. We could now head

over to the hospital and turn in the IRB information. The only problem was that we would have to

somehow print off these two documents.

So we tried one printing center and they only do photocopies. The next printing center said University

of Kumasi Printing and when we went

inside we found out that they only do mass projects like printing books,

fliers, ect. A nice gentleman asked if

we knew where the publisher was and we had no idea so he was nice enough to

escort us to the right place. Then next

problem came when the file could not be open from the jump drive. The lady working on the computer said that

their was something wrong with the file.

Mitch double checked on his laptop that the files were not saved in

windows 2007 because they only have windows 2003 at the University. This time after double clicking she was able

to open and print the documents for us.

A simple print job in Africa took us just about an hour.

We figured that we should probably stop for lunch before we

go to the hospital. There is a food

stand in the commercial center. (The

commercial center is one of the main areas on campus, it has food, office

supplies, a pharmacy, and the ATM. It is

similar to an union building on most college campus except that this one is

completely open air.) We had to wait a

little bit for the food to be prepared.

In front of us in line was a group of school girls also waiting for

lunch. When we finally got our

lunch: rice and beans for a dollar. We were very disappointed. Everything tasted like we were eating

charcoal. We forced down the food with a

nice cold coke but decided that lunch place would be used for emergencies only.

The way that many lunches are packaged in Ghana at these

food stands is that the woman working behind the counter takes out a plate and

then covers it with a thin plastic bag.

She then put all the food onto the plastic on the plate. This usually includes a very large portion of

rice, a protein, and then spices. After

everything is on, she ties the plastic bag up so your whole meal is

together. Then she puts in a black

plastic bag. All the locals eat the

contents of the bag with their hands. We

Americans get a spork.

After eating lunch we headed to the hospital with our IRB

information. After calling Dr. Ankobea

to let him know that we arrived we showed him the IRB approval from Michigan

Tech. The first thing he then asked for was

where were the documents from the hospital and we had said that we never received

them. He then asked why we didn't email

him over the weekend to say that we never got it. We then rushed down to the IRB office to talk

to John to get the forms and start working on them. John had just sent the forms out this morning

to at 10 a.m. Ghanaian time. Andrew

forwarded as soon as he got it but by that time we were already at the hospital

trying to work out this problem. John

then said that he could put the information on a jump drive. Marcie handed her jump drive over to

him. It turns out that somehow there

were four viruses on the jump drive. Dr.

Ankobea gave John his jump drive and it thankfully worked. We then headed up to

Dr. Ankobea's office to work on it. It

was already 1 p.m.

The next forty five minutes was spent trying to open the

document. Dr. Ankobea's jump drive was

also infected and the documents would not open.

Instead all they looked like was jumble.

Mitch then tried to connect to the internet but it was so slow. Cory and Marcie went downstairs to try to

have John reload the documents on to the jump drive. He said that he could not do that because it

had been in our computers and was now probably infected. He said that he would e-mail it to us. One of Emanuel's friend worked in the

hospital so we asked if we could try to open a document on his computer. When we tried to open it all we got was the

same jumble. We then called Andrew to

have him forward Marcie a copy of the documents. We then called Mitch to tell him our progress

but he had gotten the internet to work so that we would be able to download the

documents. The next two hours flew by as

we flied out page after page. We then

thought that we were done so we decided to show John in the IRB office our

progress. We had misinterpreted one of

the questions so we were back to the drawing board. We decided that we needed to talk to Brooke

who was actually going to be doing the study.

After talking to her for a few minutes, we just decided to send her the

documents. This happened just before

four o'clock. However, at four o'clock the internet in the whole hospital shuts

down. This had pretty much shut down any

hopes of finishing the IRB application today.

We had asked Brooke to look over the IRB with her advisor, Dr. Newman,

and then to send us the IRB with any corrections. They had said that they would be able to send

us the corrected document in a half hour.

We called Dr. Ankobea and asked if there was anything else that we could

do. He just asked for us to leave a copy

of the document with him. By the time we

got out of the hospital it was already 4:45.

Because it gets dark by 6:30, we decided that we needed to get some

food.

We left the hospital to try to find a taxi to take us to

Baboo's Bazaar, a western style restaurant.

We walked for about 10 minutes and could not find an empty taxi. We then decided to take a short cut through

the cultural center. A short trip

through the cultural center would not be complete without buying some

interesting gifts. We made it through

and found a taxi and asked to be brought to Baboo's Bazaar. This was strike two for taxi drivers not

knowing where the restaurant was. The

driver was a Cote D'Voire native and spoke a little English but mostly

French. He asked us if we knew where we

were going and all of us just looked at each other. He stopped and asked for direction and this

cost us another 2 Cedis. The restaurant

ended up being just a few blocks away.

We pulled up in the taxi and all the traders recognized us;

they were very excited to see us. They

all wanted us to buy something from them.

Before we had all eaten dinner we had

all at least bought two more paintings.

While we were eating they were all just waiting for us to come up and

once we did leave the restaurant everyone had something to sell us. Much of the time there were three people all

selling the same things trying to get your attention at once. This allows to get a pretty good deal because

they bid against each other but it can be a little overwhelming.

We finally hailed a taxi and asked to be taken back to

Tech. Only certain taxi's can go into

Tech; they must have a special sticker on them.

Our driver did not have this sticker but because there was no one at the

gate he decided to chance it. He made it

to the next gate where there was a guard waiting. After a brief conversation the taxi driver

bribed the guard to let us through for 1 Cedi.

We made it to the internet cafe where we downloaded all the information

that we would need to then work on the IRB.

Shortly after Emanuel stopped by to see how we were

doing. We had a great conversation about

our past few days and talked about our upcoming plans to visit the

villages. We then got back to work on

the IRB and hope that the next day would go a little smoother.