What I've Learned So Far

Even though I just arrived in Ghana a couple of hours ago (as of when this was written), I have already learned a lot. Here is a sampling of some of these things:

1. I don’t like lines. Especially short but slow moving lines that seem to take forever, followed by another line of the same type. At least by the time I got through all of these lines, my flight was boarding so I didn’t have to hang out in the terminal for too long.

2. I am not a fan of turbulence. I could not help thinking “we’re going to die!” throughout the whole ordeal.

3. It is very difficult to sleep on an airplane. Even though I was extremely tired and had more than enough time on my flight for a very long slumber, this did not happen. I probably only slept for about 3 hours, and much of that was interrupted.

4. I REALLY don’t like sitting next to people when they sneeze. Especially when their spewage gets on me and makes me want to vomit.

5. Ghanaians are very nice people. I sat between two Ghanaian men on my flight between Amsterdam and Accra, and they were both very kind to me. One did ask if I knew the phone number of where I would be staying…kinda weird, but I kindly told him that I did not know it yet, which is not entirely false.

6. Apparently I need to work on my diction. When I told that same Ghanaian man my name, apparently he thought I said Millicent, so while waiting to go through immigration, he shouted what he thought was my name until I turned around to see him wave goodbye. Oh, and I have really bad hearing. After every sentence, I’m like, “What?” This is going to be interesting.

7. I’m not very good at picking lines. Every line I picked (immigration, customs, etc.) ended up being the longest line and took FOREVER to get through.

8. Ghana is VERY humid. As I walked off of the plane, I was hit with a wall of sticky heat and instantly began sweating. This is going to be an awesome (read: smelly) summer.

9. Taxis are nuts. Now, this is something I’ve always known, but Ghanaian taxis take it to an entirely new level of scary. I thought we were going to die on the way home from the airport. But, alas, we made it home in one piece.

10. I don’t really have a good number 10, but I did discover that I like the bananas here. Quashie (the guy who picked me up from the airport) gave me all this food and a huge thing of water (for which I am very grateful, but I’ve probably already sweated out), and the bananas are very good. They have kind of a different taste than the ones in the U.S.

That’s it I guess. The other volunteers that I’ve met seem very nice. A couple are from Britain, my roommate is from Italy, and a couple others are from the U.S. Tomorrow I'm going on a mini tour of Accra and then hopefully will start working on Wednesday.

More to come as it happens...