9/15/11 Ghana

It's been too long since I've updated my blog.  I've been a little busier on the medical front.  After Morocco, there were lots of cases of traveler's diarrhea.  We had to isolate some of the kids to a separate room because of concern of a viral strain spreading like wildfire throughout the shipboard community.  That never happened, and the whole traveler's diarrhea thing calmed down quickly.  It was replaced by a viral respiratory illness that is interfering with people having the most pleasant time possible.  However, it turns out that meaningful travel doesn't necessarily have much to do with pleasant conditions.  Unpleasant conditions happen.

Take Ghana for instance.  It is actually much more pleasant than I expected, with less overt poverty than I expected (although I'm told it is one of the poorest countries we will visit).  It is, however, awfully hot and humid.  At times all I can think about is sleeping, or better yet, jumping in the nearest body of water to try to cool off a little.  This behaviour is strongly discouraged due to the high prevalence of parasites found in fresh water here.  We are advised to wear long pants and sleeves to avoid attracting mosquitos or unwanted attention.  This does not help the problem of being too hot.  It seems that most of the locals wear long pants, which baffles me, given that they  basically live at the equator.

Another test for me is the food here.  Our tour guide cab driver took us to a local African food restaurant yesterday.  The place was called "Lick the Pot," and was completely empty except for us.  The cab driver recommended we try a soup made of tomatoes, spicy red peppers and onions, in which half of a fish is placed, complete with bones and skin attached. We were then given 2 bags each of "banku" which is a cooked, mushy, fermented cornmeal mixture.  We were also each given a large bowl of water.  In this country it is rude to eat with your left hand, so you must touch your food with your right hand only.  You're supposed to take a glump of the banku, dip it in the soup with your hands, and then eat it.  Then you should reach back into the bowl with your sticky fingers, grab a clump of fish, and eat it, skin and all.  You can use the spoon provided to sip the broth, if you'd like. When you're done, you're supposed to clean your glumpy, gooey hand off in the bowl of water that we're been told not to drink for fear of bacterial contamination.  Well, I couldn't quite stomach eating the skin of the fish.  I'm sure it was comical (or disgusting, depending on your perspective), watching me try to get the skin and bones off my chunks of fish with my right hand only, while it was submurged in a bowl of red, spicy liquid.  The fish was good. The banku is an aquired taste, I'm told, and I won't disagree with that observation.  The boys did surprisingly well at navigating their way through the meal and at least trying to look like they were enjoying it.  I was very proud of them.

While we're on the topic of food, we learned that the average Ghanaian local has at least 5 parasites living in their GI tract and that personal hygene habits around food are not quite what we're used to in the USA.  Therefore, despite lots of warnings against eating food that hasn't been cooked or drinking the local water, I'm expecting lots more traveler's diarrhea after this port.  Fun, fun, fun!

Yesterday we got the opportunity to visit a local elementary school where our taxi driver's wife works.  We got to speak with the principle, see all the classrooms, and do some interacting with the kids.  The conditions are very simple; open-air classrooms, wooden desks, chairs, a chalkboard, pencils, paper and some books. That's it.  The kids were all in uniform and were as cute as can be.  They seemed to be ahead of our kids in the USA as far as their education is concerned.  They were learning French (the official local language is English,which they speak well, but most also speak one of the several African languages of the four main ethnic groups present in this area), and the math seemed a little above par for where our kids are expected to perform at similiar ages.  Granted, this was a private school with small class sizes, but I was impressed, none-the-less.

Traffic jams are a real problem in this country, but some Ghanaian higher-up has decided to spare us the pain of waiting in traffic jams.  They have actually provided police escorts to make the local traffic move out of the way so that we spoiled visitors don't have to wait.  I think they want Semester at Sea to continue coming to Tema and boosting their local economy.  They appear to be afraid we'll be scared off by the traffic and choose to go elsewhere.  I must say, that although it made me more than a little uncomfortable to think of being treated in such an undeserved VIP fashion, it saved us hours of sitting in traffic.  Please read Jeff, Reade or Tate's blog for details of the police escort experience, which was FASCINATING!  In the rare times we did have to stop for a few minutes, local street vendors crowded all over the highways, hoping to sell whatever it was they were selling (which could be anything from snacks to clothes irons).  It seems there is a demand for this service and that the locals do get some of their shopping done in this way.  I would imagine it thins out the population a little too, although our tour guide told us that traffic-related deaths of street vendors are rare.

Here, as in Morocco, the locals shop in markets made up of narrow isles filled with little booths. The vendors sell food, toiletries, clothing, cloth, diapers, appliances, sporting goods, and just about everything else you can imagine. There were tailors all over the place, custom-making clothing on very old, well-used sewing machines.  There were also stalls filled with grains that were being ground and made into the piles of mush that would later become banku, or kenkey (sour cornmeal mush).  The electronics shops were full of discarded cell phones and computers that were being fixed and reused.  People were everywhere, and at this market, were much less aggressive than those in Morocco.  The art market was a totally different story though. We stepped off our tour bus into a flood of vendors, literally trying to pull us in 5 different directions to their various shops.  It was too much chaos for me and made me really uncomfortable.  We did get personal drumming lessons from one vendor and ended up buying 2 of his African drums (for far more than the locals would have spent, we later discovered).

That's all for today.  We're going to spend the day at an orphanage tomorrow, so I expect to have much more to report after that.