Katrina Traikov,

Ghana 2006/2007 Participant

First Week in Accra

Wow I’ve been here for less than a week…we arrived in Accra on October 2nd – 5pm (4 hours ahead of Canada) via Frankfurt, Germany and Lagos, Nigeria. We all lucked out and the plane emptied out enough after the stop in Lagos for all five of us to have window seats as we flew into Accra. I was fortunate to have a window seat all the way from Frankfurt and the sky was pretty clear for most all of the flight. I’m pretty sure we flew over the Sahara and its beauty astounds me. Sand for miles on end – first dry mountains and rock formations to the north of it with swirls of red and black and grey teased through the pale tan parched earth – then the Sahara, with wave patterns etched in to it by the wind. The land slowly got greener the more south we got. The land looked so peaceful from the plane.

As we landed in Nigeria and then flew along the coast to Ghana even the whitecaps of the waves didn’t look like they were moving. I had the strangest feeling while I was in the plane, like I was in a dream – in a bubble waiting for it to pop. Not believing that I had actually flown across a large portion of Africa and that I will be in Ghana for the next five and a half months.

The flight from Toronto to Frankfurt was the first cross-Atlantic flight I had been on and I remember partway through the flight my heart skipped a beat. I realised, perhaps for the first time, that I would be a long way from home. I don’t know if the bubble has popped yet, but its surface is gradually thinning as it’s dawning on me that I’m actually in Ghana. It’s also dawning on me over and over that the majority of the world live in unimaginable material poverty. Electricity, running water, safe drinking water, relatively safe streets at all hours, enough clothes ‘to burn’…adequate medical care, enough food – My privilege is being shoved in my face over and over.

This One World program could never be an exchange. The Canadian government granted only 25 Ghanaians a visa to visit Canada in 2003. Yet, I can afford to take 8 months off school and work to partake in this experience. I could take a flight home tomorrow if I wanted to. I will see more of Ghana than most Ghanaians do. I can choose to live simply or what simply living means to me whenever I want to. I can choose when I want to live in solidarity and when I do not. Its’ 2006. Life’s not fair.

We’ve spent the last week in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Sister Bernadette picked us up from the airport. Her nephew Ofori took a week off of work to be our guide and take us around his “hometown” of Accra. It is a huge city! If I could describe my experience of Ghana so far it would be OVERWHELMING. The first day walking in Accra, especially in the market (which seems like a maze of people and stuff)… it is an impossible amount of people and things (keep in mind everything is new to me, the sights, smells, sounds, tastes, EVERYTHING!).

I couldn’t muster the courage to take my eyes off of the back of the person I was following. I think it’s also not helping that I only know one of the 50+ languages in Ghana (English). People are yelling things out  to be heard over the ambient noises of car horns and voices. Most of the time I have no idea what they are saying. Some works are starting to pop out and make sense in my head. “Atisen” (how are you?), “Eye” (I’m fine), “Akwaaba” (Welcome), “M’dasi” (thank you), “m’dasi aye” (no thanks”.

Ofori is teaching us well! Tomorrow we leave fro Battor and I am super stoked! It amazes me how welcoming some people are. It also amazes me how utterly stupid I am… think about it…especially when I get to the village: What? No running water? How do I bathe myself? No Electricity? How to I cook food to eat? What’s safe?

I am like a two year old – only more dangerous – because I want to have everything under my control… who am I if my university education doesn’t matter? If every accomplishment doesn’t matter? If my life as I understand it (relationships/lifestyles, etc) can’t be understood by those around me? It is humbling! At our core “we are all the same”. We went to the Ghana hockey association )… and Ofori repeated that statement about six times in a row – we are all the same – like he was trying to think of a better way to say it, but the words kept falling out of his mouth because there is no better way to say it… we are all the same.

I guess that is what made today so hard. Ofori looked at the pictures I had brought of my family and friends… and he said “you have a beautiful family”. Today he brought us to see the house he grew up in, his shop, his friend’s restaurant and the house he now lives in with his stunningly beautiful wife, Stella, and his two beautiful boys Raphael and Dennis. Someone said, “Wow, you have a really nice house”, as his wife offered us seats in the living room – which was about the size of my shoebox of a dorm room at Saugeen – and perused his family photo albums. “Thank you”, Ofori replied with a quiet dignity. And I wonder how it must feel when we ask him to take us to the bank multiple times in a week because we need to take out 6x the maximum daily withdrawl amount (2 million cedis = $200 US) when he lives in a compound with 2 other families. How he must feel taking the week off work to show 5 obrunis around for a small fraction of what they are taking out of the bank. How he must feel knowing that ‘thank you’ is the only appropriate response to that question that one cane think of on a short notice. What was he supposed to say?

...to be continued