Two Days in Ghana

I arrived in Ghana on Thursday night, exhausted and already overwhelmed but my trip is still off to a good start. I've been lucky with jet lag so far. I woke up early on Friday to get to go to one of the production facilities in an economically disadvantaged suburb of Accra. I woke up early today to go for a jog with a couple other women.

In any case, I haven't been really surprised by anything but the friendliness here. I wasn't expecting that. Many people say hello or "you are welcome" and not just because they're trying to sell something. In the market, there was pushiness, like you'd expect, but with a friendly joking to it that I haven't seen before, as compared to places like Peru and China. Also interesting - everyone has something to sell; no one is begging.

What hasn't been a surprise but is still hard to see is the poverty. At lunch on Friday we walked through the slums to find lunch at a shack, which really is the best word to describe the place. For 4 Cedis, about $2, we had more food than we three could possibly eat, including fufu, Banku, and face the wall (as in, it is such a poor person's meal, you don't want to show your face while you eat it). We left most of it on the table, hoping someone else would be able to finish it and embarrassed about over-ordering.

The slums are tough. There are deep concrete ditches for drainage, and I'm sure they're great when it's raining but now they are just filled with garbage. Chickens and goats roam freely, the smell is part sewage, part burning trash.

The women who work in the production facility also live in the slums but you would never know it from their appearance at work. Some wore nice dresses made from batik or kente cloth, some wore Western-style skirts and blouses. The facility seemed like a genuinely nice place to work. It was clean and seemed recently built. And the pace of the work, work hours, and manager's expectations were nothing like the horror videos of women in the garment industry. The facility is absolutely not a sweat shop.

Today another volunteer and I took some time to explore Accra. We went to Osu, the main shopping district, and the craft market, which is geared towards tourists but was still really fun. I bargained for a small carved wood elephant and some glass beads which I had seen in a high-end Osu jewelry shop for much more than I paid.

Still processing the whole experience. I need to think more about my Western conception of work and work ethic as compared to Ghanaian ideas about work. I need to think more about the way I want to live here for the next month, spending my money like it is nothing because it feels like nothing. I'm not sure yet how to navigate my affluent Western guilt and judgment.