Corn Rows, Canopies, and Collective Cooking
Welcome to Monday.
It's rather interesting how much I have come to value the weekend. I am beginning to think that being able to take ANY time off and setting your own schedule may be preferable to the whole Monday to Friday deal. Although this will probably be contested by all of you still in school, I do like having the freedom to, well, not do work if I choose.
We did have a rather productive weekend though. It was however, as usual, too short.
I finally made it to Labadi Beach - a public beach, referred to by some as an "activities beach." Very fitting description. I do have pictures, hopefully I will be able to post some tomorrow... just keep checking in. The beach was insane. I think the best part was that it looks EXACTLY like every picture I have ever seen of it. It is in fact super beautiful. I was expecting it to be much dirtier than it was too... granted there were lots of random plastic bags floating in the water, but once you got past that, the sight of the ocean was really something else. To contextualize the dirtiness comment... the beaches here are full of garbage. Well some of them. Unfortunately they have been used as dumping grounds and in many places are full of waste. Luckily however, the current is not as bad as in Togo or Benin (Sonjel, don't worry!), so you can go in the water, if it happens to be clean enough, which it was at Labadi. All over the beach there are people playing football (soccer) and frisbee, and loads and loads of vendors, selling everything from plantain chips to paintings to puppets. It is quite a sight, and also super fun!
In other news, I spent three hours getting my hair braided on Saturday (also pictures to follow). I was informed at work this morning that I was ripped off. I should have paid 30,000 cedis (3 USD) instead of 80,000 (8USD). That seems rather insane as I paid 30,000 to get to work today. In any case, I was more than happy to pay 8 dollars, 9 with tip... I mean THREE hours, with THREE different ladies pulling my hair?! Apparently I now look half African, or so the ladies at work have told me. Pretty awesome. Fariba - I am awaiting your comments. Oh and if you're wondering, yes it hurt, holy crap.
On Saturday we wandered down the road (recall from the picture of my street) looking for a canopy and chairs to rent for Louise's going away party. We couldn't find it, so luckily this girl wandering by helped us find the RANDOM canopy rental place/shop - I really can't stress how random this was, and how SHOCKED we were that we even found the place. Anyway, they brought the canopy to our place, set it up in our courtyard and we were set for the evening. It was a pretty great party, and again, I will post pictures later. Loads of people showed up to say bye to Lou (who is going back to the UK before she goes to Senegal), and I think it wrapped up around 4am. I think my Doxy(cyclene) [for malaria] is making me a granny though, because I want to sleep at 11pm every night...
I have another gross bug story... but at the risk of people thinking that bug stories have characterized my time in Ghana to date, I will refrain. It's not the case I assure you, I just find them rather entertaining... and imagine you all do too.
Tonight we're taking a crack at collective cooking... a few of us bought Jay-Z tickets on Saturday (concert is THIS Friday!), so we're kind of broke. We'll see how long this cooking stint lasts... Actually I think that needs a qualifier: Our stove (me, Lindsay and Trish) doesn't work. If it is turned on it will electrocute you. We're not talking ouch, and move on, we're talking it will throw you across the room... so we have to cook upstairs with Shanika and Mary. Anyway it is sort of a shame we don't have our own stove, as I do miss cooking/eating vegetables/not ingesting vats and vats of oil everyday... ahaha. RIGHT.
As of tomorrow I will have been in Ghana for one whole month. Now isn't that just insane?
It's rather interesting how much I have come to value the weekend. I am beginning to think that being able to take ANY time off and setting your own schedule may be preferable to the whole Monday to Friday deal. Although this will probably be contested by all of you still in school, I do like having the freedom to, well, not do work if I choose.
We did have a rather productive weekend though. It was however, as usual, too short.
I finally made it to Labadi Beach - a public beach, referred to by some as an "activities beach." Very fitting description. I do have pictures, hopefully I will be able to post some tomorrow... just keep checking in. The beach was insane. I think the best part was that it looks EXACTLY like every picture I have ever seen of it. It is in fact super beautiful. I was expecting it to be much dirtier than it was too... granted there were lots of random plastic bags floating in the water, but once you got past that, the sight of the ocean was really something else. To contextualize the dirtiness comment... the beaches here are full of garbage. Well some of them. Unfortunately they have been used as dumping grounds and in many places are full of waste. Luckily however, the current is not as bad as in Togo or Benin (Sonjel, don't worry!), so you can go in the water, if it happens to be clean enough, which it was at Labadi. All over the beach there are people playing football (soccer) and frisbee, and loads and loads of vendors, selling everything from plantain chips to paintings to puppets. It is quite a sight, and also super fun!
In other news, I spent three hours getting my hair braided on Saturday (also pictures to follow). I was informed at work this morning that I was ripped off. I should have paid 30,000 cedis (3 USD) instead of 80,000 (8USD). That seems rather insane as I paid 30,000 to get to work today. In any case, I was more than happy to pay 8 dollars, 9 with tip... I mean THREE hours, with THREE different ladies pulling my hair?! Apparently I now look half African, or so the ladies at work have told me. Pretty awesome. Fariba - I am awaiting your comments. Oh and if you're wondering, yes it hurt, holy crap.
On Saturday we wandered down the road (recall from the picture of my street) looking for a canopy and chairs to rent for Louise's going away party. We couldn't find it, so luckily this girl wandering by helped us find the RANDOM canopy rental place/shop - I really can't stress how random this was, and how SHOCKED we were that we even found the place. Anyway, they brought the canopy to our place, set it up in our courtyard and we were set for the evening. It was a pretty great party, and again, I will post pictures later. Loads of people showed up to say bye to Lou (who is going back to the UK before she goes to Senegal), and I think it wrapped up around 4am. I think my Doxy(cyclene) [for malaria] is making me a granny though, because I want to sleep at 11pm every night...
I have another gross bug story... but at the risk of people thinking that bug stories have characterized my time in Ghana to date, I will refrain. It's not the case I assure you, I just find them rather entertaining... and imagine you all do too.
Tonight we're taking a crack at collective cooking... a few of us bought Jay-Z tickets on Saturday (concert is THIS Friday!), so we're kind of broke. We'll see how long this cooking stint lasts... Actually I think that needs a qualifier: Our stove (me, Lindsay and Trish) doesn't work. If it is turned on it will electrocute you. We're not talking ouch, and move on, we're talking it will throw you across the room... so we have to cook upstairs with Shanika and Mary. Anyway it is sort of a shame we don't have our own stove, as I do miss cooking/eating vegetables/not ingesting vats and vats of oil everyday... ahaha. RIGHT.
As of tomorrow I will have been in Ghana for one whole month. Now isn't that just insane?
posted by Laura at 3:21 PM
1 Comments:
I laughed out loud about the "electric stove"...
cheers
Megs
P>S Thx for the shout out in the last post, course I'd tease you to your face...but I may send a trout in the mail instead.
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