August 26. A Comprehensive Victory

Thursday night being Quiz Night, it was time for redemption. Having finished a distant fifth last week, we brought a large team this time round, adding another Canadian, an American, a Czech, and a South African. The international flavour paid off, as we not only won the Quiz, but also took the beer and tequila rounds – the hallowed trifecta.

August 23 - 27. A Quiet Week at Work

This week was a bit of a quiet one at WiLDAF, as most of the staff was in Cape Coast training women on political participation as part of WiLDAF’s We Know Politics program. I’ll join them for week two near Takoradi on Sunday.

August 19. An Off Week at Quiz Night

Thursday being weekly Quiz Night, it was off to Champs again. The team was largely unchanged from last week, so our confidence was understandably high. However, the competition was shockingly stiff and we tumbled down to a staggering fifth place finish. We figure we’re left with no choice but to increase practices to three nights per week. And if we can’t improve significantly by next week it may even be time to fire our coach.

August 17. Pin Pals

On Tuesday night a group of us went out for Lebanese food and then played a couple games at what I can only imagine is Ghana’s only bowling alley. I complained loudly and often about the lane, which seemed to take every ball I threw to the left just as it got towards the pins, and bowled a fairly miserable 83. During the second game, however, I aimed to the right on every shot and managed the high score of the night with a 133.

My grumbling aside, it was quite a nice bowling alley, and certainly unexpectedly nice for Accra. It’s too bad it’s a good way out of town or else it would be doing a roaring business.

August 15. Ping Pong

On Sunday Duncan and I spent the afternoon at Ashley and Matt’s, where they were hosting some friends and having a table tennis tournament in their yard. It was good fun, although I went 0-2 in the competition.

August 12. Trivial Pursuits

Tonight Duncan and I thought we’d once again bring our encyclopaedic knowledge of trivial things to Champs for Quiz Night. This week the group included Gabrielle and Andrew, as well as Greg, a half English, half French journalist, his Uruguyan housemate, and our friend Ashley from California. Our international ensemble blew away the competition and walked away with a well-deserved first place finish. We look forward to defending our title next week.

August 9 - 13. The Work Ahead

This week at WiLDAF it was decided that I’ll create a number of further Question and Answer documents for uploading to WiLDAF’s website. For now I’m working on the general structure of the legal system, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Property Rights of Spouses Bill, the Universal Periodic Review, and the rather excruciatingly named Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.

August 7. Weekend Getaway

Saturday morning found Duncan and I picking up Gabrielle and Andrew, a New Zealander volunteering in Accra, and heading out west along the coast to Bojo beach. Once there we crossed an estuary about 80m wide and were deposited on a long sandbar made of almost white sand. The water was surprisingly cold at first (much colder than I’ve experienced anywhere else in Ghana) and there was a bit of an undertow, but overall it was nice for swimming.

We had a nice lunch at a restaurant on the beach, played some cricket on the sand, went for another swim, and then headed off a little further along the coast to Kokrobite Beach, where we stayed overnight at a popular guesthouse called Big Milly’s.

August 4. We have Lift-off

Today was the official launch of We Know Politics II. The festivities were set to kick off at 9am, so naturally three of us – myself and Richard, who were in charge of playing the slideshow I created yesterday, and Samuel, the WiLDAF driver – headed off to the Ministry of Local Government at about 10:10. Our mission was to inquire as to whether the Minister would be attending later that morning. That’s right, three of us went to do this job, while any one of us could have accomplished it in a fraction of the time with one phone call. In any event, we managed to arrive back at the launch just as things were kicking off – over 90 minutes behind schedule.

The launch itself went quite well, and the slideshow and Bernice’s speech were well-received. There were probably over 300 people in attendance, including the Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs, a female Chief, and a bunch or representatives from Western aid organizations that are contributing to the project financially. There was even a live band. Overall it was a very celebratory atmosphere.

August 3. Countdown to Launch

At work today things were a little hectic because of the impending launch of “We Know Politics II”, a three year campaign to increase the number of Ghanaian women in decision-making positions. I was asked to create a movie/slide show to provide a look back at the successes of the first phase of the project, “We Know Politics I”, and write a speech for Bernice Sam, the head of WiLDAF Ghana, to deliver at the event.

I was able to get both tasks done to my satisfaction, despite the fact that I’d never used Windows Movie Maker before, and despite the version installed on my computer being a French one (not much good to this Anglophone, nor to any of my Ghanaian colleagues). I look forward to attending the launch of the project tomorrow, as I’m told it will be attended by hundreds of people, including representatives of donor organizations and members of the press.

After work Duncan and I decided to combine a trip to the grocery store with dinner and a movie. The theatre is at the Accra Mall, which is a really nice, modern mall on the north edge of town. We figured we’d eat at a pizza place there that does 2-for-1 pizzas on Tuesday night, only to find that the wait time after ordering was over two hours! Not willing to wait this long, we went elsewhere, then did a rushed shop before the movie started.

The film we saw was Inception, with Leonardo DiCaprio, and it was quite good. There was a brief, unscheduled intermission as the power went out for a few minutes, and there were two rather loud and vulgar verbal arguments that broke out during the course of the movie, but it was a beautiful, comfortable theatre just like any back home. I definitely plan on going back to see another movie or two before leaving Accra in October.

July 31. The hills are alive...

This Saturday night Duncan and I met up with Gabrielle, a fellow CCI intern working in Accra with Abantu for Development, and went to see The Sound of Music at the beautiful National Theatre. That’s right, The Sound of Music done by an all-Ghanaian cast. There were certainly a few slightly surreal moments, for instance watching Ghanaians yodelling and portraying Nazis, but all in all it was a great experience. Maria held the show together, and could actually act and sing, something that couldn’t really be said of most of the other cast members.

One of the biggest problems was the sound quality. Only some of the players had microphones, and the distribution of the mics seemed almost random. Further, there was a fair bit of distortion and feedback, which, combined with the Ghanaian accent, made it quite hard for me to understand the lines. The audience too was an integral part of the experience, since, while they seemed to enjoy the performance whole-heartedly, they felt no compunction about hooting and jeering if someone really missed a note, or cat-calling the Baroness when she came on stage in a particularly tight dress.

July 28. Back on the Pitch

After work today I made a successful return to football. The leg was a bit sore but overall fairly well healed.

July 27. Au revoir

On Tuesday I visited Genee’s school, and watched as she gave a lesson to the kids. It was miles better than the ridiculous rote memorization that their normal teacher relies on. I witnessed some of it and could hardly stop myself from laughing as she rapid fire style ‘taught’ them: “u-p, ‘up’, u-s, ‘us’, a-t, ‘at’, i-n, ‘een’, i-t, eet” etc. She was going so fast that none of the kids would have any chance to understand what she was spelling, and even I couldn’t follow all of it. But the kids were suitably talented as parrots so all was well. After Genee taught for a while we went outside and blew bubbles for them, which made them all go clinically insane.

After work we went to the airport as Genee’s flight was to leave at 1am the following morning. There was some hope that she could stay for a couple extra days as the flight was overbooked, but unfortunately there were some no-shows so she had to leave as scheduled. Thank goodness for Skype.

July 26. Back to the Salt Mine

Today it was back to week after my work off. The office was quite quiet as most of my colleagues were in Cape Coast for a week-long training session.

July 23. Return to Accra

Today Genee and I stopped by the local craft market in Kumasi and bought a number of items including several masks. Then we hopped aboard another STC bus back to Accra. The journey was uneventful, except for the simultaneously annoying and hilarious Ghanaian soap operas we were subjected to on the bus’s tv system for the entire duration of the trip.

July 22. Back to Kumasi

Today again started at the ungodly hour of 3am, as we hitched a ride with a German family back from Mole, through Tamale, all the way to Kumasi. The reason we went back to Tamale, which isn’t actually on the road from Mole to Kumasi, was because the family was stopping in a village near there to pick up a family friend who had stayed there overnight.

The family friend turned out to be the chief’s daughter, so the village insisted we all stay around for a traditional dance. Before we were treated to the dance we were led into a small house where we sat on wooden benches amidst a bunch of laundry hanging out to dry and were served tea. Just as we had poured the tea, though, we were led back outside as the dancing had started. It was fairly entertaining, and certainly not something one sees everyday in Canada, but we were left with a sour taste in our mouths as afterwards the Germans were basically made to donate money to the village as a fee for watching the performance.

After all this had been negotiated, it was time to head back down to Kumasi. However, while we were watching the traditional dance the bus had been taken to a local garage for a quick once over. It returned soon after the dance finished, but then it was decided that it needed to be washed, so we had to wait around another 30 minutes for that to happen. Genee and I were not too put out, as we were only heading as far as Kumasi, but the German group was headed all the way back to the coast – about a 20 hour travel day – so they weren’t all that pleased with what turned out to be a four hour layover in Tamale.

July 21. "Baboons to the left of me, baboons to the right of me..."

Our second day at Mole we got up early (although not in comparison to the day before) and did a walking safari at 6:30. It was a small group of four – me, Genee, and a Flemish couple we befriended the day before. The walk was about three hours in total, and we saw basically everything we did the previous day, although this time we came upon the elephants at a large watering hole. We stayed there just watching them splash around for about a half hour. As we were leaving we caught sight of a crocodile, but he wasn’t up for trying to chomp on an elephant and was giving them a wide birth.

In the afternoon we lounged around the motel’s pool and watched as the baboons launched periodic raids on the dining area, at one point even entering the kitchen. One particularly bold baboon ran over to a table and stole a bottle of salad dressing, then screwed off the lid and sat on a concrete block and licked out the dressing. When he’d apparently got all he could by this method he poured some out and licked it up off the concrete. All in all I’d say the guests were probably only slightly more amused than frightened by the baboon attacks.

July 20. Holy Mole

We rise dark and early at 3am, as we’ve been told we must get to the bus station well before 4am to secure tickets on the bus from Tamale to Mole. The drive there is slowed by the dozens of sleeping goats and sheep sprawled out on the road. They disperse and let us past after some honking, put seem put out to be doing so.

At the bus station nothing happens for almost half an hour – just a few dozen people sitting sleepily in chairs at the open air station. When an official with the bus company arrives we find out the bus to Mole only runs once a day, at 1:30pm. But we’re told there’s a bus to Wa in the upper west region of the country that goes within 5km of Mole. We decide this is the best option, only to be told that the bus is already full.

At this point we make a friend named Kumara who suggests we take an 8am bus to the Damongo junction, about half way between Tamale and Mole, and try our luck finding a tro tro the rest of the way. Figuring that this is better than waiting around until 1:30, we find a bus company employee who walks us over to the line up for tickets to Damongo. After standing in the pitch dark for 20 minutes we’re told that it’s actually the line for tickets on the Kumasi-bound bus. We are not amused.

Next we thought we’d give the Wa bus another try, and fortunately it turns out that they are now into the standing room only ticket allocation. So we buy tickets and squeeze on, the second and third to last people let on. Three hours of sitting on our backpacks with peoples knees in our backs later we arrive at Larabanga, and take a motorbike the last 5km to the Park.

Since we left so early, we have plenty of time on our first day to do an afternoon safari. We lucked out and met a group of Dutch girls volunteering in Kumasi that came with their own vehicle and driver. So we piled into their truck and went on a guided vehicle safari. We saw plenty of antelope, warthogs, monkeys, baboons, and – the highlight by a wide margin – elephants. In fact, we were able to get out of the car and walk to within about 20 metres of the elephants, who munched away unperturbed.