Nerve-Jangling Highs & Lows

What I've Learned In Africa:

1.    It is impossible to keep your feet clean here even if you wash them several times a day. Dust/dirt roads and flip-flops are not a good combination.

2.     Nothing can stop a mosquito intent upon sucking your blood in the night- not spray, not long sleeves, not nets. Nothing. They are invincible and far more strategic than you would expect from a winged insect.

3.     If you drive a taxi here you don't need to follow road rules, when you can just beep manically all day long at everyone and everything.

4.     On a related note, you can put as many people as you can physically fit into a taxi…as long as you can afford the police bribe if you’re stopped.

5.     Not having a running water supply is no big deal. Just grab a bucket, head to the outdoor tank and get over it. Anyway, it’s refreshing and environmentally friendly to wash in cold water from a bucket--we should all do it. 

6.     Power outages in a hot climate are, however, a very big deal- because we have no fans and it gets ery hot and sweaty very quickly and not in a good way. 

7.  Camels are a viable mode of transport, possible the most efficient one here and certainly more comfortable than a packed trotro.

8.     If there’s a building with an ocean view, its worth climbing to the top, even if it means getting dizzy on a looong spiral staircase and rickety ladder. 

9.    For some reason they mostly love to play American/British pop music from the 80’s and 90’s on the radio here. Which is fine and not annoying at all when you hear the same Rod Stewart song for the third timein one day.

10.  Don’t take directions from Ghanaians in shantytowns; they probably don’t understand your English and will always confidently say “go straight” even if they don’t know and will end up in you getting nowhere fast.

11. Better to trust Google maps which always knows the way, even in said obscure shantytown in middle-of-nowhere Africa.

12.  Don’t rely on the taxi drivers here to know the way to anywhere either; they are as clueless as you are and probably haven’t been in the city much longer either.

13.  It’s actually no harm to accidentally brush your teeth using the tap water occasionally or a get couple of mosquito bites…I’ve done both and am still alive (If I contract cholera/malaria when I’m home, I will take this one back).

14.  Living in a place where there are beach parties 7 nights a week is good for the soul. 

15.   Nobody needs a hairdryer, contrary to my life-long belief. Didn't have access to one for 2 months and I never looked better if I say so myself. Anyway the humidity renders hair styling useless.

16. Avoid eating snail kebab, even just as a culinary experiment. I don’t care what the Frech say or if it is a ‘delicacy’, it tastes dis-guuuust-ing.

17. I can handle most things that living in very basic accommodation in a developing country can throw at me, except the COCKROACHES! Can’t. Deal. With. Them. Someone please just get those icky creatures away from me.

18. I can now use a tin opener if the tin doesn’t have that little tab to open it. #lifeskillz

19. When I have enough experience/financial security to make completely independent life choices, I will definitely live somewhere with a climate that allows you to wear just a dress and flip-flops and still be warm outside at any time of day or night. In fact, if I don’t sort a life plan out soon, I might just stay here and become the guy who sells coconuts from a wheelbarrow for a living.

20.  If there’s a choice between staying somewhere comfortable or going somewhere risky.... GO!!!

Food, Glorious (?!) Food

Banku, with tilapia fish and red and green chilli pepper sauce

Ghanaian food is quite simple- you can have plain rice, jollof rice (spicy rice in tomato sauce), chicken-with-rice or fish-with-rice. The small fish is called tilapia and arrives on the plate fully intact with head, tail and sometimes an eye or both looking up at you. The portions of rice are HUGE, enough to feed a small family, and at first when I didn't finish even half the plate my colleagues were very concerned that I was sick or about to fade away- definitely not the case. 

Yum!

If, for some strange reason you don’t want rice that day, you can choose banku (lumps of fermented corn maize) or kenkey (bigger, more sour lumps of corn maize wrapped in corn leaves) or fufu (a gooey pulped ball of crushed yam or cassava served in a soup). These have to be eaten using your right hand to pick bits off the lumps and dip them in the sauce- it is frowned upon to use cutlery or your left hand. The chilli pepper sauce comes in green, red and black with varying levels of hotness, even the mildest of which makes my eyes stream, my tongue burn and my face turn chilli-red. My colleagues at work advised me to ask for gravy as a sauce with my lunch since I clearly can’t handle the hardcore stuff- so I was happily anticipating some Bisto-style goodness. But no, this was not gravy as we know it. Ghanaian ‘gravy’ has the texture of minced meat and still tastes spicy, but I’ve learned to love it - anything to relieve the plainness of rice.  While I'm enjoying the culinary experimentation, I do miss having a plain old cheese sandwich for lunch.

Such a foreigner drinking the coconut milk from a glass!

Visitors are advised to avoid eating salad here unless you’ve bought and chopped it yourself because it could have been washed in dirty water that will cause you to turn cross-eyed, your limbs to fall off and/or die a horrible death. The fresh fruit here is amazing and so cheap from the stalls lining the streets. They have juicy pineapples, oranges (which are green), mangoes, watermelons, guavas and the ubiquitous plantain (from the banana family). You can have the plantain fried, baked, boiled, sliced, as crisps, sweet or savoury; all taste delicious. At lunch time, we get coconuts from a guy with a wheelbarrow full of them; he chops the top off with a machete so we can drink the milk, then use the top to scrape out the husk to eat. 

When we go out for dinner, the service is inevitably slow and chaotic. Several items we try to order from the menu are ‘out’ that day. A request like no olives in the salad or no corn on the pizza will be forgotten/ignored. They don’t bother attempting to bring everyone’s food around the same time. Even though they write down the order, someone’s food or drink always gets lost, meaning another 30-40 minute wait. On one occasion, two of us went to get lunch at a quiet hotel restaurant. I ordered an omelette and my friend ordered a hamburger. More than half an hour later, the waiter appeared with one plate- it was a burger bun with egg in the middle. We were starving and not impressed. 'This is Africa' is the catch-all refrain to excuse such things. 

The most fun is trying to pay the bill- No-one in Ghana EVER has change for any denomination, so if you try to use a 20 cedi note to pay for something that costs 12 cedis, they will huff and puff and disappear for ages to scrape together the coins from somewhere. The bill will often contain different prices to those on the menu. When we query this, the waitress will vaguely answer “Oh, that was the old menu, it’s changed…” The stress of organising all this would drive us to drink, if it weren't for the fact that ordering a drink would mean repeating the whole rigmarole all over again!