Long days

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I will preface this entry by saying that I am posting out of chronological order because I forgot to save last week's post on my jump drive. Expect very soon to hear about my trip up north last weekend!

The past couple days have been long and there’s been a lot to deal with. Tuesday I spent four hours walking between offices and waiting for people to return from lunch and meetings. At the university, students must register online for final exams in order to receive credit for the course. However, there was a block on my account and it told me to go to the registry. In typical Ghanaian fashion, the man I needed to see was taking a two hour lunch, and still managed to be 15 minutes late. There I found I owed the university $300 US even though I paid my program in full and they’re supposed to pay the university on my behalf. From there neither my program coordinator nor the International Program Office could help me. And the woman at IPO was actually very rude to me, treating me like a child, which was only amplified in my mind by the fact that I was tired, hot, and very hungry. The next day, I spent another two hours touring campus with a different woman from IPO who was acting as a mediator on my behalf. Still the problem is not resolved, but it is no longer in my hands. My program has to show proof of payment to the registry before the hold on my account is removed. At least it’s out of my control now and I don’t have to waste any more of time getting frustrated because no one knows what to do to solve the problem. It’s true what they say here, systems never work, but people do. You need to know someone in order to get anything done properly.

After my second voyage to rectify my registration issue, I headed to the mall to use the ATM. Of course, the entire system was down and they could not fix it that day, so they told me to try a different branch. (Visa cards are accepted at almost all ATMs, but only two banks here accept MasterCard, which is what I have.) They gave me directions, and I was fairly familiar with the area they described so I felt comfortable going on my own. When I got off the tro-tro I began looking for the bank office. I spent an hour walking up and down the main road looking for the bank, but couldn’t find anything. Because I was by myself, many people stopped me to talk and try to sell me things. They were very nice in trying to direct me, but no one actually knew where I was going. After an hour, I gave up and went home.

Just to put the icing on the cake of wasted time, I tried to make a reservation at the guesthouse on campus for Tim when he comes to visit, but there were no rooms available. In Ghana, reservations are almost unheard of, especially more than one day in advance, so I expected to book a room without any problems. I’ve found that my expectations are rarely met here, which can be good or bad. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised and other times I am disappointed, so I’ve tried to stop having any expectations at all, which is a much more difficult task than it seems. On a side note, I think there may have actually been rooms avaliable, but the woman did not feel like helping me because she was engrossed in a Nigerian soap opera. She made no effort to check any book or list and didn’t say anything to me the entire time except repeated “no’s.” Just another example of the customer service you find here. My director explained that people with those jobs feel a bit superior because they have the goods or services you need, so they are more privileged than you and they decide for themselves if you deserve their attention or product. They just don’t share the same basic business values as we do in America.

Thursday things got a bit more serious when three of my friends were involved in a car accident, but no one was hurt seriously. They were riding on a tro-tro that got cut off by a private vehicle and the two collided. Immediately after the accident happened people in the tro-tro started jumping out, like the car was about to catch fire or something, so my friends did the same. Two of them landed in glass from the shattered windshield and windows and the other emerged with only a couple scratches and bruises. I was at the mall using the ATM (which worked!!) at the time and I went to meet them at the hospital as soon as I heard what happened. Our director was there and a couple other friends came to join.

The nurses did not seem competent at all in basic first aid. They were scrubbing Sarah’s arm which was covered in shards of glass, which only rubbed the glass into her skin harder. They also ignored her when she told them that she needed to lie down or she would faint. Her cuts were worst of the three and it looked like a child had dressed her wounds. We fixed it up a lot better when we returned to the hostel. The most disturbing part of the experience though was the fact that the nurses used the same bowl of water to clean all three girls’ wounds. So much for the AIDS prevention poster just outside. I wonder if they know it is not only transmitted sexually. Someone here actually told me that Ghanaians believe that obrunis don’t get AIDS, so maybe that played into their decision to use one bowl. Luckily there is a group of nurses from Canada staying in our hostel and we consulted them for some more reliable advice on how to take care of their scrapes and bruises.

So after all this, I’m hoping Tim’s arrival is the light at the end of the tunnel and that this week of bad luck will end. My time here has it shares of ups and downs, just like at home. The good parts are definitely overshadowing the bad, and I definitely don’t mean to imply that my whole week has been stressful. My geography professor was actually helpful and kind this week, which was a shock. (She never ended up changing our class time to 5:30 am, thank goodness.) Also, I had excellent Lebanese food for dinner one night and ice cream for dessert. And I’ve become very close friends with most of the girls in my group, so that makes the hard things a little easier and the good things even better.

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