Blogs from Ashanti, Ghana, Africa - page 19

Happy birthday America. Yeah, I'm a day late, but I was toasting you last night with a few other Americans, celebrating my return to Kumasi, so let's call it close enough The field work concluded yesterday with a successful visit to one last town, Wenchi. Spirits were high, as the students get to return to awaiting moms and home-cooked fufu (one of them claimed yesterday he gets his "big muscles" from a life of mashing the cassavas for his mom's fufu, I'll have to try that workout on for size and see what happens), and my co-worker gets to spend a weekend with his wife and kid for the first time in a month. As for me, I got to go to a decidedly expat-centric restaurant last night and have a hand-made veggie-burger. Tonight I am ... read more

As the copying machine whirs along with copy after copy of housing finance questionnairres, it almost feels luxurious to be sitting still here typing again, just an hour away from being free from work until our research team meets at the bus station tomorrow afternoon. As I mentioned in yesterday's apology, this week has been insane. We spent the week in a place called Samaritan Villa, a Catholic retreat outside of Kumasi that was a great backdrop to four days of training students on how to do focus groups and surveys, and develop our questionairres and various other complicated little Excel charts. The kids were really well engaged, and asked great questions, as well as constantly using the very Ghanaian trait of making a "the line is drawn here!" statement, fully standing and almost shouting over ... read more

Or something like that. I always worried about starting a blog and following the "post, post, post" then "nothing, nothing, nothing" pattern of 99% of these things. But while it looks like that has happened, I have not had access to internet all week, and have been working more than almost any week in any job I've ever had (still not done for the day) Tomorrow I rest, so expect some updates.... read more

One of my favorite commercials in the US is from a few Super Bowls ago, by UPS. It has three guys in shirt and tie in a closed office dancing to "Push It" by Salt 'n Pepa. The boss bursts in, the music stops, and he asks a series of "where is the shipment", "who's handling what," "how much money do we have" type questions. One of the workers checks the UPS tracking system, answers the three questions rapid-fire, and turns the music back on, and dancing resumes as the confused boss leaves the room in a fluster. Fast-forward to last night, and on local TV the same scene occurs, except it's African beats and Ghanaian office workers, but the boss is still just as angry when he burst in, yelling that a shipment arrives the ... read more

Arrived in Kumasi on Sunday afternoon following a five-hour bus ride from Accra. Kumasi is the second-largest city in Ghana, and the capital of the Ashanti, the largest ethnicity in the country, and the namesake of the year 2002's favorite R and B singer. The Ashanti kingdom is not a historic idea, it is a living, breathing thing, as they still have a fully-functioning king and various other dignitaries, as well as a palace right here in town. This might explain the plethora of tourist-friendly masks and "artifacts" in some shops, which are made insignificant with the real shopping heart of Kumasi, the Ketejia market. Like with any large city in an agricultural area, the Kejetia market is just bursting with commerce on the smallest of scales, with sometimes what seems like more vendors than buyers, ... read more