a different sort of culture shock

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AN - So this entry has less to do with the cultural experience of living in Ghana, but more of the cultural experience of living in Ghana as an international student. One evening we were told that one of the American girl that lived in our building was having a birthday party. Her name is Ashley. We met her on a couple of occasions and she seemed like a nice girl. We have also met a few of her friends that were of course from the same program and from the same country (America). We thought it would be a good idea since, we were still quite new in town and we should try to make some friends. So, we agreed to come.

Ashley was able to have the international bus driver take her friends and us on the bus for go good rate. Unfortunately, no one knew where Jazztones were. Jazztones is a jazz bar; it claims to be the best jazz bar in all of Ghana… I’m sure this isn’t hard to do since I believe there are maybe 2 other jazz bars in all of Accra. So we basically took the international bus on a joy ride, until we got a phone call from one of the students that was already at Jazztones and told us that instead of jazz tonight, they had an open poetry night. No one really seemed that keen about open poetry night so they started to direct the driver to Cellsbridge, another bar. Once we got there, we were the only foreigners there. The 15-20 of us sat in lawn chairs on the patio. Chantel and I started to notice the slow invasion of team America. They were like ants; one ant notified where there was sugar and soon a colony would take over. It was like that at this Cellsbridge bar. One by one, they all entered the bar in packs. There were about 40 foreigner students at this little bar. It was quite overwhelming to be exact. I made a little joke with one of the American students sitting next to us. I said, “Wow, you guys really invade and take over don’t you? Always travel in packs?” She looked at me, smiled and reply, “It’s true.” A few of the students also spoke about how they try as much as possible to avoid group outings. This was quite interesting to hear. They were expressing the fact that they didn’t like the feelings that got as a group this large. About how, they would literally take over a place and draw attention, instead of mingling within the locals, being more discreet. This made me really appreciate how both Chantel and I came to Ghana. It was nice that we were not tied down to a program, and I guess I was a little thankful that we didn’t have everything handed to us and that we did have to struggle a little to get to Ghana. Struggles builds character, doesn’t it. The positive of not being part of a large group also forced us to make friends, both local and international. I would think that both of us would be less opt to make friends if we were in a large group of other students that share the same demographics. Anyways, not so long story, shorter, I ended up leaving after two drinks. Team America all seemed very nice, but I don’t know if I would really go out of my way to hang out with them.

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