Accra and thoughts

I spent time on Saturday with my roommate Irene, who is from Accra. We went into the city and did some shopping! We took the tro-tro (public transportation) into town and shopped on the streets for a while. The streets are just crowded with people selling EVERYTHING you can ever imagine- scrub brushes and soap to clothes and shoes to African fabrics to jewelry to vegetables and meat. And they are just set up on the roads and sidewalks. I bought two short sweaters that tie in the front (my roommate calls them petticoats), a headscarf like I’ve seen some Ghanaians wearing, a pair of brown sandals (Irene said they looked “African”) and some elastic headbands. She helped me bargain, which was fabulous. Then I came back to the dorm and did homework for the afternoon.

My life in Ghana and my life in America are truly not all that different from each other. I am still me. I sweat more and need to shower more often; I am sad that I don’t get hot water from the tap and that there isn’t toilet paper provided in the bathrooms, but really, I am still me. I think that I thought that my life would be so completely different, and it’s not. I can still get anything I need. I live in a giant city with so many goods – both imported from the west and locally made. Having the Calvin group here means that I have friends here who understand me and where I’m coming from. Although they don’t know my history the way a lot of my friends at school do, they understand me. And we are all similar enough to be able to have meaningful conversations even this early into the trip. So it’s not a struggle to relate to those around me either. I know that as I experience more of what my roommate calls “culture” (the life in the city of Accra she just calls “modern way of life”, not “culture”) I will be challenged and fascinated in different ways. And my life here does make me think about the way American culture works. I think that is most important to me right now. Here I see how a balance needs to be reached between the rich and the poor. I see that there are difficulties in getting basic needs met for all the people (especially the handicapped), and I see that as a basic justice issue. But I also see a lot of the Ghanaian way of life as closer to my values than the American way of life. Ghanaians buy most of their products locally. It is very easy to eat food that was grown close by, and buy all products that were made in Ghana. Imports are available, but actually more expensive. Public transportation is really the best way to get around, it is easily accessed, and it is cheap. Ghanaians have a pride in their daily work and in their country’s heritage and their own ethnic culture that I do not see in a lot of Americans. Finding the balance in life between the economy and the environment is important for me, and seeing such a different balance here than the one in the States still has my mind spinning, and I’m not sure yet where it will land. I know that a lot of the American lifestyle is not for me, but the Ghanaian lifestyle is not perfect either. I see improvements that can be made, but I also feel inadequate to judge the Ghanaian way of life because I have had so little interaction thus far with it. I feel like I can legitimately point out things I want to fix in the American way of life because I have been a part of it for the last 22 years. I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, but suffice to say, my life at this time doesn’t look too much different from my life in the states, and I am comfortable here. Not to the point of complacency, but enough that I feel like this place can truly become my home for the next 3 months.