earth walk

Saturday morning I slept in a little. I wake early every morning and know to within 10 minutes what time it is. From the early grey of the morning sky, it was 5:45. After my late social night I have slept in and missed the drums.

I am now completely used to cold showers. I have at least 2-3 a day. The water in shaded tanks here is as cold as an outdoor pool in Melbourne; I would say quite cold, but not chilling. It is stored in a huge polytank on the floor immediately above my bed where they are still building. There are no cement mixers here - concrete is hand mixed. If I see a crack appear in the ceiling I have estimated that it will take 1.7 seconds to casually stretch and rise from bed, unlock the door, and leap into the corridor from a standing start. The tank is about 2m diameter, and between 2-3m high, so I guess a 10,000 litre tank. 10 cubic metres of water weighing 10 tonnes, when the tank is filled by the water trucks. And the trucks come frequently now, after we raised the issue of water running out, and Ikando who are paying the bill escalated it with the hotel. In Africa, the Sword of Damocles is a black polytank. Mix concrete like the wind, my building friend ! And don’t spare the reo.

While having breakfast at the Brotherhood, we saw a funeral procession coming up the main track, ‘The 18′. I have seen a couple of these in the camp now. A noisy procession, beating drums, shuffling dance, everyone with their faces smeared with a blue-grey paint. Pictures of the deceased, a young man in his 20’s who died suddenly and unexpectedly after a brief illness. They stopped at each stall and showed us a picture of the man so that he would not be forgotten. One of the leaders asked me if I was comfortable having some of the war paint on my cheek. I agreed, there was a short 5 second ceremony, and I shifted from observer to participant. It was moving. Sudden deaths here are both tragic and routine. People around me were saying things like : ‘Another one! He’s the third this week!’ In a camp of 50,000, that would translate to a mortality rate of 1 in 50 p.a. or 20 per 1000 of population, I guess not unexpected given the circumstances and environment. Malaria, cholera and typhoid are commonplace as pretty well only volunteers are prperly vaccinated (due to the cost.) So I think it is not so much the rate, as the average young age, that is more tragic. As in, ‘Another one, only 24 years old !’

At 9am I gave a workshop to a representative group of IT professionals at the camp. There are quite a few technical qualifications around, even Cisco and MSCE. I gave an all purpose project management presentation which seemed to be relevant. Covered in the soft chalk dust, with adults sitting in the school double benched desks. There are people here who have some great ideas, but never schedules, dates, or names of real people doing things. Resources don’t get pulled together, budgets are a surprise on the day causing a frantic search for a sponsor at the last minute, and it just doesn’t happen. I have an idea that teaching key people here how to plan a simple project might be the best thing I can do in the short time left. At first they found it a bit abstract. So I asked them, ‘I am going to Accra on a tro-tro at 7:45 tomorrow morning. This other guy is going to Accra sometime next week. Which one of us will definitely get there ? Why ?’ Ah-ah ! More solid examples please.

So we talked through how to build an internet cafe in Liberia, with today as day one of the project. I know that this is an actual stalled thought. When do we want it to open ? Shall we say, September 1 2007 ? What happened the day before to make it real ? Oh, so who ordered the truck ? What was the name of the man who organized transport, you ? Who signed the lease? When did he go over to check out properties ? 3 months earlier ? On a bus ? Who designed the network, you ? Who then ? How many PC’s ? etc etc. Working from the final goal backwards, rather than the vague idea forwards. All basic stuff for our PM readers but I think it was the right message on the right day. So many ideas here are in a holding pattern, and people sort of wait for the next step, then the next; things may proceed slowly and sequentially, or stall altogether.

The workshop finished very positively and we did the group photos thing in front of the blackboard. I grabbed my backpack, raced to the tro-tro’s, and caught one bound for Cape Coast where I planned to stay the rest of the weekend.

There is a stereotype you see on black american TV sitcoms. A matriarch is unimpressed. Drawing to full height, hands on hips, and looking down her nose, she simply utters : ‘Hmm-Hmmmm!’

The first syllable is short and low. The second syllable is much longer; it starts off the same pitch, but then rises quite a way. It says so much and leaves so much unsaid.

Simon and Hannah were to visit a church service Sunday. It was a special event, being the first sermon by a pastor friend of theirs. (About 10% of the population here are pastors.) They were to be escorted to the church on Sunday at a meeting place, but the rendezvous did not connect. Instead they went to Kokobrite Beach for the day. Unfortunately, while there they had a bag snatched. They lost only some day cash, and their bag was later found with their keys still in it. Passports and camera were safely at home. But it was still very unsettling for them both.

Simon related that they told an african women friend about the theft. She started off quite sympathetic and concerned. Then she asked, ‘Weren’t you supposed to be at a church service ?’

Uh-oh. As Simon tells it, he stammered just a little with an ‘Um, well..’ sort of start. The connection between not going to church, and having a bag snatched same day, was closing in on them. She heard them out before pausing, then announcing :

‘Hmm-Hmmmm!’

I have heard that sound a few times. They do it so well here.

The sky has been greyish the last few days and the temperature has dropped to about 30 degrees sometimes. This feels very cool and refreshing. However, I noticed that the sky was more of a haze than a cloudy overcast, and even the nights are clouded, with only a few stars visible. The Harmattan has arrived; this is the seasonal north wind which arrives late November, bringing with it sand and dust from the Sahara. Visibility reduces to around 1km for a month. So far the Harmattan has a cooling wind with the haze. I hope it stays that way: the Sahara sounds hot. The Harmattan blows across most of the Sub-Sahara for a month.

School has officially finished and an exam period has started. Students in all grades are sitting hour long exams for the next 2 weeks. I hope they all bring their pens and pencils. In a typical class, about 6 arrive each lesson unable to write. However I still have the adult IT classes, and some non-teaching school things to do. The school pc’s are all virus infected so I will give the network a spring clean.

This means I have a bit more time during the day. I gave Erin a hand to print some tickets for the ‘Miss Liberia in Ghana’ Beauty Pageant to be held Friday December 1st. Erin had done a great job with the graphics, but the tickets needed to be sequentially numbered 1-1000, and Photoshop was not up to it. Manually typing each number, the first 100 tickets took half a day. So I migrated her over to Access and did a report with the numbers 1-1000, using her graphic as a background, and laying the tickets on the page 3×3. A fair bit of resizing due to page sizes and printer margins, but it came up a treat. The special ticket paper had not arrived yet. I asked if the ticket paper was A4 or US Letter. No one in either Ghana or Liberia knows if their country is metric or not. You would think it would be a matter of asking a few adults around you, but no, no one knows. Cars have metric odometers, but they are all european anyway. School texts are metric. But people talk in miles. There are no city signs showing distance that I have ever seen. I guessed A4, formatted accordingly, then found that the standard paper size is US Letter, and so was the ticket paper when it arrived. Another resize.

While walking to the building where the printer was, I passed a huge tray truck stacked about 4 metres high with full sized hessian bags filled with what appeared to be a green plant, bamboo shoots or similar. A man was perched precariously up on top, lowering bags down one at a time to a crew of about 6. They reached up and set the lowered bag on their heads, before walking about 25 metres to an area where the bags were being stacked into another huge pile. I couldn’t help noticing that there was nothing between the truck and the destination pile. The truck could have reversed another 25m and they could have just dropped the bags over the side. I watched this for a while, took the scene in from a couple of various angles, then moved on.

There is one job here that seems like really hard work. Most people have charcoal burners for cooking, buying charcoal that is made in the camp. There are about a dozen places where a family burns wood in an underground pit, where it is covered and smoulders for a day or so, turning into charcoal. They then dig the still hot charcoal out with shovels, put it into hessian bags, and sell it. Day in, day out. I walk past a couple of these regularly and it is hot, sooty work. Just walking past you need to be careful with pants and shoes, but these poor people are literally covered in it. I can see that there are young children working there who should be in school. But if they went to school, the charcoal income would reduce, which means water and food would reduce, and they would all suffer. So in the balance of things having their own children work in a charcoal pit is the optimized outcome.

I met up with Simon and Hannah for a coke at the Holiday Feeling. There were 4 women, staff, sitting together. Simon warned me that one of them thought I owed them money. So I called her over, and asked if I was up to date. The result was a 15 minute shouting match.

Scenario : the previous night, I ordered a chicken and rice (21,000) and a coke (3,000). The woman came up and said that they were out of chicken, but they had beef. So I said, ok, beef and rice is fine. I had never tried the beef before because I have not seen any cows in Ghana, and thought it unlikely that people were importing frozen container loads. I have seen some buffalo, but ended up concluding that the beef was a red meat, and can we please let it go at that.

So she came up later for the money. She asked me how much the beef cost, then suggested 21,000 ? The menus were downstairs. I said it sounded right and paid 24,000. Our small group then took a few minutes to venture downstairs. Woman is looking evil.  It turns out that beef and rice is 28,000 and I should have known that. I have not paid enough. No problem, I say, I want to be clear, how much do you need ? All are happy it is just 7,000, which I pay.

But today she is still looking positively evil. I ask what the problem is. She tells me that I owe them money, her friends intervene, then she screams at them and I can only partly follow the conversation. I pick up that she is happy with the beef side, but now thought I had 2 cokes. Her friends are adamant I only had one. She is upset and thinks they told her I had 2, so now they are the ones causing the problem. This goes on forever before she storms away. One of the staff apologizes to us. Several times now I have seen Ghanaians having a full on shouting argument in front of customers. Anyone reading this in the customer service training business, there is plenty to do over here. Ironically, this same shop has a scrawled sign out front advertising for a catering person.

The last few days I have gone to bed exhausted around 8.30-9 o’clock. That sudden deep weariness that I need to go to sleep right now, and I am closing my eyes as soon as I land on the bed. Tonight I go back to the hotel, enter the room, and am asleep within minutes.

Today I had a visit from James Bedeah, who runs a school of 40 odd students in the camp specializing in literacy. An australian girl, Tara, assisted with setting up the program, called ‘Literacy for Life.’ Tara is a friend of one of my friends at my Monday meditation classes, Helen. Helen made the connection and put us into email contact with each other before I left.

James was with a woman and two small children. I asked James how he was going, and we exchanged the usual pleasantries. However I found out later that James has malaria. Child one has malaria. Child two has typhoid.

If you are reading this from a western country, then unless you had a very unusual day today, you probably don’t have a lot to complain about.

The school has 3 wells, each of which is 4 metres deep. The opening of each well is about 1 metre square. So the school has a huge supply of non-drinking water. The wells are simply holes in the ground, with square ground level concrete covers in place. The school also has a very small quadrangle. The school buildings form a rectangle enclosing the central quadrangle, which is about 20m x 10m. The children can only play in the quadrangle as the school gate is shut during school hours.

Now the best place to put wells is somewhere central, so that when the maintenance man opens the covers a few times a day to lower buckets for water, it is not too far to carry them. And what could be more central than the centre of the quadrangle. I have some photos of the children absolutely crowding the play area, and another of Mr. Maintenance standing over open wells drawing water.

The well covers are almost always firmly in place.

What could be more of a cliche than hearing native drums in the african night ? However…the Golden Gate hotel is beyond the camp boundary, just at the edge of civilisation. On the western side of the hotel we see huts and tracks extending into the hills. But I have never explored that way.

Usually I crash around nine, and sleep deeply until 5.30′ish when the sun starts to rise. But on Sunday morning I woke to the sound of two people in the corridor talking loudly and opening a door at 4am. As everything quietened down, I heard the distinctive sound of african drums and chanting in the distance, beyond the western edge of the hotel. The sound of the drums stirred something deep; it was not merely a haunting sound, it actually seemed to arouse something I had hardwired in. There are some things that are genetically coded and we react to, which require no explanation. An aggressive stare, the cry of a child, fingers down a blackboard: these are not taught and are recognized in all cultures. I have to tell you that there is a particular sound of drums and rhythms that you can add to the list. I have heard so many african drums so far which were very musical and spectacular, but this sound was of a different type : primitive, evocative and powerful. Like, I have been here before. It was so striking, the feeling : oh, this is the real thing. I lay awake until the sun rose, listening to the drumming and occasional chants. Then, exactly at first light, it abruptly ceased.

As I was leaving the hotel at 7am, I handed in my key and asked the receptionist : What was with the drumming early in the morning ? She didn’t look at all surprised and just said, ‘Oh, that is the fetish priest, they worship the old ways and ghosts.’ It is all coming together. I also asked, ‘Do many people here still believe the old ways ?’ Then she did look a bit surprised, and repeated almost word for word what Trish had said in Accra 2 days before : ‘I think maybe everyone in Africa believes the old things…’

There is interesting research now showing that if you follow all the dna codes backwards, they seem to converge in what is now Gambia. Apparently western people descended from a small band, estimated at only 50 people, who crossed the land bridge from Africa to Europe 50,000 (?) years ago. I have terrible bandwidth today; a record 20 minutes for the first load of gmail, several timeouts. The network icon status shows only 100 bytes/second. I will allow the last 10 minutes for pressing the ‘Publish’ button for this post ! So I can’t google the links I am after, but it is definitely an interesting read for those who want to follow it up. Both New Scientist and Nature magazines also have a great articles on the ‘haplotype tree’ theories, and various ‘out of africa’ debates. After this morning I can well believe that somewhere in this part of the world, long ago, these drum beats were planted as a deep human memory.

Since then, I have heard them each morning. I am stirring at around 5 o’clock now. They always stop just as the sun first colours the sky grey.

Saturday night I was invited to Mark Davies’ birthday party in central Accra. Mark runs Busylab, where I was invited to host the software development process workshop. Mark is a really fascinating character :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2977598.stm

After taking the tro-tro in, I stopped off first at the flat to drop off a few things, rather than carry them around. Small differences in the weight of a backpack make such a difference if you are walking around a lot. I rested under the fan for a while, then went out and had lunch in Oxford Street, Osu. This is the part of Accra where you can buy anything in the supermarket, and there are western food courts and restaurants. I had a chicken burger and white coffee, a real treat.

Customer service in Ghana is non-existent. Shop staff are not necessarily rude, they just really don’t have a clue. There is no concept of smiling or ‘Have a nice day.’ Imagine you are in the shower and your partner asks you to get out and make them a cup of tea. Customer service staff  have that expression on their faces that you would have when you try to buy something. This is just in Accra. Around the camp, it is the opposite; Liberians, Sierra Leonians and Senegalese shopkeepers are all really friendly and comment on the unique Ghanean approach to customer service themselves.

In the afternoon I caught up with Laura and Nat at the Ikando office. I met Laura’s companion Jean-Luc, who I found out works for AlItalia in Accra. A wonderful airline ! and one I cannot recommend highly enough. And a very good day to our readers Laura and Jean-Luc. I spent a bit of time tweaking the Ikando laptop, which had ground to a halt due to multiple anti-virus programs being installed and fighting, and killed McAfee that had half uninstalled but stayed a zombie.

I walked from the flat to Mark’s place. The house was in a really nice part of town, Asylum Down, with walls and security guards distinguishing it from the surrounding numerous stalls. The house is huge : high ceilings, enormous rooms, cool and comfortable. The upper storey was about 50% balcony, so we went out there to enjoy the cool breeze and the view. It had been a bit overcast and unusually cool, maybe even in the low 30’s.

I met Cory, who is from Seattle and is building a call centre from the ground up. Cory is staying there while in Accra; he was fantastic company and a great host. I also met Bless, who left Ghana at the age of 5, did very well in the US, and has now returned to build wireless/telecommunications networks throughout Ghana. Cory, Bless and I talked shop for a bit and I found their stories great fun. Example : Cory arrived to find the call centre cabled with 35km of CAT cable. That’s a lot of new cable. The cabling quality was great. However, when he asked for the ‘map’, blank looks. As in, patch panel numbering, what goes where ? Hmmm. End result was that it was far easier logistically to rip out the 35km of cable, put it aside as it had been cut to length, and start again with new cable. Both Cory and Bless also talked about the power supply problems in Ghana as a whole. Cory was also an ex-Microsoft senior manager for many years and shared a few insights about life at Microsoft and within the senior development team. Very entertaining : maybe not necessarily for the public domain, but over a barbeque when I get back !

I met Trish, who has lived in Ghana for 10 years, and in Nigeria for 5 before that. I told her about my encounter in the bus with the juju preacher. She related her own experiences, and explained that in Africa, everyone believes in juju and ghosts as a given. I didn’t want to clarify on how extensive ‘everyone’ was due to present company. So how did that reconcile with the fundamentalist churches everywhere, surely there’s a contradiction ?

That’s where it gets really interesting. Belief in the old ways is the foundation. People then take on a church, not to replace the juju, but to protect them from it. A second layer. So it is not a contradiction to believe in both, rather they are complementary halves of a single world view. The juju preacher was bridging the gap, and reinforcing  the message ‘You need me, and christanity, to protect you from the witches, and we can pray against them and attack them.’ That certainly put a new perspective on things.

Food was wonderful; spicy goat skewers were a highlight. Caroline then told me a lot about Senegal and how different it was in french West Africa. I resolved to visit the french part of town next time over here.  Apart from the completely different food, the education system there was typically french. Cote D’Ivoire in the early days was apparently the model of educational excellence, with graduates being given a new car (Honda Civic) AND a furnished apartment. I understand from my daughter Jannah that this is in contrast to the current Australian Government’s model of student support.

Around 11.30 I started to wind down as it was way past my current bed-time, so I reluctantly headed home. Everyone else was just starting. I thanked Mark for a wonderful evening and went back to the flat.

There was no power ! Funny that. That means no fan, so I opened all the windows, got a mosquito coil going, and crashed. That is, until 2am when the mosque down the road with loudspeakers started. I had Sunday breakfast in Osu : a coffee and a fresh croissant ! Then an early lunch at Frankies, including a thick chocolate milkshake. A hot walk back to the tro-tro station.

Taxi drivers sometimes go too far. After frequent beeping, one jumped out, followed me, and waved animatedly, shouting ‘Taxi! Taxi!’, with all appearances of following me around despite my politely waving a ‘No.’ Then I replied ‘Man ! Man!’ We alternated this for a while. Then, he thought we should shift from stating the obvious to something more interrogative. ‘Where you go?’ met with ‘Where you drive?’, ‘No where you go ?’, ‘ Where you drive?’ Anyone who has seen me with a 4 year old doing the ‘Did..Did not..Did too…Did not’ routine knows I have the grudging respect of toddlers. Eventually he wandered off. Another one stopped right next to me beeping, and asked ‘Can  help you?’ I replied, ‘Yes, could you please stop all the beeping ?’ He laughed, gestured a vague explanation that never came, then waved and drove off. I think the Accra drivers know they go too far sometimes with entering your personal space.

The trip back to the camp was incredibly hot but I am getting used to it. I stocked up on 1.5 litres of water for the 2 hour trip in a sauna back. Arrived about 3pm, wandered around the camp for a while. I gave the Sierra Leone guys at the brotherhood a copy of a french weekend newspaper (Le Monde) I bought at Koala in Osu, had a cool coke, and went to bed early.

This has now happened 5 times in a row. I came to school one day eating a pineapple I had bought just near the school. The woman there sliced it up for me. As I walked through the school gate, one of the ‘canteen’ women who sits there all day with food and water, said to me : ‘White Man ! You like pineapple ? Do you want me to bring ?’ Good idea : yes please.

Next day, at morning recess : ‘White man ! You want your pineapple ?’ ‘Yes please, but at lunchtime.’ Lunchtime comes and she looks helpless, surrounded by 400 children. It is not a good time. It takes about 3 minutes to peel and then slice the pineapple with a wicked looking knife. I have a class after lunch, so end up eating it late, just before school finishes around 1.30pm. By the way, it is not unusual for someone to just call out ‘Hey White Man!’ It must happen 30 times a day.

That was fine, but it has happened every day since then, exactly the same. Recess : ‘Hey White Man ! You want your pineapple ? ‘ Me : ‘Yes please, but for lunch’. Lunchtime : ‘Oh, too busy.’ Mind you it is delicious, and she only charges 2500 cedis (25 cents). But I would prefer it a bit earlier. I know that Gannt charts are not popular here, but I am thinking that maybe she could cut up the pineapple just before the kids come out for lunch ? Although in a strange way, it is starting to become one of those little routines that is a milestone in your day, like an afternoon cup of tea. It adds a little predictability to a sometimes alien landscape. Perhaps if she did look ahead, and gave me a prepared pineapple at lunchtime, I would miss it.

On the way to Accra Saturday morning, Erin and I walked from the brotherhood, up the 18, towards the tro-tro station. I was on the way to a dinner party that night, and Erin needed to hit an ATM. Up ahead we heard the loudest drumming and singing, then saw a crowd of about 50 young people coming our way. It was a full on procession. The girls were all carrying hand made brooms, and doing a shimmy sort of dance alternating with group stomps, while moving the the brooms in time. Guys were drumming very loud. They were all singing this simple rhythmic song, pure african. It was all hypnotic and incredibly loud.

As they neared we stepped right to the side, with our backs to a stall to let them pass by. But instead they wheeled towards us, shuffled into a dense pack, and surrounded us completely, still singing, drumming and stomping. There was absolutely no escape : it was not even easy to move at all. Then one girl held out a plastic bag which was full of money, shaking it to the music, about 10 cm away from me. The singing became more of a chant : loud loud VERY LOUD ! loud loud VERY LOUD !

There was nothing even remotely threatening. But I recognize a good cause when I see one, and getting out of there was an excellent cause.  I had the 3000 cedis change from breakfast in an accessible pocket, so I didn’t have to look through and count notes, which would have been awkward. I just went reach-drop. The crowd goes wild ! A huge cheer, more chanting. Now everyone turns to Erin. She finds 1000 cedis and another cheer erupts. Then the procession moves on.

No idea what it was all about. But it worked really well.

African women have an amazing walk and posture. Everything can be carried on your head. Not just women, but also men carry anything above a kilo on their heads, using a cloth wound into a loose ring as a base under the load. However the women have it down to an art form.

The first day on camp, I was directed down a main road. At first I couldn’t see the road. I was standing on what we would call a dry creek bed, very narrow, but with steepish, short uneven banks, rocks, some rubbish, and a downhill path. That would be the road. I walked carefully at first then got a bit used to it. There are other tracks that are fine, including the central road called ‘The 18′; they are even and easy to walk on, if a bit dusty. But the road to the school is a creek bed.

One morning I was walking to school and saw an african woman coming the other way. Sometimes around 7am you see someone immaculately dressed, who must work for a bank in town, or for western union over the road. She was dressed really smartly, newish clean dress, hair made up - a very non-refugee look. I was walking with my rockports, treading comfortably but carefully. She was walking over the uneven track with her perfect african posture and easy stride, not missing a beat. Then I saw she was wearing high heels.

Every morning, on the way to breakfast, I still see at least one thing that blows me away.

There is no other way to say this. Most of the camp looks like a rubbish tip, a hard stone ground covered in plastic bags. It is the first thing you notice. But when you first parachute into an alien landscape you suspend all judgement, absorb every vivid sight and sound with your heightened senses, and later reflect on how it all can be used to make sense of the new environment.

However with the plastics I have no idea. People are personally very clean and proud, showering regularly, covering in soap and scrubbing. Each morning naked children stand outside absolutely lathered from head to toe, pouring buckets of non-drinking water over themselves from the huge tanks and wells. And adults shower in these single person wet areas that are everywhere, about 2 metres by 2, with concrete block walls about 1.6 metres high. It is enough for personal privacy, but with the addition of eye contact with the outside world. So you see people soaped up and showering each morning, greeting you as you pass. The first few times it is weird but it all seems quite normal now. And good morning to you sir !

But the rubbish, I never got it. True, the bins are few on the ground, but they are there. I don’t drop anything and know where bins are for my water bags as I wander around. When you ask people, what’s with the rubbish ? it gets genuinely vague. I don’t think anyone knows.

Electrical power here is called current. As in, there is no current. Power failures happen a lot. I read an article in a magazine saying that the Akosombo dam, which is 3% of Ghana’s land area, is low due to a drought. The dam is huge and was a major engineering project in the 60’s, and one which launched Ghana into modernisation and relative propserity. It turns out is is not so much a drought ,as a new climate feature due to climate change which is being accepted here. Sounds very familiar, similar to Steve Bracks (Premier of Victoria, Australia) announcing recently a new water plan for Melbourne, with reserves at an all time low and projections worrying.

Things are not as simple as they seem however. Ghana does have enough water to meet the electricity needs of the entire population. However, they sell power to neighbouring countries such as Togo and others. There are many industries which get preferential treatment and subsidised power. And a few people who live here said that they never had regular blackouts until the huge aluminium smelter fired up. Since then Ghana has been running in power deficit.

Australia is similar with water. We announce a new water plan, but farmers who irrigate, and industry, use about 94% of the water supply. City dwellers and householders, the other 6%, are the ones asked to conserve. I am all for responsible water use and conservation. We use an average 600 litres a day in my house at home. This includes occasional swimming pool maintenance, laundry, cisterns, a dishwasher, and bathing a daughter twice a week. However, a single big mac at MacDonalds requires a total 5,000 litres of water to produce. This includes the cow, the farm, the grain and the rest. I can save 200 litres a day maybe, then blow 25 days worth of saving by buying a single hamburger. It takes 25000 litres to produce 1kg of beef, 9000 litres to produce 1kg of wheat, 5000 for 1kg of rice. Add it up and you realize that the water out of your tap is completely irrelevant; it is the food you eat that completely swamps your personal water usage by orders of magnitude. So apart from my 150 litres a day of personal use, I use at least another 20-30 thousand maybe by eating. Add more water for the packaging, transportation. We are only talking about the 6% usage in the city. In Australia farmers are up in arms about talk of changing the irrigation model, however maybe not all countries are in a position to grow whatever they want if it rarely rains. This is an interesting read, among many others. A subject worth a google. :

http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/1037.html

Anyway, Ghana switches whole sectors of the power grid on and off daily !! Critical services have generators. But you just can’t do this without severely damaging the infrastructure. When a grid is taken on and off line, huge travelling waves of electrical energy reflect up and down the lines like waves on a string, causing dramatic power surges in electrical equipment. Things just blow up.

I spoke to a guy called Cory who is building a new call centre in Accra. He told me that they have used state of the art voltage regulators, but still can’t keep up with the damage to the huge circuit breakers. People talk of their household equipment, even washing machines, going bang. The school is a case in point : when I arrived there were 9 pc’s, and 4 dead power supplies.

The wiring here is, well, different. Live and neutral wires are used interchangeably, and earths are usually not connected at all. If you see 2 wires in a roof, you can tap into them and connect them to a switch and a light. Everyone seems to know how to do that. The 2 wires are usually the same colour. Metal things tingle. Sometimes you see a wire between a switch and a light socket having several splices over its short journey. Oh, and you can see the wiring because it runs over walls and ceilings, usually not under. Due to the lack of switches and meters, people work on things live ! I have no idea why half the population has not been electrocuted.

Quite apart from issues of safety and things blowing up, it means that modernisation is being affected. Overseas consultants like Cory have the skills to build data centres and call centres. But they absolutely need a reliable, sane power supply. And don’t get anyone started on billing. Metering is not a big thing here so estimates are the norm.

A funny thing happened on Friday night. A few of us were sitting on the only high point on the camp, the top level of ‘Holiday Feeling’, a hotel come restaurant on the main road to Accra, on the very edge of the camp. You get a great view over the whole camp. (I must have been here too long already. I am talking about a great view over a refugee camp.)Suddenly, everything went pitch black. A few generators started and a few lights appeared here and there. Then a few fires and fireworks (what could go wrong) for light. But we were still sitting in the dark. After about 30 minutes, the waitress came up and told us they had started the generator, but the light wasn’t coming on. She pointed to 2 light globes above us. One was wired to the generator, perhaps the globe was loose. Simon is quite tall and offered to twist it around. He reached up, grabbed the globe, gave it a quick flick, and the other mains globe, and the entire camp, suddenly lit up around us. The way things are wired up here, you could almost believe that the power grid failed due to one loose globe in a restaurant.

I wash my hands about 20-30 times a day. Over here, even a small cut or graze can become infected in the tropical, humid air. Rubbing your eyes can cause an eye infection. Handling cash, as you do many times a day for countless small transactions, is a health risk. So I wash with soap often, mostly avoid touching my face at all despite the odd itch, scan morning and night after each shower for small scratches and cuts, and carry savlon and anti-bacterial wipes around.

The school has some reasonably modern toilet facilities. There are several wooden cubicles with western style units and cisterns. There is a dedicated staff cubicle, with a key. The cistern sometimes has water in it but usually you take in a bucket, several of which are always lined up outside by the ever-present maintenance man/groundsman. There are 2 small hand sinks outside with taps. For the taps to work, the maintenance guy has to fill a header tank manually; I think this involves climbing with a bucket. Maybe 1 time in 4 or 5, I have success and wash my hands with soap. The other times there is no water for hand washing. You also would rely on these taps as the only place to wash your hands during the day, especially before and after meals, and after eating juicy pineapples.

However there is a backup plan, which is the same plan reserved full time for all students. There is a communal hand washing basin filled with soapy water. It is one of those plastic laundry bowls about half the height of a bucket and twice the diameter, the type you might soak a woollen jumper in. The 400 odd students wash their hands in this during the day. A second bowl is for rinsing. Both bowls sit in the sun all day.

The first time I noticed these was when the taps didn’t work on day one. The helpful man pointed me to the basin of soapy water. It all clicked, and I remembered I had seen children dipping and soaking during the day. Now, I am thinking to myself, you don’t see a petri dish this big every day. I am also thinking that the sanitation model is a work in progress and I might wait for some process improvement before I get involved myself. I nod politely to the guy, point vaguely towards the library where I have hand wipes, and wander off. I know what he is thinking: this australian doesn’t even wash his hands! But what can you say ? They have made an effort at implementing hygeine, told children the importance of using soap and water, and check they always wash after using the bathroom.

We met an american volunteer called Lee from Philadelphia. She told us that she was assisting in an immunization program in regional Ghana, somewhere near the Volta River. There were trained nurses giving injections with single use disposable needles. So far, so good. However, the nurses were using the one and only alcohol soaked tissue to wipe everyone’s arm, both before and after the shot.

There is a western staffed hospital on camp, St Gregory’s. The french volunteer doctors’ service ‘medecins sans frontiers’ is there. I think those guys are heroes.

Ikando is a great volunteer organization. Laura, who runs things, is just wonderful. When I was first doing preliminary planning for the trip, I spent a lot of time doing a due diligence exercise on the various organizations offering volunteer work in West Africa.  I had some obvious governance level criteria, as well as a few specific ones of my own, eg no political or religious strings. The short list came down to just 2. Ikando were smaller and newer, and Global Volunteer Network (NZ : see new entry in the ‘Links’ section to the right) were larger and more established. But both had excellent references and testimonials.

I have heard so many stories, both directly since here and on the web, of volunteers abandoned by their organizations, and being left to fend for themselves. Including other teachers at my school ! Whereas Ikando takes their responsibilities seriously, and are personally interested in each volunteer.  You feel that a lifeline is always there should you need help or advice. The welcome pack had everything I needed, and orientation the first few days was just about right. By the way, I had been pronouncing it : “ee-kan-doh” whereas it is actually “eye-can-do’, exactly as in the sentence “I can do.”

Both Nat and Laura keep in touch regularly, and respond quickly if anything comes up we need help with. Ikando’s ethics and goals are exemplary. It shows that there are some organizations out there that are ethical and run by wonderful, caring, switched on people. It is not just me; several times I have also heard Erin volunteer to others that she is with a great organization.

I arrived at Busylab about 20 minutes early, and had a real orange juice with a real coffee in their modern restaurant downstairs. The workshop was to begin at 10. I sms’d Mark that I had arrived and was not far away. After coffee, I walked upstairs where there is a modern reception area, took a seat, and looked around. The whole complex is modern, clean, air-conditioned, and one of the few buildings I have been in since arriving that could have been in any city anywhere in the world.

Mark arrived and we entered the meeting room. A good sized modern meeting room, large whiteboard, all mod cons and facilities. He introduced the team of 8. It struck me as an unusually healthy mix of pure developers, engineers, science grads, a consultant, and business people. They explained where they were at and problems they were having.

Non-software people feel free to skip ahead. Basically they have an uncontrolled dev environment, no change control, and migrate direct to production daily from dev. No specs, but user requirement docs are apparently not too bad. Being web based apps, they prototype. No source code control, buildmaster or formal build processes. No BA, and the project management is early days but probably adequate for the size of the team. Looks like system test is not performed; there is one QA who is more business than tech, not necessarily a bad thing, who does functional testing and creative ‘try to break it’ tests. I think she (Garcia) will be a key person there : she has a lateral QA mindset already. Projects and designs slip, no bug tracking yet. Bugs in production often don’t reproduce in dev. Not sure of bug rates, true project efforts. Developers handover code way beyond initial estimates, quoting loose requirements instead of tight specs as the cause. There is a little frustration on both sides but the team spirit is positive and strong. It is a credit to Mark.

All of which sounds normal for where they are at, a young growing team which has hit the first barrier to their scaling up. The business owner/PM has recognized process as an area of interest and targetted a pretty good ad to recruit an experienced process person. I had told Mark at our first meeting that I would be leaning right away from another dveeloper, and looking for an experienced manager broad across the SDLC, or as a minimum, a good software PM who will know what is missing. The dev team is saying the sort of things you would expect. So it is all on track. I think this team has great potential.

I give an all purpose SDLC workshop on the whiteboard, highlighting especially extra effort in requirements and specs, UAT mapping back to user requirements, change control, source code and version control, the milestones in a typical software project. The crew are pretty sharp and ask good questions.

Lunch is served and is great, planteins and beans. I can’t finish it. I am eating oats each morning but can’t have 2 meals after that. I have half the meal and am pleasantly full. The workshop finally finishes at 2.30. Mark has to leave for a 2 o’clock but arrives later just as we wind up. We need to compare notes later.

I spend a bit of time downstairs in the new high bandwidth internet cafe and life is good. I get to catch up on a few emails and update the weblog a bit. I even get a chance to read some of it for the first time ! Still quite a few typos, I notice.

A tro-tro to Osu, which is the commercial area of Accra.  I buy Raid for mosquitoes, an african magazine, Le Match (french newspaper) weekend edition. On the way out a man sees me leave the door and sprints over, shouting ‘Taxi ! Taxi !’ This happens a lot. EVERY taxi that passes a westerner slows down and toots a few times, staring at you. And there are a lot of taxis. I appear concerned and say to him, ‘Yes, this way, they’re just over here.’ At first he is confused but when he realizes we are walking together towards the taxis so I can help him find one, he sees the joke and cracks up.

I walk down to the Osu food court and order a proper coffee, the last for a while. I find a really modern technical store that has every part under the sun, and smart new PC’s that look well assembled. I mistake the proprietors for russians at first due to thick accents, then I see arabic on a computer screen. I see a couple of PC power supplies for 250,000 each ($25) and bookmark it. I take them around the block a bit with queries about varying the spec on a PC and they are on the ball. So I have finally found a computer shop I have a bit of confidence in. One by one, I am finding landmarks.

This morning I was in a refugee camp teaching place value, then later in a modern IT complex, whiteboarding the SDLC. I am learning that in Ghana, it seems to be either one extreme or the other.

Thursday morning I got up early to head into Accra. The brotherhood guys were not ready to make breakfast so I just got some corn bread, and headed for the camp bus station, which is a dusty car park full of vans and the odd hopeful taxi. The Kaneshi tro-tro was almost ready to go. The business aim is to fill every seat, so they will tend to sit there until the last passenger fits in. That would be me. I sit just behind the mate, on a fold up seat with a window just behind the sliding door. Good spot.

The passenger behind me is well dressed, and taps me on the shoulder. I only catch every second word. Excuse me, can I ask you [blah] into the middle ? Pardon ? I am going to [blah] and if [blah] the middle please. With the hand gestures, I work out he wants me to swap with the guy next to me so I am not in front of him. I have a window seat on what will be a very hot drive with traffic jams once we hit Accra, and have no interest in moving. The guy next to me looks happy where he is too. He then adds : I will be [blah] and I don’t want to embarrass you. Maybe he intends to sing ? No idea. But I say, Look, I really don’t mind.

Tro-tro takes off. At the 1 minute mark he suddenly announces in a LOUD preacher’s voice, ‘Brothers and Sisters ! I am going to minister this morning, hallelujah ! Say hallelujah ! ‘ From now on I understand every single word. The first 30 minutes is generic stuff, biblical quotes, and what you would expect from a fundamentalist in auto-pilot. It gets really hot, all windows are open, and when we slow down the mate also opens the sliding door. People in passing tro-tro’s stare at us, you could hear this guy from Morocco. Some laugh and point, like : look at those poor guys, they’re stuck. However about a third of our bus is with him. When he says close your eyes, raise your hands, give me amen, they do. I am watching the driver now and if he closes his eyes I am thinking, I will do something amazing so they open.

Then after we pass Kasoa it all goes a bit sideways. If I command someone to die, he will die ! By the power of the gospel ! Brothers and sisters, i KNOW a witch very well, her name is M-something, and at 4.30 every morning she appears at something Junction ! She charges the atmosphere with evil things ! The faithful on the bus murmur. No one says the obvious. They are actually with him.

She puts evil things into the air ! [unlikely]
She creates sickness !  [really]
She causes arguments and fighting in homes ! [i don't think so]
She makes houses fall down ! [look at my watch]
She causes embarrassment !

Whoa ! This witch causes embarrassment ? There’s just no need for that, she has gone too far now. We need to take this witch down.
Brothers and sisters ! We will fight this witch and destroy her ! [All right !]
Will you help me defeat her power in the name of God ! [Yes ! Let's burn her !]
Through prayer and fasting ! [That's what I meant...]

Then, it gets weird. If everyone prays enough, God will put stones in her stomach and cause the snakes in her hair to be scattered. I already have a snake problem, and scattering more around sounds like a bad idea. I think, better they stay in her hair so we know where they are. I am no longer with the program.

Later, I am talking to Laura from Ikando, and tell her about the trip. She explains that over here, the christian religions are often a hybrid of original juju/voodoo and conventional western church. People believe and fear the juju man; he is the equivalent of the australian aboriginal tribal elder who can point the bone, causing someone to die within 3 days. Even many educated, modern Ghaneans deep down have the old beliefs. There are still many villages in Ghana, with a chief and a juju man. And the churches don’t help by blending old with new.  A lot of little things I have seen and heard now make more sense. And I recall the church services I have often passed, which sound very african, although the background chants are Hallelujah ! and the rest.

We arrive at Kaneshi and I get another tro-tro to the circle, then walk to Busy Internet for the software process workshop this morning. On the tro-tro I had my backpack sitting on my lap, and I notice that my newly washed clothes are now all dusty; I must have put the backpack in the dust at some stage. I look like I have just walked in from the desert. I will leave describing the workshop for now, however, when I walk into the modern air-conditioned offices, all the team there look cool, well dressed and very smart. I feel positively refugee in comparison. I make a small joke about arriving so hot and dusty. What’s this ? Could I be slightly … embarrassed ?

Oh, Man !! That’s it. What was the name of that junction ?

About 5 times a day someone calls out to you when you walk past. Hey, my friend. How are you today. Let me walk with you. Then there is a request to meet to discuss something. I always reply the same way. ‘I am pressed and cannot stop now my friend; what is your topic ?’ The reply is always ‘ I cannot tell you in the sun. It is better if we sit down and discuss something very important.’ I always reply that I am unable to assist but simply say Good luck to you today, and move on.

There are 2 types of request. One is never for money directly there and then, but for sponsorship of some type short term. For training, for essential equipment for a tradesman, a computer, school fees, to start up a business. If it is someone I know, or an adult student, I explain that it is against the policy of my NGO, and also that we volunteers stay until we exhaust all funds then go home to save up again.

The second request is like a Nigerian style scam. A guy who stayed overnight in our hotel sat with me one morning while I was waiting outside at 7am. He had just arrived from Liberia with a cache of gold, with his friend who was a Government minister. They were looking for a westerner to facilitate a financial transaction to move the gold. I told him that I understood his situation very well, as I had met several people in exactly his predicament. I appreciated that Liberian ministers with tonnes of gold were under some stress. As a volunteer with my NGO etc I was unable to engage in any commercials, but expressed confidence that in Accra he would be able to trade the gold.

This last guy was not Liberian. I told him ‘You don’t have the same accent as the other Liberians.’ He explained he was one of the afro-american Liberians (ex american slave heritage), and that yes, they did have a different accent. Later in the day, I asked the Liberian guys, do the afro-american Liberians have different accents ? Nah.

You feel sorry for people you know who really are desperate and under hardship, and who would find any financial assistance life changing. But everyone in the camp is in the same situation : no one lives in a refugee camp by choice. Any westerner they see seems to be incredibly wealthy in comparison. And we are.

Hey ACCRA ! How ya doin’ tonight.

An Australian walks into Accra’s largest western type department store. He buys 2 voltage regulators for a total of 900,000 cedis. He says to the cashier…(pause) : Excuse me, can I pay using my visa card ?
(Audience breaks up, holding sides. Woman in front row alternately shrieks and gasps for air. Oh, my, that’s so funny!)
Just as well he had 45 of the huge 20,000 cedi notes in his pocket ! Ha !
(Ha..Haaaa! It’s gold ! Can’t breathe…)

Same guy is wandering around the Liberian Camp. He goes up to a stationery stallholder. Excuse me, I’m looking for a map of the camp…

(Audience on floor now. Ha ha, oh, That’s TOO much ! Stop it, no more…gasp…oh ho ho, it hurts…)

Thanks Accra, you’ve been a great audience. The name’s Ralph, I’ll be here all week.

In the adult hardware class today I started basic networking. In the computer lab, I wired up the voltage regulator, which had come without a plug on the end, and connected the switch. All powered up fine. I showed the class how to make a CAT-5 cable with RJ45 connectors. For the non technical readers, this is a fiddly exercise where you strip an 8 wire lead, twirl 8 little coloured wires inside into a specific order, and push them into a tiny plug. The wires typically move out of order when you insert them and you have to start again. Big fingers, little wires. When all is ok you crimp with a tool : SNAP ! and repeat for the other end.

The students attack the 100m roll of cable and start stripping, twisting and crimping. Everyone has their tongue sticking sideways out of their mouth, one eye open and one closed, heads are tilted at odd angles. Cable 1 is finished. I use it to connect the first computer with a switch. The green light comes on. Success ! Miraculously, 6 cables work first time, and 3 don’t. I was not expecting such a high rate for beginners. The ones whose cables work are ecstatic. Little high pitched laugh, fists pumping air, little dance. Then running from the lab to the adjacent classroom to tell everyone the news. Mind you, the ones that didn’t weren’t that happy. I tell them the first times rarely work and we will try again.

I am getting the class to build the network themselves. I have gone through IP addresses, comparing them to telephne numbers, covered DNS (which is like a telephone white pages for IP), LANs, switches and computer names. Looked at windows network settings, how to set IP, gateway, DNS. So far, so good. This is a real feelgood lesson. The students are building a network all by themselves as I talk it through, and making a real contribution to the school as well. I don’t know who feels better. They are so grateful and happy, I feel as though I am the one on the receiving end. It was so rewarding : I know that teaching children is a reward in itself, but the adult classes have been terrific too. What a great day.

Sunday morning, I got up early to leave for Accra. Erin had an african drumming workshop, and I had a meeting with the CEO of an ISP and software development house here. Morning traffic, even on Sunday, is very heavy, so we left at 7am. The trip involved multiple tro-tro’s : camp to kaneshi, kaneshi to city circle (circ, circ !), circle to danwyn circle, then another to 37 station. We arrived at the drumming workshop just in nice time. On the way, I asked directions several times to the ‘du bois’ centre where it was held. A few replied, Dwah ? I found out later there are 2 ways to ask for the du bois centre. One is ‘dwah centre’, also acceptable is ‘du boy’. All those french lessons were a waste ! En route I saw a Shell station and picked up a map of Accra, a really good, detailed one. So happy.

We meet Ikando Laura, Helen and Sara, and I sit in for about 10 minutes. Hitting the drums as we were shown for even that short time was pretty hard on the hands. I got a bit of a bass and treble sound happening. Helen, Erin and Sara stay on for the whole 3 hours. Then Laura drops me off at Busy Internet to meet Mark.

Busy Internet is extremely modern, with a small data centre, slick pc’s and an industrial ISP environment. Mark Davies turns out to be very switched on and a pleasure to talk to. He has been advertising for someone senior to introduce more process to their 8 man software house. The ad is interesting :

http://www.ikando.org/busy.html

The type of person they want almost is similar to my previous job description. However it is a long term gig. Mark tells me a bit about the team, the work they have been doing, and some of the process problems they have hit. For our IT readers, they are having the sort of issues you have in a pre-QA, pre-change control environment. However they are doing all the right things, recognize that they are at the next stage on the roadmap, and want to improve process. I am impressed. I sketch out to Mark some of the generics you might consider as the next stage, and seem to strike a chord. To move forwards, I am invited to hold a small workshop with the team to map out ways to approach a typical software project from start to finish. This will probably be Wednesday. They are doing some serious projects, having built www.tradenet.biz which tracks prices and orders in an online market trading system. Mainly Windows and Linux/MySQL.

I am there for an hour and a half, then take a tro-tro to the ‘Koala’ supermarket, the biggest and best in Accra. It is refreshing to see fixed advertised prices. You can buy anything here, as in a western supermarket, including deli. I buy Lays Salt & Vinegar potato chips, some chocolate, and banana chips. I figure I may as well enjoy increasing my salt intake. Sara and Erin meet me there; the drumming workshop was a success. They then show me a food court in Osu just down the road. As there is no running water in the city (is it just me ? isn’t that huge ?), the coffee machines are out of action. I order a chicken burger, and a chocolate ice cream from a freezer. I am now completely out of control.

I had not met Sara before. She is an Ikando volunteer from Austria, staying in Accra, and is assisting in an artistic environment where things sound a bit more peaceful than at the camp. After lunch we all head off, Sara for a short walk home, Erin and I for the tro-tro’s home.

It takes ages to get home. A major roundabout is completely gridlocked. There are no signals, and the driver repeatedly shuts down the engine. It is stifling in a stationary tro-tro, so it is just as well we have water and banana chips to take. Then, on the way to camp. we see a huge crowd standing around a written off new Mercedes. It had hit a truck going the wrong way down a divided road. We could see the truck across the centre divide, still facing the wrong way. Scary.

All along the road between Accra and the camp, you see wrought iron gates every couple of k’s. Really elaborate, large, double painted gates that would do any home in Toorak proud. They are just propped along the highway, for sale. I find it bizarre but am getting used to seeing the most unexpected things.

No water again at the hotel. I could get a bucket from the outside tank. Although I am hot and bothered, I just turn on the fan, spray Raid, light a mosquito coil, check for snakes, and crash. It has been a great weekend.

The African Sun here is so hot, that even at 7am it is 35 degrees on its way to 40 plus. We are right on the equator, in the closest city to the latitude and longtitude (0,0). We are actually (4,0). The sun does an arc right overhead at a steady 15 degrees per hour from east to west. From sunrise to sunset is always 12 hours; so you always can tell the time and direction. However, the sun doesn’t burn you the way it does at home. I am in the sun for hours at a time and am not getting burnt. I know that at home, I would. The air here feels really hot, but the sun doesn’t make you feel like you are being cooked with radiant heat. I am now totally convinced that our Ozone Hole is very real, and that the sun in Melbourne is more of a problem than the sun right here on the equator. 

Saturday morning Simon, Hannah, Erin and I met at ‘The Brotherhood’ for breakfast. The plan today was to go to Kokrobite Beach, about halfway between the camp and Accra. Breakfast was great; today I ordered oats and milo. This took some time as I said ‘my-lo’ as opposed to ‘millo’ and confused everyone. Other australianisms such as ‘ta’ for thanks, and ‘tea’ for dinner, also results in funny looks. But I return the looks sometimes ; ‘tea’ means nescafe coffee, as opposed to brewed coffee. I have yet to see real tea here anywhere.

We took a tro-tro to Barrier Junction, then a shared taxi to Kokrobite Beach. The beach was all thatched huts and market stalls. There is a well-known resort right on the sand called “Big Millie’s”. Initially Simon and Hannah had planned to stay there overnight, but they were full, so they found a room at a newish next door resort. There are about 50 Oberoni (westerners) around. I feel uncomfortable surrounded by so many white people but my policy has always been ’live and let live’. Actually, on the camp there are very few westerners. Apart from the few people I work with, I am lucky to see one or two other white people in an entire day. Apparently there are 15 volunteers at CBW (Children Better Way) but they seem to mostly keep to themselves in a compound at one other end of the camp. As you walk around, some of the  very young children and toddlers just stare at you in amazement sometimes : what the hell is that ? Then they totally beam and say ‘Oberoni’ and point at you. It really did feel odd today with the change of demographic scenery.

We wandered down the beach and found a thatched umberlla and table. It belonged to a resort. When the owner came over and asked if we were staying there, we said no, but he was happy to accept 5,000 cedis = 50c to rent it for the day. The day was strange, a bit grey and overcast with a cool breeze. The first really cool breeze for 2 weeks. Just sitting under shade with a breeze near the water was wonderful. We ended up just sitting there for 4 hours chatting; time raced by. Simon and Hannah went for a swim, and reported that although the water was lovely and warm, there were hygeine concerns you really didn’t want to know about. No, you really don’t want to know what is out there. Do you mean E Coli ? No, E Coli wouldn’t stand a chance out there. I took the local advice and stayed on the sand. 

A woman came by with a huge bagful of african beads. We have seen these everywhere, however there was consensus that these were the real thing and worth a look. The 2 girls had a huge shopping rummage. I picked out a couple of small things that caught my eye to bring home.

We then went to the Kokrobite Gardens Italian Pizza Restaurant : a huge thatched gazebo in a lush garden setting. Apparently many years ago, an Italian cook was cycling around Ghana. He found Kokrobite, stopped cycling, bought some land and has been here ever since. His wife, a spanish woman, came out and gave us menus. All types of pizza, milkshakes, and recognizable dishes. Playing in the background, softly (softly!) some Cream and Pink Floyd. I ordered a four corners pizza, which arrived as the real thing, genuine cheese, salami, the lot. Perfect Lygon Street fare. Then a banana milkshake, thick with real banana. This is total luxury. I wonder where they get the milk and salami. A very pleasant meal in a nice little oasis. And it is so cool today; this has been a great battery recharge.

In the evening we go back to Big Millies, where we meet up with Laura and Louise, and watch some african music being set up. Here, a sound check lasts for about an hour. They set up the conventional 7000W stax of speakers, and a guy does the ‘One, two, one…TWO!’ forever. The first musicians play at 8 and are great. There is a traditional instrument I have never seen before, a round seed pod about 1.5 times bigger than a basketball, with a hole in it like a guitar, and a long narrow fretboard attached radially, with strings. He did this plcking thing rather than strumming. A second guy accompanied on african drums. The music is really good; I have heard something vaguely similar from a Mali musician before, and like the effect. It is downhill after that, the next crew apparently caters for westerners and we hear Billy Joel type stuff in a thick african accent. The effect is similar to a Phillipines karaoke session; I suggest we move on before the Gershwin segment. Simon and Hannah stay on, Laura, Louise, Erin and I share a taxi back to the junction. On the way we pass an even bigger set of speakers in the courtyard of Simon and Hannah’s hotel. No one was to get any sleep that night. It is an african thing to have not only incredible volume, but also clipping and distortion as the amps are in overdrive. In Africa, huge stacks of speakers are the norm but no one really invests in large amps; they just turn the little ones up full. No one seems to notice or mind. Our taxi driver is a space cowboy; I am surprised and delighted to arrive at the other end. Then we take tro-tros home.

Friday it was so hot in the grade 4 class that I had to stand near the door a couple of times, soaking wet. It was a double period. The fan still doesn’t work. Laura is doing shopping sums and there are lots of additions and subtractions to do. Despite being so hot, most students are trying hard. I have a lovely pineapple for morning tea. The pineapples here are very juicy and tasty compared to the ones at home.

The adult hardware class is great. I do a diagram on the board : cpu, north bridge, south bridge, super i/o, agp, memory, main peripherals, slots. All the connecting busses and speeds. Title : PC Architecture. We have already looked at data, bits and bytes, storage and retrieval of 0’s and 1’s. Now we are discussing 0’s and 1’s zapping about on busses between components, relative speed, traffic management. Everyone asks good questions and the class has a really positive feel to it.

After work, Karrus escorted me by tro-tro to Laura and Louise’s house in Aigbe town, about 30 minutes away. They live in a large house with a drive, fences, gates and a small gazebo which caught a lovely cool breeze. Laura (’School Laura’ ) is a great cook ! We had pasta and vegetables with mushrooms. But the piece de resistance was pancakes. I consider myself a pretty good pancake maker, and found these just superb. With sugar, lemon juice and nutella on the side. I learnt that Laura had spent a few months teaching in remote China, and Louise has been in refugee camps in Cambodia. What other experience do I have in third world conditions ? ‘I flew AlItalia’, I reply coolly. They nod slowly and seem impressed.

The power went off suddenly, so we also had candles for the complete restaurant effect. This is a worry. Power and water seem to fail a lot here. Accra, the capital city, has not had running water for over a week. There is water around, in bottles, bags and tanks. Just not tap water. The city is the size of Melbourne. The girls’ house loses power frequently, often on schedule, but often unplanned.

There was no water at the hotel this morning. There is a tank at ground level. I have noted that sometimes, the shower outlet which is 1.5m from the ground has no water, and the sink tap 1m from the ground has a low trickle, before disappearing completely. So it depends how full the tank is. When  it gets down to the 1m mark, the taps drop out. I take a bucket to the tank, fill it, and shower/wash with that. Now everyone in the capital Accra (44km away) is doing it too.

What I find odd is that no one in the capital knows why the water is off. I would have thought it would be front page news. It seems quiet and people seem to be more accepting than curious. It may be related to power outages disrupting water supply installations, as there have been widespread power problems too. No idea.

Accra is recognized as the most modern city in West Africa. In many ways it is a pretty switched on place, albeit in a totally parallel universe when compared to a european city. But it really makes you wonder what the other countries are like if Accra leaves them all behind. I know that Liberia is a ruin, and Monrovia still has no electricity at all, let alone schools. The guys at ‘The Brotherhood’ say that it is still not possible to live in Freetown (Sierra Leone).

I get home by tro-tro about 9pm, after a nice meal and good company. I find there is still no running water at the hotel. Couldn’t be bothered doing a bucket run in the dark so I just crash.

 From http://earthtrends.wri.org, which is a useful site to be aware of.

Population of sub-saharan africa : 700 million (around 10% of world)
%age of population under 15 years old : 44%
%age of population over 65 years old : 3 %
Average fertility rate (births/woman) : 6.1
Infant mortality/1000 : 89
Under 5 mortality : 175
Life expectancy, female : 49.8
Life expectancy, male : 48.3

Half the population here are children. I was born in July 1958, so I am now exactly 48.3 years old. I have this halfway through life feeling about my age, however the reality for so many people here, is that this age is the end of life.

In grade 5 I try to use a concrete example for some of the arithmetic problems we have found. LHS of the board : price list for Mr Stone’s shop, with water, pineapple, oranges, pencils etc. Middle of the board : your shopping list, with multiple items and quantities. All round numbers though as most things are in hundreds of cedis. I then explain I am giving you an imaginary 20,000 cedis to buy these things. Please calculate how much they should cost, and the change we can expect. RHS : example layout for the sums.

The result was 42 different answers. No two had the same. Many had an expected change greater than the initial 20,000. This is impressive, as those of our statistics readers will recognize that in a random sample, you don’t need a lot of people in a room before 2 people share a birthday. By chance at least I would have expected 2 answers the same.

Talk, teach, chalk, add. Then I remember I see a lot of these kids after school in stalls helping out. School starts at 8 and finishes at 1pm, so most children are home all afrternoon. Many stay till 3 for ‘extra’ classes in literacy and numeracy. So I ask the question : put your hand up if you help in a shop, and take money and give change. 15 hands, a third of the class. That explains a lot. I would like to be doing more money and shop questions for a while, curriculum permitting.

This morning I had an earlier than usual breakfast of oats and coffee. There was lively debate this morning at The Brotherhood. Sometimes they have CNN on a TV there, and we watched the US election results. Next door, the guy with the stall there listens to BBC radio. A small crowd gathered to discuss world politics. I have to say the average refugee here knows a fair bit about global politics. Points of discussion : US hegemony, the inevitability of Rumsfeld’s demise, the long term implications of China’s generous offers to African leaders, what would happen if China moved funds from USD to Euros, George Bush (you can guess), Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, the Panamanians gaining the UN seat over Venezuela, the new UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan (a Ghanean) in retrospect, Tony Blair, and the fact that other countries would follow Spain and Italy in having electorates punishing leaders who took their countries into Iraq. I just listened  and wished I had a t-shirt : I am not an american. Actually there are very few US people here, and the rare westerners are either european or australian.  When people find out you are australian, everything relaxes, like the ad at home with the St George bank manager. There was not just a statement-response type dialog, but a bit of debate and analysis as well. Today’s maitre-d showed me a magazine published quarterly, ‘BBC : Focus on Africa’ which covers every country in some detail. People I meet ask me detailed questions about Australia when we meet, eg ‘Oh, so you’re from Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide…?’

I met Maxwell at 8am and we took a tro-tro into Accra. Today’s mission was to round up some surge protectors, some CAT-5 cable, a crimp tool and RJ-45 connectors. I have decided to wire them up while I am here. And if I can find it, a copy of Scott Mueller’s ‘Upgrading & Repairing PCs’, to leave as a reference for the computer hardware class.

The tro-tro trip was smooth enough and comfortable. As you drive into Accra, all the windows on both sides of the van are opened as widely as possible. Then, from about 10km from Accra and thereafter, street vendors walk between cars selling things. There are so many vendors, that 6 can surround a van when it stops for 30 seconds. Everything is for sale. Women carry containers on their heads and have fistfulls of notes. Transactions have to be super fast, because the traffic can move at any time. Then some poor woman runs alongside the van at slow traffic speed until it stops again. It happens a lot that something gets passed into the van, but the money changing is only half complete when the driver moves off. Sometimes the vendor never sees their money, sometimes a passenger never gets change. It probably balances out. The tro-tro stops for no one. Traffic is chaotic and busy. Accra is a city of 2 million, with only 3 arterials in and out : west, north, east. We are coming in from the west. The morning peak has nearly as many cars as Melbourne at 8am, but without the benefit of firm traffic signalling. So it can be slow AND chaotic. And very noisy.

There is a horn blowing protocol. 1 beep means ‘Coming through’. 3-4 beeps is “What’s wrong with you, I’m coming through”. A long repeated beep for ‘Oh no, not again’.

The entire trip in, I see half built houses of concrete blocks on both sides of the road. It is an african thing, apparently, to build a house over a long period of time, the way we might slowly get a beach house happening. But maybe 1 house in 3 is unfinished in a big way. People still live in rooved ones though - just way before we would call it ‘lock-up’ stage.

Arrived in Accra eventually. Walked around in the sun for about 2 hours but found a couple of voltage regulators that will do the job. I saw UPS units but they were pricey. These ones will be suitable for surge and under/over voltage protection, at least things won’t blow up any more. All the power boards back at camp have a volt meter at one end. I would have thought surge protection built in would be handier, but they don’t sell power boards like that. They all have meters. This is because the line voltage can vary enormously from the nominal 230V. If you see it at 300, then you know to not plug in electronics. The lights don’t matter as much.

Also found 100m roll of CAT cable, RJ connectors, crimping tool. Looking good. I then ask Maxwell if he knows of a large computer bookstore. Um, doubtful looks. The he brightens up and we go to a street where stalls along the path are lined with books. We find one guy, and Maxwell explains we are after a computer book called…but the guy hears ‘computer book’ and rushes off, saying, ‘I have two, just wait.’ Not good. I am after one particular book, and he has 2 computer books. He finds the first one, something about business systems for students. No thank you. Wait, wait a moment. Then he shows me the other one. Upgrading and Repairing PC’s by Scott Mueller, 16th edition. No way. I just look at the book, look at him. Sometimes it is like being on another planet. The price is reasonable and I buy it.

We take a taxi back to camp as we now have heavy gear. You don’t take shopping home on a tro-tro due to the cramped seating. The taxi quotes 120,000 cedis = AUD12 for the 90 minute trip home. Done. We arrive back exactly at 1.30pm in time for the hardware class. Unfortunately, I leave my lovely Katmandu peaked cap on the back seat I think. It breathes really well so I get shade but not too much heat. I have brought another hat with me, but a larger rounded style one. Absolutely no one here wears a hat except for me. Or sunglasses, despite the sun.

Hardware class is fun. Nat from Ikando drops in from Accra with Helen, and we have a cool drink after class and a chat. I casually describe the snake we saw to Nat. Its length about half as wide as a door, just thick enough to crawl into a small coke bottle, black. I have learnt that in Ghana and Liberia it is much easier to describe measurements, as the number estimation here is terrible. Someone points to an overpass on the horizon while giving directions, and says, Go there, maybe (pause) 20 metres ? So I don’t use numbers now when it comes to length or distance by habit.

Nat goes quiet. ‘I think that is a black mamba’, he says. ‘If they bite you, you are usually dead in 5 minutes, and there is not enough time to go to a doctor’. And we might have one slithering around the hotel. ‘Really’, I reply, feigning interest and looking around distractedly. I mean really man, make an effort  to engage the listener. He goes on to say that the long grass around the hotel is unusual for this area and perhaps is a contributor. We then discuss the possibility of maybe moving into the camp area, in a house that Ikando is just completing.

That would suit me just fine, as the hotel is not that far from camp, but it is very quiet there at night. Whereas the camp buzzes with activity all the time. The house is supposed to be finished on the 14th, to westernish standards, so we will see.

Karrus catches up for tea, I have a spicy spaghetti. I also tell him about the snake and Nat’s comments. I thought that here everyone would see snakes all the time. When I lived in Noojee you would often see brown snakes around. However it is highly unusual and he agrees it may well have been a mamba. Karrus shows me his house, introduces me to the family. He has a gorgeous 3 year old daughter. Everyone here built their own house, often from mudbricks with cement render. Everyone also does their own electrical wiring. There are a few rough meters around, which some people pay for, and then others tap into that and pay the meter owner. Karrus also shows me around a part of the camp I had not seen before.

I walk home, have a drink, and check for mambas under the bed. Cool shower, then check for mambas under the bed. Finally, I clean my teeth with toothpaste and bottled water before checking for mambas under the bed. Then crashed into a deep sleep.

Wednesday night I left the internet cafe around 7pm, and usually I would head for the hotel along the main road. But tonight I decided to walk throught the camp and pick up something to eat. I have not walked through the camp in the dark before.

There is some strange schedule here, where different areas of the camp have (I think) 3 days power on, then off, then on or similar. So everyone has power, but whole sectors of the camp are either on or off at any given time. The area I walked through was dark tonight. There was the odd oil lamp here and there, but apart from that, it was simply dark. The african sky at night is usually quite bright, what with the stars, and the moon being mostly full since I arrived. However, tonight was overcast.

The main road, ‘The Broad Street’, had dense pedestrian traffic ambling up and down. It was a very eerie experience. I was aware of people approaching me in the near pitch black, and when you passed an oil lamp, spaced maybe every 50m, you could see a  continous crowd marching in both directions. And there was certainly a loud enough chatter all around. But I could only just discern shapes passing by and was trying to avoid collisions.

Here’s the thing though. In the dark a voice calls out, ‘Hey Morris’. And a voice maybe 10 metres in front replies, ‘Hey there’. No way. I mean, I think I might have made out a vague shape. I then realized from little scenes here and there that most people could see in the dark much better than I could. Having lived their entire lives with no/some/intermittent electricity, for them, this was just another night and they were taking just another evening stroll.

Tuesday I woke to find no running water. The shower area is huge, with a large and small bucket always there. I took the large bucket outside, where the manager raced over and filled it for me, explaining that there was a problem with the pump. I showered by filling the small buckt from the large one and pouring it over myself. It seemed to be a lovely, normal, leisurely shower but when I finished I was surprised to see that I had used maybe only 10 litres out of a 40 litre bucket. At home I have been known to use more than 10 litres when showering.

Erin came out as I was about to leave for breakfast, and told the manager and me that she has an enormous cockroach in her room, a big one, I mean it. Manager offers to sort it out.

After breakfast I take a new route to the school, this time a straight line. This has advantages apparently. I hear really loud music, african, tribal, drumming, chanting, deeply primitive. I really like the sound but am thinking, at 7.30 in the morning they are playing that through the speakers way too loud, it must be uncomfortable passing by. Get closer. Then I see the ‘Healing Temple’ filled with over 100 people. This music is live and unamplified. It is a church service. The pastor is chanting, the congregation replies, there are both words and ullulations. There are drums, and the sound of all those people doing a stomp-dance on the earth floor is powerful and mesmerising. I stand rooted to the spot for a few minutes; I have never heard anything like this. The words are in English and of an ultra-christian bent, but there is not a skerrick of anything western in the music. This is primitive, raw, african, and unbelievably great. I am tempted to go in but do not want to either disrupt something, or becoe the focus of evangelistic fervour. I reluctantly move on.

Maths, maths, and maths with grades 4,5 and 6. Did I say the other day the rooms were 6m x 6m ? I paced it out today, actually 6m x 4.5m. 52 children and 2 teachers in the grade 4 maths class, the room where the overhead fan blew up. The poor things look so hot. It is hard to have a totally quiet atmosphere because the other classes around us are so loud, you often need to raise your voice just to be heard over them. The nursery and grade 1 classes over the courtyard would melt your heart if you peeked inside. There are little 4 year olds who smile SO wide, and are fascinated by white people. They run up and take your hand. You squat down and smile, and they just beam and run off.

Some children look thirsty. Drinking water can only be bought, as it is purified and comes in bags. No one drinks the bore water or the water brought i by truckloads each day, which is for washing. There is a gesture of putting a thumb near your mouth and tilting your head back, which means, ‘Please give me water.’ Teachers and volunteers are under strict instructios to not do that, because of the unmanageable chaos that would follow when it became a precedent that teachers give free water to students on demand. Water is only a few cents a bag, but some parents maybe don’t give their children water money. It is always hard to say, I am sorry, but we are not allowed to. In general though, students seem nourished. I am trusting the local teachers know when intervention is necessary.

Another hardware class with adults, we are on a roll and it is all in autopilot. I bought a fresh pineapple for lunch. They cut it up for you while you are there, so food hygeine and preparation is not an issue. (They can also be bought pre-sliced in plastic bags which then sit in the sun). I then eat a whole juicy pineapple. 40 cents worth. Between plantein and pineapple I now have a fruit plan. I meet Erin after work, and we split a 15 litre bag of water to take back to the hotel for drinking water. This is a big sack of 30 little 500ml plastic bags.

Back at the hotel, Erin finds a dead lizard in her room. After her cockroach encounter this morning, this prompts a request for another room. No problem. I carry the water down the hotel corridor to drop off her half. Erin says, ‘Ralph, is that a snake?’ It met all the criteria, so I said yes. As we watched, it slithered under a door, which fortunately was not one of ours. In another world and another time, I suppose that would be a concern. But it seemed to make sense at the time.

I went outside, had a coke, and reflected on the variety of african wildlife that could be seen from the comfort of a hotel room.

Cotton socks are not a great idea. After washing they hold water for so long. They dry just fine in the sun. But if the hotel offers laundry services, and has a policy on guests doing their own in the rooms, one tries to be discrete. Everything else dries instantly overnight in the room, but cotton socks don’t. Even after all day they are damp. Eventually i find a sunny spot near the school. I will probably get some synthetics. You need socks as mosquitoes hover at ankle level from dusk to dawn. I thought cotton would be cool, but they are really not worth the hassle.

Fried plantein, mmmm. I went to my room and the power suddenly went off. It was all starting to make sense. I have a maglight always at hand, so between that and the moonlight, it was fine. The power came on soon after when they started their generator, tragically allowing some hip hop music to play.

Bed under the ceiling fan. Mental count, have I drunk enough today ? 3 litres, need more. Salt is a problem. I have a coke to keep sugar at a level, but with all the perspiration there is not a salt plan yet. No one has salt in food here. I mix some GastroLite from my medical kit. I brought 20 sachets over in case of dysentry/dehydration, but so far so good. It tastes way too salty, and oh so right. Will look for salt tomorrow.

I have been reading Agatha Christie’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ in a french version. It is a great read. I haven’t read Agatha Christie for about 25 years. It is a reflection I think of how your life can simplify in a very short time. The difference between needs and wants becomes suddenly very clear, in a camp such as this. Water, oats, rice, chicken, an egg, a bread roll, a coke, soap, a place to wash clothes, a coolish shower, a ceiling fan, an Agatha Christie novel. A shady place to sit when the sun is hot, where a breeze blows.

Internet access is a nice to have. Coffee is a very nice to have. But a foolproof way to kill snakes would be spectacular.

I am in a nice morning routine now. I wake at 5.45, stare at the fan and soak up the cool breeze, slowly think about rising, then get up a bit after 6. A shower, tidy the room, and a walk to ‘The Brotherhood’ across camp for breakfast. I tried the oats this morning with a brewed coffee (the only one in camp). Chat to the french speaking owners. Magnificent, total AU 60 cents. Take the anti-malarial tablet. Then cut across to the school, unfortunately missing the prayer meeting start yet again. I really am hopeless and must try to arrive earlier than the exact 7.46 i get there each morning.

The african teachers all walk around carrying a switch stick, like a narrow bamboo cane. The mind boggles. I am guessing that with no westerners around, they probably swish around. Simon told me that when he and Hannah first arrived 2 months ago, he explained to the principal that they were incompatible with a corporal punishment environment. And we have certainly seen no trace of it. However, they still walk around swishing, like a cop on the beat casually twirling a baton while walking along.

However, I have seen them used to, um, herd students. When there is a swirling, tumbling cloud of younger children that needs to be moved from one spot to another, say from the courtyard into the classrooms, the teachers walk around them and sort of do a herding thing with the switches, and the children tend to turn around as a group and it all sort of works. And the funny thing is, the children sort of have a ‘ready to be herded’ mode. Hard to explain that bit, but there is a system there. It seems to work, everyone seems happy, and is probably less ratty than shouting instructions, or alternatively buying and then feeding kelpies. At lunchtime I see people herding goats around a bit and the action is identical.

Dogs and goats here are all really small. Goats tend to be about 12 skewers each in size, dogs about 8. Both look nervous. Of all things, I actually saw a turkey this morning, the only one I have seen here. There are countless chickens around; egg and chicken are staples. But a turkey ? I wouldn’t be buying any green bananas, fella.

Maths was great. We keep doing laps of times tables, division, multiplication, add and subtract. Lots of counting on fingers. Grade 5 : What is 9+3 ? (fingers, fingers). I have just learnt something cultural. Children can copy from the board, or listen, but not both at one. If you talk while writing, it is pointless. I later found the same in an adult class. One guy actually asked me, ‘WOuld it be OK if you just wrote, let us copy, and then talked it through after we finish ?’ Got it. My default style had been to write something, then enhance the notes with examples while still writing.

The children have this micro-storm thing that is alarming when you first see it, but now I am used to it. The scene : Mr Stone munching orange at recess. Two children argue 5 metres away. Child 1 hits child 2. Not a tap, but something pretty solid. Child 2 screams in genuine pain and cries. Mutual hitting. Mr Stone approaches. At 3 metre mark, it is all over as quickly as it began. No dwelling or pouting, all bad feeling has dissolved already. Someone cries for 5 seconds intensely then immediately stops. Grudges have a lifespan only of the initial event. I have seen this about 200 times now. Even the little ones (nursery from 4 years old) seem, with a western eye, to be sometimes really vicious with each other, but again, in 5-10 second time windows, which disperse as suddenly as they arose. They laugh and shout with delight 99.5% of the time, it is just these playground micro-storms. And the funny thing is, if you pull them up, even 10 seconds later, they give you a funny look like, well, that problem has already gone, hasn’t it ? Why are we talking about it now if we already stopped ? I am still thinking of a good answer.

Apart from that, I have seen no one at all stressed, angry, shouting, anywhere in the camp. God knows there is cause for depression and discontent, but you just don’t see it. The general camp atmosphere is surprisingly positive. People see that they are in the process of building something good and long-lasting, and that the present tough times are interim. They have the patience to see it out. And an enormous pride, as in, ‘We are building the infrastructure for a new Liberia. I am planning the library. I am thinking about education and its administration. My uncle has ideas about agricultural improvements. We will go back, and build a successful nation from the ground up, including everything, and I am a part of that !’ All from a bench under a tin roof.

In the afternoon I took an adult computer hardware class. I was initially assisting the incumbent local teacher, and was curious to see what we would be covering. The class started like this : ‘This is Mr Stone. He will be taking this class. I need to go, thank you.’ Now I was more curious than ever about what we would be covering. Fortunately, one of the pc’s I knew from yesterday to be motherboard dead (burnt tracks). Having nothing to lose, I pulled out trusty screwdriver and said, ‘I am going to open this PC, take it apart, and we will discuss the components in turn.’ Class exchanges barely suppressed expressions of delight and guilt. A bit like, ‘Were taking a computer apart. Can you do that ? Are WE allowed to do that ? Is this something naughty ? I’m in !’ Great class, great fun. The adult students are SO motivated. They are also in future building mode. They asked great questions and kept reinforcing everything I said until it was clear.

At night, I spend an hour or two from 7 onwards sitting outside the hotel, looking at the stars, feeling the breeze, and sipping a coke to keep the sugars up. Sometimes Erin arrives and we each debrief on the day and compare general notes on Africa. Erin is also placed by Ikando, and is educating at a women’s centre, where she is trying to address a range of issues affecting the women on the camp. This in a continent where the default hierarchy is : child, woman, man, chief. I can say this with authority. One of the textbooks at school is called ‘Ghana morals and theology for students’. There is a chapter on hierarchies, and the role of a chief. Every village here has a chief.

Crash at 9 after a cool shower and the usual washing of clothes.

I can take or leave banana fritters at home. I find they are a bit bland, although a good excuse for some ice cream. Plantein is another story. These are a slightly different type of banana that is cooked. They are SO tasty. A smooth, deep, warm, strong taste. Vendors deep fry them in a frypan after dusk. They are just wonderful.

I slept really well in the very cool and comfortable flat. Erin arrived about 11am, and we walked down to the tro-tro stop and caught a ride to Kaneshi. This time the commercials were trivial. Then a changeover for one to the “Liberian Camp” and home.

I arrived at the school at 3pm and started to repair 3 of the damaged PC’s. A couple of people came to help, Karrus, and Maxwell from the local internet cafe. Maxwell was great value and rotated memory and power supplies around to get a triage happening. One power supply was ok but the fan was faulty. I decided to pull a fan from a dead unit, and wire it in to replace the other fan. Usually when I rewire a fan into a power supply I do not use blunt rounded school scissors for baring wires, and sticky tape for insulation. I have only 1 phillips and 1 flat screwdriver. But it worked, and we got 2 more PC’s into the fleet, which is now 6.

Time turned left somewhere. I feel I have been here for a year. Many of the things that first appeared alien now seem normal. Water comes in bags. 10 cents is a lot of money. You walk, talk and even think in a different time scale. You rinse clothes every night and string them out. Children run along, touch your hand and sing “Good morning Oberoni, how are you?” Breakfast is egg and bread. Lunch is a pineapple, or rice and chicken. Watch for mosquitoes. Use DEET, Raid, mosquito coils. Prices of things change not only between transactions, but also during. Chickens and goats run everywhere. They build the first story of a hotel while they open the ground level rooms. And bamboo is a construction item used for both scaffolding, and for supporting new concrete floors on the first floor. I will let you know if the last experiment is succesful; I will be among the first to know !

Other alien things are also very good. People can be very warm and generous. There is very little guile or artifice; most people are genuine and open. People with agendas are usually obvious. Stories are heartbreaking and moving. Talking to refugees and other volunteers is sometimes like being in a living, breathing world of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. And when people smile, especially children, it is such a beautiful smile.They haven’t picked up the Western thing where the mouth smiles but the eyes don’t.

One mystery remains. No one has change for 20,000 cedi notes (the only thing you get out of ATM’s). Even if you try to pay for a 12,000 lunch, they can look worried and expect exactly 12,000. Where does all the change go ? 1000 notes fly around at high speed and are the preferred note for most things.

Let me check the weather tonight. Oh, it’s hot. I might just have a cool shower, soak my clothes, and lie under the ceiling fan. And sleep a deep, weary, wonderful sleep.

Saturday morning I woke early, did the usual breakfast and laundry things, and met Erin and her friend Miata at 9am. Miata is a camp local who offered a tour of the Accra markets. The transport here can be a taxi (expensive) or a tro-tro (cheap). I had wanted to learn how tro-tro’s work so it was a good opportunity to go with 2 people who had done it before. You need help the first time.

Tro-tro’s are small vans, like ‘hi-ace’ size, which have 4 rows of seats fitted at the back, each 4 seats across. The sliding door opens, the seats closest to the sliding door fold up, and everyone piles in. Counting 2 people next to the driver, this is 19 per small van. The driver just drives. A guy called the ‘mate’ is like a tram conductor. He hangs out the sliding door as a tro-tro approaches a stop, like an unmarked  bus stop, and they have these coded hand signals and calls for destinations. Pointing down and circling with one hand, shouting “Circ, Circ, Circ’ really fast, means “City Circle”. Pointing up with “Kanesh, Kanesh, Kanesh” means Kaneshi. Pointing horizontally is (I think) travelling medium distance in this direction. The mate holds a huge fistful of cash and notes fly everywhere.

Getting on the right tro-tro at the right place was no problem, thanks to Erin and Miata. Paying however,  I had the same experience twice. I give the mate the expected amount. He flags that either the amount is wrong or that change is a problem, not sure.  I ask him how much the fare is, and he comes back with a second transaction that would help, eg you give me X and I’ll give you Y. Then, bizzarely, a passenger next to me I never met, hands me a 5000 cedi note. Everything stops in confusion. Notes fly around again. It ends when I have given him the first amount anyway. There was a changeover tro-tro and exactly that happened on the second one too. I am sure it was just a communication problem. People here are in general very honest and helpful, but they sometimes do transactions in an unexpected sequence.

A tro-tro can be scary. My trips were all fine. However I saw one in passing on the side of the road, with a wheel off, and someone bleeding brakes into a jar. The only unusual aspect being the full load of passengers inside patiently chatting. Our trip was about 90 minutes intotown with a changeover at Kaneshi.

The Accra market is HUGE. It seemed to be vastly larger than Victoria Market at home, but the stalls were all tiny. 1 metre wide is a small stall, 2m was average. It was so crowded that walking was a crawl; if you have been to the showbag section of the Melbourne Show, imagine a complex a few times the size of Victoria Market, which is that crowded everywhere. You could buy anything you could imagine, there was a stall for everything.

We then took a taxi to the ‘Arts Centre’, which was much more relaxed and touristy. They had lots of artefacts, masks, wooden items etc and seemed to be the place to go to find treats to take home. There were a lot of stall holders, but only a few tourists. The stall holders were complete hawkers though. As you walked up and down multiple times, they became more persistent and a bit more over-familiar each pass. I think the 4th pass down the same aisle would have resulted in a rugby tackle, so I stopped at 3. I didn’t buy anything today, to avoid minding it for 4 more weeks, but will probably go back there just before heading home.

Ikando Laura and Ikando Helen met us there, and we then left in 2 taxis. Mine went to a nice flat that I was staying in that night. Laura showed me the flat, handed over the keys, and then they left. The flat was nice, and is leased by the wife of the Italian Ambassador, Veronica Ryan. She is an Australian/Italian who spends time equally between Milan and Accra. When she is in Milan, she allows Ikando people to use the flat. She is apparently a well known and prominent artist; the flat had several of her works and books.

I was to meet Morris in town and check out a computer supplies inventory, but he never showed. By chance, I went for a walk and passed a Saturday Computer Market, similar to an Australian Sunday computer market, but smaller. Of allthings I found a nice new shrink-wrapped SMC 16 port switch, for equivalent of $80, and picked it up. I would like to get a school network happening. Even though there are only a few pc’s, everyone saves to the C: drive, and it is all a bit chaotic. I was also looking for surge protectors and network cables, but no luck on a Saturday afternoon.

I had a quiet tea of chicken and rice, and listened to the BBC on the radio. I then listened to a station with a program “VOA” for Voice of Africa. The reader read US news items in ‘Special English’. For 30 minutes I listened on the porch balcony, and each time he said “Presented in Special English” I flickered a bit in interest, as I heard nothing special. Then I realized that the reading speed was excruciatingly slow, aimed at learners of English I guess. However time slows here in the heat. People talk of ‘African Time’. For half an hour he sounded fine to me.

Time has slowed in many ways. You don’t multi-task here : you do one thing slowly at a time. I am aware that I am not planning ahead much; you tend to focus heavily on the here and now. People here have a casual relationship with time. If they say to meet at 4, it means anytime between 4.30 and 6.30. Or don’t turn up at all. Where we would say “If you see me, you see me”, that is the tacit understanding for ALL meeting proposals here.

One thing about purchases here. With no price tags or lists foir anything, every transaction is negotiable, every time. A tro-tro from the camp to Kaneshi costs 5500 cedis but may be more or less, depending on your interaction with the mate. A coke that is 3000 cedis today may be 4000 tomorrow from the same vendor. It takes getting used to. Sometimes you just want to pay for something and have some idea in advance of the price. When I first arrived, I did a quick calculation that 10,000 cedis = $1,  and thought that anything below that I wouldn’t fuss about. Then after 1 day, it dropped to 1000 cedis, or 10 cents. Now 250 cedis seems significant. That will buy a bag of water. 10,000 seems quite a lot now and will buy a very decent meal, or an hour’s internet access.

Water comes in small 500ml plastic bags that cost 250 cedis, or 2-3 cents. A bottle of water “Vittel” or similar) costs 20 times the amount. You only buy water in a bottle when you first arrive. The little bags, you drink them all day like, well, water. Everyone can afford them and there are millions of them in stalls everywhere. Ironically, water and electricity are 2 things that the camp has in abundance. The electricity goes up and down, surging devices, but it is fine for lighting.

A conventional start : bread, eggs, coffee, water, then a walk to the school for maths and more maths. A very touching thing happened at morning break. I tried to buy an orange and bag of water, which cost 600 cedis.  I offered a 1000 cedi note, but the woman wouldn’t take it. I couldn’t follow her and thought it was a change problem. Then she said, ‘No, he already paid’, and pointed to one of my year 6 students, who flashed a nervous smile and took off.

The students call all the other teachers by first name, eg Brother Simon and Sez Laura. I introduced myself as Mr Stone, which is fine and has stuck. The way they say it though is funny. A real children’s sing-song ‘MISS-terr st_OH-ahnn’. Huge vowel sounds. Both words sound very african. When I walk around the camp sometimes, I hear a child call out my name like that. It’s nice hearing my name sounding like an african song.

After classes, Morris and I sat down and discussed IT needs and strategies. They really need Surge Protectors here as computers keep blowing up. I will try to get a network up this week so the hardware and network classes scheduled next week (!) can proceed with some hardware and a network. Currently there is none, although pc’s have network cards. I will try to find a network switch in Accra.

Simon and Hannah do a Friday night thing, probably to compensate for pub night back home in England. I drank a 1.5 litre bottle of water in about 30 minutes. Erin joined us and we had a nice time chatting about camp life. Simon and Hannah live in a house in the middle of the camp. I am intrigued and would love to visit there to check it out. BTW, Simon had malaria a couple of weeks ago, despite being on the same anti-malarial tablets I am on, doxycycline. People here are philosophical and regard malaria the way we regard the flu.

When I first got here, I had lunch with Nat (Ghana) and Helen (Switzerland). Over a lunch of fufu, rice and chicken we discussed malaria. We concluded that every country has its dangers that terrify people. Africa has lions and malaria. Australia has crocodiles and jellyfish. And Switzerland has its banking system.

Tomorrow Erin is going to Accra to see the markets with a local camp guide. I will tag along, and then split off to meet Morris and hit some computer stores. I will stay in a flat in Accra that Ikando Laura is organizing. (There are 2 Laura’s : Ikando Laura and School Laura). This week has rocketed by! I have that really tired feeling that is also a fine feeling.

Lying under a cool ceiling fan when it is 35 degrees outside is pretty good.

Internet access continues to be a challenge. There is a great complex in Accra called Busy Internet. It has its own Data Centre and is as good as anywhere in the world. On camp however, it is a different story. I am on a PC with 64M RAM, and a slow link I am sharing with 30 others. Pages often time out. Even just scanning the email and bank balances can see an hour timeslot race by. So apologies for being tardy.

Also, the site was off line for a couple of days thanks to an adsl problem in Wheelers Hill. It may take me a day or two to catch up.

This morning I woke up at 6. You always wake up at 6; here everyone follows the sun. I tend to crash about 9pm under a ceiling fan, sleep very soundly, then wake with the sun and the chickens. The day starts with a shower, with water at the one and only temperature, slightly bracing but fine. All the plumbing fttings here are marked in 2 colours, red and blue; no one knows why. Probably for aesthetics, like traffic lights. Then a breakfast at ‘The Brotherhood’, a little cafe stall run by a french speaking guy from Cote D’Ivoire, Carlos. He does a fine eggs and bread, with coffee, for the equivalent of 60 cents. The I arrive at the school at 7.45 each morning, unfortunately just exactly missing the 7.30-7.45 prayer service. I really must try harder to be more punctual.

Today was full on maths again, grades 4,5 AND 6 all on the one day. The children are so polite. A little ratty, but in the way that 50 children in a small hot room can only be. Gaining class attention so far has been no issue. All classes today were variations on division, factors and fractions, with times tables in the background. There are so many children from traumatized homes, I have been using lots of positive validations. Just saying ‘well done, young man’ or ‘brilliant work !’ makes someone beam for a whole minute. Children need all the love and support we can give them, traumatized and orphaned ones even more so.

After lunch I assisted in the adult IT class. I would like to see pc’s used by students, however there are only 4 working units and 4 broken ones. 4 computers in classes of 40-55 is tricky. I am keen though and will work something out. Morris is a guy who works at an Accra ISP and helps out here. He is great value and has written a set of guided MS-Office activities that were as good as any I have seen. Morris and I will plan together the future IT curriculum here for the adult students.

I have met quite a few people here now. James is the school principal, a quietly spoken man who has a vision for the school. The school supporters look to a time when they are back home in Liberia, and schools will need to be rebuilt. The strategy is to build something here that can be taken back to Liberia as a template. The entire education system collapsed and will need to be built from the ground up. They are strong here on wanting processes and procedures developed that can be used long after a given volunteer returns home. I like it. Everyone is looking with interest at the new President after the recent elections : there is hope and optimism.

When you look at what everyone has been through, it is amazing that the atmosphere in the camp is as positive and optimistic as it is. The people here see themselves as a community where we help each other, and all do things for ourselves. They are anti-charity, just wanting assistance to get programs off the ground they can run themselves. When I saw the women’s centres, schools, neighbourhood watch, health and other centres that have been developed, and see people trading everything ever made or grown effortlessly, it made me wonder why some communities disintegrate into anarchy without centralized leadership, and Buduburam is as it is. The unfortunate conclusion was that there was nothing for anyone to take here. If the camp was sitting on a diamond mine perhaps the dynamics would be different, and there would be external threats as well. But as it is, greed and over-ambition are irrelevant. People help each other to survive, and dream together of a better future for their children.

I have been drinking 4 litres of water and a coke each day, which seems about right. The appetite is right down : just breakfast, then at some time during the day, rice and chicken, or a local alternative : fufu, garrie, plantain. The food is simple but very good.

Simon and Hannah are from Norwich, England and have been teaching at the school for  2 months. They have just extended visas and plan to stay longer. Laura is an Australian (with an english accent ?) teaching grade 4 maths. We will be taking an adult statistics class together next week, that should be fun. A major support stream for the school is its after hours adult classes, which people pay for. School ends at 1.30, after that the computers are for adult learners. All 4 computers. It also helps the school’s visibility in the camp.

I end the day back at the ‘hotel’. There are only 2 guests here -  myself, and Erin, a Canadian who is assisting at a women’s centre and teaching basic rights. Having a coke at the end of the day, I reflected that after all I had seen, the real tragedy of Africa may be the music that they play in bars and restaurants at night. Despite the fact that during the day all you hear is wonderful, african, rhythmic music all around you, all the time, for some reason restaurants and bars (think ‘drink stall with bench’) play boy bands, Boney M, Abba, and american girl singers at 7000W, using speakers left over from Woodstock. During the day is different, the camp music is just great. People play it, sing it, drum it, all the time. If you could not hear music in the camp for any reason, it would be like the crickets suddenly going quiet in Australia.

Each night I wash all my clothes in a bucket and hang them out. Then off to bed at 9pm again, lying in a cool breeze under a marvellous ceiling fan. And go to sleep listening to the restaurant music in the hotel courtyard outside.

This morning, Thursday, I woke at 6am and had the local breakfast : egg omelette, bread, and coffee. Walked to the school and immediately joined another teacher for maths with 40 grade 6 students. It is very hectic : students are raising hands all the time, they actually try to get your attention and a personal explanation. This is very good pedagogy wise, but exhausting !  I then took a grade 5 class by myself, with the other teacher assisting. The aim was to try to give a concrete picture of what is happening when you multiply and divide numbers, as many had relied on rote but did not have any imagery or concrete frameworks as to what it all meant. Falling back on linking division to ‘here we are sharing a bag of lollies’ made a difference. Took an adult computer class for 2 hours as the normal treacher was off-site. The students were so positive and grateful for anything you do, it was very rewarding as well.

Lots of conversations with some other local volunteers swapping notes on West Africa, Ghana, Liberia, economics and politics, I have learnt an awful lot in a short time. Life here is as basic as you could possibly imagine. The camp could have been built 3 days ago, nothing is permanent, no infrastructure, and there are only a few solid buildings - the school being one, thanks to a US project led by one woman who organized funds. But there is a very strong sense of community and ‘we are all in this together’, and people seem happier and more content than the average Melburnian. This is really community and commerce at its most basic. People build a small stall, offer goods/services, and trade cash. No regulation, taxes, standards to adhere to etc, just - open trading. Just about everything is negotiable and tradeable.  Hpousing can be as simple as you like. As long as there is a roof, even walls are optional. It is never cold here and a single sheet is plenty.

I have locked onto a couple of places for food which were recommended. Staples are simple but fine. I have bought 15kg of purified water in 500ml sachets. Fortunately the school has its own western mens room, although the flush button doesn’t work so you take in a big bucket. I am not complaining given the options.

I have adapted to the heat and seem as bothered or otherwise as the next person. One trick is to change the way you walk and move. I found I have instinctively got an african, slow gait happening, which comes naturally under the hot sun. A Collins St bustle just wouldn’t work.

For those contemplating Africa, now a word from our sponsors. The clothing I have has been fantastic. I am a big fan now of Berghaus Sandstorm shirts, easily leading the pack, followed secondly by Columbia Titanium shirts and pants. Ex Officio travel underwear is brilliant. All these things are incredibly light but also wash and dry almost immediately. As usual the Rockport Global Traveller shoes are amazing.

Tonight I am meeting a couple of other teachers for a cola and a debrief, before crashing early I think !

This morning I got up around 6am. Accra is loud 24 hours a day : music, talking, shouting, chickens, traffic, more chickens…..I showered and went for a walk. Again at 7am it was so hot. I have a thermometer keyring on my backpack. 35 degrees at 7am, and the sun felt hot on you despite having just risen and I needed to put on my cap. Soaking wet again when I got back.

First maths lesson given today : everyone wipes their brows with kerchiefs, which seemed a damn fine idea. I saw a guy selling them and asked how much they were : 2000 cedis It was my fault for then complicating things, I asked for 2 instead of 1, and gave him 4000. He pointed out it was 6000. Confirm assumptions : 1 = 2000? yes. 2 = 6000? yes. i came from the angle that 2+2=4. We did not achieve consensus, but we settled for 5000 for 2. The money was neither here nor there, being either a 5 or 10 cent difference, but I was fascinated by the maths and the logic.

Picked up by Ikando team and driven to the Liberian camp in an air-conditioned new Toyota. The camp is just amazing. There are about 50,000 refugees who have built a small city on a plot of land. Everyone trades as there is no other source of income. It is a maze of goat tracks, stalls, shops and services of every description, buildings and huts that were constructed in a day using whatever was available. In short it is a succinct contrast to the western way of life.

The school was loud ! with very happy children. There were about 50 to a class, and the rooms were physically small, about 6m x 6m. They had those old fashioned bench desks with lift lids, but instead of 2 students per desk there were 3 or 4.

I immediately got hands on. While being shown the 4 working computers, one blew up when a student turned it on, with a spectacular bang and plumes of smoke. The transformer had been set to 115V not 220. Ok, 3 working computers. I offered to swap out a P/S from the bank of non-working ones stacked to the side, and it lived again. Opening the case and swapping supplies drew a crowd, and there was enough interest to have an impromptu ’this is memory, this is a hard drive…’ as we went.

Karrus, who was the visionary behind founding the school, is a great guy. Very articulate and strategic, with ideas on how to achieve long term rather than short term improvements for students. He gave me a tour of the camp, we had lunch, then back to school where I sat in on an adult IT class - basic MS Word skills. Morris, who took the class, is a gun and we will be sitting down together tomorrow to devise some plans.

After that I spoke to the principal, James, for about an hour. It is unclear yet how I will be balancing IT class time vs generic primary. I will sit down with some teachers tomorrow morning and talk through some options. There are some remedial classes which clash with some adult afternoon classes.

The ‘Golden Gate’ Hotel is being built around me as we speak. In another country it would not have opened for a few more months, or at least until after lock up stage. However there is a shower and a western amenities so I will quit while I am ahead. Amenities wise the camp itself is an al fresco design.

So going to bed with lots to think about under the African sky. That is if I can find my way back to the hotel from this internet cafe : there are no street lights anywhere and lots of goat tracks.

I slept really well, and woke up around 6am Tuesday morning, a good sign. Sleep wise I am synch’d in. The hotel was modern and air conditioned. I went for a walk and was immediately struck by the heat, even at 7am it was hot enough to raise a sweat. As it turned out, it doesn’t get too much hotter later, but whereas at home we have a cool-warm-hot thing happening throughout the day, then back again, here it is maybe a 10-20% variation over 24 hours. I guess midday UV is something to watch apart from temperature. If you wore a t-shirt and jeans you would be sad. The clothes I brought over were great today. I found an internet cafe, first class, and an ATM.

Here is how money works here : Visa and cash. Mastercard is not accepted in West Africa.That’s it. Despite all the due diligence at home, my Westpac and Commonwealth savings cards aren’t accepted either. Westpac had promised faithfully that I could expect no issues at a Barclay’s bank. It is good that I came prepared, after reading about others travel logs and warnings. I put the Visa card into positive credit before leaving, and that will be the only source of funds. Of course I can top it up over the internet as I go. And it looks like Visa isn’t going to work for purchases in the traditional sense either. When I checked into the hotel and told them I would pay by card, I started a major logistics exercise which is still continuing. So it appears I can only use the card for ATM withdrawals.

Notes here are hard to get your head around. The largest note is a 20,000 cedi, worth around $2. And these notes are physically quite large, more like share certificates. So you withdraw about 1 million, which equates to $100, and end up with a lunchbox of notes. To compound things, I found that the first few things I tried to purchase (eg water) immediately caused change problems, so I had to try to offload 20,000 notes for smaller ones. Another lunchbox.  And when you do a conversion in your head, the 4 digit thing is counter-intuitive; I needed to second check everything. So 7000 cedi = 70 cents, and 70,000 = $7.

Laura from Ikando, the organization I am working with,  met me at the hotel outdoor breakfast bar, and I had a 2 hour briefing come orientation. Apart from getting a better idea of the school environment, I learnt a lot of practical things as well. Her most important warning : don’t touch your eyes ! Due to the constant handling of monetary notes, which in a cash only world you need to do many times a day, eye infections are easy to get if you even think of wiping an eye with a hand. And in a hot, humid environment, believe me, it is hard not to. Brush your teeth with bottled water. I knew this, she told me again today, and I used the hotel tap anyway out of habit. Sigh. Laura has been here for over 2 years (dutch/irish background) and was a great source of practical advice. Everyone here seems a bit cavalier about malaria, and they don’t take tablets. After a few years here a permanent daily regime is unachievable. You just sort of accept getting it, then zap it then.

We then took a taxi to their office to meet a couple of others and swap general notes, before my first local lunch. I am glad I was with locals ! as I wouldn’t have known what to order. This is what we ordered : ‘rice, meat  and plantain please’. Apparently it is not necessary to be more specific when ordering meat. Plantain is a type of banana that is cooked like a potato. Really. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantain). Staples here are plantain, cassava and yam; it looks like I will be eating them a lot. It was quite nice, with a spicy sauce. Drinking lots of water : they recommend 4 litres a day. Fortunately bottled water is cheap, about 60 cents a litre.

After lunch I went into town with Nat, who helped me with a local SIM card, trying a couple more banks to see if I could access my normal accounts directly (no), and giving some navigation advice. I have put the local SIM into my phone already and will email people the new local number. I will load up the old SIM a couple of times a day to check for sms messages.

This whole city is one open market place that seems totally unregulated. Only in a big supermarket did I see any pricetags. However in the walkabout I made, it seems that you can buy almost anything here, no matter how obscure or specialist the product or service. Shops are usually stalls, tables or huts of a few square metres, and are everywhere, lining every street and trading everything.

Nat showed me how a tro-tro works. This is a cheaper alternative to taxis. There are millions of battered small vans, a la hi-ace style, that go round and round fixed routes. There are no signs, they just shout the destination and you jump in. I found out that 16 people can fit into a hi-ace van. You sort of flag them down, or they stop at unmarked stops - you just have to know. You don’t really need a car here because transport, even taxis, are so cheap. To be driven to Kumasi, Ghana’s second major town a couple of hundred km’s away, will cost a dollar.

Tomorrow (wed) morning I check out of my lovely Accra hotel and we drive to Buduburam camp, not that far away in km’s but a 90 minute drive.

The Alitalia 767 from Milan to Ghana left at 2pm Monday, with a brief stopover scheduled in Lagos. The entire passenger list was english speaking, being either Nigerian, Ghanean, or Australian (me). That did not discourage Alitalia from showing an Italian film without subtitles. This flight was really different. The thing to do on long haul flights is to stand in groups in the corridor, swap seats, meet friends up the other end. Even on economy Alitalia gave out free wine to al and sundry, so the overall effect was something between a Saturday house party, and a school bus on excursion. Very cruisy though - lots of singing. It was loud, chaotic, but fun.

Landing both in Lagos, where we stayed on to the plane, and in Accra, the passengers still applauded. So its not just an Italian thing. People on Alitalian flights really just appreciate landing. 

It was hot getting off the plane at 11pm. Clearance was simple, and I was met by a contact here, Nathaneal, who has been great value and very helpful. Introduction to Africa (1) : we got into a taxi, and Nat negotiated a price with the driver - there are no meters. The driver agreed. Then the driver got out, and walked off. Nat and I chatted. Then the driver came back about 15 minutes later. No idea why. The taxis are scary : battered old Peugeots and similar, no seat belts in the back, and traffic at any time of day is a high speed, honk and charge affair. Cars, trucks and small buses whizz into roundabouts without slowing, and sort it out when they get there.

We arrived at the hotel. I applauded.

 woke up very early and had a leisurely breakfast before wandering over to the station. The TGV (train grand vitesse) left on time at 6am, mostly empty, so i had lots of room to spread out. Another look at the lovely countryside. As opposed to Australia, France has one large city, several medium ones, and about 80,000 small villages. The train arrived not at Paris, but actually at its own terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport. The transport gods were again kind : the AlItalia terminal was literally adjacent to the TGV one. 10 minutes after getting off the train I entered international.

Alitalia is a bit different. Draw a line 1 metre long. At the left extremity, make a mark and label it ‘Qantas’. 2 cm further along, another ; ‘Virgin’. At the 5cm mark, put : ‘laissez-faire attitude’. Now mark the right hand extremity ‘Alitalia’. There you go.

Greg had warned me about this, but when we landed in Milan (for transit), the passengers applauded. The hostesses exchanged a relieved glance and nervous smile, like ‘we made it’.  I wonder what happens on flights that don’t deserve a clap. To be fair, the flight was ok, and I had never seen the alps, which were much more extensive than I thought, and quite beautiful to fly over.

The Alps reminded me of history lessons, and Hannibal crossing with elephants. I think Hannibal had issues. I mean, I would consider crossing the Alps with a backpack, but elephants ? What was he thinking ?

Another brief stopover, then boarded another plane for Accra in Ghana.