Bola car

Every Tuesday afternoon, the sound of a loud truck comes through the windows of my room in Com. 2. Then an even louder sound comes when the guy driving blows the horn and all the people around starts running and shouting "Bola Car, Bola Car"!! Bola is garbage in twi, and the much appreciated Bola car drives fast through the neighbourhood allowing people to throw all their accumulated rubbish into it, if they are fast enough. I'm just glad it comes at all, even though it would be nice if it came maybe twice a week. The size of our dustbin in our common kitchen (where we dont cook, we cook in our room...) is small and the mice that live in our roof (...) probably enjoys the bola... Anyway. Ghana IS improving when it comes to waste management. At least people on my street dont have to burn their rubbish outside the house everyday.

The picture is of people running after the bola car outside our house with their bola. I unfortunately was too slow to get a picture of the actual car, and I didnt feel like going outside taking a picture of the bola car like a weird obroni. After all it looks just like a Norwegian bola car...

Party with pomp and circumstance

I went to a party on Friday. Sister in law celebrated her belated birthday, party arranged and paid for by her boyfriend who returned from USA for holidays last week. There was LOUD music, there were lots of drinks in a barrel full of ice, there was a kebab guy, ice cream, fruits and loads and loads of plastic chairs in the small garden of my mother in law’s house. We live about 500metres away, and we could hear the music as soon as we started on our way to the party. Though a fun, irresponsible party for youngsters, the ceremonial part of it will never be left out in Ghana. There was a master of ceremony and a prayer was held, before the gang could get drunk and dance their dances that leave nothing to imagination, in the garden of a staunch catholic lady. She came home from church in the middle of the party, and sat inside the house wondering when she was gonna get to sleep. She was reassured that they were going to close “very soon”. I guess she was disappointed.

I came wearing jeans and a nice top and realized I’d totally missed the dress code, cos the beautiful girlfriends of sister nurse (she is studying to become a midwife) looked like the girls dancing in hiplife and 50cent music videos. In their supersexy extremely short outfits they were tempting the few boys around. And I felt like a 50 year old. If I was in Norway I wouldn’t think much about it, its normal to dress like that (if you can pull it of), but here knowing the puritan morals of the society, I cant help but thinking: how the hell were they allowed to leave the house dressed like that??

Anyway, it was the topic the next day between bf and friends – “its bad, the parents should talk to them bla bla bla” while I tried to tell them that the development is inevitable, it happens everywhere, Africa can’t hide from the powerful fashion trends of the world, and the older, more conservative generation will sooner or later have to let go, cos nobody will stop the Americanization of the world and we will one day all look the same. But they don’t believe me though.

Ludo

The friends of Assemby Woman have got a new hobby apart from talking and gossiping on the porch. I think they have just gone and bought a Ludo board cos I’ve never seen them play before. But now they sit there the whole day playing Ludo with great passion, screaming, shouting and arguing over who is cheating. While their unattended kids are visiting our room by force.

The cries of the children

More negativity to way up for all the positive posts of Kajsa and the rest...

Last year I was here I needed something to do, and coming straight from working with children from D.R. Congo in kindergarten in Norway, I had realized children might be the way to go for me. My bachelor in African Studies has brought me back and forth to Africa, and opened some doors I didn’t expect, but working with children appeals more to me than anything else.

So last year I was introduced to the Community 2, nr. 1 Municipal Day Care Center, who were more than willing to take me in as free labour. And I was more than ready to gain experience in educating children, in a totally different environment. But I wasn’t up to the task. I couldn’t avoid being witness to regular beatings of tiny children, who most of the time had done nothing apart from just being children. Sometimes I ended up between the child and the vicious bamboo rod held by terrifying “teachers”, and I realized the situation was absurd. I know kids are beaten in schools, nurseries and homes in Ghana, hell, I’ve attended secondary school here and watched 18 year old boys cry after getting lashed by an over-eager, frustrated teacher. But at least, the 18 year olds who brought knives to school or deliberately breached the uniform dress code by tying their shoe laces around their legs instead of on the shoe, kind of had it coming. They had the sense to know what they did was against the rules, and they knew very well the consequences. But a 2-year old who cries cos he is scared on his first day in a nursery where all are strangers and the grown ups are intimidating instead of safe, when he is afraid of going to sleep in this unknown place, he gets beaten. And it tells the child: the teachers are dangerous, they will beat you. While the teachers feel it tells the child: it is wrong of you to cry, don’t cry, expecting the 2-year old to learn from this lesson, while the 2-year old has forgotten what happened the next day, and he cries again. His brain doesn’t even connect the crying with the beating.

Realizing that my plan wasn’t to try and change the old women working in the kindergarten, and realizing that none of the children really respected me cos I didn’t beat them, made me give up. A shameful thing to do, but being there made me depressed and sad and I had watched babies being beaten for too long.

Still, now I live right across the road from a similar nursery and the cries of the children in there is the backdrop to my morning activities.

Yesterday I was watching the TV3 Evening News and they had a report from Korle-Bu (regional hospital) from the burns unit at the hospital, showing horrible images of people with burn injuries, while the focus of the report was the lack of staff in the unit. 50% of cases reported at Korle-Bu involved children under 5 years of age. How do so many young children suffer such injuries? Well, yesterday afternoon the same thing could have happened at my house. Assembly woman told me she was going out somewhere, and I said ok, while realizing her 4-year old daughter was alone on the porch with a 2 year old neighbour kid. No one around to watch them, and she didn’t ask me to either. Minutes later I found the girl with a box of matches, trying to light it. She has easy access to an big, rusty gas cylinder in her moms kitchen and I didn’t like the grim alternatives minding my own business could bring forth. I confiscated the match box, and therefore had to suffer the wrath of Adwoa as she demonstrated how infuriated she got from my display of power. Trying to explain that matches can be dangerous and are for adults to use, was lost on her as she stood pressing her face against the wall, refusing to look at me.

I know we overprotect our children somehow in my own country. But am I hysterical to react? I wouldn’t know.

Breaking news

"A mad man who had been healed by a pastor at Madina 3 weeks ago, is still wandering around being mad, and surely isnt healed", reports NET2 TV 29th July.

Salvador - the whole story

One of the first days after i came, i was in my in-laws house and listened to a heated debate between bf, his sisters and his mother. The topic was the newest hot tele-novela shown on NET2, Second Chance. Or its original name: El cuerpo del deseo – Body of Desire. Not sure of its exact origin though its Latin American in all its characteristics. I realized people were really passionate about it, and thought: “hey, this is my way in”. So I watched an episode and got most details about who is who from bf.

Don Pedro was a rich, piano virtuoso who lived in a nice house with his wonderful daughter, Angela, and his loyal servants. He marries opportunist Isabelle, who together with her…lover? Andre, plans to kill Don Pedro and inherit all his riches. Isabelle poisons Don Pedro and he dies. End of story you might think.
But here comes the twist, and some twist it is: Don Pedro’s body dies, but his soul jumps into the body of a hunk-a-chunk of burning love-villager named Salvador, who dies at the same moment! And the story is now getting interesting. Don Pedro is inside the body of this Greek god look-a-like, stuck in a village with a illiterate wife and son. He runs away from the village and seeks work as a driver in his own house and intrigues can begin. So Salvador/Don Pedro is in the house, Knowing Isabelle killed him, knowing Andre is her accomplice, Isabelle’s opportunistic aunt, Rebecca, moves in, (or did she already live there? Gotta get the details from bf), the butler Walter is suspicious of him and Rebecca is on his side, Salvador is mysteriously shot but recovers, all the women in the house are deeply infatuated by Salvador, including Isabelle, Rebecca and Isabelle’s niece, Valeria (the only pure soul in Isabelle’s family), Isabelle starts an affair with Salvador, not knowing its her late husband playing her, while Don Pedro is mostly interested in Valeria, who plays the piano and shares his passions of music.

Salvador plays games on the people in the house by sneaking around and playing the piano just the way Don Pedro used to do, and scares the hell out of the evil doers. Don Pedros dog knows Salvador is Don Pedro and also acts strange. Antonio, son of servant Abigail, brother of Simon and “boyfriend” of Angela, is almost losing his mind over this, until he realized Salvador is Don Pedro and is happy with that, but doesn’t tell anyone.

Meanwhile, the original Salvador’s wife from the village, Cantelisia (?) has come to the city with their son to look for Salvador, who they think has gone crazy. She is as previously mentioned, an illiterate and obviously from the 12th century considering how helpless and stupid they portray people from villages, she stays with the uncle of the village priest, who funnily enough, is an artist painting nude women… She finally finds Salvador and complicates the story, refusing to accept that Salvador does not want anything to do with them anymore, considering he is in fact Don Pedro and she stays in town being an annoying crying moron who thinks Salvador has lost his mind and waiting for him to recover so they can go home.

OK. I know this is pointless to use a whole blog entry for. But its funny. And it has become somewhat of a tradition at 9 o’clock in our house, after all the people who has come by cos they need something from bf or from my computer or his printer has gone home, we half watch Second Chance. Sometimes my eyes close during it, but that’s one of the good things about this series. You can skip 20 episodes and still get whats going on, OR only listen to the dialogue. I’ve heard its better anyway, this way you use your imagination to create the characters. Ehm.

Yes im full of bullshit, but I had to write something not negative cos I made that rule the last time.

Intro

I was just thrown out of the taxi I was in cos we passed a girl who wanted "dropping" and I was in an empty, but shared taxi (cheaper than dropping, takes 4 passengers). The driver stopped another taxi, said "hey you, take my passenger with you, eh?" and gently kicked me out. Hmpf. Anyway, no harm, no foul.

Considering this is my second post on this blog, and everyone who dont read Norwegian have no idea what I have been writing before, I dont really know how to start. So I'll just go. I have been living as a (desperate) housewife this week to, only interrupted by a trip to Accra to accompany bf.

Thursday evening I went out on adventure to Accra to meet bloggers in Ghana who Kajsa has gathered. We were 6 people there, from Sweden, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica and Norway. Quite interesting to meet people that way, while initially we only have in common that we blog. And iI was the only nationalist who worte in Norwegian. Hence, this blog.

Our porch still works as the public Speaker's Corner/gossip place/konkonsa venue in the neighborhood. The man in the house is working on a ship so now the wife is alone entertaining all her friends outside our window. While it used to be the man and his buddy and his radio who used to make the most noise in the mornings, and of course his crying/screaming children, its now his wife's friends and their crying/screaming children. They sit right outside our window out to the porch and talk and talk and they have so much to talk about. Sometimes I think they are about to come through the walls. Its not that they are really that much of a nuisance as I make it sound, maybe more the feeling of never being alone in your "own" house. Fine, we rent, and SHARE with a family of 4, but thats not all. We share with the whole neighborhood, and sometimes it gives you the feeling of being the guest rather than the "host", since you dont know anyone you meet on the way to the toilet in your "own" house.

Lately a woman has been sleeping on the porch. We dont know where she came from, and she is not a guest of the woman (from now on referred to as Assembly Woman), cause she sleeps outside. She was visiting another woman in the neighborhood, but no room for her to sleep there, so Assembly Woman let her sleep on our porch. We werent informed of this decision of course, and one night she surprised me when I was on the way to the toilet in the dark and almost tripped over her sleeping form. She doesnt cause any trouble mind you, she is just around, she isnt shy of walking around bare-chested, and stealing my bathroom slippers right in front of my nose. Norwegian and Ghanaian hospitality rules are different, and Im not new to Ghana so I dont take offence when people take my things without asking, just feel amusement. At least it gives us something to talk about. And we get all the latest gossip of the area through our window to the porch.

I would write more, but Im hungry, my toes are about to fall of cos of the aircon, and I have to get a ticket from Frankfurt to Trondheim in November, and I cant concentrate on several things at one time it seems, though I thought that was a quality my sex was supposed to master better than the other sex... How many hours does one want to spend at Frankfurt Airport when one arrives after an overnight flight? 0. but I'm looking at 6.