A Broadening Mind: Smooth Sailing Thus Far

Today has been comparatively normal, except I just got back from lunch and a local woman grabbed my behind with both hands (my first time from a stranger). Her answer to my puzzled inquiry was simply, “I like your butt.” Most Ghanaian women have not been this aggressive, so this caught me off guard. I just realized that I should have gotten her picture, because she was pretty cute. Maybe it will happen again tomorrow.

I’ve also realized that I haven’t said anything on how much things cost here. The currency exchanges almost exactly to the American dollar (about 96 cents actually), and the equivalent of the dollar is called the “cedi.” Cents are called “pesewas.” To add a bit of confusion, the Ghana cedi recently underwent a re-evaluation where they changed the currency to be exactly 10,000X less than it previously was. Most people have not mentally made the change, so buying a meal still costs 15,000, which is 1.5 cedis. Remembering that cedis and dollars are equivalent, $1.5 for a big meal is pretty cheap. A five minute cab ride is about 35 pesewas, and the beers here cost around 1 cedi for a 24oz bottle.

One of my favorite things here is this ice-creamish substance sold by bicycle vendors throughout Tamale. It’s called Fanice and it comes in four different flavors: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and tampico. The vanilla is amazing; the closest thing I can compare it to is cake frosting. It comes in a little frozen bag; you bite off an end and squeeze it into your mouth. At a reasonable 30 pesewas, it’s a pretty good way to brighten a long day.

My days here are starting to get more routine, although I did have a funny story yesterday. I was tagging along with some other students taking water samples in a nearby rural village, and our local guide stopped by his house to serve us lunch. We ate tiezet, which is the basic staple of the poor villagers. It doesn’t really taste like anything, but it has the consistency of fufu (see previous post for a description and picture). It turns out that it tastes pretty good if the stew is right, and his wife had prepared groundnut soup that was really good. It was very thick and had the flavor of unsweetened peanut butter, but lots of spices had been added. Throw on top some local guinea fowl, and you’ve got yourself a meal! Everyone in our group loved it.

Back to the story. While I was sitting and eating, my red nalgene bottle was clipped to my belt. There were several children following us around as always (anywhere from ages 2 to 7), and while they usually keep their distance, one crept up behind me and briefly touched my bottle, only to recoil quickly. At this point I took notice, and he looked at me and slowly placed his hand on the bottle and kept it there with this look of amazement. The other children who were watching intently then made their way over and took turns touching the bottle, slowly at first and then for longer periods of time. I eventually figured out what they were doing; they saw the clear red and assumed it was flaming hot, and one brave soul touched it to see. They found this highly entertaining.

My research is going well, although I’m not getting the results I was hoping for. I guess that’s just part of the game, but I’m hoping to solve the problems before I leave Tamale on the 25^th. We’re working out where we’re planning to go and it sounds very exciting, but I’ll save that for another post. A few of us will be traveling around Ghana together as a vacation before returning to Boston.

Below are some pictures of Tamale. The first one is on the main drag through town.

Here is a picture of the marketplace. It’s pretty tight quarters as you can see, but mostly the vendors are selling all kinds of food or fabric. I’ve already bought three designs of fabric which I’m having made into shirts. It was 6 cedis for each fabric (2 yards needed for a shirt), and another 4 cedis for the tailor. The girls in our group are having dresses, skirts and pants made.

And here is a picture of Andy and me acquiring water for the house when we moved in. This coincides with the house mentioned at one of the first posts. Also visible is the infamous red nalgene bottle I mentioned.