It is 11:00 in the morning in Ghana, I am sitting on a bus
(with air conditioning!!) heading to Tamale for my in country training. The last 24 hours have been a bit of a blur,
but I will do my best to recount every big event or cool tidbit. Here we go!
(for added effect listen to The Time Warp from the Rocky
Horror Picture Show while listening)
Toronto – 6:00PM
After rounding up all of my gear for the trip me and two
other JFs set out to be the first ones at the airport (and save a little money
doing it) and decided to brave the busses.
One streetcar, one subway and one city bus later we were standing at
(the completely wrong side of) the terminal.
A ten minute walk later and we had handed over our bags and waited for
the rest of the JFs to show up. After
clearing security and having a last drink and burger in the bar (tequila shot
chased with some Heineken … I enjoyed one of those things) we were on the plane
and on our way to Amsterdam!
Amsterdam – 12:00PM
Well, having just landed and gotten off the plane we decided
to find our new gate. After finding the
gate may people (not me, apparently Sasktel doesn’t really care if you know)
got texts from their service providers summarizing to:
Texts : $0.75
Calls : $2.00/min
Data : $0.03/kb
For those of you who don’t know, that would mean downloading
a movie (usually 700mb) would result in a $21,500 phone bill. I immediately turned my phone on airplane
mode and have had it that way ever since.
After a wonderful impromptu piano recital from Ryan (Nocturne in B flat
minor) we all cleared security and got aboard the flight.
When I took
my seat in the plane I was informed (in Dutch) by a police officer that there
would be two people being deported on the flight, and that one of them was
quite upset and would likely be screaming.
I then told him I didn’t understand a word he said, and repeated it in
English. At the time of the warning I
didn’t think much of this, I have heard people scream before, and I have seen
people upset before.
I was wrong. The man
was quite large, and did not want to be on the plane, his screams rang through
the plane until we had taken off, and were then replaced momentarily by
weeping, and then silence. He was
screaming as if he was being taken to his death. I wish I knew more of his story.
Accra – 8:00PM
Well, we all got off the airplane and hit ‘the wall’, the
wall of humidity that is. The heat
wasn’t bad – 26 Celsius, and the sun had been down for around an hour or
two. Getting into the terminal and
flashing my yellow fever immunization card got me into the immigration
lines. An hour and a half later we had
gotten all our bags and met the APS who would be taking care of us for the next
little while. A short taxi ride later to
the guest house and I was setting up my mosquito net in hopes of a bite free
night. The place was very nice – an
outlet to charge my computer and even a shower, only one temperature – cold. It was bliss.
Well, that pretty much brings us to today, we woke early –
got the bus terminal at around 5:30 so we could take the 6:00 bus to
Tamale. Two and a half hours later the
bus showed up and we were on our way.
The first rest stop let me pay 0.20 Cedi to use the washroom, and then I
got a meat pie (the friggen best ever!)
and some very fresh and very wonderful mango for dessert.
The next day we did some cool team training stuff, then went to the market to buy an assortment of supplies. We got phones, passport pictures, and many other things - including my very first 'Star' beer (a Ghanian beer) which was very good. Still don't have internet though - I need to get an MTN data stick, which I am not very sure when I will get - but they are around 60 Cedis for 4 gigs of 3G data (around $10 a gig, which seems fairly inline with Canadian prices)
Anyways, I should stop stealing another JF's data stick for tonight (Thanks Cecile!!)
Until next time!
-Nathan
No comments:
Post a Comment