It has been a while, not because I had bad internet connection but because it has been hard to find time to write. I'm now in my second week of working here, so I'll update you a little bit on what has happened! Before I went to Ghana MeetAfrica told me that you need to give yourself 1-2 weeks to orientate and observe before you can really start doing the work that you planned on doing (as far as you should really plan much). I have experienced that this is definitely true :-) The first week was mostly about finding out who and what I'm exactly working around, and especially finding out a lot more about the way people communicate (or sometimes don't communicate). The first Monday I met with Bernice and two other people that work for her to talk about the work I'll be doing. This took place in a small, relatively dark office, which was not ideal since I still had some difficulties understanding the Ghanaian accent in addition to being half deaf anyway. I felt like most of the conversation was me asking "I'm sorry?" or "Can you say that again?" But I kind of figured out eventually what they expected from me. Especially now, two full weeks in, I feel way more clear about everything. I'm working on two main things, one of which involves improving the quality of the bamboo bikes and increasing our international connections , and the other one involves developing the prototype of a wheelchair. Especially this last project I'm very hype about! That's why my favorite day was the day I went to the "factory", one of the two the places where they make the bicycles. I took the trotro to get there, which was pretty funny because like I said earlier, certain hand moves indicate the direction of the trotro. I knew the name of the direction but not the right hand movement, so I just tried to get their attention. The third trotro coming by understood me as he was passing me so he hit the breaks, I felt bad for the people in that trotro, but I got in :) The factory I went to was the smaller one of the two they have, I'll upload some pictures so you can have an imagination by what this looks like. It's a combination of guys and girls with different levels of education working there, overseen by a main technical guy/engineer (you can ask him to make anything from bamboo and he can do it, amazing!). They have their own bamboo plantation where they get the materials from, so after they treat the bamboo they manually build the bicycle frames. Some of the frames are sold directly, others are assembled into different kind of bicycles, which can be made just how customers want them. You should see this picture below of the Dutch lady who ordered a frame and assembled her own bike from it, so cool! There was also another cool project going on behind the factory, in which they were building a house from plastic bottles filled with sand. Great initiative, because one of the sad things to see here is the huge amount of plastic trash that is everywhere. I realized that there is also no public trash cans in Ghana, or at least very very few, so I guess their solution is to just drop it on the ground? One of the things I have to get used to when working with people here, is the way they approach things. I am used to having a final goal, then think about the steps that have to happen to get there and go about it that way. Here, I get the feeling that people sometimes tend to skip half of the steps and just want to jump to the end result right away. Same with the way they communicate; when they expect or want something from me, I feel like I am missing 90% of the background information. Sometimes I feel like I am asking so many questions, but I've also figured that this is important because a lot of times things have been decided and you just 'haven't been told yet', so if I don't ask I will waste my time. Like with the bamboo bikes, after two days when I started making a clear picture for myself of what we need from a partner (in the Netherlands), I found out that they wanted our partner to be able to assemble bicycles. So most of the potential partners I found during my research those days before were not even an option... Aka, keep asking questions :) I'm trying to observe and understand they way they communicate, which is definitely getting better. Now, two weeks in, I feel like I know the people that I work with a lot better and they know me better so that is really nice. I feel more and more connected and included. After that first work week I had my first weekend here in Kumasi. This means, Saturday = laundry day! It is funny because on the one hand I live in a very modern house, but some things are still very different compared to our homes. For example, we have running water, but no hot water, and washing clothes still goes by hand, like how most people picture "African life". I do some of my laundry by hand at home anyways, so when Auntie (grandma) asked if I needed help I very confidently said I'm experienced so I should be fine. Well, I think she didn't agree with that. She was observing me as I was washing my first shirt, and decided very quickly to take over from me. After seeing her do it I understand why, I'm clearly not at her skill level (yet). It was hard for her to let me take back over, I think because she just couldn't stand seeing how clumsy I was. After we all finished doing that (aka, 3 pm) we were finally ready to go fabric shopping! I was looking forward to this moment so much, because I had seen a lot of pretty fabric and I couldn't wait to get some to get clothes made by a seamstress. That is in Ghana how people (with enough money) get their clothes. There is also many places on the street that sell 'Obruni wawu clothes', which literally means 'dead white people clothes', but that is not seen as as "nice". Those are the clothes that we put in a bag in Europe/US and give to charity to be donated to developing countries. They call it this because people here thought (or think) that those clothes are from dead white people, not people donating them... Never knew! In general I had such a wrong perception of fashion in Ghana. You better not come here in your safari outfit or American comfort style, bring your nice dresses and jewelry because it matters what you wear. Sunday was a day of frustration and fun. Me and Alexis (one of the other American girls) wanted to go to Lake Bosumtwi, a lake in the area here. We knew that we could take a trotro to a point close to the lake. We walked to the road from our house to get a taxi to take us to the trotro station. The driver wanted to charge us way too much money but after some talking we could reduce it (still too much but better). Then, when we were getting to the station, he was talking in Twi to the trotro guys to ask where we had to be, and then told us that we should really let him take us all the way to the lake for 60 cedi's, and that the trotro was no option, but we can understand a little Twi and heard the other guy saying that there were trotro's going. You can imagine that we were very annoyed by our driver, so we quickly gave our money at him and ran out of his car. A very friendly Ghanaian helped us to find our trotro, and for 2 cedi's we got all the way to the last stop nearby the lake. From there we had to take a taxi again for the last part. We wanted a shared taxi because it is so much cheaper (basically like uber-pool), but the guy kept trying to say that he wouldn't do that. After a while we finally convinced him, so we had a shared taxi (which ended up being super-shared with 6 people squeezed in), but saw that he still charged us twice as much as the local people... Then, to enter the gate to the lake area with our taxi, nobody had to pay anything except for us. You can imagine that our level of irritation was relatively high at this point, especially Alexis was not having it. So then, when we finally got out of the taxi and we wanted to enter the beach area, a guy yelled at us "you have to report here!". There we went, into the registration office, where a 'very official' man' was sitting behind a big desk. "Hello welcome ladies, you have to pay 20 cedi's here to enter the beach". We immediately looked at each other, are you kidding... Our other friends had been there and we knew that this wasn't true, the money would go straight into their pockets. I wanted to apply my 'talking to Ghanaian people with power skill's' that MeetAfrica taught us, starting with complimenting them on their beautiful like and what not, but Alexis had already lost her patience and started arguing, which obviously didn't help. So, a lot of cedi's later we finally entered the lake area. This was the first time here in Ghana that I actually felt frustrated. I think because so many people tried to take advantage of me for being white, while I am trying to fit in with everyone else. This keeps happening, where I really don't see myself as being different than the people around me, but that is just not the way that people look at me. If you are with other Ghanaians this doesn't happen as much, but by yourself it does. I also know that this will take some time, but at times it can be frustrating. The more Twi I learn the easier it will be, I just have to be a bit more patient.
Once we entered the lake, all my irritation disappeared right away because it was so beautiful, and we met so many friendly Ghanaians that we hung out with :-) People showed us around, and told us everything about it, complete opposite experience of our past hour. It was totally worth the journey of getting there. Our traveling back to the house was also a great experience, we were practicing our Twi with all the people in the trotro, which was hilarious. Our mispronunciation of words was very funny to everyone, especially because so many words in Twi sound so much like each other but have a complete different meaning. One of the girls in the trotro told us that 'we made this the most fun ride she had ever had'. What a compliment. At the end of the day we came home with big smiles on our faces.
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October 2017
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