I have returned to the Peace Corps training site in the middle of the
country and am once again staying with my host family. Two more weeks
of this and then we are officially sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers
on August 18 and I will go back to my permanent site. As part of the
swearing-in ceremony, I will be performing a dialogue in Fanti about
the Peace Corps with my friend Andrew who is also learning Fanti. We
were told when we arrived in June that the President of Ghana would be
attending the ceremony and we were continually told this until
recently when suddenly Peace Corps staff was not sure if he was
coming. Now, we know he is not coming and he is not sending anyone
from the capital to represent him. The best we'll get is some regional
minister. This is roughly equivalent to being told that President Bush
is coming (for better or worse) and then getting Charles Gargano (feel
free to Google that if you don't know who he is).

Which brings me to the Manhyia Palace. The Palace is home to the king
of the Ashantis, a tribe that used to control much of what is now
Ghana. The tribal system has not really left Ghana, it's just changed
form. Ghanaians still talk about what tribe they are from and they
have various stereotypes for each tribe. In that sense, it's like
people from the US talking about what state they are from. But, each
village/town/city in Ghana has a chief. Chiefdom is passed down
through the mother (there's a word for that, but I can't spell it).
The role of the chief is to settle local disputes and to assist in
development projects. And, like any good bureacrat, the chief sucks up
local money building a nice house, buying a car, etc.

So Peace Corps told us a month ago that we were going to the palace in
Kumasi, the second largest city in the country, to meet this king.
But, he ditched us for Morocco and we ended up not seeing his real
palace and not meeting him and instead going to the palace museum.
"This is where the king sat down and wrote letters." "This is where
the king ate breakfast." "These are the dishes the king used to eat
with." etc. etc. And it's not even particularly nice stuff, even by
Ghana standards. And none of us care at all about the Ashanti King!
It would be like visiting the home of some obscure American president.
Who would want to travel 3 hours to visit the William Henry Harrison
museum??

After the museum, we went to the Kumasi Cultural Center which sells
various crafts. I still can't differentiate between actual indigineous
Ghanaian art and tourist crap. I finally bought some fabric so I can
have clothing made for me. It costs about 35000 cedis for 2 yards of
fabric and I will probably have to pay the seamstress about another
20000. That's about $6 for a custom-made shirt...

Addendum #1: There have been a lot of amusing questions posted
recently. I'll try to address a few of them...
1) Medication is often surprisingly cheap. Example: someone in my
group bought Valium - I think it was a few hundred cedis per pill.
That's a few pennies each.

2) People in Ghana claim to be way older than they really are. A
friend of mine attended a funeral recently of a woman who died at the
age of 180! Of course there are no records to prove or disprove that,
but she probably was not 180.

3) Birthday celebration was fun. People made a cake for me and then we
went to an outdoor hotel bar. My homestay family bought me a birthday
card, which hopefully I'll post a picture of one day. Ghanaian cards
are kind of like the really gloppy religious cards that they sell in
the US only much more poorly designed.

4) The large town about 15 minutes from my permanent site has a
basketball hoop! At least I've been told. I played basketball a few
times when I went to visit a volunteer at his site when I first
arrived. Ghanaians are surprisingly absolutely awful. But very good at
jumping.

5) I do wear a Jurassic Park style hat and I do occassionally wipe my
brow with a hanky.

6) I do have a new address, but you can keep sending mail to the
address in Accra that I emailed around a while ago. Eventually, I'll
email around the new address, but it should only be used for letters.
Packages should always go to Accra. Thanks in advance for sending me
stuff.

7) I do need to get the keys to all of the rooms from the owner. I
don't anticipate this being a problem once I return to my permanent
site. Would be really weird to live in a place with 15 or so locked
doors.

8) Luke rides on Taun-Tauns on Hoth. Close. But now every time I get
on a tro tro I will think, "and I thought these things smelled bad on
the outside." Generally applicable to tro tros as well.

9) Wadi told me that Bloomberg declared a yom cham and made everyone
drink a lot of water and go to free swim. So I guess you still are not
allowed to turn the air conditioners back on.

10) There are hospitals that we're allowed to go to in Ghana. There
are 10 or 11 regional hospitals that Peace Corps has inspected and
accepted. Mike, they're waiting for your application.

11) I would not be the richest person in Ghana, but working for a
Western company and living in a developing country is a sweeeeet deal.
You earn enough dollars to live in a Western country, but you pay for
everything in cedis. Imagine making the salary you make now, but only
paying 30 cents for a cab ride...25 cents for ice cream...$1 for a
bottle of beer...etc.

Addendum #2: Jared Kushner bought the New York Observer!!! Moche, why
aren't you keeping me informed? This is HILARIOUS. Please, email me
more info (I just read the New York Times article on it).

Addendum #3: I'm horrified by the formatting of this website. Line
breaks are all off. Font size changes. Different type faces. It's a
disaster.

¶ 1:27 PM