I'm on site visit now. This means that I've left the Peace Corps training site in central Ghana and traveled to the town that I will be spending the next two years in.

 

The town is different from any other place I've visited in Ghana. It's not quite a city but it's far more developed than any villages I've seen. The village I stay in for training is completely flat with nothing but one-story homes and one paved road through the middle of the village. The town I will be living in for two years is very hilly, it has buildings that are taller than one floor (!!) and it has paved roads all over the place. The narrow streets, red rooves and the fact that the biggest building is a church, which looks like it was built by colonists a few hundred years ago, gives the town a bit of a European feel (but only a bit).

 

The town also has a lot of nice houses, meaning they would almost be appropriate in America. The volunteer who just left my town stayed in such a house. It was known as "The White House" and was just a few minutes from the school. For better or worse, this house was not available to me. But, not having stayed in it yet, I'm happy with what they gave me.

 

My house was built by "a prominent citizen of the town" (that's how he was introduced to me) for the local Pentecostal (sp?) church. It was built with large funerals in mind and was meant to house guests that travelled for such occassions. Apparently, it's been used only 3 times since it was built 9 years ago. So, the house sits empty, except for a 23-year old watchman, who happens to be in his second year at the secondary school I'll be teaching in.

 

The house has a large porch and opens into a sitting room. The sitting room actually has couches, chairs and two ceiling fans. These are things that most volunteers don't get. The sitting rooms opens into a corridor, probably about 30 feet long by 10 feet wide. There are doors everywhere. All doors look the same but not all rooms are equal. Most of the rooms are empty, except for a bed and some are used for storage. One of the rooms will be my bedroom. There is also a kitchen with a fridge (another luxury, although it was broken, but they said they would fix it). And there is a bathroom with a shower (yet another luxury) and a flush toilet (check). In the back right of the corridor is yet another door which opens to...more doors! There are another six rooms, all empty I'm told, situated around a very small (4 feet by 2 feet) open space. There's also a second shower and another bathroom, although it's the pit latrine type.

 

So, that's my house. Very large, but very awkward because it's just a bunch of empty rooms. As of now I don't have the keys to them, but I'll have to work on that. They said they would clean it and fix it up a bit before I return in a few weeks. It's far larger than the average Peace Corps accommodation and has some nice amenities. My theory is that this town has a long history with white colonists (which is true), who generally live in the biggest houses in town (also true). So, they're initial thought is to give me (the white man) a very large house. Also, the section of town that I'm living in is called Broni Krum, which means White Man Town.

 

The town is in the southern part of Ghana. By public transportation is about 2.5 hours from the capital of Accra. More importantly, it's about 45 minutes from a beach and 2 hours from a beach that I visited on Saturday. The beach is small, beautiful and it's so close!! So, in theory, if I wanted to I could easily have a quick tropical vacation every weekend. I'm not sure if I'll actually end up doing that, but it's VERY EXCITING that this option is available. Also, the large town about 15 minutes from my site has a resort-like hotel (reasonable rates available - come and visit!) with a pool that I can swim in for $2. More importantly, there's no such thing as a quiet place outdoors in a Ghanaian village/town, so this is a perfect place to come and sit outdoors without being bothered.

 

I go back to training early tomorrow morning. Training is still booooring and generally a waste of time, but it's almost over. My site seems like it has potential, which is exciting, but it's impossible to imagine what 2 years here are going to be like...

 

Addendum #1: About the rest of my visit here - I'm staying with my headmaster. Awkward. For better or worse, he won't be the headmaster when school reopens on September 11. I've been speaking a lot of Fanti. I still can't really speak it, but I know enough catch phrases that people seem impressed (but mostly they just laugh). There's another volunteer who came over with my group who lives just 30 minutes away. He lives in a shared house with other teachers but he has his own private sitting room and bedroom. His big perk is that the school kitchen will cook every meal for him. In Ghana, school food is generally not a bad thing.

 

Addendum #2: So we took a series of tro-tros to get the village (they're like mini-buses). On the second tro, a preacher got up. This sort of thing happens in New York, but in Ghana everyone else on the tro gets really into it. Almost everyone prayed with him and gave him money, including my headmaster. The preacher talked about how he used to smoke pot, but by the glory of god he has seen the light. I really wanted to get up and say something like, "Dude. You're preaching on a bus. You're probably even less productive than when you were smoking because at least then you weren't taking money from well meaning travellers." Argh. This made me mad. But what made me even madder was when the "herbal specialist" stood up. He was wearing a white lab coat with "herbal specialist" written in marker on the pocket. Real official looking. He was hawking some herbal medicine - it costs 100,000 cedis in the clinic, but I'm selling two for 30,000! (he actually said that, but in Twi). He claimed that it cured Typhoid Fever. The best part was when some guy on the tro got up and claimed that he used the medicine and it worked. Once that happened, everyone bought, including my headmaster. Again, this made me upset.

 

Addendum #3: American Idol is on Ghanaian television every Sunday night. Need that, Ghana does not.