3 Weeks In

Three weeks into the program and I’m still going strong. By strong, I mean that I have yet to get food poisoning, malaria, or a parasite. Being in Ghana this far has been like living in a reality TV show. Each day brings its own trials, and slowly but surely we are all starting to feel what it is really like to live in West Africa.

School technically started last week, but only about half of my professors actually showed up and this week one of my teachers was almost 45 minutes late to class. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but since my lectures are a solid 20-30 minute pilgrimage in high humidity and heat, it is a bummer when the professor doesn’t show up or they show up ridiculously late. I have heard that this is a constant battle here on campus because if it isn’t the teachers that aren’t showing up, then it’s the students that aren’t coming to class. I am the prime example of being consistently late, but Ghanaian time (where timeliness is virtually nonexistent) can be a bit extreme. Oh well. Guess you have to do what the locals do and if that involves consistently being late, I can get on board. So far it seems like class is not going to be a major issue anyway. I like the topics and the workload is virtually nonexistent compared to what I get back home.

Being in Ghana is a strange feeling. On one hand, you have all of this joy and celebration while on the other you begin to see some of the underlying problems. Socially it feels like I stepped back in time 25-30 years, and in general the history of Africa isn’t the happiest. On our first weekend here we went to the Cape Coast Slave Castle. At first it didn’t really hit me that I was about to see a landmark that saw the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and arguably hosted some of the worst people that have ever walked the earth. It wasn’t until we saw the women’s holding area that reality set in. Hundreds of women- some with malaria, cholera, on their periods, or in general just doing what our bodies were designed to do- were trapped in this dark, humid room for weeks if not months on end, dazed and confused as to what their future would hold. Meanwhile just upstairs, their captors sat back and enjoyed the sea breeze wondering how much of a profit they would make by selling their fellow human beings. It is important to note that not only white-Europeans took part in the slave trade, so did many Africans. The more I travel, the more I see the terrible things that mankind has done to one another. A vast majority of people would agree that slavery and the whole African slave trade was a terrible thing yet even in places like America, people are seen as being less than and racial prejudice is still a major part of life. The potential next leader of the free world fails to recognize the fact that 99% of his comments are either racist or sexist. In times like today, I think that it is pretty important to look back at history so that we don’t make the same terrible mistakes again and again.

Regardless of Ghana’s sad history, the people here are still incredibly kind and festive. Music is a universal thing here. Everywhere you go, especially on a night out, you can find people from all backgrounds, ages, and abilities dancing it out. Celebrations in individual cities attract hundreds if not thousands of people who are ready to have a good time. I feel comfortable with the constant feeling of being uncomfortable in my new temporary home and really hope to see more of what this part of the world has to show me this semester.