Accra again
Today, like most days in Ghana (for me), has held both good and bad. And the good has outweighed the bad, also like most of my days in Ghana.
We came back to Accra yesterday, after days without cellular Internet access (amongst other things), so this is the first chance I’ve had to post. Miranda found a hostel in G-lish’s guide that was reasonably close to the Ministries Block and to the Red Cross and some other places we needed to go. We caught a cab here after the 4 hour bus ride, and managed to navigate directly to it, despite it being in a weird location.
A room with a private bath (in which the water wasn’t running this morning) was $31CEDI. Should’ve opted for the shared bath ($25?) since it doesn’t seem to work anyway, hah. Also i have now added one thing to my list of “things to check for before renting a room in Ghana.” This is a pretty long mental list as each of the half a dozen or so places we have stayed have been missing something critical (fan, windows, any conceivable way to hang a mosquito net) — and today the missing feature is: electrical outlets. The room has a light, and a fan (hardwired), but no outlets. Luckily we will only be here 2 days and my netbook has a 6 cell battery (7-8hrs of life) that I charged fully before leaving.
In Ghana I have read that if you “see something you want, buy it, because you may not see it again.” That is good advice as that is how the commerce system works in all the places I have been so far (which is to say things are unpredictable). Related to that advice is something we have also learned: if you have [water/electricity/whatever] now, use it while you can. So if you have electricity, charge all your stuff; you don’t know how long you will be without it. If your water bottles are empty, fill them now while the tap still works (and of course only fill water bottle from the tap if you are filtering your water properly — we have had water here out of the tap that looks like diluted Tang). I prepared a lot ahead of time for this sort of thing, we have spares of everything, extra batteries galore, and so on, but there is only so much spare stuff you can cart with you.
Unfortunately our hostel/guesthouse is a mix-bag. On the good side of things, there were a bunch of acrobats practicing contortion and acrobatics while we ate dinner last night. Also the kitchen/cafe there is vegetarian (!!!). On the downside, well, you already know about the water being off, and the lack of electricity. Worse yet, this morning I came out to have breakfast … they brought our food, but I wanted to get some water. I went up and leaned on the bar to ask for water, and got covered in fresh paint. Apparently a “WET PAINT!” sign struck them as too much work.
Two of the staff immediately began dousing my arms in turpentine (!!!) and scrubbing the paint off. I’ll give them an A+ for effort when it comes to removing the paint, but there’s really no way to get all of it off, not to mention the epidemiological concerns I have about pouring turpentine on my arms, not to mention there is now bright blue paint on my khaki pants, one of three pairs of pants that I have for the remaining two months of our journey.
After the paint fiasco, our first stop was the Ministry of Health, which was located somewhere in the Ministries Block in central Accra. You might be surprised how many ministries that Ghana has. Based on how many we walked by that weren’t the MoH, I’m confident saying it is dozens. Several dozen.
Eventually we found the Ministry of Health, but they’d never heard of either of the two people at Ghana Health Services we’d been dealing with. We had even searched to confirm that GHS and MoH were the same, and Google seems to think they are, but apparently they are not. We deduced this on our own, and then later confirmed it with our GHS contact (GHS is part of MoH which is part of the overall Ghanaian Gov’t).
The receptionist at MoH found a woman to take us to GHS. She first took us to Ghana Civil Services, but then after our clarification she helped us to find GHS. I point this out because she walked with us for a good five or ten minutes. This would not be the last time today someone would go way out of their way to help us.
Finding GHS, we asked a security guard where EPI (expanded programme on immunization) would be located, and he flagged down a passing doctor (I am presuming here based on an awesome TB shirt he was wearing). I repeated my question to him, and he asked whom we’d been dealing with. I gave the name of our contact, and he began laughing happily — a good sign, I took it. Unfortunately our contact was at the teaching hospital today, which is a ways away. The doctor then called him on his own phone, chatted with him, passed the phone to us, and we worked out a time to meet later this afternoon at the WHO. The doc helped confirm on our map we had the right address for the WHO, and then even offered to drive us (all the way across Accra). People in Ghana are nice, almost too nice.
We then headed to the Red Cross in Accra, and found the regional HQ. Unfortunately it turns out that Accra has two Red Crosses, one the regional HQ, and one the national HQ. Of course the national HQ isn’t listed in any of the places we looked, but the folks at the regional chapter were super nice and gave us directions to Ghana Red Cross National Chapter. One of the women even offered to come with us to make sure we got there okay. Did I mention people in Ghana were nice?
Getting our visas sorted out for NY is now a step closer, but still far from complete. We traipsed out to the immigration office and after much explaining ended up with the correct form to get a re-entry visa. Unfortunately they only accept these forms in the morning — of course! I mean, what sense would it make to do this sort of thing all day? The US Embassy also does this sort of thing, only letting you check-in between 8:30am and 11am, or some ridiculously short period — so we’re headed back in the morning to attempt to get a reissued visa for after our super-short NY UN trip.
The meeting at WHO with our GHS contact went very well and we got a lot of lingering questions answered. So without boring you, let me just say that we now understand a lot more of the technical specifics that were unclear to us, as far as which agencies will participate in the campaign (and their roles, etc). The doctor we were meeting with also told me a heartbreaking story about being a young doctor in the 1980s and stacking bodies of child measles victims (Ghana has not had a measles death in several years now, whereas in the 1970s and 1980s measles accounted for almost 20% of child deaths).
Basically today was really productive, and filled with really, really helpful people
Today, like most days in Ghana (for me), has held both good and bad. And the good has outweighed the bad, also like most of my days in Ghana.
We came back to Accra yesterday, after days without cellular Internet access (amongst other things), so this is the first chance I’ve had to post. Miranda found a hostel in G-lish’s guide that was reasonably close to the Ministries Block and to the Red Cross and some other places we needed to go. We caught a cab here after the 4 hour bus ride, and managed to navigate directly to it, despite it being in a weird location.
A room with a private bath (in which the water wasn’t running this morning) was $31CEDI. Should’ve opted for the shared bath ($25?) since it doesn’t seem to work anyway, hah. Also i have now added one thing to my list of “things to check for before renting a room in Ghana.” This is a pretty long mental list as each of the half a dozen or so places we have stayed have been missing something critical (fan, windows, any conceivable way to hang a mosquito net) — and today the missing feature is: electrical outlets. The room has a light, and a fan (hardwired), but no outlets. Luckily we will only be here 2 days and my netbook has a 6 cell battery (7-8hrs of life) that I charged fully before leaving.
In Ghana I have read that if you “see something you want, buy it, because you may not see it again.” That is good advice as that is how the commerce system works in all the places I have been so far (which is to say things are unpredictable). Related to that advice is something we have also learned: if you have [water/electricity/whatever] now, use it while you can. So if you have electricity, charge all your stuff; you don’t know how long you will be without it. If your water bottles are empty, fill them now while the tap still works (and of course only fill water bottle from the tap if you are filtering your water properly — we have had water here out of the tap that looks like diluted Tang). I prepared a lot ahead of time for this sort of thing, we have spares of everything, extra batteries galore, and so on, but there is only so much spare stuff you can cart with you.
Unfortunately our hostel/guesthouse is a mix-bag. On the good side of things, there were a bunch of acrobats practicing contortion and acrobatics while we ate dinner last night. Also the kitchen/cafe there is vegetarian (!!!). On the downside, well, you already know about the water being off, and the lack of electricity. Worse yet, this morning I came out to have breakfast … they brought our food, but I wanted to get some water. I went up and leaned on the bar to ask for water, and got covered in fresh paint. Apparently a “WET PAINT!” sign struck them as too much work.
Two of the staff immediately began dousing my arms in turpentine (!!!) and scrubbing the paint off. I’ll give them an A for effort when it comes to removing the paint, but there’s really no way to get all of it off, not to mention the epidemiological concerns I have about pouring turpentine on my arms, not to mention there is now bright blue paint on my khaki pants, one of three pairs of pants that I have for the remaining two months of our journey.
After the paint fiasco, our first stop was the Ministry of Health, which was located somewhere in the Ministries Block in central Accra. You might be surprised how many ministries that Ghana has. Based on how many we walked by that weren’t the MoH, I’m confident saying it is dozens. Several dozen.
Eventually we found the Ministry of Health, but they’d never heard of either of the two people at Ghana Health Services we’d been dealing with. We had even searched to confirm that GHS and MoH were the same, and Google seems to thinnk they are, but apparently they are not. The receptionist at MoH found a woman to take us to GHS, which first took us to Ghana Civil Service, but then after our clarification helped us to find GHS. I point this out because she walked with us for a good five or ten minutes. This would not be the last time today someone would go way out of their way to help us.
Finding GHS, we asked a security gaurd where EPI (expanded programme on immunization) would be located, and he flagged down a passing doctor (I am presuming here). I repeated my question to him, and he asked whom we’d been dealing with. I gave the name of our contact, and he began laughing happily — a good sign, I took it. Unfortunately our contact was at the teaching hospital today, which is a ways away. The doctor then called him on his own phone, chatted with him, passed the phone to us, and we worked out a time to meet later this afternoon at the WHO. The doc helped confirm on our map we had the right address for the WHO, and then even offered to drive us (all the way across Accra). People in Ghana are nice, almost too nice.
We then headed to the Red Cross in Accra, and found the regional HQ. Unfortunately it turns out that Accra has two Red Crosses, one the regional HQ, and one the national HQ. Of course the national HQ isn’t listed in any of the places we looked, but the folks at the regional chapter were super nice and gave us directions to Ghana Red Cross National Chapter. One of the women even offered to come with us to make sure we got there okay. Did I mention people in Ghana were nice?
Getting our visas sorted out for NY is now a step closer, but still far from complete. We traipsed out to the immigration office and after much explaining ended up with the correct form to get a re-entry visa. Unfortunately they only accept these forms in the morning — of course! I mean, what sense would it make to do this sort of thing all day? The US Embassy only lets you check-in between 8:30am and 11am, or some ridiculously short period — so we’re headed back in the morning to attempt to get a reissued visa for after our super-short NY UN trip.
