Hey! My first post.
Africa is a trip. Its not dangerous, I haven't seen or felt a single mosquito and poisonous snakes and the deadly AIDS virus, when left alone, are not a nuisance. I'm glad I don't live here, though. To find this internet linked computer I had to travel twenty minutes by tro tro, a sort of privately owned bus thats really a dirty old van packed with people, and then wade through blocks of vendors and beeping taxis and smog. Its like Canal street, except with open sewers in the place of side walks.
I live in a well to do suburb of Accra in a walled-off little house. I peep over the gate and Kofi, the house boy, comes running to let me in. I say something incomprehensible to him, he says something incomprehensible to me, and we both laugh. Mrs. Sackey, my host, is waiting behind the door to fuss over me the way grandmas do all over the world. She is really very nice, though, and she gives me Pineapple and Papaya treats like you have never tasted. Her two grandkids are normally around, one very young and one a nice little girl of five who chases me around and trys to bite me.
My roommate is a smart, nice Irish boy who talks too much and down the hall is a prim German girl who wears her Protestantism around her neck and an English boy with a big nose who I might go to Mali with. All of us are journalists, but they have crap placements and I have a good one.
I work at the Chronicle, which has a nice big office that I walk to in the late morning. I'm the only volunteer there, but everyone is very nice and very chatty. The organization is a bit spotty and no one seems to be really in charge, so the first day, after I was introduced to everybody, I just sat down and wrote an article. I don't think they'll publish it but thats okay. Today I accompanied Tina to cover the birth of a new political party. We went to the Electoral Institute of Ghana and waited, and an hour late arrived the chairman of the Ghana National Party and his little posse. It was really an exhilirating and proud event, he formally turned in his party's proposed logo and constitution and all the signatures he needed and the commissioner of the electoral college formally accepted them. But then, this being Ghana, it turned the commissioner and the chairman were somehow distantly related and they sat down and talked and laughed for an hour while Tina and I sat bored stiff. Then everybody shook everybody's hand like everyone does in Ghana, like a normal handshake except that when you're drawing your hand away from your friend's you press your fingers against his so that they make a snap! Everybody shook my hand, too. It was very nice.
All Ghanaians are very nice. It seems that they are genetically predisposed to be friendly. They want to know my name and know where I'm from and know my address, too, which is a bit odd. But even the cabbies who honk at you on the street honk with a smile, although I must add that the prostitutes who solicited my attention were all business and didn't smile back when I shook my head at them.
Maxwell, a Ghanaian boy I met, invited me to a beach party and I musn't be late. Signing off, Me.