Monday afternoon at the Busy Internet in Accra. My first article that I wrote alone was published today, a thrilling but rather controversial piece on natural gas. Today I went in to the office, started typing, and then the power went out. With out air conditioning, the place was unbearably stuffy, so I left.
Generally, though, heat hasn't been too much of an issue, although I am generally glad to take a cold shower in the evening. I'm not always glad, but thats not really an issue, seeing as there's no hot water in the house, or in much of Accra, for that matter.
Water, water, water is drunk out of little plastic baggies. Prepubescent girls and women with the bodies of prepubescent girls carry big bowls on their head and walk through the traffic, yelling 'puhe watuh, puhe watuh'. When I'm sitting in a tro (mini bus) and I spy one near me and I'm hankering for a drink, I gesture or grunt and one comes running over to my window. I hand her the equivalent of three cents and she passes me the H20. I rip open the corner with my teeth and suck. A very satisfying way of drinking.
A large portion of business in ghana is done in this way, people hawking wares carefully balanced on their head to passing commuters in tro tros. When the tro is stuck in traffic, which is most of the time, all the nearby vendors come running and pressup against the windows. So if you're on your way home from work, and the traffic is bad, maybe you do a little shopping in the meantime, buying a snack of plantain chips or a flashlight or some christian literature.
The local dishes I have mostly stayed away from, as a large portion involve meat. In poorer areas, meat is pretty much unavailable but in Accra they have a wide variety of meat sauces or soups to douse your mashed up cassava in. They also eat a lot of rice and yams and plantains, none a good source of protein. They also have a dish called redred, which is beans in somesort of sauce, and I've been eating a lot of that. Plus, energy bars are always a good snack, and the locally produced chocolate is delish. Ok, my friends are here, I'm out.