Hello Tema

Everyone arrived on Saturday.  My room has a lot of space, air conditioning works well and I wasn't expecting it but there is a TV.  The hot water took at least 2 days to figure out how to use but now we've all gotten it down. 

There was a guy hanging out in one of the lobbies the day we arrived, he introduced himself as Francis.  I didn't get it then but he has been an awesome surprise.  We had no idea he would be part of the trip but he is our Tema liason and has been hired for our entire stay to work with us on all exploration of Ghana.  He is with us on the weekend and evenings and gives us the local understanding of what's going on around us. 

One of the main roads in Tema

Our first outing was to exchange money and then to lunch, we had our first Ghana dishes: I had Banku (a corn and cassava mixture) served with an Okra soup; Kristina tried fufu with fish (which we discovered comes w/the head, note to self for future ordering); Joanne had Palava sauce (sort of veggie/spinach mixture) with yams.  This was the first taste and has been reiterated since, they are seriously into their red pepper in Ghana, dishes are way spicier than I expected - everything is hot hot hot.  Every other meal has revealed that there is a lot of Chinese food here, everyone serves it!

Near our hotel, everyone carries stuff on their heads

I was really glad to see while Tema is a city, the third major city in Ghana, there is still a rural feel.  Most of the pictures online were of the industrial side so I couldn't tell that there is quite a lot of open ground, people walking on the road, unpaved (and paved) roads and it's not covered in buildings.  There are lots of merchants on the side of the road with all sorts of random things including a lot of leather couches, a plumber, baskets and baseball hats.  In a few short days I have seen everything you can think of and many things you never see being carried and properly balanced on people's heads.  Trays of food like bunches of bananas to bins full of goods and even these guys with their suitcases.  I am going to try and learn before I leave!

Sunday we had the whole crew together for the first time:  Kristina and Joanne from Canada, Kerstin and Heike from Germany, Shikha and Ranga from India, Shin from Japan, Jun from China, Jorge from Mexico and Denis from Brazil.  We had breakfast together and then took a tour of Tema.  We walked around the Tema market, very similar to bazaars in middle eastern countries though even a bit more run down.  We saw the beach along the Gulf of Guinea, I was surprised to see a ton of ships parked offshore and a zillion containers.  This hit home that Tema is a serious port city.  But then as you drive down the road the beach becomes more prevalent.  Boats and little drink type places start to pepper the landscape.  And then there was the random shepherd with his flock of sheep, it was very similar to what we saw in Morocco.  Seeing this flock elsewhere in Tema wouldn't have looked so out of place but surrounded with shipping containers, major paved roads and hotel resorts it was an odd site to see.

We then got to explore the Tema harbor and I could confirm that the picture I put up for this blog was in fact taken there.  I googled images of Tema to put up on the blog before I came.  Then after I published it, I noticed the flags in the harbor picture are clearly not the Ghana flag so I started to wonder if this was a mistake.  The picture was taken from an article in Ghanaian Journal and the caption was Tema harbor but I couldn't figure out the flags, maybe it's something local vs the country or maybe it's some other African country and they mistakenly labeled it.  In person the harbor looks the same and had all sorts of other flags flying.  I asked our driver and Francis what they mean, the answer: absolutely nothing.  The fisherman just pick whatever flags at random.  There were a lot of German flags flying this day.  I had a great time w/the kids in this fish market, they loved having their pictures taken and seeing how it looked in my camera.  I got a lot of willing models - some adults too.

Some of my new photo loving friends

We got a briefing in the afternoon from a doctor and the police commander to advise us on how not to get sick and how to stay safe.  That night one of the cabs our team was in got pulled over so the police commander's card came in quite handy.  We also met Barbara for the first time, she is the in-country liason for CDC which is the NGO who organizes the program.  She has selected the projects and made all the arrangements for our projects.  We also met Edem her assistant who makes sure everything works.

Sunday ended with a lot of Star beer and as we have quickly learned, meals that take forever to come out and at all different times.  The polite concept of everyone waiting for everyone to be served is quickly getting impractical here.

Monday was our project orientation where we met all the key people on our projects, heard about their organizations and agreed at a high level on our statement of works for our projects.  More on that next post and the start of our projects.

Ghana dishes, lots of soups and stews with serious red pepper. Muy Caliente!