Culture, I'm still learning, I shall keep you updated.

Source: Sarah Baughman - the street near our house

Culture shock is not an experience that can be taught. Sitting here, on this side of my computer, with you, sitting there on the other side, you are too far away to understand anything about this culture from what I have to say. That is the harsh reality of it. You won’t know or understand what I see, and how I feel until you are in the same situation. Trying to explain what this is like, would be at the moment, the same as me trying to explain what the colour purple is like. It is a little bit like red, and a little bit like blue, I think it clashes with yellow, green and orange, but in some lights they look nice together.

You have heard mixed reviews about the colour purple right? You know it exists, you have seen a glimpse of it here and there, and heard a brief story about it. But no matter how much you hear, or are lead to believe, no matter what picture you have of it in your mind, nothing compares to seeing it in real life. No holds barred.

What is a culture shock? In many respects this isn’t “third world” (I don’t think that term is used any more anyway). This feels more like a completely different planet. I flew from winter in Europe, in an air-conditioned plane with no concept of what it would be like here, on the ground. We got off the plane on the runway at about 10pm and the heat hit me like opening the oven door. It was suffocating. 

I hadn’t prepared myself mentally for any of it. When I applied to come to Ghana, the original plan was to arrive at the beginning of March, and stay until August. James and I had decided to travel from Madrid to Accra through West Africa, but that didn’t work out. So I found myself in Ghana 5 weeks early, after spending 50hours in and out of airports, a week on overnight buses, trains and in totally foreign environments.  Even while I was in the plane, on the final leg of my journey to Ghana I barely thought about what this all meant.

I was picked up from the airport by the head of the organisation, who took me back to the compound (where we all live). The heat was overwhelming, and I was exhausted. I met the rest of the volunteers the following morning. Currently there are 9 of us, half from America and the rest from the UK, Argentina and Switzerland.

The smell is hypnotic. The best way to descried it is smoked meat and dust. There is a haze over most of Accra from all the burning. For the most part, I think rubbish is burnt, which creates the haze. It is so thick that at night time it’s hard to see the stars. I imagined that being in Ghana, being in Africa really, so far away from all the lights of the big cities, that the stars would be easier to see. I have never seen the sky at night, like it was in Bröllin. I hope that when we venture further north, the sky will become clearer. I must say however, I can see the moon every night, and Orion’s Belt. That’s all that really matters to me anyway. 

Sometimes the smell isn’t of burning rubbish. The sewerage here is pretty much open. So in some areas the smell is repulsive. Littering is a serious problem. There are barely any bins in public areas, and the ground is covered with plastic bags, empty water sachets, and I don’t know what else. It’s really sad, but there doesn’t seem to be much forethought about taking care of the environment.

Driving from the airport to the compound was insane. The roads (as I have said) are not all paved and are full of potholes. We drove along a street with the arrow pointing towards us, not away from us, there were cars everywhere, no street lamps, people selling things on the sides of the road, loud music playing at various locations. Part of me would like to say that it was terrifying, but it was addictive.

As I said, on the Saturday I had my first tro tro experience, and visited a hospital. Looking back on it now, I was very shocked by everything I saw; confronted by it all, and in some cases in sheer disbelief. From the hospital, we took 4 more tro tros to the Cape Coast, and my eyes were opened even wider.

I wrote this over a week ago. It is much less overwhelming now. More to come