Hooray! I’m quite happy, in case you hadn’t already noticed - I’ve finally got some pics happening, and I’m actually getting used to living in Accra. This is good news – I no longer walk around with my eyes popped out like stalks every time I see or smell something revolting. However it also means that I’m becoming immune to seeing people pee in the street. It’s completely normal to walk out in front of oncoming traffic, and to be offered onions, goats or toilet paper through your tro window. Oh dear.
Everything becomes a lot easier when you know where you’re going. It becomes good, normal, you feel more confident and accepting. You learn the routine and you get quicker at getting to your destination, which around here is really helpful. You become a regular at certain places, people get to know your face and where you come from. People always assume I’m from Canada or the US or the UK; I guess Australia doesn’t exist, much less Tasmania.
The Daily Guide Office
My placement is going really well. The other day I got to go on assignment to a Liberian refugee camp, called Buduburam, just out of Accra. My expectations were that it would be the type of fenced in, people screaming and clawing and demanding to be told where their mother/brother/sister is sort of deal, like you see in movies, but it wasn’t like that at all. This one is a fully operational community of around 20,000 people. There are no fences, nobody’s screaming, there are markets and families, people working and children running around.
Buduburam
There’s a guy from my office who’s a Liberian refugee, he actually lives in the camp with his family and travels into Accra for work everyday. Buduburam has functioned as a refugee camp in Accra for about 20 years, and at its peak held approximately 67,000 refugees who had fled civil conflict and ethnic strife during the breakdown of democratic governance and rule of law. Ghana has an exemplary record of providing protection to forcibly displaced people over the years, not just to Liberians but to people from Togo and many other countries in the region.
Liberians in Buduburam
A guy from my office said he saw me on TV the other night, I thought that was so cool :) haha. Small things.
It’s weird having the race shoe on the other foot. At home, Africans and other races are the minority; we leave them alone to get on with their lives and don’t subject them to name calling, derision or nasty looks (as I know most of you wouldn’t). Wow, what a wake up call. I’ve been glared at, and called a white pig. The refugee camp assignment was with the United Nations and when we got back to Accra, we stopped at the Ghana Broadcasting Corp to drop the tv crew off. I and the other Cat were ordered to get off the bus because we were white, as apparently its ‘policy’ not to let ‘expat foreign media’ (ha) in to GBC. What a load of rubbish. Everybody on the bus started shouting at each other and debating whether or not the obruni’s should get off the bus, while we just sat there feeling, well, vilified. In the end the four guys from GBC got off in a huff and we received an apology for being treated that way. Charlotte was ordered off a tro for being white yesterday, and another volunteer was spat at. It’s a shame. I’m starting to like the place, and most of the people I come across are lovely. It’s just a few who ruin it for the rest of them.
On a lighter note, a carpenter came over the other night to put something over my bed so that I could hang my mosquito net up, as I’ve just been using it as a sheet and applying loads of deet every night, which has been working fine. He wandered in, took some measurements, then wandered outside again to start banging away at something with his hammer. Half an hour later he staggered back in, with what could only be described as a micro bunk bed. He hammered one end to each end of the bed, then plonked a skinny bit of timber across the top and over my head. He finished his hammering, stood back with a satisfied look on his face, and wandered off.
I was left standing there, with a mosquito net in one hand and a bunch of hooks in the other, thinking oh my god, that is completely useless. And now it’s stuck there! The bit across the top looks like it could withstand a few chin ups, if I was so inclined (I’m not), but its not going to fit a mosquito net properly. After a while he wandered back in with Salima, they ummed and ahhed over it, took the net off me and faffed about with it, putting one end here, another corner there. Then it clicked – they had never seen a mosquito net that hung from the middle before! Oh well, too late now! Charlotte came in a short time later and nearly wet herself laughing, which started me off as well, and then I felt bad because Salima had probably paid this poor guy good money to build it (I’m not even sure if build is the right word). I can only imagine what the next volunteer who comes and stays here will think when they walk in.
Anyway I could keep going but I have to shut up at some point. I’ve been here a little over two weeks now, woohoo! If I can do that, I can definitely do the last two. Stay in touch, and I hope your all well. Love xx
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