The Oops Bar and Restaurant

We got to the camp Tuesday afternoon and were
greeted by a heard of enthusiastic (and often
annoying) children. I figured out soon enough
to lay down the law and not allow them to climb
on me. They are always around Guest House 2,
looking in the windows like we're in a zoo or
putting bracelets on our wrists and then the next
day asking us to pay for them! The volunteers
who have been here longer will just send them off
with some cedis to buy whatever they want, and we
tip them with a piece of bread or a water sachel.
Tuesday night we went to eat and then played
poker using ibuprofin, calcium, and matchsticks
for pokerchips with a 5000 cedi buy-in ($.50). I
did quite well for myself considering I've never
played in real life - only watched.

Wednesday we didn't get to have our orientation
because the BBC came to the camp as part of filming
for a documentary to be aired July 8 and 9th on
BBCWorld with some cheesey title like "Journeys
of Hope." We got to meet their long-time Africa
correspondant and they filmed in the pre-primary
classroom and on Main Street. Also on Wednesday
a gaggle of girls took me off to see the camp. I
had no idea where I was most of the time, and of
course many people were staring or introducing
themselves. I was taken into the houses of two of
the kids, and one of them had an uncle who wanted
to show me his room! The houses had small rooms,
sometimes with lanoleum or paper on the ground but
often just cement. They took me by many different
schools including a school for the deaf, where I
went in and signed out my name - the kids in the
lower of the three levels all screeamed and jostled
to spell theirs. Mid-morning I went and sat in on
pre-primary class (1st grade) that was doing reading
via repetition (I question that the kids were
reading, probably they had memorized the excercise)
and then did a spelling bee. Then the BBC finally
came, quite late, they'd kept the children into
the afternoon. And then I was exhausted, having
not slept much Tuesday night due to noise and the
very uncomfortable bed. I'm rooming with a very
nice woman from Australia named Yuki who is here
three months and will leave at the end of June.

So today we started orientation and heard from Semeh
and various CBW volunteers and coordinators. Anna,
in the newly created position of GVN/CBW
International Volunteer coordinator, has created
a new and improved orientation as well as improving
many other programs. Anyway, we've seen all the
levels of school and the HIV/AIDS team in action
and tomorrow we'll finish up and then decide what
we want to do. I'd like to do English for the older
primary students and probably do some ad hoc
HIV/AIDS team stuff as well as helping them put
together a regular visit to Accra to give company
and support to AIDS patients abandoned by their
families. There's a bit of a hangup as CBW is
full of red tape and getting either the car or
funding for trotros (hey, I'd pay for it myself
but others seem to think CBW should) is exceedingly
difficult.

The camp is full of houses of cement, the streets
are trashy and of course used as sewers. The house
has a fairly nice (compared to my expectations)
toilet and shower set up. The pre-primary school is
right next door, though, and the kids don't have a
toilet so they use the corner of the yard by our
house! So that smells a bit.

I really wish I'd brought my digital camera. All
of the GVN literature was quite misleading, and
Anna is revising that now but there is sporadic
yet available electricity to charge cameras (one
girl even has an iPod) and most of the volunteers
have them and say it's very safe. I would love
to set it to low resolution and go around taking
50 pictures of the crazy names of shops and on
buildings - China Embassy no visa on a house,
The Oops Bar and Restaurant good food and drink,
and all sorts of religious names. I guess this
way I don't have to be paranoid about it, but
I really wish I'd known to bring it. And you can
easily get things that they say you can't,
everything from toilet paper to tampons to hair
conditioner (which I will be buying in Accra).

This weekend many volunteers are going to Lake
Volta but the new ones will have to wait because
of orientation. I'll be going into Accra Saturday
to see the Cultural Center, use the fast internet
and go to Koala grocery and whatever else, and
Sunday we might go to the beach (where, contrary
to things I've read, bikinis are perfectly
acceptable, say the other volunteers). I'll also
look for cloth to have some clothes made.

Right now a little girl has just come up to me and
is now hanging on my lap and won't tell me her name,
but she is very cute.

I'm a bit worried because I can't load my inbox.
The internet is painfully slow, and I'm at the
airconditioned place at the top of camp where it
is supposedly faster than White Flower, the bar/
eatery/internet place close to our Guest Houses.
But in 40 minutes my inbox hasn't loaded.
Strangely, Redsox.com loaded fine. I can't wait
to get back to the fast place in Osu.