Yum and yea

Last night I was invited to dinner by an American girl I met in the supermarket last week who arrived around the same time I did. She’s here to train teachers at a center for kids with autism. Her roommate/boss who has been here a long time reminded me of my college roommate. Even before she said she used to be a ‘radical butch dyke.’ The other invited guest, a former Senegal Peace Corps volunteer works at the place where I’m hoping to get a job interviewing refugees for resettlement to the US. Sounds like a good job for me from what she says. But they just hired four people, so I was annoyed at myself for having decided to wait to submit my resume. I did it first thing this morning.

We ate salad, hummus, lentils, rice, and avocado. The first truly balanced meal I’ve had here. It was bliss.

I had a good time, too. It definitely seems like it would be easy to fall into the ex-pat crowd, but I’m making every effort to fight that, though it’s tempting and seductive and easy. It’ll be nice to have these other foreigners as backup as I attempt to forge Ghanaian friendships.

And it’s happening, slowly but surely. A boy I met at the internet café stopped by my office a few days later to deliver me a local newspaper clipping from last year about women’s rights that he thought I’d be interested to read. It was cute. So last night I met him at a ‘spot’ near my house that is hopping on Thursday nights with a live band. He’s my age, studying economics, and…well, he just may find this so I better not say anything else! :D

When I was walking down the street yesterday, a group of men at a storefront kind of beckoned me over; I said hello but kept on going. Less than half a block later, a group of women in their compound’s courtyard called out to me. I stopped and joined them, learned their names, pleased them with the few words of Ga I know, was surrounded by children that came out of the woodwork, and was given some plantain chips.

Today, two small boys on the street were looking and smiling at me, so I said hello. One took my hand; his mother had the other and together we walked a little ways, lifting him over the open gutter (full of trash and urine) and then crossing the street. In the course of a block, I felt as though I was an old friend of the family.

I wandered back down to the beach. No dead bodies this time, but I did see the fishermen pulling their boats ashore with the day's catch. Other men come daily to assit in pulling the boats in, a heave-ho, tug-of-war motion, while singing a Ga song. They're rewarded with a couple of fish each and some very solid muscle mass. To make it slightly easier, they put down wooden planks and the boat rests on a round piece of metal, to help roll it in. I plan to go back another day and take pictures.