First Impressions

Hello Dear Friends,
Well it has only been six days since I left, but already home seems worlds away and ages ago. After two days of orientation in New York and almost twenty accumulative hours of flight I am on day 2 in Accra, Ghana. I will skip over my orientation in New York, (it wasn't very eventful) and skip straight ahead to my first impressions of Ghana.
So where to start. Ghana is amazing. Ghana is startling. Ghana is different than anything I've ever known. I am trying to keep these brief and readable, so for today I will share just one of my experiences. On day one we traveled from the hostel we are staying in to the beach, a distance of 10-15 miles, a trip that took at least an hour each way. The beach itself was, well a beach, and there is nothing to explain there. But the ride to and from was a first look at life in a Ghanaian city, and it was incredible. First off, the driving is insane. There are people, goats, chickens, dogs, etc. walking constantly along and across the streets, and yet the fearless drivers still drive at gut wrenching speeds. As far as I can tell the only signal people really use much is their horn, and it is almost constantly beeping. The next part of this ride that was new were the street vendors. There were hundreds of them, and at every stop they would rush up to our open windows, trying to sell us rich "abrunis" items wranging from candy to sunglasses to yams to screwdrivers. I wonder how much of a product these diligent salesman manage to make, because of the hundreds of them we passed, I saw five or less sales. The other part of this ride that was also incredible was the poverty. I had of course known it would be everywhere, but seeing it first hand was another story. It is absolutely numbing to see it all, be it naked little children standing atop garbage piles, bone skinny old men or women sitting inside there about to collapse little shacks. And seeing all of this I also have to take into mind that Ghana is one of the better off African nations, which is also quite numbing. That said, there are many positive things happening here. As our orientation leader said to me earlier, there are so many good things happening in Ghana and in Africa, but Americans and other foreigners seemed obsessed with only focusing on the negative things. The poverty rate here is declining, there water and other services are improving, good things are definitely happening. And aside from that many people live happy content lives, but because there lives are simple and do not involve much technology it is assumed that they are impoverished.
Accra is very dirty and as I said poverty is present everywhere, but despite that I am already in love with the culture. Part of this I think is because it is so completely different from the U.S. For instance, as far as I can tell 90% of shopping is done out on the street, and price is always negotiable. This provides for a very lively and also loud atmosphere everywhere in the city. Also the smells are all competely new, both good and bad. All the sewers here are open trenches along the roads, so that at first was a bit nausiating. But then there are the smells of street food, and that is very pleasant. I am not planning on eating much of that street food, but so far the food that has been prepared for us has been delicious. In general a meal consists of a staple food, (plantanes, yams, beans) and some sort of very spicy sauce that usually contains meet. Although the meals are all similar, they have all been some of the most delicious meals of my life. And to end this, the last thing I will add is that the people I have met here so far are amazing. Everyone is very friendly and of course very interested to hear about the U.S. I met a man yesterday who greeted me by asking who I was voting for, and when I told him that I supported Obama he broke into an ear to ear grin and gave my an enthusastic handshake. There are very few white people here, so in part I think we are a bit of a novelty and people wish to talk to us because of that, but they also do seem genuinly interested in knowing a bit about us and about our country.
Ok well that is all I am going to write for today, I hope that I did not write to much and that it is readable. In my next post I will try to add some pictures, I think they will be quite fun to see. Also, my posts are also viewable at www.wesfinger.blogspot.com.
I hope all is well back in the States, and I hope all of you are doing well.
Best Wishes,
Wesley