Assorted

Subtitle: Names I've been called on the street

Obroni
Kwasi Obroni. - Kwasi is the name for sunday-born (i think), and apparently all white men are born on sunday until proven otherwise. And according to Liz, white women are tuesday-born. Who knew?
Yesu
Jesus
Second Jesus
Modern Jesus
Pierced Jesus
Osama bin Laden

I've gotten Osama bin Laden about 3 times. What can I say? Long beard: christian messiah or islamic fundamentalist. You decide.


Subtitle: Electronics are allergic to Africa

Okay. As you may know, I'm pretty basic, frugal, thrifty (cheap). I came to Africa for the year with a big backpack and my travel guitar. Even so, I'm sometimes susceptible to the calls of gadgets and technology. Africa may have cured me of this predilection.

I brought with me a solar-powered charging doodad called a Solio. It's pretty cool, really. Charge it in the wall, or set it in the sun for a day and use the many adaptors provided to charge all kinds of electronics -- phone, ipod, camera. It's less cool when it decides it will no longer charge any piece of electronics for more than a minute at a time before shutting off. And since I don't really have time to sit there and hit the button to restart every 60 seconds, it's pretty much a loss. Luckily I brought the normal chargers with me too.

I brought a phone with me. A motorola that I bought in Chinatown NYC a few years ago and, luckily it works on the African network. Unfortunately it had laid dormant for a year or so, and the battery, I discovered too late, was completely gone. After not quite a day of light usage, it will spontaneously shut off when people call and the ringing puts a strain on the battery. Obviously, no replacement battery is available.
I decided I wanted a phone with two features: Quad-band (which means it will work on any world network) and long battery life. And I wanted it without expensive extras. I found a few models online which had what I was looking for. I couldn't find them here. It turns out that it was still cheaper to buy the specific phone I wanted from ebay and have it shipped to Africa, than to buy one of the much fancier phones with those features that are available here. And it turns out that I'm stubborn enough to wait.
After interminable weeks and months of poor cellphone function, by some miracle of the Ghanaian mail system, the package eventually arrived carrying my lovely new phone, which worked beautifully for 2 days. For only 2 days. So yeah. E-bay seller: Do you accept returns, from Africa, months after you shipped the item? I'm still waiting on the email answer to that question. And I'm back to my cripple phone. Which wouldn't be so bad if my Solio worked so I could charge it easily. Crap.


Subtitle: Home is what you're used to

I took a long weekend last week and travelled with Liz (the stanford friend in Accra) to the Volta Region. The Volta is a dammed river in eastern Ghana that constitutes the largest man-made lake in the world. The region is cool, mountainous, and has both Ghana's highest point (about 1000m) and West Africa's highest waterfall. It was a great trip!\. We hiked the peak, went trail-running to the waterfall, jumped in.

Still, it was a lot of tro-tro time (which is Slow time), and I arrived travel-tired in Manso Nkwanta early Tuesday evening.

I was greeted by akwaaba's from coworkers I hadn't seen in weeks, had a happy chat with the owner of the corner grocery on the way home, and drove a project truck to the bungalow in the sidelong light of my favorite time of day, which coaxes texture out of the hillsides formerly flattened by the power of midday's light.

It felt like home!