Water

My Street in the neighborhood of Madina New Road.  Accra, Ghana

Much of the drinking water is provided in small 400ml sealed plastic bags called "satchets".  The water doesn't taste great but it doesn't make you sick like the untreated water will.  Here is a man at one of the treatment facilities filling and packing the satchets into larger bundles.

 

The treatement and filtration machines.

First Days in Accra

I've finally gotten access to a computer at an internet cafe!  So far things have been going as well as expected. Accra has proven to be a very tricky city to navigate.  The directors of our program don't recommend getting a map because all of them are so inaccurate.  But I can at least get myself from home to school either by taking a share taxi which costs about 60 ghanain cents or I can

walk which takes about 45 minutes.

I'm living with an older man named Papa Jacob for my home-stay.  There are also two Canadian students living there who've been here since August so they've been able to offer some good advice.  We live inside a little compound that is walled off from the street and neighboring houses.  Our rooms are in a separate building from Papa's house.  I have my own room with a small couch and a dresser.  There is a bathroom with a toilet and a bathtub in the building but no running water. Bathing is done with buckets and to flush the toilet you have to fill up the top with a bucket.  There is a big reservoir of water in the middle of the compound that is fed by pipes or a well I'm not exactly sure.

The weather is incredibly hot and humid.  Not sure if I will ever get used to it.  I'm beginning to think I should have chosen a cooler climate for my study abroad program.  Maybe Iceland.

We started having regular class and lectures at the university on Tuesday we have a classroom right next to the SIT office and they bring lecturers from the university to talk to us.  These have been pretty brutal.  I'm not used to sitting in a classroom from 8am to 3 or 4pm anymore.  On Friday we had a workshop on how to make Batik.  This was the most exciting class we've had so far.  The process involved white cotton fabric, wax, and various color dyes.  We would use sponges that we cut into various Adinkra symbols to apply the wax and then we would put the cloth into the dye.  The wax resists the dye and you are left with a very beautiful finished product.  I will post some pictures as soon as I can.

We're only in Accra for one more week and then we travel to Kumasi for a two week intensive on dance and drumming!