Shito on my Noddles

     As you might have guessed, this is the blog where I get to play off on all of the freshman toilet humor possibilities here in Ghana. I just can't resist. First there's shito, a spicy concoction that rivals any hot sauce from all of the various cultures that have spicy foods. It goes great on almost everything. I even got a jar for myself so I can have my shito at home. The label cracks me up as you can see the O at the end of shito doesn't look like an O. Great label, isn't it??? I love the fact that it's Mama G's Special. I want to meet Mama G.

     So I had shito with my Singapore noodles at Koffee Lounge in East Legon at the A&C Mall, except there's a typo on the menu. Noddles :) not quite the same thing.

nod·dle  (ndl)

[Middle English noddel, back of the head, perhaps from Latin ndulus, lump, knob; see nodule.]

    So does getting a plate of noddles with shito insinuate that I am a shito head? Maybe I should have opted for the assorted meat head plate? All I can think of right now is the the little boy Mike Myers called Head from the movie So I Married an Axe Murderer.

     OK, let's think of some other things that go with shito. How about some cowpeas? Yes, cowpeas. That's what they call black eyed peas here. Having lived in Texas for 14 years, all I can think about are cow pies, you know the stuff you want to avoid stepping in when you're walking across a cow pasture. Cowpeas and shito is a winning combination.

I got the Singapore Noodles with seafood from the Koffee Lounge. The Shito came on the side. This was quite good actually.

So now we'll talk about sanitation. Shinefeel toilet paper. What does it mean to have a shinefeel? There's nothing on my body that requires any kind of shine especially that region. Eeeek! Sound kinda painful if you ask me, although the packaging promises a soft and comfortable experience. I'm not sure I trust that and what's up with the two hearts??? They look like something else more relevant to the use of the product at hand. Yes, my heads in the gutter right now but don't lose hope, there's wisdom in this blog.

That wisdom is in the form of oral hygiene. There's a full line of Wisdom products for all of your dental needs. But wisdom can be harsh. It took me a long time to find a toothbrush with soft bristles. I'm not a fan of pink but that's the only color they had available for sensitive teeth. Are they questioning my manhood with this? I thought real men were supposed to be sensitive? Well, wisdom has it's ups and downs but the best part is that Wisdom is cheap in Ghana. I got the toothbrush for about $1.25. So let's put it all together. You can have noddles and cowpeas with shito for lunch. After that you'll need a little wisdom but hopefully not the shinefeel. If you make a bit of a mess you can always call Der General!

Der General is what you get when you combine Mr. Clean with Pine Sol. It is a very strong cleaner as are most cleaning products here in Ghana. Maybe they should call this shinefeel? Although I'm not sure Der General would be a good fit for toilet paper. Anyhow, I think I'll stop there with the products. There are many more, but I think I'll call it a day.

So I'll leave you with this closing picture. I need to go back and take a better shot of this wall but I like how specific they are about where not to urinate. What if I urinated just left of the arrow, is that permissible? I wonder if the arrow is pointing to a particularly sensitive spot that's been hard hit by passers by? Maybe it's affecting the structural integrity of the wall? I particularly like the juxtaposition of the corporate sineages & souvenirs sign. So many questions, so little time.

So these are the things I see and experience every day here in Ghana. Hope that was an enlightening experience for you as much as it has been for me. Well, now I have to go. :) Bye.

Buying a Car in Ghana

Step 1: Get a big stack of cash. There's no credit here in Ghana and not many people use checks. You can get a loan, but the interest rates are super high. I brought some cash with me to exchange for Ghana Cedis but had to get the rest from the ATM's. It took several weeks because I could only take out $400 per day. It got to be a mundane routine of going the get a wad of cash everyday. I did figure out that the Commercial Bank of Ghana gave the best exchange rate along the process. I got together about 15,000 Cedis or around $7,500 Dollars and I was ready to go. 

Step 2: Look for a car. This is the hard part, they're everywhere even online and you can go crazy just looking. There are also used car lots which are a bunch of cars parked on the side of the road in a dirt field sometimes. Unlike the states, there are a lot more obstacles to deal with. For one thing, cars are not manufactured here so every car on the road was shipped hear new or used. Market value is a bit higher since there's a duty to pay for every car that enters the country. The duty is based on value but more significantly on fuel efficiency. So an SUV will have a higher duty than a compact. A lot of cars come from the US and Canada but you also get a lot from Europe and Asia. By far the most popular brand is Toyota. I'll be selling my car before I leave so I have to think about getting something that will sell easily and also something that can be repaired with little problems. So Toyota it is.

I picked this one. 

Closer inspection revealed a really bad paint job. A lot of cars look good from afar, but not up close. 

Drove well, but had too many miles, AC wasn't working and wasn't registered yet. 

Step 3: Start making phone calls. This part gets weird because of the different personalities and the local accent. My phone is not so good as well so it became a challenge to communicate with the sellers. This is where I instituted help from the nearest Ghanaian that in my immediate vicinity during phone calls. When I couldn't understand what the people on the phone were talking about, I would ask someone I knew to talk with them. It made things tedious but it really helped to figure things out.

Step 4: Check out some cars and take them for a test drive. Bring a local friend to help with the language and also to be your wing man so you don't make a stupid impulse buy. This is not my first used car purchase but my first in this country. I tried a few times to get help from a mechanic, but with the way things go here in Ghana it was logistically very difficult to to arrange a meeting of all parties involved.

     So all of the cars had some issue or another because the price range I was looking at wasn't going to yield something perfect or clean. Just about every car has some body damage and any attempt to repair them is very noticeable so you just have to live with it. Mileage doesn't mean as much here but what does matter is how long the car has been registered in this country. The roads here are very very rough, so the less time it's been driven here the better. I was looking for something that had been registered no longer than two years. I checked out a Toyota Corolla, two Pontiac Vibes (based on the Toyota Matrix) and a Toyota Yaris. I chose the Yaris. In hindsight I might have been better off looking at more vehicles but the Yaris had a pretty solid engine with good suspension, clean fluids and I was getting tired of searching.

Step 5: Make the deal. This is where you need to bring your mad negotiation skills, or bring a local. I chose to bring one of my students who had recently make a purchase himself. After some negotiations we came to an agreement on price. We managed to talk them down a bit. I was happy with it. So we had to drive to a different neighborhood to get the paperwork. It took us about 45mins to get there due to traffic and this is where my friend got a little nervous because it was dark (sun sets here at 6pm everyday) and we were going to an area we weren't familiar with. The owners were a young couple. The gentleman worked in IT and his wife who drove the car was a grad student at the University where I found the car. I didn't feel threatened in any way but my friend Denice decided that we should wait for them at a public place while they retrieved the paperwork so we pulled over at a filling station and waited for them to come back to make the deal. This was probably a good idea since I was carrying around $7,500 in cash in my backpack at the time. After a few minutes they arrived and we made the transaction. It took about 10 minutes for her to count the money in the back seat while we looked over the paperwork to make sure everything was in order.

Counting the money

The couple I bought the car from at a filling station in Accra. 

Most important step is to buy Denice a chicken and jollof rice dinner at the mall after the deal. It was dinner time and we were both hungry.

Step 6: Drive home in your new (used) car. On the way home buy your friend a chicken and jollof rice dinner at the mall.

Step 7: File a transfer of ownership form at the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority) downtown. This is still in the works and has it's own complexities. The DVLA is usually very crowded and slow so I have a friend of a friend who has a little kiosk outside the DVLA. They know people inside the DVLA so they can get expedited service for you if you tip them so I left my application form with a deposit for them to process. This takes a day or two but it beats waiting in a crowded room for most of the day.

So there you have it. It was pretty crazy but the freedom of having a car here has been amazing. I hate having to haggle with a taxi driver every time you go somewhere so iIt's changed my attitude and I've been able to explore new areas like Cape Coast which is a few hours west of Accra. I'll be making more journeys soon as we get closer to the holidays. More adventures to come....

The final step is to pose like an old man in front of your vehicle and mutter something about "kids these days."

Senegalese Dance and Faith Healing

       O.K. so there is no relationship between Senegalese dance and faith healing but I encountered both of these in the same evening last week. One of my students Samuel was kind enough to invite me to the dance performance Banlieue by the Diagn’ Art Company at the Alliance Française Accra. The performance was a mix of traditional Senegalese and contemporary dance with text from Roland Fichet. The dance was about the phases young men go through in Senegal as they become men. Of course this was all in French so I didn't understand a word, but the choreography alluded to a lot of the themes that they were addressing. They were amazing dancer and I found the performance to be very moving. It was refreshing to see something contemporary. As a foreigner a lot of places I visit like to emphasize the traditional and historical. That's all very interesting but I'm just as interested in what is being created in the present. 

     So after the performance, I returned home to find over a thousand screaming Christians in an open field across from my apartment. On any given night this field is a place where local Christians will form prayer circles, preach the gospel and rejoice. Some so to speak in tongues. Anyway, on this night Robert Ampiah-Kwofi, faith healer was on hand to do some good old fashioned healing. There was a sound stage with a full band and the whole entourage of people in suits and a camera crew on stage. It was quite the spectacle. Fortunately they were good about binging the event to a close before midnight.