- The three cell carriers here, Vodafone, MTN & Glo, have painted their logos on nearly every stall in every town in this country, so everything here is either red, yellow, or bright green
- There's only one road from one major city to the next here, so traffic is terrible. Most of the major roads are really nice, though.
- Many Ghanaians are named after the day of the week in which they were born; for instance, if you were born on a Friday, your name would either be Efua (for a female) or Kofi (for a male)
People's names here have Muslim, Christian, Western, and Ghanaian influences, so they're all unique
- Ghanaians are perpetually late
- Many Northerners are "branded" with markings as children that denote the tribe they belong to
- More than 75 dialects are spoken in Ghana
- No one smokes here
- Many of the teachers here keep canes in their classrooms, which they use to punish their students
- Polygamy is legal here, and is pretty prominent in the North
- The unit of currency in Ghana is the Cedi, named after the word for cowry shell, which was once widely used as the medium of exchange
- Primary school is supposedly compulsory here, although 20% of children don't go
- Cocoa farming is a major industry here, although chocolate is scarce (due to the issue of storing it, I'm sure)
- Tourism has grown 1000% in the past decade
- 45% of the population of Ghana lives on less than $1/day, and 79% lives on less than $2/day
- No one here wears sunglasses
Foods I've eaten here:
- Fufu
- Banku
- Teazet
- Omo tuo (rice balls)
- Okra stew
- Groundnut stew
- Jollof rice
- Red red
- Fried plantain
- Boiled yams
- Tom brown porridge
- Pineapple
- Mango
- Fried rice - very popular here!
Things I will miss about this country:
- The signs that say "Except God"
- The creepy Jesus pictures everywhere
- Clothing styles you could never get away with in the US
- How goats & sheep roam freely everywhere you go (including church and clinics)
- How fights can break out anywhere and under any context
- How many people they can fit in a tro-tro - or pretty much anywhere for that matter
- How many things women can carry on their heads (the winner was a woman carrying a tray upon which she had placed three 10-gallon pots)
- How every taxi is inevitably missing something essential, including mufflers, working window handles, and even door handles - but never horns
- How everyone sleeps at all hours of the day
- How you don't actually have to go into a shop to know what it sells
- How every child here will say hello to you, and how if you offer to photograph them, you'll have a flash mob on your hands
- How everything is painted with MTN or Vodafone logos, including the trees
- How all restaurants here call themselves fast food restaurants, although they don't actually sell fast food
- How you can get anything in a bag - including alcohol
- How fertile everyone and everything is here
- How the only utensil required here is a S-P-O-O-N (count that with all five fingers, and you realize you only need your hand)
- How cookbooks instruct you to first kill the goat before you prepare the meal
- How everything closes when it rains
- The "Don't Urinate Here" signs
- How women breastfeed anytime, anywhere
- How everyone wakes up at 4 to sweep their floors, and how it takes them forever to do it
- How many purposes buckets have
- "African time"
No comments:
Post a Comment