The Little Stuff

Correspondence with my dear friend Sarah, who has just returned from a summer of language study in Cairo, has reminded me what it's like to hear about a far-away place second-hand, and it's prompted me to blog. The little things of daily life so quickly become commonplace that you forget that someone, back home, might find them interesting! In addition, this might be our last chance for a couple of weeks to post, since we don't know what the internet situation is like in Winneba (the phonology professor there, who I've been in contact with, says "the email facility here is unreliable beyond belief").

For one, there's the street food. Food is perhaps my favorite part of international travel, and street food always tops it. Here in Cape Coast we have our usual things; boiled & salted peanuts (which Jefferson is eating right at this moment, incidentally), thin & salted plantain chips, or roasted plantain with dried peanuts. The first two items are always bought from a woman with a huge metal mixing bowl on her head, carrying the items as she walks down the street (sometimes it's a child with a smaller bowl, and sometimes the seller will be sitting by the side of the road). Roasted plantain is bought off the grill (it's so hot!). In addition, I've basically given up vegetarianism for the trip (someone who adores trying new international food has to do this, I think!) and I often get a "meat pie" while we're out, which is something shaped like an apple turnover with a thick buttery crust and some ground meat (I have no idea what animal!) inside. Along with meat pies are "rock buns," which are oddly named because they're basically soft, sweet muffins. I often get apples, too, small sweet green ones, and Jefferson often gets oranges. Oranges in Ghana are mostly green on the outside, orange or yellow on the inside. They're purchased skinned so that just the white part contains the flesh, and the default way you'll be given it is with the top quarter cut off, so you sit right there and suck all the juice out the top. Finally, everywhere you can find young men ready to open a fresh coconut for you to drink the milk and eat the flesh, although I've learning that I (sadly!) prefer processed coconut milk and flesh to the real thing!

Second, there's the taxi system. You can either catch a taxi for "dropping," where the taxi takes you exactly where you want to go and you pay a ridiculous amount, or you can catch a shared taxi, where you just hop in if there's room and get off somewhere along the driver's route. The latter costs about 1/10 of what "dropping" costs. We've been taking shared taxis almost exclusively in Cape Coast since we've arrived; learning the routes and prices is one big advantage to staying in one place for awhile. And it's perfectly comfortable, most of the time. Usually there's three people in the backseat and one person in the bucket seat, but occasionally the driver will try to squeeze out an extra 1,000 cedis (about 11 cents) and put two people in the front bucket seat! Usually you're only going a kilometer or two so it's not too bad, but I did it once and (after basically squishing the little old woman I was next to) don't ever want to do that again.

If you go longer distances than taxi routes, or when a certain route is really popular, the best mode of transport is a tro-tro, or mini-bus (we've mentioned these earlier without description, I think). When we go to the University of Cape Coast campus we take one of these to get from the administration building (nearish to our guesthouse) to the Colleges of Arts and Sciences (a few kilometers away). It's basically a boxy bus that holds 11 passengers: 2 in the front seat, 2 in each of the two middle seats, and 3 in the back, plus one each on the fold-out seats at the end of the two middle seats. The guy who collects the money either sits in the fold-out chair next to the first middle row, or he half-stands with his bad to the front seat. (It can get over-crowded sometimes, so that the money-collector is just squished in a standing/crouching position.) The main thing about a tro-tro is that it never leaves until it is completely filled. At UCC this isn't a problem, we always leave right away, but when we were going to Kakum National Park we had to wait about 45 minutes before enough people wanted to go in the direction of our route. Once you get going, there's a nice breeze through the windows and it's a pretty pleasant trip, although the seats are sometimes pretty thin and you have a metal bar as your cushion the whole way. The main plus of tro-tros is that the fare is comparable and usually cheaper than a shared taxi.

This is getting lengthy, so I'll stop for now. Today's an interesting day because it just so happens that we're in town when the President is here, today, visiting and making a speech in a public venue! (A little comment on it is here: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=87681) We also might go to a live football game, if we're not too tired by the late afternoon. Anyway, the trip is going well, although we're both ready to leave Cape Coast and see what Winneba is all about!