Day 5

After getting the kids ready for school this morning Matt, Azar and I decided to go to Madina to look for a few bits and pieces to build a medicine cabinet. We decided to take Kelvin along with us to help navigate our way around and negotiate better prices for us. Kelvin is a Ghanaian guy of 25yrs who just started working at the orphanage last weekend. He doesn’t get paid but gets given one meal a day and a roof over his head. He too is an orphan and has 3 younger siblings. He loves the kids and is happy working with them and us at the orphanage.

Anyway, it takes around an hour or so to get to Madina and there is a big market there which was interesting to say the least! Lots of fruit, really smelly dried fish, second hand clothes and shoes, pretty much anything you might need. The stalls are all close together mostly at ground level with people sat on the floor shouting ‘oberoni oberoni buy from me, look look’. It’s hard to navigate a path through the crowds and get to where you need to be… even harder to attempt any kind of conversation unroute! Luckily we had Kelvin with us to help us get what we needed and get back in one piece and not completely bankrupt!

After we had looked around Madina and couldn’t find what we were looking for we decided to head to Accra Mall for the first time to see what we could find there. We discovered that on entering the mall it was like you were leaving Ghana and stepping back home be it the UK or the US. It was air conditioned (you can not understand how that felt after several days in the extreme heat!!). There was a supermarket with all imported goods from home. We stocked up on some supplies and spent more than we planned. We then discovered the food court and after a week (a month for Azar!) of small portions of jallof rice or plain spaghetti (with eggs for me and chicken occasionally for the meat eaters!) it was heaven to find some western food. We tucked in to pizza’s and drank coke…. Kelvin had never tried pizza and loved it. At this point we didn’t realise he only eats porridge for breakfast and nothing else all day. We fed him up with 3 kinds of pizza and he ended up with tummy ache from eating too much but he enjoyed it. We also discovered the internet café with a much faster connection than the one in our village. We spent an hour sending emails and updating home on our progress before leaving the mall to head back to Dodowa.

As we left the mall Kelvin mentioned he would like to pop home as he’d not been home in a few weeks and he needed to get something. We decided to go with him as it was only one trotro ride out of the way.... not realising traffic makes it a long ride!

Ahh… trotros…. I haven’t yet explained about Ghana’s main mode of public transport! TroTros are like some kind of minivan. Most of them are in extremely poor condition with doors hanging off, holes in the flooring and far too many people squashed inside. You cannot, however, visit Ghana without taking a ride in a trotro. It’s a lot cheaper than a taxi and gives you a real insight into life in Ghana. The roads are very uneven and the rides very hot and bumpy. You get out of the trotro with bruises and a sore bum on many occasions. The average price locally for a tro tro ride is around 50 pesewas depending where you are going.. this is around 20p (35 cents?). They usually sit 4 people to a row with 4 or 5 rows (depending on the size of the trotro). These rows are extremely cramped, especially if you have so much as a handbag with you and sometimes the ‘conductor’ will shout ‘small small’ or ‘five five five’ meaning you should squash up even further to allow more passengers on, or allow 5 to a row, whilst he hangs outside onto the door frame while the trotro speeds along (I’ve no idea if there is a speed limit in Ghana…potholes are not an issue as they just drive right over as if they are driving an off road truck or something)! It’s craziness and in the UK I would never set foot inside one (it would never pass an MOT anyway!) but it’s all part of the experience in Ghana and I never had any problems other than sweating far too much and a couple of near misses with other trotros (traffic is crazy… if I hadn’t of asked someone I would never have known you need to pass a test and get a license to drive over here!). Azar says he once shared a trotro with several people, a fridge freezer and two goats... now that I wish I had seen!

Anyway, back to day 5…. We took a TroTro to New Legon which is where Kelvin lives. He was excited to show us his house and we were excited to see it. We got off the trotro and walked for awhile down some dirt roads (most roads in Ghana are just dirt roads). Then we came across a small shack with a lady selling bits and bobs and behind that was Kelvin’s house. It looked like it was in the process of either being built or being knocked down and there was no front door, just a hole. We went inside and Kelvin showed us to wooden door which was padlocked. He realised he had forgotten the key so we all took it in turns to try and pick the lock, then to break the lock… none of us managed it…. Then the lady from the ‘shop’ outside came in, handed me her cute little baby girl and smashed the padlock off the door making it look easy! Kelvin showed us inside….. it was a small room, like the size of a box room in an average UK home. There was a small bed in the corner, a 2 seater battered old sofa and a bookcase filled with crockery. An old fashioned clock hung on the wall and Kelvin said these things had all been his mothers. He had kept them after she died of cancer the year before and he and his 3 siblings (1 sister, 2 brothers) all lived in this one little room together. The house belonged to his uncle but they did not get along and his uncle did not want them living there so they would all go away when he was around and then come back when he was gone, keeping their few possessions locked in this tiny room.

He pulled out some old photographs of his mother to show us and was close to tears when telling us all about her. I still had the baby gurgling on my lap and I was close to tears myself hearing his story and trying to play with the baby. Kelvin loved his mother very much and it devastated his family when she passed away, having already lost their father when they were young. He is now head of the family and just wants to do what he can to help his siblings. His sister works doing the job his mother once did and his brothers are both in boarding school but they will all be home for a month at Christmas and Kelvin is looking forward to seeing them having not seen them for months. He also pulled out a whole heap of certificates and said his mother had worked hard to keep her kids in school and he had done well at school himself. He had certificates in all sorts of things and scored high and highest on all his schooling. He was very proud to show these things to us and I was very grateful for his honesty and for sharing with us things so important to him.

Kelvin then put his things away and got what he needed and we left, paying someone to fix the lock so nothing would get stolen. We then took the long rides back to Dodowa (over 2 hours in traffic) and were back in time for dinner just as it got dark. It was a pleasant day and a nice break at the mall after all the culture shock we’d had the first week. Kelvin really enjoyed himself and loved experiencing a little bit of western life with us at the mall, as we loved experiencing a little of his life back home in New Legon.