Religion seems to be a very important part of life in Ghana - and rather hard to ignore given the numerous signs along the roadside proclaiming "God is Love Hairdresser", "God's Hand Furniture Shop" and "Lord of Life Bakery" - just an example of the thousands of signs you can see. Christianity would be the most common religion, with various denominations including Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian. But there is also a reasonble number of Muslims - you can hear the chanting from the mosques at 5am! I'm also looking forward to hearing the singing on Sunday morning from the churches, because I suspect there might be some quite cool Gospel-style songs!
The people here have some lovely bible-inspired names like Endurance, Patience, Promise and Charity. Being a long distance runner, Warren particularly liked the name Endurance - I think he may adopt it as his "African name"! "Jacinta" is a bit difficult to say and remember, so now I seem to be called Mama Jessie or Madam Jessie - which is quite nice. Although one man told me that they have a similar name in Ghana - Jesita (unsure of the spelling) - which means God's Gift - so I'll claim that as well!
People will quite often say God Bless You as a farewell or thank you - which always gives one a warm fuzzy feeling! However, religion is not forced upon you in any way - if you're not religious that's fine; if you don't go to church - no problem. Whatever goes really!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The Adventures Begins!
And so our adventure in Ghana begins! Just to paint a picture of our new home – we are living at the Owere minesite, in Konongo, Ghana. Konongo is a large town about four hours drive from the capital city Accra. It is probably only 200km, but seems to take a long time thanks to roadworks and slow moving vehicles along the way. The trip from Accra is an experience in itself – there is a town affectionately known as “Breadtown” along the way, where you will see dozens of people balancing baskets of breads delicately on their head – roll down your window and you can buy your loaf of bread for lunch! Likewise you can buy phone cards, toilet rolls, bottles of water, even giant snails or bushrats, freshly killed and ready to cook up for dinner! We stopped for lunch along the way and had our first experience of local food – fufu is a starch a bit like thick sticky mashed potato with fish stew. It was very tasty, and I think it definitely earns respect amongst the locals if you try their food.
The minesite village is just on the outskirts of Konongo town, and is a group of houses and mine offices built around a loop road about 2.5km long (which I call the Ring Road). Warren’s office is only about 100m from our house, which is much nicer than sitting in peak hour traffic every day! I’ve been going walking or running around the Ring Road each morning which creates a bit of a stir – its fairly unusual to see a white woman, let alone a crazy white woman running! The children all call out – “O Bruni” which means “white woman” – its not a derogatory term of my white legs, just a general comment to any white person!
The kids are SO cute – they have these beautiful white smiles which appear on their little black faces, and most of them including the girls have shaved short hair. I met two little girls on my walk this morning, who were 10 year old twins, Sharifa and Mariama – I’ve noticed them looking at me inquisitively the past few days, and today they started talking to me. They were an hour late for school, but that didn’t seem to bother them!
Our house is a nice white colonial style cottage, about two metres off the ground on stilts. Its actually a duplex type house, but no-one lives on the other side at present. The inside is simple, with fairly basic furnishings including a beautiful brown velour lounge suite! Our bed is as hard as a rock, however it is king sized which is quite nice, and I’m slowly getting used to the hard mattress. We’re slowly adding a few little touches to make it more homely, like my nieces paintings and some photos of our families. We also have a second bedroom, so if anyone wants to come for a visit feel free!
I set up my computer with a new USB wireless internet connection yesterday, but it was infuriatingly slow and kept dropping out – I was so frustrated I almost threw it out the window! So this is actually the second time I’ve written this blog, because the first time it disappeared somewhere! Now I’ve learnt to write in Word first, save it and then post it on the blog – just in case. And I’ve also arranged a different internet connection which should be slightly better, and I’ll get used to it eventually. As they say around here – “This is Africa” !!
The minesite village is just on the outskirts of Konongo town, and is a group of houses and mine offices built around a loop road about 2.5km long (which I call the Ring Road). Warren’s office is only about 100m from our house, which is much nicer than sitting in peak hour traffic every day! I’ve been going walking or running around the Ring Road each morning which creates a bit of a stir – its fairly unusual to see a white woman, let alone a crazy white woman running! The children all call out – “O Bruni” which means “white woman” – its not a derogatory term of my white legs, just a general comment to any white person!
The kids are SO cute – they have these beautiful white smiles which appear on their little black faces, and most of them including the girls have shaved short hair. I met two little girls on my walk this morning, who were 10 year old twins, Sharifa and Mariama – I’ve noticed them looking at me inquisitively the past few days, and today they started talking to me. They were an hour late for school, but that didn’t seem to bother them!
Our house is a nice white colonial style cottage, about two metres off the ground on stilts. Its actually a duplex type house, but no-one lives on the other side at present. The inside is simple, with fairly basic furnishings including a beautiful brown velour lounge suite! Our bed is as hard as a rock, however it is king sized which is quite nice, and I’m slowly getting used to the hard mattress. We’re slowly adding a few little touches to make it more homely, like my nieces paintings and some photos of our families. We also have a second bedroom, so if anyone wants to come for a visit feel free!
I set up my computer with a new USB wireless internet connection yesterday, but it was infuriatingly slow and kept dropping out – I was so frustrated I almost threw it out the window! So this is actually the second time I’ve written this blog, because the first time it disappeared somewhere! Now I’ve learnt to write in Word first, save it and then post it on the blog – just in case. And I’ve also arranged a different internet connection which should be slightly better, and I’ll get used to it eventually. As they say around here – “This is Africa” !!
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