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I've had 3 weeks here now. Internet is slow, and can be impressively unreliable, I've been trying to write this for a week, constant café error thwarting my efforts. There is much I could write about, and not enough space for it all, but this is my first entry in more than 2 weeks, I'll see how much I can get done.
Last weekend i went away to Busua, a small costal village with an attractive beach and a disproportionate number of hotels, built to cater for the steady influx of obruni. I had plenty of time on my hands, which is a common feeling for someone used to the european pace of things, but it was nice to just drink beer and read.
The best of my meals was in the black mamba corner. Described in the guide as a german-run eatery, it was more accurately the house of a german women who cooked for european travelers given half a days notice. The word 'restaurant' does not necessarily describe an establishment of the european notion over here, it might well be that someone has put a table in their front room and a sign on their door. But i had a fine pizza cooked by the german lady, joined by a young austrian couple. The owner talked to us almost without break for 4 hours. She was entertaining enough, and had some interesting stories of her travels and of the country, and was kind enough to relate them to us in english, but i would have liked a chance to exchange some experiences of teaching in ghana with the austrian girl. She had come to teach german as part of her degree, told by the university in accra to arrive at start of term in september, there was in fact nothing to do for a month. "What did she do?" I asked. She read all her books, sat around, went into the supermarket and looked at how much things cost.Not I think an entirely uncommon sort of experience out here.
Along with that meal, I had a chat with an ex-pat Londoner I'd already met in takoradi, in a beach bar, giving me several different and interesting perspectives to life out here.Together with my own perspective on things, I feel like I'm learning a lot about the world by being here.
I'm being well looked after by my hosts, who are taking me out often. Their hostpitality extending as far even as trying to find me a girlfriend. Despite Andersons (now rather tiresome) running gag about my three fiancés back in the UK, he insisted on taking me out on a blind date over the weekend (and again tonight I think).As I think I said before, being white and being in africa, you have a very different experience as you would have if you were any other colour.This might well be the only place where I've had instances of women telling me I am beautiful (with the exception, probably a few years ago of my mother).Many people it seems, even some of those already married, have ambitions of marrying someone white.But although Anderson's blind date seemed rather nice, the cultural chasm being as it is, the etiquette of dating something I can only guess at, it's not something I really want to dip my toe in. You often happen upon older western men with young pretty ghanians on their arm, although i wish to make no judement on such matters, something of it seems a bit seedy to me.
My work at the school has had a steady increase.I'm giving violin lessons in two schools now.Today was interesting, mansek music school started teaching at a new school.I had to try to give a lesson to more than 40 over-excited school kids, with just 6 violins.We demonstrated several instruments for the kids to decide which they wanted to play, and the lions share of the 100 odd kids opted for mine.This was I'm sure more to do with the allure of having lessons from a white man than it was any sort of endorsement of my violin playing. This number will be scaled back in the next few weeks, from kids dropping out, and from us weeding out those that haven't paid.Once this is better organized, and I can bring along an assistant if needs be, it will be a great step forward for the school.The lessons I'm giving in schools, together with the time I have with the staff at mansek, and the preparation I'm going to do for a 3 day staff workshop in December means that I now have a pretty full day (very busy by ghanian standards).
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