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6 weeks down now. It's taken me 3 days to compile this, continually interrupted by internet failure.
Two weekends ago (24/11) was my first trip to green turtle lodge. An ecolodge in the truest sense, staying in local style mud-huts, powered by solar panels, everything made from local materials, the bed the chairs from bamboo. They run excursions which benefit the local community and ecology. Set on a palm lined beach, populated by mostly 20something obruni, and with nothing to do but laze around eat and drink it reminded me very much of the book/film 'The Beach' (it also reminded me somewhat of 'Swiss Family Robinson', a film reference too far perhaps for some). Much of the romance was lost for me however by the time i left taking with me at least 100 insect bites (i counted 23 on my right ankle). Due to the pattern of biting, concentrated largely on areas normally in contact with the bed rather than those parts in contact with the air, these were i assume bed-bugs. Distinguishable also i think because they were both more painful and persistent than the solitary mosquito bite i've had so far (i think) . I would have returned however this weekend just gone(with some cunning anti-bedbug strategy) were it not for the lack of availability green turtle has between now all the way up to xmas.
So this weekend i went instead to Ellis hideout (i'm not sure whether the absence of a possessive apostrophe was deliberate or not). Quite similar to green turtle except for having mains electricity, plumbing and set on a beach a bit more amenable to swimming. I was rather put off of swimming at green turtle, there are strong undercurrents, and on my first morning at the lodge there was a bit of a drama where a chap had to be rescued by two barrel-chested men. Given that i wanted to swim primary because i feel so unfit (physical exertion is kept to a minimum in this climate), i decided against it.
Ellis also lacked some of the charm of green turtle. Where as the later had produced rather good results with basic materials, had a high level of craftsmanship, was both ergonomically and aesthetically well designed; Ellis had made use of perfectly modern building materials and yet were implemented quite crudely. Like the shower floor not being sloped towards the plug hole at all, or the placement of the mirror in the bathroom directly above the toilet, particularly annoying when i wanted to shave (well, it wasn't really that annoying, i just moved it, but it was still a stupid place to put it).
Ellis is just off the small village of butre, seperated by a precarious looking but stable enough footbridge. The common greating you get in Ghana from children is "Obruni, how are you", or maybe "Obruni bye-bye". Rare in Takoradi but more common in some places "whiteman give me......" (which is from very cheeky children, not from very needy ones, they are only asking because you're white). Occasionaly you might get "whats up" from a teenager. Some very young children have burst into tears and/or ran away at the sight of me. But the most notable thing i thought about Butre was the children greeted me simply with "peace". Which was quite charming, until i got absolutly swamped by a whole load of them, very happy and excited though they were.
My anti-bedbug device is still unproven, i don't know how much of a diference it made. I'd brought a large binliner for the precise purpose, which i'd fashioned into a barrier to be placed under the bed sheet. I still got bitten, but maybe only twenty times perhaps (i think there a fair few on my back, but i haven't been able to get visual confirmation). If they were bedbugs, they certainly weren't the giant-mutant-evil-bedbugs they have at green turtle.
In the two weeks between my trips a couple of things happened. Firstly i lost my phone on the way back from green turtle, but given that i knew the exact location it fell out of my pocket, and that was in the taxi-service the lodge ran to agorna junction, it was returned to me the next day. Following that minor drama, on the thursday of that week 3 men from internal revenue came and closed the school, putting their own padlocks on the gates. They didn't even give the teachers enough time to lock up the school properly, or to get all their bags and money from the rooms. Crisis was averted as we were able to get access back into the office using Koko's 'magic' key, and Kwesi decided to risk death and climb out onto a ledge to reach the balcony of the main part of the school, to reclaim their bags on lock up the other rooms. We placed up a sign ("Due to unexpected intervention, the school has closed temporly, thank u" which i had a consultation role in drafting but not in all the spelling) and i bought the teachers a beer (explaining: "if this happened in england, we'd all go to the pub").
It seemed quite a serious crisis at the time, they wanted more money than the school could hope to raise. The tax men were demanding an arbitrary figure, without inspecting any of the school's finances, or considering their ability to pay. It seems the system here is that the local officials are given a sum they need to raise, and they sit in their office inventing sums of money needed from each business, and send out the bills. Stranger even more so given that any real equivalent of mansek in the UK would be exempt of tax (or even be subsidised). But it got sorted out, and the school only lost that thursday afternoon in the end. Quite how it all got sorted out i don't have much of an idea, but i think making dramatic gestures like padlocking schools is part of the way things get done here, even though i'm sure it caused Fiifi a great amount of stress.
Other than that, the only other thing that sticks in my mind is my church trip on the middle weekend (1/12) and fiifi's self destructing violin. Fiifi wanted me to play at church with him (it wasn't i don't think his normal church), but i was using his violin. I had a few minutes warning before we were to play (what, i hadn't yet been told)where i tried to get the instrument working. Doing up the bow was a bit of a mission, but the pegs were the real problem. I had just a few moments to try, but they just wouldn't budge, i've never come across anything like it (indeed, later, when Fiifi tried to move one he ended up just snapping it). With the fine tuners i could get the A string to what i guessed (with my less-than-perfect pitch) was within a semi-tone of 440, but no more. So there was a rising dread as i walked up to the front to cheers and shouts of "yeah, white-man". My guess was confirmed by the keyboard on stage, and i couldn't move the pegs any better. Playing from ear a simple tune i've never heard before was possibly within my grasp, maybe even still if i could have got just one string in tune. But the other than the A string, i could get none of the others within a minor third of where they should be; so the 'performance' ended up being me trying to move immovable pegs with a slightly pained expression on my face. Ah well.
So i had better be getting back to work. Next week we have the staff workshop (at least i think we do), which i'm preparing for. I'll do some more travelling after xmas.
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