Accra

"Ghana is what people see in their dreams. Those who are here are the lucky ones." That's how United Planet's young assistant describes his country to volunteers.

Lucky is: humid.When we touched down in Accra at 9:30am, it was 84F. Now at7:30pm, the heat of theday has at last escaped the buildings but it's still ridiculously muggy. Yao, the assistant, met Rebecca, another ND volunteer, and I at the airport and took us to a hotel in
Osu, a smart part of town with plenty of restaurants and a Wrangler Jeans store. After a briefing, we ate lunch at a cafe on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Guinea. A flight of steps, tall and steep, led to multiple levels of tables which were protected by a wall from the drop-off and the spray of the waves throwing themselves toward the coast. We visited the tomb of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, and a small museum about the history of the slave trade in an old fort. Accra is hot, roads are paved and relatively clean, named shops sell specialized types of goods, and people stare much less than in Kampala.

Tomorrow we'll travel with Raj, the UP coordinator, to Putubiw in the central region, west of Accra and just northeast of Cape Coast. Rebecca and I will most likely be co-teaching English in the junior secondary school (~middle school, lucky us indeed) for 1-2 classes each morning. After a free afternoon, we'll help with the review sessions run in the evening by the Putubiw Student Union (PUSU). the Union is our host in the village. We'll be living in a home (essentially as boarders) with a family just out of the center of Putubiw. What all of that will be in actuality once we reach the village is yet to be seen...