Compound

Monday morning I moved into my new place a bit sooner than expected (my landlord Rosa had forgotten to let me know that my place was available already when I came, but I didn't find out until late Friday). The place is a compound in the mixed Christian/Muslim area Newtown, which the previous Danish intern at IBIS had recommended. Other than me, there are only German-speeking girls from Austria, Germany and Switzerland living here, all of them working as interns in different positions for the German state's main aid-organisation. The compound has two large common areas, a nice kitchen, a washing machine and internet connection. Now, I'm home alone with a cup of Nescafé trying to organise myself and update this blog, while the girls have gone to the beach. I'm sitting in the outdoors common area wearing my football shorts, a t-shirt and my Ghanaian sandals (see picture), that are actally meant for Fridays, where Ghanaians dress up. In a minute I will go have a look at what's going on in my neighborhood where the Muslims are celebrating the end of fasting dancing, singing, eating, drinking, basically doing everything they feel like. In Ghana most of the population is Christian, but there are a lot of Muslims, though mainly in the North. Both Christian and Muslim holidays are days off, so today there's no work.

In all fairness

I trust you, I said, to Nana, the bellboy at Frankies Hotel as I handed him 100 USD. I had just arrived to my hotel and I had asked Nana where I could get some water or exchange some money. I can do it for you mr. Borch, he said, and I thought it was a good idea. After all, it felt like I was pretty likely to get scammed if I tried to find a place to buy water on my own at 8 pm in the evening in a touristy neighborhood. Osu is a part of Accra famous for its upscale restaurants and where plenty of salesmen are lurking in and outside of the shadows for an opportunity to earn a cedi or two. Really, it is relatively risk-free to get around once you know the basics, but having just arrived to Ghana for the first time, and all alone, I was not feeling very relaxed with the situation. I didn't want to start out my time in Ghana with negotiating with a street vender that I couldn't know whether or not to trust. So I accepted Nana's idea, and offered him a 10 USD bill. But he told me that small bills don't provide good exchange rates, and that it would be better if I could give him 50 or 100. I sighed and wasn't sure whether I was making a naive move handing over 100 bucks to the first person I talked to in Ghana. I decided to do it anyway. After all, my reasoning was that I had to take some chances in the beginning. Also I felt like I owed it to test my guide book which had really underscored that Ghana was a safe place to be and that Ghanaians were generally speaking very honest people.

Testing trust
Still, for some reason I quickly decided that since I was going to trust Nana, it would be better to let him know that I was in fact sceptical about whether I could trust him. By saying that I was of course letting him know that if he fooled me, I was going to find out, even if I couldn't do anything about it - I was putting him on a test. I felt a little uneasy about placing him in that situation, but Nana came back with 140 Ghana cedis, which I knew was probably a common exchange rate here, and two bottles of water. I had a bad taste in my mouth for what I had said, but I was happy that it was not a mistake to give Nana the money. Nana didn't seem to mind the situation, and told me he hoped we could be friends, and he asked how long I would be there. A week, I said, and he offered me his cell phone number. Knowing that I would be spending the weekend alone I thought, why not?, and he said I could call him Friday afternoon after finishing my first day of work.

Nana comes back
Although when I got home I was tired and didn't call him, he turned up together with his brother at the hotel on the next day (his one day off) and we went to a brand new KFC a couple of hundred meters away. KFC was fresh and clean, and full of Ghanaians watching football, FC Barcelona - FC Porto, the Uefa Super Cup, and even John Kouffour, a past president of Ghana, came to pick up a meal! After that we had an icecream and agreed to hang out when Nana was free the day after, maybe go to Accra mall, maybe to the beach and play football. We ended up going to the beach and paying the entrance to a place full of restaurants, with horseback-riding opportunities, a small marketplace, sun chairs for tanning, and kids playing on the edge of the water with volleyballs and footballs. Nana and I went for a walk to check it all out and when we came back we played ball with a crowd of boys who were probably a few years younger than me, and very good at it! After playing football, we sat down on a bench on the beach, just hanging out and watching the waves. Nana asked me, So, can I be trusted?, laughing sarcastically and referring to the episode at the hotel. I told him I was sorry about that, and attempted an explanation, but I knew it was kind of pointless telling him that it was not him, but my Western based presuppositions, I was testing... I felt a bit embarressed - but also a bit wiser!