The past few days have proven to show us different sides of ourselves and Accra.........
Let's start with the end of last week shall we:
We finally relocated out of the hotel and into Maxwell Court apartments in Osu. Osu is the vibrant, heartbeat of Accra where all things entertainment and shopping take place. We settled in on Thursday and decided to spend the weekend exploring.
And on to the weekend:
Friday night we tried dinner at the restaurant next door and were pleasantly surprised by the taste, quantity and price; all quite good. We headed back to the apartment awaiting a call from a friend on where to meet up later for drinks. However, we would soon come to realize that we were either a) old or b) cheap because we bailed on going out at 10:45pm at night, instead choosing to continue watching a film (Twilight). I’m going to lean towards option b) because the club we were going to started charging exorbitant cover charges at 11pm and we were not going to make it in time to avoid that. So yes, definitely b.
Saturday we walked around our new neighborhood and got a bit lost, but only in the beginning. As we wandered we stumbled upon a festival celebrating the coronation of the new king of Osu. I have to admit I was a bit sketched out at first, being that I didn’t know exactly where in Osu we were, and that there was a group of men standing around with large rifles. I think it only logical to be hesitant when you come upon a large crowd and some of those people in the crowd just happen to be carrying weapons. There are many unknown variables here. Now Brian, being the inquisitive fellow he is, continued to march on down the street right towards the group of men with guns. He joined the crowd of people gathered around a fence peering over to see the ceremony inside. I followed, bypassing the small canons sitting in the street, reluctantly. Brian said that from the beginning he knew it was a celebration and not a vigilantly mob……right.....
Brian could see my uneasiness so asked someone what was taking place. That’s when we learned the old king of Osu had recently died and they were crowning the new one. Soon thereafter they slaughtered a goat and proceeded to fire off the large rifles in the air. A parade was formed and the ceremony grooved down the street to the beat of drums and tribal chanting. We took some pictures and then we were on our way.
It didn’t take long to get our bearings. We strolled on down Oxford Street (the main street in Osu), taking photos of larger than life Obama posters still leftover from his visit earlier this summer. We grabbed some cash and then treated ourselves to gelato, a nice break from the sweltering heat. We finally made it to the main attraction of the day, a three-story local arts and crafts store, the African Arts and Cultural Development Center. This was the ultimate in masks, paintings, and beaded jewelry; everything Ghana. We ended up spending close to three hours here but it was worth every minute.
Fully loaded with goodies for friends and family we made our way towards home. We caught up with a friend to watch some football and have drinks. The rest of the evening was pretty low key.
Sunday morning we ventured out to find a nearby church. Not too far down Ring Road we located St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. Overall, it was an interesting service. We expected a lot of singing and dancing, however, it was more like a traditional Missouri Synod service with one exception. The orderly service broke away from the structured hymnal singing, Apostle’s Creed reading for a brief moment when the choir unleashed into a Ghanaian music festival. Just following the offering, the choir stood up, a young woman from the congregation grabbed a microphone and then it was all hands up, all feet stomping, dancing and singing your heart out. When they came to an end, it was right back to business. It was like they had been waiting to break loose.....
The afternoon turned out to be a lazy one with just a few errands to run. Brian’s main objective was updating his Fantasy Football stats in time for the NFL games. The plan was to take in some American football at Honeysuckle (British pub nearby) but when we arrived and they couldn’t get the right channel to come in we had to resort to our backup plan. Another western style bar, Champs, wasn’t too far away and we knew they showed American football but unfortunately charged a minimum of 10 cedi / person. Brian was determined so Champs it was. To our disappointment they too were having trouble with their satellite and so no NFL viewing was to be had that day. But to our delight, next door there was a lovely restaurant called Paloma we decided to partake in. It was totally meant to be because every Sunday they have buy one pizza get the second one free - sweet! I was probably overly excited for the pizza but given my diet has recently mainly consisted of french fries, boiled eggs and tomatoes I was in heaven. They also had a cover band that swayed us through dinner to songs such as Lean On Me and Mack the Knife and The Lady is a Tramp, a real treat.
We hailed a taxi for home as it was too late and dark to walk. We hopped in and made our way down Ring Road, under the bridge and turned right near Ringway Estates. We made the first left not too far from the apartment when all of a sudden I could smell and see smoke emitting from the dashboard. My immediate reaction was to get out of the vehicle. So, while driving down this side street, still moving at a decent clip, around 10pm at night, I started opening the door saying, “I’m just going to get out here…....” Right then Brian also realized that the dashboard was smoking and all of the interior lights had gone out. The driver was slowly bringing the car to a stop but right before the car came to a standstill, I jumped out (which upon reflection later surprised me). As you may have already guessed, like the situation with the Osu king celebration, I have a wild imagination, and in those very few seconds in which I had realized the car was smoking and had lept to my escape, I envisioned a massive explosion in which I would come away unscathed because of my quick thinking…. Now maybe I’ve seen too many movies lately or secretly think that I have superhero powers, not likely but still to be determined, but who jumps out of a moving vehicle? I’m going to chalk it up to the lessons learned as a child in grade school: Stop, Drop and Roll in the event of (real or potential) fire.
Reveling in my sly maneuver from the taxi I peered back awaiting to see Brian joining me at my side but to my dismay he was still in the car! He was knocking on the window motioning for me to open the door so he could get out. I am not a superhero. I left my husband inside the smoking car. I immediately ran back and relieved him from the potential flames that fortunately never were.
We had no choice but to walk home at this point but Brian, being the nice guy he is, gave the driver the full fare.
And now for this week:
This week has taken an interesting turn with today's events. As I mentioned, we moved into Maxwell Court apartments last Thursday. Upon move in, Brian spoke with the landlady, Maxine, to negotiate the final price of the 1 bedroom apartment we were awaiting to be finished before moving over from our temporary 2 bedroom. Until that time, she would charge us the daily 2 bedroom rate which was fine. In each of the several conversations Brian had with the landlady, she would immediately begin to yell and rant about the price of the 2 bedroom. It was a non issue as it was temporary and we needed to sit down and determine the lease and price for the 1 bedroom. Basically, Brian could not even talk with her on the phone because all she did was yell and never get to the part about the 1 bedroom. So today he tried calling her again just to set up a time to meet to resolve everything and was cut off with the yelling yet again, so he hung up. It was clear that this woman had gone over the deep end and was taking out some sort of pent up frustration on us. We liked the apartment complex and neighborhood and just wanted to finalize things; TechnoServe was going to pay for everything. We even brought in another TechnoServe volunteer who is occupying a different 1 bedroom. This just wasn't going to work out so we decided we were going to leave and just have TechnoServe pay for last few days we were there (obviously). The crazy lady called back, this time in a professional manner, and said that she would like us to vacate today. Brian responded with a firm yes that is our plan, glad we're on the same page.
Around lunchtime I went to the apartment and packed up all of our belongings and then spent over 2 hours scouring the neighborhood to see if I could find another place to live. Unfortunately, I didn't have any luck so it was back to Airside Hotel for the interim, our original home.
Brian and a TechnoServe driver met me at Maxwell Courts and just as we loaded up the truck, ready to leave the premises the guard wouldn't open the gate. He and some other staff members said that Maxine would like to see us before we left. The driver backed up and Maxine came down. Brian met her at her office and all I could hear was her yelling. I walked over and she was yelling for Brian to pay the bill for the days we stayed. Brian said to invoice TechnoServe and they would pay for it as already discussed. She said that's not the way we do things in this country or in yours, you have to pay now. Clearly she was thinking we were trying to get out of this.... probably because that's what she would have done - why else would she not let us go? We told her to bill TechnoServe and reminded her that she told us to leave and that's exactly what we were doing. Yet she wouldn't allow them to open the gates until she had someone from TechnoServe on the phone. We called and got the office manager on the line and handed it over where Maxine proceeded to yell at her. Ridiculous. She finished her rant and then let us leave. Unbelievable, Maxine really burned some bridges today.........
Brian's thoughts: "I guess it's a case of transference; misguided resentment being blind to its target...either that or she's nuts."
And now for some pictures which always makes things better:
