Week 4: The Half-Way Point

The Obrunis Go Shopping:

Last weekend, feeling we just hadn’t done enough exploring (it’s not a great walking-around city and have we mentioned how hot it is?), we decided to go to the Kaneshie market at the western edge of town. We’d read in the guidebook that there was “a woman on the second floor” who was a great source of beads.

Now, we’re not market-novices. We’ve been around. We’ve seen a lot of African markets. So believe us when we say this market was VERY BIG. There was all the stuff you’d expect to find at an African market – vegetables, baskets, fabrics, meat, fish, and tennis-ball size snails, with the slimy part hanging out like a big dog’s tongue (yuck!) – plus lots of idiosyncratic kinds of stuff like tupperware, surge protectors, flip-flops, and Q-tips.

Needless to say, there wasn’t a “bead section,” but we looked around and found a few bead women. We settled on one, and Carole picked out a few nice necklaces and then …

the bargaining. The bead lady started at 85, Carole countered 30, then in small steps to 60 vs 40, until finally settling on 50 cedis (about $40) and both sides seemed fairly happy.

The necklaces were put in a bag and Geoffrey got out his wallet and started to hand over two 20’s and a 10. The woman took the 10, disappeared around the corner, and returned 30 seconds later with two 5’s. She gave one to us and kept the other, shook our hand and told us to come again soon.

It took us a second to realize what had just happened. Ghana recently re-denominated the cedi, basically dividing the currency by 10,000. But some people still use the old way of talking, so when she said “50,” she didn’t mean 50 cedis, she meant 50 thousand old cedis or 5 new ones.

Thank goodness “our” bead lady either didn’t realize what dopes we were or was too honest to take advantage. But she must have laughed up a storm when she told her friends about us.


A Nice Visit

On Friday, a delegation from AJWS – who had been here all week, visiting some of the organizations they fund – visited “APP,” and gave us the chance to wear our spiffy new team polo shirts.

It was a great opportunity for them to understand what the organization, and especially the peer-educators, actually do. These incredibly-poised, 20-something women , most either active or former sex workers themselves and several HIV +, spoke of various aspects of their work, including a kind of role play to show us how they use anatomical models to demonstrate the proper use of both male and female condoms. [PHOTO]

Then we accompanied the delegation on a visit to a seater community, a powerful and sobering look into a part of the world far removed from their reality. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a few weeks since it was removed from ours too. The visit ended with a poignant moment as one of the FSWs thanked us for taking the time to visit them and care about them and respect them.



Finally, we – all 6 AJWS volunteers in Accra – were invited to Shabbat dinner with the visiting AJWS delegation at a very fancy hotel. It was quite a treat and Carole marked the occasion by dressing a l’Africaine (in a dress she bought about 35 years ago in the Ivory Coast!).

From the left: Geoffrey, Bruce, Susan, Aseye (the AJWS in-country rep), Lisa, Maurice, Carole.


A lovely Saturday

We tried a different beach – Kokrobite Beach, about an hour (though only 20 miles, in heavy traffic) out of town. It was low key and untouristy with a heavy dose of rasta and it had all the right ingredients: sand, water, food, fishing boats.
At the end of the day, we went to the African Dance performance arranged by AJWS at their hotel. (Jason, the video at the end of this post is for you! It may take a few seconds to get going.)

Work

As for our work, things are definitely happening. Think popcorn.

We’ve made a lot of progress on the 5-Year Strategic Plan and it’s shaping up nicely. The major task right now is to get everyone’s feedback and make requested their changes. But since all the ideas it contains came from the team in the first place, it’s definitely THEIR plan, not ours, and we’re pretty sure they will feel the kind of ownership of it to keep the plan “alive” after we decamp.

Interestingly, it is looking like one of those situations where the minute the APP team chose to directly address their challenges, positive things started happening. Even for their biggest challenge – how are they going to get funding on a reasonably long-term basis – answers in the form of some really promising opportunities are starting to emerge. We didn’t exactly solve the problem for them, but somehow the planning process, their collective focusing on the issue, may have.