An average day in Ghana
My first blog post is about an average day here in Ghana, which I am so exited to share with you.
Actually we won’t have many “average” days here since we will have 3 weeks of field work in the middle of the course. In the field work period we will be staying in different field sites. But in the remaining time we are staying at Nana Bema in Cape Coast.
This is a really nice hotel which lies on top of a hill overlooking the vibrant city centre. Often you can hear choirs of people singing loudly coming from the many churches that also belong to the area.
Well, now I’ll try to describe a day in Cape Coast.
Morning:
7 am: we have breakfast which Latitia, the cook at our hostel, makes for us. She is an excellent cook!
8 am: the bus leaves for Cape Coast University (UCC).
8.30 am: we begin our first lecture, and after this we either have one more lecture and go back to Nana Bema for lunch at 1 PM, or we go directly to the study center at Brenu beach.
We go to the beach two times a week and it is amazing out there!
Afternoon and evening: after lunch we are usually free to do what ever we want. Some people study a bit, some goes downtown to shop for dinner or maybe we go to the local beach which is a 25 minutes walk or a short taxi ride from Nana Bema.
Wednesday’s we usually have an evening lecture which can be really interesting. Mostly we cook dinner ourselves in the big kitchen or we go to one of the many restaurants. I am still working on my top 5 list of places to go for food.
In addition, people here are quite sporty! For instance we sometimes have a little workout on the big balcony when the sun is going down and the temperature starts to decrease.
Also if you’re up for a morning run, there is always somebody to go jogging with before breakfast.
I joined for the first time this Friday and it was a great experience running through the streets of Cape Coast while the sun is rising.
At this hour there is a certain calmness over this vibrant city and the smell of freshly baked bread mixes with the smell of dried fish and the breeze from the sea. The streets are far from deserted though.
The Ghanaians rise early and go to bed early as well. I remember when Orlando – the assisting manager – was giving us a rundown of the house rules.
He reminded us to keep the volume down in evening so everyone can get a good night’s sleep and said that “quiet hours” begins at 9 PM!
I was surprised because I expected something like 10:30 or 11 PM. But after living here for 2 weeks I understand him better. Automatically I’ve tuned in to rise and go to bed with the sun.
Of course this only applies for the weekdays, our Friday nights are often spent on some dance floor maybe enjoying a Club – the local and very tasty beer.
