Meetings and moves
Today has been a productive day. Our meeting with the founder of Dom’s NGO got rescheduled for a couple hours later, which gave us time to see the place that Dom had found for us to rent a room within. We met with George, a friend of Dom’s, and he took us there. It turns out to be his family’s house, and the room is quite adequate. It’s cheaper than what we have been spending, and although not quite as close to the center of town (it’s a 15-20 minute walk) it is much more secure — this will finally give us a home base within which to leave some of our gear (other than at a Dom’s place, haha, poor Dom) rather than me carrying all of it on my back at all times. With the ability to leave the house with only the needed gear I will be able to shoot nimbly (that’s the hope, anyway). Also we will now likely have running water, which would be nice. Our current guesthouse really doesn’t have running water hardly ever (the best I can manage is a bucket bath), and even the electricity cuts out a few times a day (the owner probably has several rooms plus the bar which has a sound system all sharing the same circuit).
We then got some redred near Tantri and caught a taxi to Moree junction to walk the remainder of the way to the school Dom runs. After sitting in the breeze at the school for a while we sat down with Miriam, the founder, and talked about measles. She was very receptive to what we are doing, and I think was relieved to finally hear the details of our project (and to hear that they are both reasonable and humanitarian). She gave us several good contacts for the area and we concluded the meeting feeling like we are beginning to get plugged into the community of Cape Coast.
After our meeting with Miriam we caught a trotro back to Tantri and then checked out of our guesthouse. I am generally not squeamish about bugs (although I would prefer to avoid malaria) but last night there was a spider the size of a small apple on the ceiling of our room, and of course this morning he was no where to be found. So needless to say I was all for making today the day of our move to new accommodations, haha. We packed all our stuff into my monstrous Arc’teryx pack and grabbed some lunch before heading to our new house.
We briefly got settled and then headed out to explore the area and try to get a sense of our bearings. I am pleased to report that almost right away I had a pretty good sense of where we were and we were. Soon after departing a girl of maybe 13, in a school uniform, said to Miranda, “hey baby, looking fine, where you going?” Hahaha. Miranda speculated maybe she had only heard one of her older brothers talk to Obruni girls before.
On our walk to Kotakrabba (not sure on the spelling here) we also saw a few new things for sale that we hadn’t seen before, including groundnut butter (aka peanut butter) for $1.50CEDI (which we promptly bought). Miranda spotted two hand towels that will make perfect ‘mystery gifts’ for two of our financial backers too, and she snagged them for a deal. 
Last but certainly not least we purchased two Fan Ice Vanilla packages. You might recall me saying how everything even somewhat liquid in this country is consumed from a tube/packet, well milk/icecream/yogurt is no different. I like vanilla the best. You basically bite the corner off and squeeze the soft serve into your mouth. At some point it probably is legit ice-cream-consistency, but by the time it ends up in a cooler to be sold it’s more like soft serve or even a bit more melty. In a country where I have become quite accustomed to forcing myself to drink inordinate amounts of extremely tepid water, however, anything even sort of resembling ice cream is a welcome treat (I am glad I relaxed my dairy prohibition for this trip).
Also, speaking of animal rights, today was the first time I’ve seen something that actually disturbed me. Every day we pass people living in poverty, children laboring, etcetera, but in the scheme of things Ghana is much better off than its neighbors and I think that my preexisting exposure to what else is out there has shielded me from really being shocked or disturbed by what I’ve seen here. Today, however, pulling up to Tantri station we saw two men dragging a fullly grown, hog-tied pig out of the back of a trotro, one carrying it by the hog-tie rope and the other by its ear (from which it was now bleeding, since supporting such weight partially tore its ear off). The pig was squealing like, well, someone was tearing its ear off, and Miranda and I were both pretty disturbed by the sight. There was nothing I could do — it’s not my pig, I am pretty sure animal rights laws don’t exist here, and my mission in Ghana is not to save pigs, but it was still upsetting to see any creature treated with such disregard for its intelligence or ability to feel pain.
Anyway, I don’t want to end this journal on a sad note for the day because other than this one random sight (which happened mid-day) today was very productive. We have a new place to stay (which is more secure AND cheaper), we met with the school we wanted to work with (and got a good reception AND other contacts), and I had Fan Ice, found peanutbutter, AND got my photo taken with Obama.
