April 23rd, 2019 by Galit Rudelson

Disclaimer:
I wrote this blog on my computer while in Ghana. I wasn’t able to post it while I was there since there was no internet, so I’m just posting now. Also if you’re a future INMED student looking through this blog for insight of what to expect or what to bring (like I did before I left), Im planning on writing a separate post for that at the very end! So scroll on that way. Everyone else, thanks for reading!

And so we begin my adventure:

After a very uneventful red eye flight, I arrived to Accra, Ghana’s capital. A couple of people spoke to me on the plane, asking what I was doing, and where I was going. They all had the same advice: “We love people, everyone is very nice! But be careful, there are bad people too, keep an eye on your stuff.”
I was met at the airport by Seryram, who works for the Methodist Church. I am heading to a Methodist Hospital, so that is how I got connected with him. He was incredibly nice, and helped me settle into my hotel room. He quickly rushed off afterwards to get me a new SIM card for my phone so “I would be able to communicate with family” during my stay. Incredibly nice!
Once Seryram was back, he offered to drive around and show me the city! We drove around all the different parts. He showed me Jamestown, one of the oldest parts of town, which was set up when Ghana was being colonized. We stopped in a mall in a section of town that Seryram described as the “Vegas of Accra.” It was several stories high, and functioned much like an American mall. There was a section that was for children to play in, and it seemed incredibly fun.
Driving through the streets of Accra is wild. The cars use their horns more as a communication than a warning. For example, I could honk my horn to say “go ahead” to a person merging in front of me. There is no “polite distance” between cars. Everyone is close, and merge into traffic from all sides. There are also motor bikes everywhere, which follow no rules what-so-ever. They zoom in between cars and through red lights. Seyram was telling me that in Northern Ghana, where the main source of transportation is motor bikes, they are much better at following traffic rules. But here, they are much fewer, and therefore do what they want.
After driving around town Seyram took me to look at the beach and ocean. I asked him if people swim in it. He said that everyone dumps their trash in the ocean, so it is very dirty here. So tourists and adults don’t usually swim in it. But he had as a kid. We walked down the beach and came across an area with lots of children swimming. They were doing flips on the beach and even had a step set up to run up to and jump off and flip. It’s funny, I spend YEARS teaching children to do these flips in gymnastics, and here the kids were teaching each other on the beach.
While we were sitting on the beach a wedding party came to the beach. They were young, probably a couple years younger than me. The grooms men and women were dressed in bright orange and dark blue. It was beautiful. I was shy to take a picture, but Seryram told me it is ok. So that is what I have attached here.
Tomorrow I leave for Kumasi, and then to meet the team from Ankaase! Looking forward to settling into my new home.