Certain People Rely Too Much On Blogs For Entertainment

MEZMERIZE ACCRA

If you were a rapper on the down slope of your career, what would you do to reinvent yourself? Make a cameo at the Ghana Music Awards? Ja Rule was thinking EXacTly the same thing! TODAY, the "Livin it Up" master will in fact be making an appearance in Accra at the lesser known (but still popular among sub-saharan traditional-hiphop/rap fusion music lovers) Ghana Music Awards! I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish by doing this, but I know I'm trying to get tickets and bring a sign that says "put it on me" in big letters.

In honor of JaRule, I will name all of my subject headings in this entry after his songs. You can bypass this by avoiding reading the subject headings.

NOT QUITE LIVIN IT UP

So my two friends and I have been residing in the lovely YMCA Accra. The accomadations are pretty nice and we have a kitchen we can use (cockraoches included, of course). Now, there is an airconditioner in the room but we use it minimally at the YMCA's request. However, our 'landlord' still likes to come to our room roughly three times a day to tell us to turn it off. We then proceed to show him that is it not on at which point he claims that we turned it off when we heard him coming. We have encountered a variety of other ridiculous situations with this man and now he wants to overcharge us even more. So I think we will leave, but I'm not sure where we will stay. Possibly in a cheap hotel or in a hostel farther out of town which will be very inconvenient.

IT'S MURDA -PAIN IS LOVE

I had visitors yesterday!! A family friend, Lisa, came with her mother to tour Ghana. Lisa was on a similar SIT program four years ago and so we got to compare notes. We went out to dinner and then to an African drumming/dance performance. Lisa confirmed my suspicions that people in Cape Coast are extremely aggressive in comparison to other parts of Ghana. I haven't talked much about my honest impressions of the country, but I was quite upset with the people in Cape Coast and my subsequent perceptions. In Cape Coast, it's like they can get away with murda. However, I am starting to separate Cape Coast culture from Ghanaian culture which is extremely helpful for my state of mind.

ALWAYS ON TIME

Guess who is always on time? Chabad! By searching the Chabad website I found that there is a Chabad in the Democratic Republic of Congo and they organized for a Rabbi to come host a Passover Seder in Accra. So my two friends and I got to go to a kosher seder that was led by a hilarious New York Rabbi. They brought us famous Shmura matzah and even hired a chef! We were a small group, but it was really nice to have a Seder here. There are a few African Rabbis in Ghana (Lost Tribe stuff) but we weren't able to travel to get to them which I'm sure would have been very interesting.

RACE AGAINST TIME

The end is near! I am almost done with my research and about to start writing my paper. Speaking of my research, I recently interviewed a man who explained to me, "you know why we have a water shortage in Accra? It's because we don't have enough trees here. The trees are like people who call for water when they are thirsty. The government must plant more trees if they want it to rain."
And I will close with that.