First Day of Orientation

There are far more people in my orientation group than I expected, about 18 in total. Most are young girls between 18-20 from Germany. There's a few Norwegians, one Austrian, and a Brit. I'm the only American. We'll spend the first week in Accra doing our orientation together at the SYTO offices and then break off to different parts of the country to work on our volunteer projects. I didn't expect to be constantly surrounded by a never ending chatter of German. We're spending the week together at a place called Pink Hostel. The accomodation is nice enough. I'm staying in a dorm style room with about 7 other girls. At least there is an attached "shower" and some air conditioning in this room. I have no idea what my living situation is going to be like when I finally get to Tamale in the northern region.

At 8am our driver picked us up in a large company van and brought us to the SYTO offices across the street from the UNDP compound. There we piled into a large room and met Vincent, the guy in charge of incoming volunteers. Vincent is very warm and pleasant. Day one was all about health and safety issues, the scary stuff. We get to spend an hour or so talking about Malaria symptoms, finding clean water, and not getting robbed. Fun stuff. Then we went and changed money and bought local SIM cards.

Those who want to know my local number, send me a message on facebook or write me at nljunda@gmail.com. You'll have to look up the country code for Ghana though. I don't know it off the top of my head.

The afternoon was spent at the beach. The beach was...interesting. It's not somewhere I'm anxious to get back to. The people hawking their merchandise were beyond annoying. It wasn't like they'd try to sell you something and then move on when you said no. No, they sat down with you, touching you constantly, and hung out with you all day. I'm not kidding. This guy stayed with us for the whole three hours we were there. Even if you went off to sleep on one of the lounge chairs they'd come over and wake you up. The sales pitch NEVER EVER ended. I enjoy being left alone so the beach was actually a pretty miserable and stressful experience. It was impossible to be alone or to just have a goddamn conversation with the person next to you who you came there with. I've never seen something so intrusive. The whole thing made me want to crawl back into bed and hide.